by Ty Drago
As she and Will’s mother walked the three blocks to Reading Terminal Market in silence, Helene’s stomach churned and sweat stung her forehead despite the cool morning air. Twice she tried to speak, to say what she wanted to say to this woman, and twice she chickened out. The sidewalk was crowded, yet to Helene the two of them seemed completely alone. It was deeply weird.
Mrs. Ritter, for her part, just walked. She didn’t look around or glance at Helene. Her thoughts seemed to be a million miles away—or maybe just a hundred or so, down in DC with her son.
The “keystone.”
Helene had been shocked when Tom had called Will that. Not because she didn’t agree with it, but rather because she didn’t think anyone else shared that secret belief.
Will. The reluctant hero. The single bravest and most selfless person she’d ever known.
Her Will.
But not just her Will, which was why she’d asked Tom to give the two of them—Mrs. Ritter and herself—some alone time.
“You hate me, don’t you?”
The words just tumbled out. It hadn’t been the way Helene had wanted to start this conversation.
Mrs. Ritter started, shaken out of her own thoughts. “What?”
Helene couldn’t even look at her. “You hate me.”
“Why would you say such a thing?” the woman asked. She sounded genuinely surprised, but it might have been an act.
Helene said, “I’m the one who pulled Will out of school. Made him disappear. You hate me for it.”
“I don’t hate you, Helene,” Mrs. Ritter said. “You saved Will’s life that day.”
“And gave him this one.”
Mrs. Ritter didn’t seem to have an immediate answer to that. They kept walking, though for a minute or so nothing more was said. Finally, Will mother’s spoke, her voice far calmer and gentler than Helene would have imagined. “No, sweetheart. I admire you. And I’m … grateful to you. Not just for my son’s life, but for being there for him ever since. For being his friend.”
Helene felt her eyes fill up, so strong was her relief at hearing those words. She blinked rapidly, refusing to cry.
“Thanks, Mrs. Ritter,” the girl whispered.
As the two of them reached the entrance to Philadelphia’s famous Reading Terminal Market, Mrs. Ritter smiled at her, maybe for the first time, with real warmth. “Call me, Susan,” she said, holding the door open. “After you.”
Most first-time tourists, after taking in its high ceiling and ridiculous amount of square footage, tended to assume that Reading Terminal Market used to be a train station. It didn’t. In fact, when the Reading Railroad—you know, from the Monopoly game—decided to buy this city block, they simply moved the already existing outdoor market indoors. The Reading Railroad was now long gone, but the original market remained—and thrived.
To call it a food court seemed almost criminal. Crammed into its 175,000 square feet was a loose grid work of stalls offering books, crafts, baked goods, candles, and pretty much every imaginable kind of food. Thousands flocked here every day for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, navigating the congested aisles, lining up for their meals, and jockeying for one of the limited numbers of available tables.
The upshot to all this free-market chaos was that Reading Terminal was a great place to lose yourself, and a perfect spot to hide an entrance to a secret lair. It was very easy to get turned around in this maze of seemingly identical aisles. So, to find your way to Haven, you’d better know the route cold.
Helene did.
She led Susan through crowds that, while not yet lunch-time strong, were still plenty heavy. Staying close together, they skirted more vendors than Helene could count, turning left, then right, then left, then right again, weaving their way deeper into the enormous building until they reached its back wall.
Here stood an empty aisle of stalls, marked with a sign that read: fresh fish markets only open on Wednesday with a rope blocking off the whole area.
Helene looked around. No one seemed even remotely curious about them. Life in the city tended to breed that lack of interest. The Undertakers counted on it.
So did the Corpses.
Satisfied, Helene slipped under the rope into the shadows of the empty stalls.
Susan followed.
About halfway down the unused aisle, Helene cut left behind a barren countertop. There, a heavy, unmarked door stood against the market’s outer wall. The door was locked, but Helene produced a key and opened it.
Inside waited a dark, narrow corridor, its dusty cement floor littered with empty cardboard boxes. The place reeked.
