by James Ponti
As zombie number two tried to squeeze the life out of him, Alex reached back and jammed his fingers up his nostrils. Then he literally ripped his nose off his face. Next, he spun around inside the bear hug, jammed two fingers into each side of the zombie’s mouth, and did a move he calls “the double fishhook.” I don’t even know what he did next because I had to turn away to keep from throwing up.
By the time the rotted flesh had settled and the water stopped splashing, two zombies were dead, the other two had run off into the darkness, and Natalie was helping Liberty out of the pond.
Liberty looked at me and shook his head, water dripping everywhere.
“The first time we met, I ended up riding in the Old Croton Aqueduct,” Liberty said to me. “And this time, I wind up fighting for my life in the Morningside Pond. You’re not exactly a good-luck charm.”
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly.
Next, Liberty walked over to Alex and shook his hand. “You, on the other hand, couldn’t have been better luck. I can’t thank you enough for saving me.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Alex replied. “Omega today, Omega forever.”
“I’ve never seen someone fight like that before,” Liberty said. “What do you call that?”
“I know,” Grayson said before Alex could answer.
We all looked to him.
“What?” asked Liberty.
“That’s what you call a drum solo.”
The Undead Calendar
Rather than hang out at the park, where there might have been some more undead bad guys lurking in the darkness, we decided to head back up the stairs to Morningside Heights. We walked for a few blocks, which gave Liberty a chance to air dry and let Alex change our course enough times to be satisfied that no one was following us.
Finally, we found a pizza place across the street from Columbia University that was jammed with college students. In addition to being loud, it was filled with the mouthwatering aroma of pizza dough baking in the oven. This last part was important not only because it smelled yummy, but also because it masked Alex’s and Liberty’s scents, which might have been picked up during the fight by the two zombies who got away.
In short, this was the perfect place for us to hide in plain sight.
We slid into a booth in the back, with Alex, Grayson, and Natalie taking the side against the wall so they could watch both doors for any unwanted visitors. I sat next to Liberty and quickly realized that it was going to take more than air for him to dry off.
“Sorry,” he said as he used a wad of napkins to mop up the pond water dripping off his jacket and onto the seat.
“It’s all right,” I replied as I grabbed a couple napkins myself and helped out.
At first, everything about the conversation was awkward. Here we were, an Omega team, sitting down for some slices with . . . a zombie. Of course, we were all careful not to use the z-word in front of him, but that was kind of the problem. We were so worried we’d say the wrong thing, we barely said anything at all. That is, until I broke the ice in typical Molly fashion by sticking my foot in my mouth.
It happened when I handed Liberty a menu and it dawned on me that getting pizza might be a big mistake. Undead taste buds are totally different from living ones. I’d learned this the hard way when I’d crashed my first flatline party and tried a dollop of that brown paste they call food. It was disgusting and made me gag. But here we were asking Liberty to eat something that probably tasted just as disgusting to him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I began to stumble over my words. “I’m sure you don’t like . . . I mean, this is not the right kind of . . . or rather, we don’t need to . . .”
“Is she always like this?” he asked the others. “Or does she sometimes actually finish her sentences?”
“Sometimes,” Alex said, “but even then they don’t always make sense.”
While the others had a laugh at my expense, I took a moment to compose myself and tried again. “What I meant to say is that I’m sorry we brought you here. It’s pretty insensitive . . . considering the type of food you normally eat.”
He laughed loud enough that a couple people at other tables turned to look.
“You really are one of a kind, Molly,” he said. “You’ve almost gotten me killed. Twice. But the thing you’re worried about is insulting me by bringing me to a pizza joint.”
Now our whole table laughed out loud, including me.
“Well, when you put it that way,” I said with a bashful smile.
“Have no fear,” he continued. “The pleasures of greasy pizza extend across all taste buds, even those in . . .”—he looked around to make sure no one was listening before he whispered—“my condition.”
We placed our orders, and I handled the official introductions. Despite their concerns about him, Liberty quickly won them over with his sense of humor, and the conversation flowed easily once he started talking about his time at MIST. It turns out we had some of the same teachers and many of the same opinions of them.
“What about the principal, Dr. Gootman?” he asked, smiling. “Does he still give the yeast talk on the first day of school?”
“Every year,” Natalie said.
“We will eat bread made from this yeast,” Alex said, doing his best Dr. Gootman impression. “And in doing so we will continue a meal . . .”
“. . . that has included every student and teacher in this school’s history,” the rest of us said in unison, laughing.
Liberty closed his eyes for a moment and smiled, maybe replaying the memory in his head. When he opened them he pulled a garlic knot from the basket in the middle of the table and held it up with two fingers.
“To Dr. Gootman, to MIST, and to bread,” he said.
We each grabbed a knot and joined him in the toast.
“Dr. Gootman, MIST, and bread!” we said as we “clinked” the knots with one another and popped them into our mouths.
