by James Ponti
“You put us here,” he sneered at me one day. “But of course I am the one who will have to get us out.”
His escape plan was inspired by an unlikely source. Since actual doctors rarely ventured down to see us, we were primarily under the watchful eye of an evil man named Big Bill Turner.
Big Bill had no medical education. In fact, he had no real education at all. His training had come from his days as a street fighter with the Swamp Angels, a notorious gang that terrorized the East River dockyards for decades. His role at the Asylum was not much different, only now he kept order by terrorizing patients with brute force and intimidation.
He loved to brag about his criminal past with the Swamp Angels and one day told us the secret of their success. “We used the sewers,” he said with a toothless cackle. “It was genius. We’d rob the ships at night and sneak everything we stole through the sewers so the police couldn’t find us.”
It was this detail that caught Marek’s attention. He wondered if the same sewers that protected the Swamp Angels might also be able to protect us. Over the next few days, he took advantage of Big Bill’s ego and got him to talk more about his “genius.”
With his experience digging tunnels and Big Bill’s knowledge of the layout of the New York sewer system, Marek began to envision a life for us beneath Manhattan. One night he laid out his plan for what today is known as Dead City.
“We will make a home out of the underground,” he said as he ran his hand along the craggy wall of schist behind him. “The black devil we once feared will now give us power and protection.”
“But we’re locked in this hospital,” Cornelius reminded him. “How will we even make it to the underground?”
“The same way everyone does eventually,” Marek said with a laugh. “We’ll die.”
Two nights later, the nurse brought us our dinner. She was the only person at the hospital who ever treated us with any kindness or compassion. I especially liked that when she brought us our meals, she’d say, “Good evening, gentlemen. It’s time to eat.” It was the closest anyone came to treating us like we were human.
That night, however, there was no greeting—just the first scream, a horrified shriek followed by the sound of a dinner tray clattering to the floor. Rather than patients, she saw thirteen lifeless bodies strewn across the room. It appeared as if we’d finally succumbed to our mysterious unknown disease.
“Mr. Turner! Mr. Turner! Come quick!”
In keeping with Marek’s plan, my eyes remained tightly shut, but I still had a vivid picture in my mind of what it looked like when Big Bill’s massive frame filled the doorway and he looked out at the scene that had traumatized the nurse.
“They finally died,” he said, no doubt with a smile on his face. “Well, it saves me the trouble of having to kill them.”
He walked over and poked at a couple of us with the tip of his muddy boot. Satisfied that we were, in fact, dead, he turned to the nurse and said, “Best go get the doctors.”
The brilliance of Marek’s plan was that it took advantage of people’s prejudices. The doctors were so relieved that we were dead and no longer their problem that it never occurred to them that we could be faking. We had no pulse. We were not breathing. We were dead. They were so happy to be rid of us, they sent us out for burial that night. Our bodies were loaded onto the backs of two horse-drawn wagons, and we slowly pulled away from the hospital.
It was a still night, and for a while the only noises I heard were the sounds of the horses’ hooves clopping against the brick road, the creaking of the wooden wagon wheels, and the very unmusical serenades of Big Bill Turner singing Irish drinking songs as he drove one of the wagons. Soon, however, these were drowned out by the evening’s second scream.
It was Big Bill.
Marek and Cornelius had risen from the back of the wagon and attacked him. Unlike the other driver who ran away, Big Bill relished the opportunity for a fight.
That was his mistake.
By the time I was out of my wagon, he already lay motionless on the ground. I couldn’t tell if he was dead or unconscious, but he was certainly no threat to us.
We knew it would not be long until the other driver made it back to the hospital and raised the alarm about our escape. Search gangs would soon follow. But we had a tremendous advantage. We were Blackwells, and this was Blackwell’s Island. We had spent our childhoods visiting our grandfather and playing in the woods around his home. We knew every path and trail by heart. Even on this moonless night, we could travel at full speed.
“We scatter here and meet up at the dock,” Marek said. “If you’re late, you’ll be left behind on this godforsaken island.”
Everyone began to scatter, and I moved to join Jacob, but Marek took me by the shoulder.
“Milton, you come with me,” he said.
I tried to hide my fear. “I-I thought the plan was for me to go with Jacob,” I stammered.
“The plan has changed,” Marek said ominously.
“Then I’ll come with you both,” Jacob said, coming to my rescue.
Marek glared at him. “He does not need a cousin to protect him when he has a brother.”
It was dark, and all I could see of Jacob were the whites of his worried eyes. I knew he wanted to help, but there was nothing left for him to do.
“I’ll see you at the dock,” I said to him, hoping that it would be true.
“See you there, cousin,” he replied as he turned and disappeared into the woods.
Soon, everyone was gone but Marek and me. He was lingering, and I wasn’t sure why. I decided to try to win him over with some flattery.
“Your plan worked perfectly,” I said. “You are so very smart.”
When he laughed, I could see the flash of his white teeth cut through the darkness. “Smart enough to know what you’re thinking.”