Susan made a face. “Stinks in here. Don’t the fish vendors use this?”
“Not anymore,” Helene replied. “Every week or so we dump a load of rat droppings, to … discourage them. Works, but it means we gotta get through here quick. Otherwise the smell sticks to your clothes. Come on.” They followed the corridor to a second, locked door, which opened on squeaky hinges and revealed a flight of metal stairs heading down into darkness.
“Before we go down there …” Susan said. Then she took Helene’s hand, a gesture that made the girl fidget uncomfortably. “I want to apologize if I ever came off as … cold … toward you. I’ve been so tied up in how difficult this life is for me and my daughter that I’ve forgotten how hard it must be for the rest of you. I’m sorry.”
Helene nodded. Then, as if losing some internal debate, she blurted out, “I kissed him.”
Susan blinked. “What?”
Helene felt her face flush. “I … kissed Will.”
For several long seconds, neither of them said anything. Helene wanted to crawl into a crack in the floor.
Okay … now she hates me!
“Did you really?” Will’s mother finally asked.
“Um … yeah. Just before he left for DC.”
“Well … okay … then,” Susan stammered. “But … why are you telling me this?”
“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while,” Helene replied, refusing to meet Susan’s eyes. They were still holding hands in the darkness, the space around them feeling oddly intimate, despite the thousands of people milling and eating and talking just a few yards away. Finally, almost desperately, the girl added, “I guess … I just want you to like me.”
For a long, terrible moment, Susan didn’t reply.
I blew it. I should have kept my mouth shut. I mean … what did I even think this would get me? A hug?
Then Susan Ritter spoke, her words coming in starts and stops, as if she were afraid of tripping over them. “Helene … when Will … disappeared … last fall, he was just an eighth-grade boy. Now, whether I like it or not, he’s a solider.”
“We both are,” Helene corrected.
“You both are. That’s a lot for a mother to wrap her head around. Can you understand that?”
“I guess so,” the girl replied.
“But,” Susan continued, “I think … what you just told me helps me understand you both a little better. In a way, it gives me comfort. I guess what I’m trying to say is … I do like you. And Will’s lucky to have you in his life.”
Despite herself, a single tear squeezed past Helene’s defenses and danced down her cheek. “Thanks again,” she muttered.
Then, without warning, Will’s mom hugged her—just opened her arms and kind of swallowed her up. Helene’s first instinct was to pull back. But then, some long-buried memory bubbled up from a dark place in her mind, a place she never went.
I used to have a mom. And she used to hug me like this.
And … oh God … I miss it.
So she hugged this mother back, in the here and now, fiercely and gratefully.
“Can you promise me something?” Susan whispered.
“I can try.”
“Can you promise me you’ll bring him home safe?”
Helene, with the woman’s arms still around her, both warm and weirdly heartbreaking, thought hard before she answered. Finally, in a small
voice, she said, “No, I can’t promise that. But I can promise this: If he doesn’t come back … I probably won’t, either.”
Still wrapped in their mutual embrace, it became Susan’s turn to cry.
So Helene hugged her tighter.
“Dead Presidents,” Sharyn remarked. “Sounds kinda familiar.”
Scary images whirled through my mind: a Corpse taking the oath of office in front of the Capitol Building; a Corpse delivering the State of the Union Address in front of Congress—a speech that had always been so good at putting me to sleep that my dad used to joke about recording it and playing it back at bedtime; a Corpse living in the White House; a Corpse with America’s nuclear missile codes at her fingertips.
The first female president of the United States.
The first dead president of the United States.
The last president of the United States—because, if we let this happen, the world wouldn’t survive long enough to see another election.
“Honestly, this won’t do,” Lindsay said, as if discussing draperies. “I’ve stated publicly, more than once, that I have no interest in the presidency.”
“Seems your Xerox feels different,” Sharyn remarked.
“It won’t do,” the woman repeated.
