by James Ponti
Natalie looked at his hand and smiled. “I like this plan better,” she said. “No ewwww.”
Thirty minutes later, we were at Grand Central, walking down the seemingly endless series of stairwells that according to the blueprints did not exist. Along the way, we told Liberty all about our last visit, when Orville Blackwell and his thugs attacked us at the hidden train platform.
“You survived an attack from Orville?” he asked Natalie, obviously impressed. “Not many people can say that. You know, there’s a reason they call him the Enforcer down here.”
“Well, I don’t know if there is much to brag about. He pretty much redecorated the wall with my body,” she replied while she rubbed a sore spot on the back of her head. “Luckily, Alex was there to rescue me.”
“I guess we have that in common,” Liberty said, “because I can say the same thing about Alex being there to rescue me in Morningside Park.”
“Our hero,” Natalie said.
“Yes, he definitely is our hero,” Liberty added.
“Can we focus here?” Alex asked, embarrassed by the praise. “Or I might not save you next time.”
When we reached the bottom, Liberty ran his fingers along the jagged rock that made up the walls of the hallway. “You weren’t kidding when you said it was creepy down here.”
“That’s saying something coming from a guy who spends a good bit of his time in Dead City,” Grayson said with a laugh.
We started walking along the curved hallway toward M42, and with memories of the Orville ambush still fresh in our minds, we did our best to keep quiet and stay alert. At one point, we stopped cold when we heard a noise just around the curve heading our way. It was too close for us to retreat, so we got into fighting positions. The noise got closer and closer until we finally saw our enemy . . . a giant rat scurrying along the wall. We each breathed a sigh of relief. (Okay, so Liberty didn’t actually “breathe” in the classic sense, but you get my meaning.)
“I don’t know about you guys,” I said, “but it’s a little troubling that we’ve reached a point in our lives when coming across a hideously large sewer rat is a reason to be relieved.”
The others laughed, and we continued until we got to the door.
“Don’t touch the scanner,” Liberty instructed us as he moved to the front of the group to examine it. He squatted down and looked at it as closely as he could without making contact.
“This is definitely the one I set up for Winston,” he said quietly. “And the good news is that it doesn’t look like it’s been used in the last twelve hours.”
He stood up and now used his regular speaking voice. “Hopefully, that means that there isn’t anyone inside there.”
“How can you tell that?” asked Grayson.
“It’s in a deep sleep mode to save battery power,” he replied. “If it had been used more recently than that, there’d still be a little red light blinking on and off.”
“All right, then,” Natalie said with a sly smile. “Let’s take a look inside.”
Liberty pressed his palm against the scanner, and a green laser instantly began tracing the outline of his hand. After a few seconds, we heard a loud click come from inside the door.
“We’re in,” Liberty said with a touch of evil genius to his voice.
Alex opened the door to reveal a massive room. There were hard metal edges and old-school electronics everywhere you looked. I’m sure when they built it, everything seemed modern and futuristic, but now it just looked like an outdated museum exhibit about early computers. The floor was a combination of cement and metal grates, while endless ducts of wiring ran along the ceiling.
“Should we be concerned that the lights are already on?” I whispered nervously.
Natalie nodded. “I know I am,” she replied. “Let’s make sure we’re alone.”
It was all much bigger than I’d expected. In addition to the main room, there were doorways to several other rooms along the far wall, and a hallway that disappeared into darkness. We silently poked around until we were satisfied that no one else was there.
“Is it just me, or does this place look like it’s from one of those old spy movies?” Grayson asked. “You know, like when James Bond makes it into the supervillain’s master control room?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” Liberty answered. “I thought I knew a lot about computers, but I don’t recognize any of these electronics.”
“These are the converters that turned the electricity into traction current for the trains,” Alex said, pointing toward a bank of tall gray machines with big dials and gauges. “They worked with these turbines.” He gestured toward a row of massive fans that ran down the middle of the room.
“I don’t think the Unlucky 13 are coming down here to convert electricity to run trains,” Natalie said. “So let’s look around and see if we can figure out why this place was worth adding the high-tech security.”
We started snooping around, and I came across an old metal cabinet and managed to wiggle its door open. Everything inside of it was covered in a thick layer of dust. There were office supplies, like pens and paper clips, which I expected, but there was also a calendar that seemed out of place.
I called over to Alex, who was checking out one of the turbines. “You said this was closed right after World War II, right?”
“In 1946, according to the book,” answered Alex.
“Then why do they have a calendar from 1967?” I asked.
I held up the calendar for him to see.
Alex just shrugged. “That makes no sense to me.”
“Hey,” Grayson said as he stepped out of an office. “I think you guys might want to check this out.”
We hurried over, and when we reached the room, it was obvious why he’d called us. It looked like it had been decorated by a demolition team. Everything was either bent or broken. There was a metal desk and three filing cabinets. Each drawer had been pried open, and there were broken padlocks scattered on the floor.