“I want to ask you something,” Grayson said, “but I’m worried it’s rude.”
Considering Grayson’s total lack of social skills, we were now all worried about his question.
“Okay,” Liberty said. “Give it a shot.”
“How . . . did you . . . ?”
“Get this big old scar?” Liberty said, tracing his finger along the scar that ran across his bald scalp.
Grayson nodded.
“It was when I undied, as I like to call it.”
I would never have asked the question, but I was so glad Grayson had because I desperately wanted to know the answer.
“I was a student right across the street from here,” he said, pointing out the window toward the Columbia campus. “And one Friday night I was bored. I didn’t feel like doing homework and couldn’t find any friends to hang out with. Remembering my days at MIST and the thrill of being an Omega, I thought it might be fun to go to a flatline party. So, like an idiot, I went there alone. I mean, who does that? Right?”
All eyes looked my way.
“What are you looking at me for?” I asked sheepishly, even though I knew the answer. “Go ahead, Liberty, you were saying . . .”
“I was recognized at the party, and someone jumped me from behind and knocked me unconscious,” he continued. “The next thing I remember, I was waking up in an abandoned tunnel surrounded by Manhattan schist. I had a big cut across my head, and Marek Blackwell was standing there looking down at me. He said that he was the mayor of Dead City and informed me that I was its newest citizen. He also told me that he wanted to be the one looking at my face when I realized what I had become. When I realized that I would spend the rest of time running from Omegas, just like the undead had run from me when I was one.”
The story was chilling.
“That’s why you helped me at the flatline party,” I said. “You realized the same thing could happen to me.”
Liberty smiled and nodded. “I may have seen some of my stupid self in you that night. Luckily, we got away.”
&
nbsp; “What did you do next?” Grayson asked, mesmerized by the story. “Did you move underground? Is that what happens? Did you find an abandoned tunnel to live in?”
Liberty laughed. “No, that’s not how it works at all. Most undead try to keep the life they were already living. I didn’t change much. I tried to act like it never happened.”
“You stayed in school?” asked Natalie.
“I was lucky because my dorm room was on the second floor. The undead are usually fine on the bottom three floors as long as we go underground for an hour or so every day to recharge.”
“And no one at the college ever suspected anything?” I asked.
“How could they suspect something that they didn’t know was possible?”
“What about your parents?” Grayson wondered.
“That’s a different story,” he said. “I tried to keep it from them, but they seemed to sense that something was wrong. That Thanksgiving we were supposed to visit my grandmother in New Jersey. I kept trying to come up with excuses to miss it, but they said it was a family obligation and that I needed to go. Finally, I had to tell them that I wouldn’t survive past the Lincoln Tunnel. It was all very dramatic.”
“How did they take it?” Alex asked.
“Not well.” He paused for a moment. “It took a while, but my mom eventually came around. Now we spend Saturday mornings together at the farmer’s market in Union Square.”
“And your dad?” I asked.
Liberty shook his head. “He still won’t have anything to do with me.”
The look on his face was heartbreaking. We were all quiet for a moment because no one knew what to say.
“But I’m guessing you didn’t crash a flatline party just so that you could find out about my family problems,” he said, changing the subject. “I believe someone mentioned something about the Baker’s Dozen.”
Natalie nodded. “Have you ever been to the attic of the Flatiron Building?”
Liberty flashed a big smile. “That would be the attic with the manual typewriter?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s the one.”
“Yes, I have been there,” he said. “Many times.”
He sat up a little straighter and looked at each one of us. Then he leaned forward like he was sharing some sort of secret. “I’m guessing you guys have some questions about the Unlucky 13.”
Over the next forty-five minutes, we ate pizza (which, by the way, was totally delish), and we got an understanding of Dead City that was more detailed than we had ever known.
“First of all,” he said, “you’ve got to realize that most undead don’t live underground. The Level 3s do, but the ones and twos usually find a low-lying place on the surface. And most live pretty regular lives. They try to keep their undeadness to themselves.”
“If they don’t live there,” Alex said, “then why does Dead City even matter?”
“The Manhattan schist, for one thing. You’ve got to go under every day for at least an hour,” he said. “But more than that, Dead City is like Chinatown or Little Italy.”
We all exchanged completely confused looks.
“How?” I asked.
“In the old days, when the Italians immigrated to New York, their first stop after Ellis Island was Little Italy. That way, they were around people who understood what they were going through and spoke the same language. And even though most of them settled someplace like Brooklyn or the Bronx, they’d still come back to get that really great Italian food or see old friends. And they’d come back to help new arrivals make the adjustment from the Old Country.”
“And that’s what happens in Dead City?” asked Alex.
“Yeah,” Liberty said. “When you’re first undead, you go there just to figure things out and find others who can help you. Eventually, you try to create a normal life aboveground. But you still come back to recharge your energy and keep in touch.”
“How do the Unlucky 13 fit in?” I asked.
