Dead City

by James Ponti

  He didn’t even flinch. He just reached out and stopped my bag with an open hand. For a skin-and-bones–looking guy, he was unbelievably strong. He ripped the backpack out of my hand and flung it across the floor.

  Cool and calm, I told myself.

  He made a move for me, and out of nowhere I flashed back to my Jeet Kune Do classes. I turned my body to the side, and when his fist went past me, I punched him right in the ribs. It must have been pretty hard because I actually heard ribs break.

  I smiled because I knew this would knock him to the ground and let me run for help. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to know this. The broken ribs didn’t bother him at all. He just stood there and flashed that crazy Crayola smile of his.

  Cool and calm was no longer an option. It was time to be freaked and frightened!

  He grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me against the wall. I screamed for help, which got no response from him or anyone else. And just when I thought he couldn’t be any creepier, he started to sniff the air around my face like he was some sort of wild animal.

  “What do you want from me?” I wailed.

  He tried to talk, but it was a struggle for him to form a word. Finally, he gurgled something that sounded like “Omaha.” Then he yanked off my mom’s necklace. The chain cut into the flesh along the back of my neck.

  He started to say something else when a voice called out.

  “Dude, you’ll want to give that back. It’s a family heirloom.”

  Creepy Joe and I both turned to see my rescuer. It was Natalie. Oddly enough, he seemed to recognize her. Because the second he saw her, he let go of me, smiled, and started sizing her up.

  “I can tell by your genius expression that you know what I am,” Natalie barked. I had no idea where this tough-girl attitude was coming from, but I was happy to see it on my side.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” she taunted. “Come on! Use your words!”

  This frustrated him. He kept trying to say something, but the struggle was too hard. After a few tries, he gave up and just charged at her. He was fast. Right when he was about to slam into her, she twisted to the side and used his momentum to slam him into the tile wall.

  “I’ll call the police!” I yelled.

  “Don’t,” Natalie said, looking right at me. “I’ve got this.”

  She turned back to face Creepy Joe, who was picking himself up off the ground. There was now a huge cut across his forehead. But for some reason there was no blood. He also had three fingers completely dislocated and pointing in different directions. This didn’t seem to bother him either, as he calmly snapped each one back into place. When he was done he smiled again.

  Natalie was completely unfazed.

  “If you think you’re some sort of tough guy Level 2 who can make his reputation by taking me out, you are sadly misinformed,” she said. “You’re an L3, and that’s all you’ll ever be. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but there’s no climbing back up the evolutionary ladder.”

  I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. But he seemed to. And the taunting made him even angrier.

  He ran straight at her again. This time she leveled him with an elbow across the face that sent him sprawling on the floor.

  When she saw her sleeve, she was not happy.

  “Look what your cheapo makeup did to my favorite shirt,” she said as she pointed at a smear by her elbow. “I love this shirt. It’s my first-day-of-school shirt. And that will not come out.”

  This time he was too woozy to get up. The blow to the head had really shaken him, and Natalie took advantage of this. She stepped over him and kneeled down so that her knees pinned his shoulders to the ground.

  He snarled and spat and tried to break loose, but it was useless.

  “Did he sniff you?” she asked.

  At first the question didn’t register.

  “Did he sniff you?” she demanded more emphatically.

  “Yeah,” I said, creeped out by the memory. “Like a dog.”

  She looked down at him and shook her head.

  “Get the vanilla,” she told me, pointing at her bag on the floor. “It’s in the front pocket.”

  “The vanilla extract from the morgue?” I asked, confused, as I dug around for it.

  “It’s more useful than you might imagine.”

  I found the bottle and then handed it to her. She jammed it up each of his nostrils and squirted until he sneezed and gagged.

  “That should take care of that,” she said. Next, she pulled one of his earrings tight, so that it stretched out his lobe. “Now, do I have your attention?”

  He nodded.

  “The way you roughed up my friend over there was not cool. I want to give you a little reminder so you don’t make the same mistake again.”

  Without warning she yanked on the earring and in the process ripped off most of his ear. That’s not an exaggeration. More than half his ear was now dangling from the earring in her hand.

  “I want you to go back to where you belong and spread the word among all your little troll buddies that if any of you mess with me or my friends, some very bad things will happen. Very bad! Do you understand?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Use your words.”

  He took a deep breath and, with a voice straight out of another world, slowly answered, “Un-der-stand.”

  “Good,” she said as though everything was bright and cheery. “I’m glad we had this chance to talk. Now give me back her necklace.”

  She jerked the necklace from his hand and got off him. He scampered to his feet and ran away. In the final element of freaky, he didn’t head for the exit. Instead, he ran into the subway tunnel toward Manhattan.

  “Don’t forget your ear,” she called out to him. If he heard her, he was not coming back. Natalie tossed the ear into the darkness of the tunnel. Then she turned to me, and I did the only thing that seemed appropriate: I started to throw up onto the subway tracks.

