Secret of the Corpse Eater

by Ty Drago

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

  Copyright © 2014 by Ty Drago

  The Undertakers: Secret of the Corpse Eater by Ty Drago

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Edited by Erica Rose

  Published by Month9Books

  Cover illustrated by Zach Schoenbaum

  Cover and typography designed by Victoria Faye

  Cover Copyright © 2014 Month9Books

  In loving memory of two amazing women:

  Debra Ann Head, dear friend and sister-in-law, taken too soon;

  and Bonnie Virginia Drago, mother, advisor, and loyal fan.

  Thank you for everything you both gave me. You will never be forgotten.

  “There can be beauty even in monsters, if one knows how to look.”

  —Anonymous

  This is my life.

  I remember thinking those words as the three of us stood on that South Street rooftop, looking down into the lifeless, upturned faces of hundreds of the walking dead. Many of them were smiling. There’s nothing worse than a smug Corpse.

  They knew, as we knew, that they had us trapped.

  Um … I’d better back up a little.

  It started with the poster.

  Harvey’s Open Air Tours!

  Knowledgeable Guides!

  Custom-Made Open-Air Limos!

  Leaving PROMPTLY at the Top of Every Hour!

  See Philadelphia in Comfort!

  Just $15 per Person!

  I read it—memorized it, really—but not because I cared about some Philly tourist trap.

  You see, when the target you’re stalking looks your way, it’s important to not just appear innocent, but to be innocent. Suddenly, I wasn’t Will Ritter, Undertaker. Instead, I was just a thirteen-year-old kid in jeans, with my face buried under a hoodie and my attention glued to some random poster slapped onto the window of a closed shop.

  So I read the poster. Then I read it again. And again. Until my peripheral vision told me the target had turned away. Only then did I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  If I got caught now, I was dead.

  Tracking prey through city streets is hard enough at night, but it’s way worse in the daytime.

  My target moved along South Street, heading east, with me about a half block behind. It was a little before eleven a.m., not a prime stalking hour.

  South Street’s a pretty big deal in Philly. With its clubs and bars and stores, it’s a major nighttime hot spot. In twelve hours, these sidewalks would be choked with people. There’d be lights and music and drunken laughter.

  But now, blanketed under a gray, April-morning sky, there were few enough shoppers that I’d be noticed if my tracking got too obvious—and yet too few to use as camouflage.

  My target abruptly crossed the street and continued along on the other side. Not exactly hurrying, but with definite purpose.

  I crossed the street too. Tracking 101. A newbie might think it better to stay on my side of South and follow catty-corner. Mistake. People look around while they walk. It’s safer to stay behind them, where you can react fast if they pull what Sharyn Jefferson, co-chief of the Undertakers, calls a “Crazy Ivan.” That’s when your target pauses without warning and looks back—like mine just did.

  I think it’s a movie reference.

  My target stopped. So I stopped too, ready to play innocent again. Then she knocked on the door of Quaker City Comics. I didn’t know the place.

  A few seconds later the door opened and she went in.

  A few seconds after that, I peeked through the glass frontage. A sign said the place wouldn’t open for another ten minutes, which explained why the target had knocked.

  It was hard to see much inside: a cashier’s counter, a little snack shop on the left, and shelves upon shelves of comics. A pretty cool place. I tried to remember the last time I’d read a comic book—and couldn’t, though my roommate back at Haven, the Undertakers’ HQ, kept a bunch of them.

  I just had no time for stuff like that anymore: X-Men, Batman, The Avengers, Green Lantern.

  My old life.

  I spotted my target swapping words with a twenty-something dude dressed all in black and sporting a nose ring. He smiled and pointed toward the rear of the store. She nodded and headed back there, disappearing from view.

  I tugged on the door handle.

  Locked.

  Normally, this wouldn’t have slowed me down much. I carry a tricked-out pocketknife, which can pretty much pick any lock. But before I could even reach for it, the nose ring guy was there. He yelled, “Not open yet!” through the glass, his voice muffled but understandable.

  I faked confusion and pointed at my ear.

  With a visible sigh, he unlocked the door and cracked it about six inches. “We’re not open yet.”

  I stuck my sneaker in the gap. “I need to come in for a minute.”

  “Look, kid—”

  I shoved the door with my shoulder. The guy wasn’t real big, but then neither am I. If my roommate had done this, he’d have sent the dude flying. But the best I could manage to do was force him back a step, and that was more about his surprise than my muscle.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded as I stepped into his shop. The place smelled of crisp, new paper—a musty but not unpleasant odor.

  “Sorry,” I said, meaning it. “This’ll only take a sec …” Then I sidestepped him and headed toward the back of the store.

  He grabbed my forearm. “Look kid, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull. But get out now before I call the cops.”

  I put my hand on his, found his pinky and yanked it the wrong way. He yelped and let go. I didn’t. Instead, I forced his wrist back until he dropped to one knee, grimacing in pain. “Call whoever you want,” I told him. “Like I said, I won’t be long.”

  He nodded feverishly.

