Dead City

by James Ponti

  I turned to Natalie and Alex. They both nodded. My first thought was that this was all a big practical joke. I didn’t know why they would go to so much trouble to embarrass me, but that was the only thing that made sense.

  “Since its founding,” Grayson continued, “MIST has been training select students to police and protect the undead citizens of New York City.”

  I’d had enough.

  “Very funny,” I said, with a combination of hurt and anger. “I get that I’m weird and people like to tease me. And maybe I was too eager to have new friends to notice that you were making fun of me. But you really shouldn’t have gone to the trouble.”

  I started to get up, but Alex put a hand on my shoulder to stop me. “This isn’t a joke,” he said. “We know how hard this is to believe. Each one of us has been where you are right now. And each one of us had the same reaction. But trust us when we say it’s true.”

  “That there are zombies living all over New York?”

  “Not all over,” Grayson said. “Only in Manhattan. And mostly underground or in the bottom floors of buildings. But that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves.”

  “And just how many of these zombies are there?” I asked mockingly.

  “One thousand one hundred and thirty-two,” he answered. “According to the last census. But I think there are a lot more than that.”

  “The census?”

  “Not the government one,” Grayson said. “The ‘Census of the Undead’ is taken by the Omegas every five years. It’s one of our responsibilities. The problem is that most of them don’t want to be counted.”

  “You guys really expect me to believe all this? You must think I’m the dumbest Lowbie of them all.”

  “Actually,” Alex said, “we think you may be the smartest. That’s why we want you on our team.”

  “Think about the guy in the subway today,” Natalie said. “Nothing made him bleed. Nothing hurt him. Not even broken ribs or fingers twisted in every direction. It’s because he isn’t really alive. He’s a zombie.”

  “If you join our team,” Alex said, “we’ll train you and teach you. The four of us will work together.”

  “To police and protect the undead?”

  “That’s right,” Grayson answered. “There are three levels among the undead. Level 1s look and act just like us. For the most part, they want to live normal lives. That’s where the protect comes in. We make sure they’re able to do that.”

  “Level 2s look and act like us too,” Alex said. “But they have no soul, which means they have no sense of right and wrong. That’s where the policing comes in. Sometimes they can get out of hand and need to be stopped.”

  “And the Level 3s?” I asked. “Is that what you called the one who attacked me?”

  “They’re degraded 1s and 2s barely clinging to whatever bit of life they have,” said Natalie. “They’re more like the zombies you see in movies. A lot of them don’t even realize they’re undead. They can’t pass for human too well, so they stay mostly underground and avoid coming out in the light of day.”

  “The presentation I have will take you through the whole history and explain what we know about them,” Grayson said. “But we can only show it to you if you take a leap of faith. If you decide to join us.”

  “If you decide against it, we understand,” Natalie said. “You can go back to your regular life, and we’ll act like none of this ever happened.”

  I thought about this for a minute or so without saying a word. They stayed silent too and just sat there and watched me think it over.

  “If this is true,” I said, “which I don’t believe, I don’t really have a choice, anyway. I was already attacked for being an Omega even though I’m not one.”

  “It was a mistake,” Natalie said. “Level 3s aren’t too smart, and since I covered your scent with the vanilla, it won’t happen again.”

  “Why would he even think I was one in the first place?” I asked.

  Natalie held up my necklace. “Because you wore this.”

  “My mother’s horseshoe necklace?” I asked, unable to make a connection.

  “It’s not a horseshoe,” she said. She turned it upside down and I recognized the symbol instantly.

  “It’s an omega!” I said, realizing.

  Natalie nodded.

  “But why would my mom have . . .”

  That was the exact moment when I started to believe.

  “She was one, wasn’t she? My mom was an Omega!”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Natalie answered.

  “Because you don’t know? Or because you won’t tell me?”

  Natalie shook her head. “Because the identity of any Omega past or present cannot be revealed to anyone outside the group. That’s for everybody’s safety.”