“No … it won’t,” I muttered. “And she’s gonna do this in front of the Senate?”
“That’s the big announcement,” Lindsay replied. “Completely inappropriate, of course. She’s making me appear terribly egotistical! It just won’t do!”
I locked eyes with Sharyn. “We gotta stop her.”
“’Course we do, little bro,” the Angel Boss replied. “Question is, how? It was hard enough gettin’ in here. I don’t even wanna think what it’d take to get into the Senate chamber in the middle of the day.”
“My hair’s a fright!” Lindsay complained, examining her reflection in the glass of a framed photo of the current president. “But at least I’m dressed adequately.”
Sure. Until the next time you Hulk out on us.
“We gotta call Haven,” Sharyn suggested. “Maybe my bro’ll have an idea.”
“Haven!” I groaned. I’d forgotten about the phone call. “Lindsay! Did you notice if your desk phone was still off the hook when you were in your office?”
“Oh, yes. I saw it while I was settling Moira down, poor dear. I hung it up.”
“Great.” I snatched up the receptionist’s phone, dialing the same number as before. It rang three times before someone picked up.
“Big Brian’s Guitars. Can I help you?”
“Dan! It’s Will! Patch me through to Tom!”
“Will! You okay?”
“Yeah, but I need to talk to the chief again!”
“I figured. Hang on.”
Several long seconds of silence followed. Then Tom’s voice sounded. “Bro? That you?”
“Yeah. Sorry about before. Something came up.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
A pause. “Sharyn?”
“Just took out five deaders with my pocketknife.”
His laugh carried as much relief as humor. “We gotta get her one of those.”
“That’s what she says. Maybe you could give her yours. You know … trade for Vader.”
“Yeah. That’ll happen. Put her on.”
I waved the receiver at Sharyn. “Your big brother’s on the phone.”
Sharyn, who’d been wiping Corpse Juice off the front of her already filthy white page shirt, scowled at me. “We’re twins,” she said, looking offended. “He’s not my ‘big’ brother. For all we know, I came out first!”
“He’s bigger than you,” I replied with a shrug. “Wanna talk to him … or should I drop the phone again?”
She pretended to be mad but, being Sharyn, couldn’t quite pull it off. Stalking over, she punched my shoulder. Maybe 10 percent of her “hit” potential—but it still hurt. Then, as I reflexively did drop the phone, she snatched it up and said, “Hey, bro. Where you at?”
She listened.
“Cool. Will just spent the last twelve hours hangin’ with Lindsay Micha … the genuine article. She rocks, but she ain’t herself.”
The girl listened for most of a minute. Tom was probably telling her what he’d told me about this gravveg.
Sharyn took it, as she took most things, in stride.
“Okay,” she said at last. “All that’s solid. What? Oh, we’re in Micha’s office. I did the lookout thing while Micha and Will flipped the senator’s crib for clues about her ‘big deal’ announcement this afternoon.”
She listened some more.
“Well, yeah … but only five. No big. I had Red’s pocketknife.”
She listened some more
“Straight up it’s small … but it’s sharp! You gotta get me one o’ them. Huh? Oh! Right! Hold on.” She lowered the phone and looked at me. “Tom wants to know if you can talk to your angel lady about gettin’ me a pocketknife.”
I said, “I’ll try to work it into our next conversation.”
“Cool! Thanks, little bro.” She raised the phone again. “Little bro says he’s gonna score me one. So … here’s the deal on our end: Corpse Micha’ll be marchin’ into the Senate chamber in about four hours to make her play for the White House.”
She listened some more.
“Yeah. It’s all kinds of ‘ain’t good.’ Thing is, the Capitol Building’s a tough nut to crack. Will and me got lucky just gettin’ here. No way we gonna hit that much luck gettin’ there!”
She listened some more.
“Hey, Red!” Sharyn chirped to me. “Tom says Helene and Hot Dog are headed down here to back us up.” Then, after another moment she added, this time minus the chirp, “Oh … and Jillian.”