He was standing next to the horse that pulled one of the wagons and ran his palm across his mane. “I remember another horse and wagon,” he said.
I nodded. “So do I.”
“And do you remember who saved you that day. It wasn’t your cousin Jacob.”
“No, Marek, it was you.”
“Yet you think I would hurt you now,” he said, shaking his head.
I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. Instead, I just nodded.
“Have no fear, Milton. You are still my brother. I am not going to kill you.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, although I wasn’t completely certain I could believe him.
“But we have work to do, so follow me.”
He started walking down one of the paths, but it led in the wrong direction.
“The dock is this way,” I said, pointing behind us. “Aren’t we going there to meet the others?”
“Eventually,” he replied. “But like I said, the plan has changed.”
We walked in silence until I heard the alarm sound from the prison.
“Do you think there’s a prison escape on the same night?” I asked, amazed at the coincidence.
“No,” Marek said. “I’m sure that’s for us. The other driver must have alerted them. Now the guards will be searching for us. We must hurry.”
We picked up the pace, and I soon realized where we were headed.
“No, Marek,” I gasped. “He’s our grandfather.”
Marek stopped for a moment and turned to me. The hatred in his voice was unmistakable. “He stopped being our grandfather the moment he abandoned us. And tonight he stops being anything to anybody.”
“Why bring me along?” I asked. “You know how much I love him. Yet you want me to be part of this?”
“You’re not part of this. You are all of this. This is your fault. The reason I am not going to kill you is because I want you to suffer like the rest of us. Your punishment is that you have to live with the guilt of knowing that all of this is your fault. And you’ll have to live with the blood of your beloved grandpa Auggie on your hands.”
I shook with
emotion, and in the distance we heard the bloodhounds of the guards. I didn’t know what to do. But I was not going to back down.
“I won’t let you hurt him,” I said.
He laughed. “In what world do you think you can stop me?”
“In this one,” I said.
He looked at me menacingly for a moment and said, “Maybe I spoke too soon about not killing you.”
I had no intention of fighting Marek. But I did have a plan. One side effect of our undead state was that I no longer felt the pain of my childhood injuries. My legs had grown stronger, and it turned out that I was fast. So instead of fighting, I began to run.
I bolted toward my grandfather’s house as quickly as I could. Marek chased after me, but he could not catch up.
The third scream that night was mine.
“Grandfather! Grandfather!” I screamed as I approached the house and awakened him. “You’re in danger!”
Like he did on the day we first arrived, Grandpa Auggie came out on his porch with a gun. This time he fired a couple of shots into the air that attracted the attention of the bloodhounds. They began to howl and move toward us.
I looked back at Marek, about twenty yards behind me. He was angrier than I had ever seen him. But he knew that he would not get his revenge that night.
Just before he disappeared like a ghost into the darkness he yelled to me.
“Don’t ever let me see you again!”
I haven’t.
I Love a Parade . . . I Just Don’t Like Watching from the Twelfth Floor
At the risk of sounding like a really bad word problem, I’m going to give you some impressive numbers. This year, more than ten thousand people marched in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. They sang, danced, and clowned as they waved from twenty-five different floats, performed in twelve different marching bands, and held ropes that kept fifteen giant balloons from floating away. Literally, millions of people stood in forty-five-degree weather to watch it in person. And while most of the people were bundled up and jammed together along the sidewalk, four watched from the comfort of the balcony in Natalie’s apartment.
Okay, technically only three watched it from the balcony and one watched on the TV in Natalie’s living room, but I could see some of the balloons as they floated by her window, so that should count for something.
“You’re missing all the best stuff,” Alex said, oohing and ahhing in a lame attempt to lure me out.
“I’m not missing anything,” I replied, pointing at the TV. “When you watch in HD, it’s like you’re really there.”
Grayson gave me a look. “But we are really there.”
I ignored him.
“I thought you were over your whole fear-of-heights thing,” Natalie said.
“I’m up here on the twelfth floor, aren’t I?” I pointed out. “I don’t see any reason to push my luck and dangle from the ledge of the building.”
“It’s a balcony, not a ledge,” Grayson said. “There’s kind of a huge difference.”
“Just keep looking for Ulysses, okay?” I said.
Ulysses Blackwell was the reason we had gotten up early, fought our way through the crowds on the subway, and met up at Natalie’s on a day we should have slept in. According to Liberty, the parade was scheduled to be his Verify. That meant Ulysses was one of the ten thousand participants. So, while the millions of other spectators kept a lookout for their favorite inflatable cartoon characters, we were trying to get a glimpse of an undead banker last photographed wearing an ugly polyester suit in the 1970s.
It was all the more important because Liberty thought there was a good chance that Ulysses might become the next mayor of Dead City. He had a lot of money and power, and that made him a logical choice to replace Marek.
“Would you guys mind sliding that door shut?” I asked as I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. “It’s getting kind of chilly in here.”
Their only response was to open it even more.
“Thanks a lot,” I said sarcastically.