  “Don’t worry. Everything’s cool,” I said, wondering if that was true. Well, I’d know in about a minute.

  I released his hand and went on my way. He muttered something after me, but I didn’t catch it. Just as well.

  I found a narrow hallway leading to a small mudroom that had been turned into storage. Boxes lined one wall. On the opposite wall stood shelves of graphic novels—obscure anime, according to their spines.

  At the rear was a blue door with the word exit painted on it. And on a box right beside it sat Helene Boettcher. She clutched a sheet of paper in her hands and was reading it so intently that she didn’t notice me right away.

  Helene was also an Undertaker. In fact, it was this thin, brown-haired girl who’d first brought me to Haven, having come to my rescue during an eighth-grade math class early last fall. That had been the day I’d found out monsters were real.

  Another story.

  Helene was one of my best friends. Except she was a bit more than that, too. I knew it but, so far, hadn’t done anything with the knowledge.

  Frankly, I hadn’t yet figured out what I should do.

  Helene, however, met my eyes and, as usual, knew exactly what to do.

  She got up and took a swing at me.

&n
bsp; I ducked.

  She threw another punch. I blocked it. Then she pivoted and jabbed me in the chest, near my left shoulder. It hurt, but I knew from experience that it wasn’t half as hard as she was able to hit.

  “What’re you doing here?” she demanded. Her cheeks were red, and I noticed for the first time that there were tears in her eyes.

  “Ow!” I yelped, rubbing the spot where she’d punched me. “I … followed you from Haven.”

  “You what?”

  “You’ve been doing this a lot!” I snapped. “Sneaking out on Saturday mornings. You think nobody noticed?”

  Alarm flashed in her eyes. “Who else knows?”

  “Well … just me.”

  Her visible relief did nothing to help in the anger department. “You’ve got no right to be … spying … on me!”

  I started to say something—maybe argue, maybe apologize—but I didn’t get the chance.

  Both of us jumped as someone pounded on the comic shop’s back door. Then the knob jiggled, loud and urgent. But of course it was locked.

  Helene and I swapped looks.

  A morning delivery, maybe? I glanced over my shoulder toward the front of the store, but I couldn’t see Nose Ring Dude. Maybe he was calling the cops. Maybe he was in the bathroom running cold water over his hand. Either way, he didn’t seem to have heard a thing.

  A moment later, the pounding returned, though this time it sounded farther away. Whoever-it-was was running along the alley, trying each door in turn.

  I stepped around Helene and pushed the blue door open.

  At first I saw nothing but the cracked pavement of your typical alley. Then someone yanked on the other side, tearing the knob out of my hands with tremendous strength—and I found myself face-to-face with a dead man.

  I knew the next few seconds counted—big time.

  We call them Corpses, not zombies. We do that to remind ourselves that unlike the movie monsters, these dudes are far from stupid. If I gave away that I could See this guy for what he was—a rotting, walking cadaver, he’d peg me as an Undertaker.

  Then he and his dead peeps would kill me.

  He glared at me with milky, seemingly lifeless eyes. Behind him, I spotted at least four more deaders hurrying east along the alleyway, heading toward 6th Street, maybe chasing whoever had just knocked on Quaker City Comic’s back door.

  He was a Type Three. That’s a grading system based on degree of rottenness. Threes are around a month dead. Their juices are drying up and their bodies are bloating from all the trapped gases. Worse, by now the bugs have settled in to stay; this dude had maggots crawling around inside his cheeks. I could see them wriggling.

  And don’t even get me started on his smell. Threes radiate a stench that would make a bucket of vomit smell like roses.

  In the early days, I’d have lost my breakfast, but those days were long gone. Still, it was an effort to keep my voice steady when, as innocently as possible, I said, “Somebody knocked.”

  “Ain’t your business, kid,” the Corpse growled. He had a raspy voice; his vocal chords were drying up.

  For just a second, I crossed my eyes and had a look at his Mask. It’s a Seer trick—a knack that can take a while to pick up. But once you’ve got it, you’re able to see a deader’s illusion: the false face that each of them somehow projects to the rest of the world.

  This guy’s Mask looked about forty, with thin brown hair, a pointed nose, and an acne-scarred face. I often wonder why some Corpses project ugly Masks. I mean, if you’re going to fake being alive, why not fake being halfway good-looking? But many of them don’t. Just another of their little mysteries.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to look intimidated. It wasn’t hard. “Sorry.”

  I started to pull the door shut. For a few seconds, he kept holding it, suspicion in his eyes. But then a shout from farther along the alley caught his attention.

  We both looked.

  A girl in a blue blazer darted around the corner at 6th Street, heading north, with at least a half-dozen Corpses in pursuit.

  Dead Guy let go of the door. I shut it.

  Then I turned to Helene. “They’re chasing a Seer!”

  We ran back through the comic book store to find Nose Ring Guy gazing out the front window. “Weird,” he muttered.

  “Gotta go, Doug!” Helene announced. She waved a paper at him, the one she’d been reading when I’d found her. “I’ll get back to you with the reply.”