  “Go right ahead,” she said. “It’s really a lot to take in all at once. I threw up my first time too. Did he say anything to you?”

  “Omaha,” I said between retches.

  She shook her head. “Not Omaha,” she replied. “Omega.”

  “Why Omega?”

  “It’s actually a longer story than we have time for at the moment. But I promise I’ll tell you everything. For right now, though, we need to get you aboveground quickly.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “The tram.”

  “No way,” I declared. “I am not riding in the dangling death cage.”

  “What?” she said with a smirk. “Are you really willing to take a chance that the next thing out of that tunnel is the F train, and not the creeper with a dozen of his friends? Because frankly, I don’t think we’re ready for that yet.”

  I looked into the darkness of the subway tunnel, and was terrified.

  “Okay,” I said softly. “Maybe the tram’s not as bad as I think.”

  I’d Better Get Used to Creepy Guys Who Want to Kill Me

  It turns out I was wrong about the Roosevelt Island tram. Riding it was far more terrifying than I had ever imagined. The floor rumbled, the cables creaked, and the entire car swayed from side to side in the wind. And just in case I forgot that I was dangling two hundred and fifty feet in the air, there were giant windows conveniently located on each side of the car to remind me. Luckily, I still had the subway attack fresh in my mind to keep me distracted.

  “Just relax,” Natalie whispered. “It’s going to be all right.” She was standing right next to me, trying to act normal while still being reassuring.

  Whenever I went to ask her a question, she just waved me off. “We’ll talk about it all when we get there.”

  “Can I at least ask where we’re going?”

  “Grayson’s.”

  “Grayson from lunch?” I didn’t quite see how a computer geek scared of white food was go
ing to be of much help against an underground killing machine. “Why?”

  “First of all, don’t be like everybody else and underestimate him,” she said. “Grayson is awesome. He’s smart, funny, and talented. And he’s off-the-charts loyal. Plus, he lives in Brooklyn, and we have got to get you out of Manhattan.”

  The next thirty minutes were a blur. I can only remember bits and pieces. I do know that somehow I survived the tram ride only to be told that we next had to take the subway to Brooklyn.

  “We’re going back underground? I thought you said that was bad.”

  “It will be safe,” Natalie assured me. “Even if the creeper guessed we were coming here and ran full speed, it would take him at least another twenty minutes to reach this station. The tunnels don’t intersect anywhere near here.”

  I guess it should have struck me as odd that Natalie knew so much about the layout of New York’s subway tunnels. But I was too busy clinging to the “it will be safe” portion of her statement to notice.

  Safe or not, she insisted we sit in the very front of the first car. And she turned so that she was in front of me and could see if anyone was coming toward us.

  I was still in a fog when we made it to Grayson’s. He lives in a brownstone in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn.

  “Come on in,” he said when he opened the door. Then he shot Natalie a look. “You’re only three days early.”

  “Sorry about that, but we kind of had to speed things up,” Natalie said as we entered. “Are we alone?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know for how long,” he answered, obviously frustrated. “I had arranged for everyone to be gone on Friday—”

  She cut him off. “I know. This was supposed to happen in three days. Deal with it.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” he asked, exasperated, nodding toward me. “I’m not ready for her to be here.”

  “You know, I’m in the room and can hear you,” I reminded him.

  “As I told you at lunch,” Natalie said, “Grayson’s a little lacking in the social skills.”

  “Oh, right, and you’re so good. How about the social skills in this text you sent?” He picked up his phone and read it aloud. “‘Molly’s orientation. Thirty minutes. Grayson’s.’ No explanation. No ‘please.’ No verbs.”

  “Listen, she was attacked in the subway station,” Natalie said, cutting to the point. “He was a bad guy, and I don’t think it’s wise to leave her out there without some support and information. Besides, I kind of outrank you, so get over it.”

  “Attacked?”

  “By a Level 3.”

  “You might have mentioned that in the text,” he said, suddenly concerned. He turned to me with caring eyes that were surprisingly reassuring. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered honestly. “I don’t really understand what’s going on.”

  He gave me a quick look over, checking for any bumps or bruises. “What happened to your neck?” he asked.

  I had forgotten about that. I reached up and ran my finger along the cut. The sting had dulled but still hurt. “He yanked off my necklace.”

  “We’d better clean it,” he said. “Come on.”

  He led me into the kitchen. I leaned over the sink and held up the back of my hair while he ran some cool water over the wound.

  “How do you know he’s a Level 3?” he asked Natalie. “The teeth?”

  “They were some kind of special,” she said. “Quite the ad for daily flossing.”

  I stood up from the sink, and he handed me a paper towel. “Pat this gently along the wound. Don’t rub, just pat.”

  “I know,” I said with a smile. “My dad’s a paramedic. He’s kind of obsessive when it comes to first-aid training.”

  Grayson smiled. “First-aid training. That will come in handy.”

  Natalie nodded.

  “Hey, I know what would come in handy,” I said.

  “What?”