“Did you do this?” Natalie jokingly asked Grayson.
“Yes,” he deadpanned. “I broke all of these thick metal locks with the superhuman strength I’ve been hiding from you the last few years.”
Alex looked closely at one of the file cabinets and shook his head in disbelief. “Whoever did this was strong, and I mean really strong,” he said. “It looks like it was broken off with a sledgehammer. It’s a clean break, which means it only took a couple hits at most.”
“Well, I’m guessing that whatever they wanted was in here,” Natalie said.
“Did you use your superdetective Spidey sense to come up with that?” Alex joked.
“Let’s just figure out what these files are,” she said.
I couldn’t help but think it was a lot like when we started on the Baker’s Dozen and went into the attic of the Flatiron Building for the first time. Once again we were digging through old file cabinets. What we found inside them began to paint a picture of M42 and what took place there.
Apparently, the fact that M42 was so far underground and secret made it too valuable to the government for it to just go to waste. When it was no longer needed to convert electricity for the trains at Grand Central, it was turned into a top-secret shelter for government spies. Immediately following World War II, the US government was worried about communists trying to infiltrate or attack New York City. M42 was repurposed to make sure that didn’t happen.
“Listen to this,” Alex said, reading from one file. “In case of an emergency, the agents were supposed to come here, where they could survive for up to three months. It can be completely sealed off from the outside world and has a kitchen, a communication center, and down the hall there’s supposed to be a medical center with an operating room.”
“What type of emergency were they worried about?” Natalie wondered.
“All sorts of them, going by what I’ve got over here,” Grayson said from behind a stack of files. “These are all different plots o
r strategies that the government was worried the Russians might use.”
“Do you think the Unlucky 13 might try one of them now?” I asked.
“I don’t see how,” he said. “They all seem useless.”
“Why?” asked Alex.
“Most of them rely on technology that no longer exists,” he said. “Like this one called ‘Operation Alexander Graham Bell.’ ”
He held up a file folder.
“It explains how the Russians could knock out communication by disabling the switchboards at all the major office buildings in town, but nobody uses phones like that anymore. Cell phones are completely different.”
He picked up another file.
“Or this one, which wonders how many communists you would need in New York City before it began to change public opinion in favor of the Soviet Union.” He looked up at the rest of us. “The Soviet Union fell apart decades ago.”
Something written on the cover of that file, however, caught Liberty’s attention. “Wait a second,” he said, turning his head to try to read it. “What’s the name of that one?”
“Well, it was originally called ‘Operation Red Tide,’ ” Grayson said. “But someone changed the name to ‘Operation Blue Moon.’ ”
Liberty considered this for a moment.
“That’s it,” he said, suddenly anxious. “Blue Moon is why they put the scanner on the door. Read the first page.”
Grayson didn’t see the point, but Liberty was adamant, so he went along with it and started to read the report out loud. “ ‘Although there is widespread distrust of the Soviet Union throughout the country, social scientists predict that if as few as ten to fifteen percent of the people in a big city such as New York were to change their opinion, it could start a ripple effect that would eventually grow into a majority.’ ”
Grayson looked right at Liberty.
“It’s not going to happen,” he said. “The Soviet Union doesn’t even exist anymore. And if it did, ten to fifteen percent of the population of New York is about a million people. You can’t turn a million New Yorkers into communists.”
Liberty had a panicked look on his face, and it dawned on me why.
“No,” I said, suddenly short of breath, “but maybe you could turn them into zombies.”
Scars
A million people turned into zombies. Just the thought of it sent a chill up my spine. I sat there for a moment contemplating the mass zombiefication of New York City when it dawned on me that I’d used the z-word in front of Liberty.
“I’m so sorry,” I apologized. “I should never have said that.”
“It’s okay,” he told me. “It’s a terrifying thought, no matter what word you use.”
Natalie considered it for a moment and asked, “Do you really think it’s possible? Do you really think they could make a million people undead?”
“No way,” Alex answered.
“Maybe not,” agreed Liberty. “But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t try to turn as many as they could. How many undead in New York would it take for acceptance to begin? That’s what they’re after most of all. Ever since the three wise men sentenced them to the dungeon, the undead have been looking to come up from the underground and gain acceptance among the living. They call it the Rise of the Undead.”
And there goes another chill up my spine.
Grayson reached the end of the file and handed it to Natalie. “I don’t know if this is important or not, but the last couple pages have been ripped out. The conclusions are missing.”
“And by ‘conclusions,’ you mean . . . ?”
“. . . all the ways the government came up with to stop the plan,” he answered.
“Too bad,” Natalie replied. “Those might have been helpful.”
“Suddenly, this is sounding kind of ominous,” I said.
Natalie looked at the torn pages in the back of the file, and then she turned to the cover, where someone had crossed out the original name and written in a new one. “What’s significant about Blue Moon? What does it mean?”
“It’s just an astronomical phenomenon,” answered Grayson. “It refers to the second full moon of a calendar month.”