  He looked at her, then at me. His eyes narrowed.

  “Sorry about the hand,” I said.

  “Everything … okay?” he asked Helene.

  “Sure!” she said. “See ya!”

  We pushed through the door and out onto South Street…

  … and froze.

  The dead were everywhere. The street, all but empty just five minutes ago, was now thick with Corpses—a parade of them, all heading the same way. Some wore jeans, others suits, others dresses. A few were in uniform: policemen, firefighters, even mailmen. No rags for these walking cadavers. Corpses shopped for clothes just like anybody else, held them up in front of the mirror, and tried them on for size.

  I’ve seen it. It isn’t pretty.

  Hundreds of them crowded the narrow street, choking off what little traffic there was. Car horns blared. Angry human drivers threw curses out open windows.

  The deaders ignored it all.

  “Oh my God,” Helene breathed.

  “You armed?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “You?”

  “Just my pocketknife,” I replied. Then, after a pause, “I wasn’t expecting this.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “I saw the Seer cut north on 6th,” I whispered. “She might still be on South Street…or she could be headed north toward Market.”

  Helene said, “This looks like a reverse Number 23 to me.”

  “Yeah. A big one.”

  Undertakers have moves, and most of those moves are numbered—pretty much in the order that somebody thought them up. A Number 23 involves a bunch of Undertakers chasing down a running Corpse. Yeah, occasionally we do the hunting. The bulk of the team makes chase, cutting off as many routes as possible, not giving its target any chance to double back—all the while driving them right into the arms of the smaller force, who finishes them off.

  Helene had it right. This was a reverse Number 23, and on a huge scale.

  “So what do we do?” she asked, sounding hopeless. I didn’t blame her. There’d be no fighting these guys. The direct approach—usually my favorite—was suicide.

  “We gotta get ahead of ’em,” I whispered. “But be subtle about it. If we just take off running, they’ll make us for Undertakers before we get twenty yards.”

  A slow smile crept across Helene’s face. “So let’s not run.”

  She turned back into the store, leaving me standing in the doorway, gaping at the tide of deaders marching east toward Penn’s Landing and the Delaware River. I couldn’t imagine where they’d all come from—or why Lilith Cavanaugh, the Queen of the Dead, would risk sending so many of her cronies to one place like this. She didn’t like to draw so much attention.

  Whoever the girl in the blue blazer was, Cavanaugh wanted her bad.

  Behind me I heard arguing. Then pleading. Then more arguing. “They’re two hundred a pop, Helene!” Doug was saying.

  “I know. It’s just a loan.”

  “I can’t loan you these! They’re limited-edition collectibles! Numbered! My boss would have my head! What do you even need them for, anyway? Has it got something to do with that flash mob out there?”

  Flash mob. That was almost funny.

  I went and stood beside Helene, though seeing me didn’t do anything to improve Doug’s attitude. I said, “Our friend’s in trouble out there and we need to find her…fast. Please. Seconds really count here.”

  He glowered. “You assault me and then you want a favor?”

  Helene smirked. “You’d be su
rprised how often he does that.”

  Doug was an adult, if only just, and he didn’t have the Sight. This wasn’t surprising, as the only person over eighteen who ever could see the Corpses had been dead for going on three years: Detective Karl Ritter of the Philly PD—founder of the Undertakers. My father.

  And Doug wasn’t him.

  “Look,” I said calmly; whining rarely works on grown-ups. “I swear this isn’t a prank. Whatever Helene needs, give it to her. I promise, we’ll either return them or pay for them. But we need them right now.” My pocketknife was in my hand, my finger poised on the 2 button. Pressing it would release the Taser—yeah, it’s got a Taser—which I’d use if I had to.

  “I’m sorry, dudes,” he began. “I can’t —”

  Helene said, “February 14, 2002.”

  Doug’s face reddened. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “You owe me,” the girl pressed.

  “We had a deal! You promised!”

  “And I’ll keep it. But I’m calling in the favor. Right now.”

  Doug wasted precious seconds deciding. Then his shoulders sagged and he fetched two long boxes, which he dropped onto the countertop.

  Skateboards.

  Cool.

  Then I noticed Fergie’s face smiling up from their footboards.

  I glanced at Doug. “The Black Eyed Peas? Seriously?”

  “They’re collectables. Take ’em,” he said, sounding furious. “Bring them back if you can. Get me the money if you can’t. I need this job.” His eyes fixed on Helene. “But this squares us.”

  “Totally,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “And find someplace else for your letter drops.”

  Helene’s face went pale. “Doug…”

  “I mean it. We’re not friends anymore. Now get out of my shop!”

  Fresh tears shone in Helene’s eyes. I had about a million questions, but this wasn’t the time. Instead, I wordlessly tore open one of the boxes and pulled out a Ripstick DLX—a serious board.

  I was new to boarding. Sharyn had been making everyone on her crew, Helene and me included, work some jumps and turns on these quarter pipes at a public skateboard course in Fairmount Park. Other Angels—that’s the name of Sharyn’s crew—were better at it than me. But I was improving.