With its location overlooking Central Park West, Natalie’s apartment was in the perfect spot to see the start of the parade. And while the twelfth floor is a little high to see faces clearly, the balcony let us set up a whole viewing station with a telescope, two pairs of binoculars, and a fancy camera on a tripod with a telephoto lens. (And by us, of course, I mean the three of them while I offered encouragement from inside.) It looked like the stakeouts you see in detective shows or spy movies. My job was to keep track of the television broadcast and follow parade information that was streaming online.
Plus, I was in charge of making the hot chocolate, so I was contributing.
“There’s got to be an easier way to find him,” Natalie said, frustrated, as she scanned faces with a pair of binoculars. “The whole point of Verify is to be seen. So the undead must have a way to identify him in the crowd.”
“Yeah,” Alex said in my direction. “You’d think your buddy Liberty could have helped us out on that.”
“He said he didn’t know because Ulysses isn’t his stationmaster,” I reminded him. “Besides, I thought Liberty was your friend now too.”
“I like him, but friend ?” Alex said, half joking, half serious. “It’s going to take a little more.”
“Let’s go over his aliases again,” said Grayson, who was working the telescope. “We know he always uses the names of explorers. In the past, he’s been Ulysses Hudson, Cabot, and Drake. What other famous explorers are there?”
“It doesn’t matter if there’s a Ulysses da Gama, a Ulysses de Leon, or even a Ulysses Magellan marching in the parade,” Alex said. “The name doesn’t help us because there’s no list of participants to search through. The only names that are made public are for the different entries, like the floats, marching bands, and balloons.”
“Now, if there was a giant Ulysses Magellan balloon, that would be a pretty big clue,” Natalie joked. “There isn’t one, is there, Molls?”
I played along and scanned the roster on the computer. “Let’s see, we’ve got Superman and Mickey Mouse, but no Ulysses Magellan.”
Then something on the list caught my eye.
“But how about this?” I said, suddenly getting excited. “There is a marching band from Christopher Columbus High School.”
They considered this for a moment and nodded.
“That has potential,” Alex said. “How soon until they come by?”
“They’re the next marching band,” I told them as I checked the lineup. “First there’s a Mount Rushmore float, then the cast of a Broadway show, and the band is right after that.”
Grayson looked down the street to check how close they were. “That should give us about five minutes,” he said with a sly smile. “Or, put another way, that should give us plenty of time for One Foot Trivia.”
And so began another round of One Foot Trivia, a game invented by, and to date only ever played by, Grayson and Alex, in which they quiz each other while balancing on one foot. According to the rules, the first one to miss a question or lose his balance is declared the loser.
In their boy world, there was no greater challenge. And as pathetic as it is that they get so competitive about trivia, they make it even worse with their nonstop trash-talking.
“You’re not worried that the television cameras might catch you losing and broadcast the shame of your defeat across the globe?” Alex taunted.
“No,” answered Grayson. “But I am worried they’ll get a picture of you crying like a baby.”
“Seriously, guys?” I said.
“Name your category,” said Alex.
“What else?” Grayson answered. “Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade trivia.”
Alex flashed his most intimidating look and said, “Gobble, gobble.”
They both lifted one foot into the air.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” said Grayson. “When was the first parade?”
“Too easy, 1924,” answered Alex. “Who was
the first balloon character?”
“That’s what you’re going to ask me?” Grayson said as though he were deeply offended. “You think I don’t know Felix the Cat?”
“Do you two have to play that on the balcony?” I asked while trying to mask my nerves. “We’re twelve stories high.”
They completely ignored me, and Grayson had a little wobble as he asked, “Which character has appeared in the parade the most times?”
“Snoopy,” Alex answered, doing some odd sort of flamingo thing with his legs. “By the way, I read that same article you did. I am so in your head. I know your questions before you even ask them.”
“I mean it, guys,” I said. “Why don’t you play Two Foot Trivia instead? It’s just as fun and much safer.”
“First of all, this is completely safe,” Grayson replied. “Second, if we had both feet down, we’d just be asking each other trivia questions.”
“Which would be lame,” added Alex.
“But isn’t that what you’re doing now?” I asked.
“No,” Grayson said defensively. “Balancing on one foot makes it a sport.”
I turned to Natalie. “Can you make them stop?”
“You know my rule about One Foot Trivia,” she said as she sipped some hot chocolate and continued to ignore them by looking down at the parade. “I don’t get involved in anything that’s stupid.”
“How many people watch the parade?” Alex asked, resuming the game.
Grayson looked unsure of the answer and took a huge wobble, which I swear was just to get at me. “In person or on TV?”
“In person,” Alex said. “Stop stalling.”
Grayson thought about it for a moment and answered, “Three and a half million.”
“Actually, it’s only 3,499,999,” Alex said as he pointed toward me. “You know, because Molly’s hiding in the living room and doesn’t count.”
Grayson tried not to laugh, but when he did, he lost his balance and his second foot came down. Alex raised his hands in triumph and started singing some sort of victory song.