“Well, you’ve got to go down somewhere, and every bit of underground is controlled by one of them. They split up the island by subway stations, and whichever one of the Unlucky 13 controls the area around a particular station is called the stationmaster.”
“And they do this for money?” I asked, trying to make sense of it all.
“That’s part of it,” he said. “You know that stuff they sell at flatline parties, like Betty’s Beauty Balms? Well, for every jar of makeup that Betty sells, a little bit of that money goes to the stationmaster. But mostly, it’s about trading something you have that they want. For instance, I studied computers at Columbia. So sometimes I get called to help set up new computer systems. And in exchange . . .”
“. . . you get to give your speeches about undead rights.”
“That’s right,” he said, nodding. “I get to give my speeches. And when I go underground to recharge, I don’t have to crawl around in some dirty old sewer. There’s a place I go to that’s nice and has good people there.”
“Do the 13 all get along?”
“That’s hard to say. Just because they’re related doesn’t mean they’re one big happy family,” he continued. “Some get along, and some don’t. Some work together, and some like to be left on their own. But there is one thing they all have in common.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re all terrified of Marek,” he said. “And that’s what keeps them from actually fighting station against station. Marek, as bad as he is, keeps the peace.”
The four of us shared confused looks.
“So what’s going to happen now that he’s dead?” Natalie asked.
Suddenly, Liberty turned very serious. “Marek’s dead?” he asked, surprised at the news.
“Hadn’t you heard?” I asked, assuming news like that would have spread quickly through Dead City.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Molly killed him.”
Liberty turned to me. “You saw his body?”
“I saw him fall off the top of the George Washington Bridge.”
Liberty thought about this for a moment and shook his head. “That may explain why things have been changing.”
“What do you mean?” asked Alex.
“Dead City’s been getting a little rougher around the edges lately,” he said. “Like the party tonight, there were way too many Level 3s taking charge for my taste.”
“And why would Marek’s death cause that?” I asked.
“If he’s not there to keep order, some of the others might be flexing their muscle.”
“But you said word hadn’t gotten around about that,” mentioned Alex.
“Just because it hasn’t reached me doesn’t mean the Unlucky 13 don’t know,” he explained. “Besides, it won’t become official until he fails to show up for Verify.”
“What’s Verify?” asked Natalie.
Liberty explained that Dead City follows what’s known as the Undead Calendar. Even though the Unlucky 13 control the underground, they rarely come out in public. They let others do all their dirty work for them. But once a year, each one of them has to come out for something called Verify.
“They make an appearance at a large public event so that the general undead population can verify that they’re still around and still in charge,” he said. “They split up the calendar among them. Twelve months, twelve of them, it works out perfectly.”
“But aren’t there thirteen of them?” I asked.
“There were thirteen in the explosion,” he said, “but only twelve who set up Dead City. Even in the world of the undead, Milton’s a total ghost. No one knows what happened to him.”
I wondered if we would ever be able to find Milton.
“So what will happen when Marek misses his Verify?” asked Natalie.
“That’s a good question,” Liberty answered. “My guess is that some of the others already know he’s gone and have been trying to get things lined up so that they’re in position to take charge.”
“How?”
“When’s his Verify?” Alex asked.
“New Year’s Eve,” he said. “In Times Square.”
The Night of the Three Screams
There were three screams that night. And even though more than a hundred years have passed, I sometimes still hear them in my sleep. Despite this, my most chilling memory of those events is not a scream but a whisper.
“Milton, can you hear me?”
My cousin Jacob was lying on the floor no more than eight inches from me, but his voice was so faint I could barely make out the words. We were under strict orders not to move or speak, so I knew he was taking a risk simply by communicating with me at all. I nodded ever so slightly.
“No matter what happens, you stay with me,” he continued. “And if I tell you to run, do not look back. Do you understand?”
I nodded again, and no doubt the fear in my eyes confirmed that I understood him perfectly. Jacob was warning me about Marek. The same brother who once saved my life was now looking to end it. Tonight was the night he had picked for our escape. It was the night Marek planned to settle all unfinished business.
In the weeks after the explosion, I’d noticed that the thirteen of us started to form two separate groups with distinct personality traits. Today, the undead refer to these as Level 1 and Level 2, with the primary difference being that Level 1s maintain their souls and their consciences while Level 2s do not. In this way, Level 1s act more like the living while Level 2s are more prone to extreme mood swings and unpredictable behavior.
I have come to believe that the deciding factor as to which level someone becomes is directly related to their emotional state at the moment of death. In the seconds before our accident, I realized the explosion was imminent. My final breathing emotions were guilt and responsibility. Marek, however, was standing next to me and saw my reaction. He also knew the explosion was coming, and as a result, he died angry and filled with hate.
Confined to our so-called ward in the dungeon of the hospital, we were surrounded by walls of Manhattan schist, which only magnified these differences. Marek’s anger and hate grew. It was directed at the grandfather who had betrayed us, at the three wise men who had condemned us, but most of all at me.