  “If you guys would stop talking about this like any of it makes sense and explain it to me instead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Grayson said with a sigh. “It’s just all so complicated. I don’t know where to begin. That’s why I’ve been working on my presentation for the last few weeks. So that we could explain all this in a way that would make sense to you.”

  “How can you have been working on it for weeks?” I asked. “We just met today.”

  He smiled and shared a look with Natalie. “Actually, we’ve been checking you out for nearly a year.”

  “Checking me out for what?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you just do the presentation,” Natalie said, prodding.

  “It’s not—”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s not perfect. But you’re Grayson the Great. I’m sure it’s still amazing. Way better than I could do with months to prepare.”

  “Okay,” he said with a bashful smile, the flattery working like a charm. “But we’ll have to watch in my room. It’s still loaded on Zeus.”

  “Zeus?” I said.

  “His computer. He named it.” Then she whispered conspiratorially, “He acts like it’s a person.”

  “I do not,” he said as we walked down the hall toward his room.

  “You gave it a birthday party,” she said.

  Grayson stopped walking for a moment. “Annual hard-drive maintenance and software upgrades do not count as a birthday party.”

  “No,” she said. “But singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to it does.”

  He took a deep breath. They’d obviously been through this before. “You know I was testing the new voice-recognition software.”

  Natalie looked at me. “Birthday party.”

  I laughed for the first time since the attack.

  “Pardon my messy room,” Grayson said as he opened the door.

  “Yeah, I know,” I answered. “You weren’t expecting me for three more days. I’m fine with a little mess.”

  Okay, “little mess” turned out to be something of an understatement. The room was a maze of books, maps, and electronics.

  One wall was covered with a giant subway map. It wasn’t like the color-coded ones on the walls in each station that show you which train to take. It was technical, with elevations and measurements. It also had stations marked that I didn’t recognize. They were ones that had been closed down long ago.

  The star of the room, though, was definitely Zeus, which took up an entire third of the floor space. It was an odd mix of high-tech and homemade. Different computers and custom parts had all been connected into one giant supercomputer, with three large high-def monitors.

  “Tell him hello,” Grayson whispered to me.

  “Tell who?”

  “Zeus.”

  “You want me to talk to your computer? Seriously?”

  Natalie nodded for me to do it. So, even though I felt ridiculous, I went with it.

  “Hello, Zeus.”

  “Hello, Molly,” it answered in a human-sounding voice. “Welcome to Omega.”

  Again with the Omega, but more than a little cool that Zeus recognized my voice. My yearbook picture even popped up on-screen. Grayson was grinning proudly.

  “How’d you pull that off?” Natalie asked.

  “I recorded her voice today at lunch,” he answered.

  “Will somebody tell me what Omega is?” I demanded, trying to get them to focus on what was going on.

  “That’s what I’m about to explain,” Grayson said. He pulled out a chair from his desk and offered it to me. He signaled Natalie to sit on the corner of his unmade bed.

  Grayson picked up some index cards and stood by the computer like he was about to give a speech. Just before he started talking, he turned to check his appearance in a mirror on his dresser and fixed his hair with a comb he pulled from his back pocket.

  “Good evening,” he said, reading from the first card. (Apparently, Friday’s session was scheduled for evening.) “For your safety and ours, what we’re about to tell you must
stay private. You can’t tell anybody. First of all, no one would believe you. Second, it would put them in danger as well. Do you understand?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. “I think so.”

  Just then the door to the room flew open. I let out a frightened yelp that startled Grayson and sent his index cards flying.

  “Did I miss it?”

  I turned to see Alex. He was breathing heavily and had obviously been running.

  “No,” Natalie told him, “we’re just getting started.”

  “I thought this was supposed to be on Friday,” he said as he caught his breath.

  “Deal with it, people,” Natalie replied, her temper rising. “She got attacked by a Level 3.”

  Alex nodded and looked at me. “You okay?”

  “I think so,” I answered.

  “Can we get on with this?” Grayson asked as he picked up his index cards. “My parents could come home at any minute with Wyatt and Van.”

  Natalie turned to me and shuddered as she said, “His brothers . . . pure evil.”

  “Sorry,” Alex said. “I’ll just clear off a spot over here.”

  He pushed an armful of junk off the edge of the bed and sent it clattering across the hardwood floor. He took a seat and motioned for Grayson to resume.

  “Where was I?” Grayson said as he tried to put the cards back in order. He checked his reflection in the mirror again and ran the comb back through his hair. Then he looked back at me.

  “After much consideration, Natalie, Alex, and I would like to extend a formal invitation for you to join our Omega Team. The team’s name comes from the final letter in the Greek alphabet because it’s our responsibility to be the final word.”

  “The final word on what?” I asked.

  Grayson shot a look at the other two and then back to me. “The final word on the undead.”

  I don’t know how long I sat there with the big doofus expression on my face, but I’m sure it was for a while. Finally, I was able to ask, “You mean, like, zombies?”

  “Actually, they hate being called that,” he said. “But yes, that’s what I mean.”