I replied, “Good.”
She listened some more. Then she talked some more.
By now I was only half paying attention. The other half was focused on the door to the Hart Senate Building hallway. More trouble was coming. Those Corpses Sharyn had trashed weren’t dead, which meant they were screaming telepathic murder to their deader buds, looking for help. Answering this call took anywhere from minutes to hours, depending on the circumstances.
Bottom line: we couldn’t stay here, not without running into more of Corpse Micha’s cronies. By now she’d probably heard about the dead cops Lindsay had snacked on in the Capitol Dome stairwell and the Senate subway. And given her reaction back in the Rotunda, I guessed that the Malum senator was terrified of being next.
It wasn’t easy to scare a Corpse. But, when you did, all the courage drained out of them and they’d do or say anything to save their own rotting hides. I knew this from firsthand experience—which might be why no one else had shown up here yet. Micha could have decided to keep the rest of her people tight around her. For defense.
That was good and bad. Good, because it meant the three of us were relatively safe. Bad, because it would make getting close to the fake senator that much harder.
All of these thoughts rumbled around in my head, and they were solid thoughts. Productive and practical. But they were also smokescreens, distractions to keep me from focusing on what was really twisting my stomach into knots.
Helene was coming.
Helene—who’d kissed me.
Does it sound crazy to be more nervous about seeing a particular girl than facing down a small army of the walking dead? Well, I got news for you all: sometimes girls are way scarier than monsters!
Between that bombshell and the fight with my mom, it had almost been a relief to get out of Haven for a few days and play Senate page, if only to try to figure out —
My thoughts came to a sudden, screeching halt.
“Sharyn!” I exclaimed.
She looked at me, the phone still pressed to her ear. “You look a little green, Red.”
“I’m fine. Listen—”
“You should be, ’cause the cavalry’s on its way,” the Angel Boss interjected. “Even if it doe
s include … her. Now all we gotta do is come up with a plan for keepin’ a Corpse outta the White House.”
“I know,” I told her. “I’ve got one.”
“Ah!” said Lindsay Micha, still fussing with her hair. “I thought you might.”
We sent Moira home. She still seemed pretty shook up—she’d have made a lousy Undertaker—but that wasn’t the real reason. Sharyn didn’t want her around when, and if, Micha’s cronies showed up after we’d gone. Corpses didn’t like witnesses, even clueless ones.
After that, the three of us headed to Webster Hall, this time on foot. The afternoon was sunny and warm for the time of year, so there were lots of people around, including Capitol cops. All of them, thankfully, were of the living variety, which boosted my theory that Corpse Micha had closed ranks.
Lindsay had cleaned herself up pretty good. I wouldn’t have put her in front of a TV camera, but at least she wouldn’t be drawing too many stares. And now that she was dressed in her own clothes, she clearly felt more herself, which helped.
Sharyn and I could only hope we wouldn’t run into any deaders.
We didn’t.
Lex Burnicky, Senate Page Program proctor and stick-up-his-butt grad student, wasn’t exactly happy to see us. After all, I’d gone AWOL last night and Sharyn had been reported missing by the Sergeant At Arms office this morning. Now it was past two in the afternoon and we both looked like we’d slept in the gutter.
“Have you any idea how much trouble you’re both in!” he snapped as he opened the front door, his outrage boiling over. “The police were here for hours, questioning everyone! I’ve been on the phone with the program director and Senator Mitchum all morning! Half the city’s out looking for you two! And now Greg’s gone missing! Two pages and a proctor is one day! Insane! Just where have you been?”
“Chill out, Lex,” Sharyn grumbled, her page persona having dropped like lead. “I ain’t in the mood.”
He stared at her as if she’d spoken Klingon. “You ‘ain’t in the mood’? Young lady, I’m calling in our police sentries right now! You can tell them you ‘ain’t in the mood’! And when they’re finished with you … if you’re lucky, you might just get kicked out of the program! I want you both to pack your things. You’re done here!”