“Or it can be a saying,” I added. “Something that’s rare only happens ‘once in a blue moon.’ ”
Natalie shook her head and looked right at Liberty. “But it means something different to you, doesn’t it? The instant you heard it, you were convinced that the Unlucky 13 were involved. Why?”
He hesitated for a moment, unsure whether or not he should share something with us. Then he took off his jacket, revealing a T-shirt with a Columbia University logo on it. He paused again and then pulled up his right sleeve.
“This is what ‘blue moon’ means to the undead.” On his shoulder, there was a purplish blue scar about the size of a nickel and in the shape of a crescent moon.
“How’d you get that?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Nobody knows where it comes from. All we know is that everybody who’s undead has one.”
“Everyone?” I asked.
He nodded, and for the first time since I’d met him, Liberty seemed vulnerable. He quickly covered it up and put his jacket back on. We were all quiet for a moment as we considered what we’d discovered.
The thought that the undead might be planning something like Operation Blue Moon was chilling, but what we found next literally gave me nightmares. We ventured farther down the hall and came across the operating room that had been set up to care for the spies in case of an attack.
“Not exactly state-of-the-art,” said Grayson as we surveyed the contents of the room. There was a rusty old examination table and medical equipment that was so outdated, it looked more like something you’d find in a horror movie than in a hospital. But in the corner of the room, there were two modern additions—a small refrigerator and a long freezer. Both were plugged in and we could hear their motors whirring.
Even though we all wondered what was inside them, none of us made a move to open either one. After a few moments, Natalie stepped forward. “Fine,” she said. “Don’t everyone be in such a rush to be brave.”
I cringed as she reached for the refrigerator. She took a deep breath and opened the door to reveal three shelves of plastic bags like the ones doctors use to hold blood for transfusions. Only these didn’t have blood in them. Natalie reached in and pulled one out. She held it up to the light of the refrigerator, and we could see that it held some sort of green goop. She offered it to Liberty.
“Know what this is?”
“We call it zombie juice,” he answered as he took it from her.
“Hey, watch the z-word,” I joked.
“I can say it,” he answered with a smile. “You can’t.”
He examined the bag for a moment and added, “I’ve never seen it stored like this.”
She put it back in the refrigerator and closed the door. Next she moved over to the freezer and put her hand on the lid.
“Call me crazy, but I have a feeling we’re not going to like what we see in here.”
(We’ll call this an understatement.)
The instant she lifted the lid the light from inside the freezer flooded the room. It was closely followed by a hideous odor I recognized from my many days at the morgue. When I’m there, I also carry vanilla to fight the smell. . . . Unfortunately, I didn’t have any on me now.
Natalie fought back the gag reflex and took a look inside. She leaned over and started to list off the contents. “Let’s see. One arm, one lower leg, and a hand.”
“Don’t forget the finger,” Liberty said, pointing into the freezer.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “And one finger.”
I stepped closer and peeked in. For some reason, this all seemed more upsetting than anything I’d seen in the morgue. Everything there felt hygienic and scientific. Here it was just gross. It didn’t help to see the body parts resting in a mixture of ice and rock. I reached in and pulled out a
piece of it.
“Manhattan schist?” I asked.
Liberty nodded.
Unlike Natalie and me, the boys didn’t have morgue experience, and they were turning green.
“You wanna shut that?” Alex suggested.
Natalie started to close the lid, but I reached over to stop her.
“Wait,” I said. “Check the shoulder.”
She gave me a confused look for a second and then smiled when she realized what I meant. She bent over to get a close look at the shoulder.
“Yep,” she said. “Blue moon.”
“So we know that it belonged to someone who was already undead.”
“Seriously,” Grayson said, trying to talk and hold his breath at the same time. “Can you please shut that?”
Natalie let the lid fall shut with a thud. She was just about to make a joke when we heard a noise. Someone was activating the scanner to open the main door to M42.
In a flash, Natalie took charge and motioned us to follow her two doors down, where there was an empty office. We slipped inside and shut the door so that it was barely cracked open.
We heard the main door open and shut, followed by the noise of a squeaky wheel turning again and again. It reminded me of someone pushing an old shopping cart. We weren’t sure how many people were out there, but we could hear at least two talking.
“You left the lights on again,” the first voice said.
The second voice replied in the broken English that some of the undead use. It didn’t make sense to me, but it must have to the first guy, because he laughed.
“If everyone knew how scared you are of the dark, they’d stop calling you the Enforcer.”
Orville.
Orville was the Enforcer, and knowing he was out there made me try that much harder to remain perfectly still. We could only see a small sliver of the hall through the crack in the doorway, and when they walked past, we could see that the other person was Edmund. As if we hadn’t already had enough fun with Big Red and Glass Face.
Luckily, they were too busy to notice us. They were pushing an old hospital bed loaded with supplies that, unlike the ones in the room, were brand-new. Just enough light came in for me to see the worried expression on Natalie’s face.