  “Then you can tell me,” I answered instantly. “And, Grayson, you can start your presentation. I’m in!”

  Things You Should Never Touch in a Subway Tunnel and Other Lessons

  When I told them I wanted to join, they exchanged happy looks and smiled. But before anyone could respond, we heard Grayson’s parents come in the front door.

  And they weren’t alone.

  To say that Grayson’s little brothers are loud is like saying jet engines are kind of noisy. They sounded like a troop of howler monkeys as they raced down the hallway toward his room. Natalie told Alex to block the door to let me have a chance to reconsider.

  “Are you sure?” she asked as the brothers started slamming their bodies against the door to force their way in. “It’s a big decision.”

  There wasn’t much time to think about it. But I didn’t really need any. I had never been more certain of anything in my life.

  “Positive!”

  Just then Alex lost the battle, the door flew open, and the brothers tumbled into the room. They were much smaller than their volume and strength had suggested. Both had big curly hair, thick glasses, and matching elementary school uniforms. They were arguing about whether or not dinosaurs were warm- or cold-blooded and wanted their big brother to settle the dispute.

  “Stop!” Grayson quieted the pair as he pointed an angry finger at them. “How many times do I have to tell you about this?”

  It was the same angry tone my sister uses whenever I interrupt her and her friends. Except, Grayson being Grayson, the interruption wasn’t the part that he was angry about.

  “Cold-blooded and warm-blooded are inaccurate terms,” he continued. “It’s ‘endothermic’ and ‘ectothermic.’ Got it? You’re not in second grade anymore.” (Okay, this was so unlike any argument I had ever had with Beth.)

  The scolding quieted them for a few seconds until they started another argument about who was to blame for using the wrong terms.

  Eventually they left the room long enough for me to see Grayson’s presentation. Even in its incomplete state, it was as impressive as Natalie had promised.

  It was a full multimedia production, complete with pictures, graphics, and video. Some of it even had music and fancy editing. It explained the three levels of zombies and the history of the Omegas.

  It was almost done when Grayson’s brothers came back to argue about something else, and we decided to move out onto the stoop for some privacy.

  I sat down on the top step and asked the one thing I was dying to know. “So tell me, was my mom an Omega?”

  Natalie shook her head. “No, she was not an Omega.” Then she flashed a huge grin. “She was the Omega.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Absolutely,” Grayson said. “She’s a total legend.”

  “Depending on whether you were one of the living or one of the undead, she was either the most revered or most feared Omega ever,” Alex added.

  “Feared?” I could hardly believe it. “We’re talking about my mom, right? The woman who made snickerdoodles for my birthday?”

  “I haven’t heard anything about her baking skills,” Natalie answered, “but I have heard that she was the ulti
mate Zeke.”

  “Zeke?”

  “It’s from ‘ZK,’ ” Alex explained. “Abbreviation for ‘zombie killer.’ ”

  I let this sink in for a moment and couldn’t resist smiling. My mom was quite the mix: room mother, soccer coach, medical examiner, zombie killer. No wonder I turned out the way I did.

  And now I was following in her footsteps.

  Over the next six weeks, Omega training dominated my world. And while my complete lack of a social life left me with plenty of free time, training ate up enough of it that it affected my studies. This led to an oh-so-fun lecture from my dad about my midterm grades.

  I blamed it on watching too much television and promised to fix them before my next report card. I don’t normally lie to my dad, but I couldn’t possibly tell him the truth. It’s not like MIST wasn’t already superdifficult. It turns out it’s even harder when you have to squeeze all of your homework and studying in between training sessions with names like “Seven Ways to Kill a Zombie,” “How to Remove Dead Flesh from Open Wounds,” and my all-time fave: “Things You Should Never Touch in a Subway Tunnel.” (Spoiler alert: “Pretty much everything.”)

  My new teammates took turns, so I worked with each one on different days.

  Mondays and Fridays, I learned history and procedures from Grayson. To avoid interruptions from his brothers, we usually took long walks around Brooklyn while we talked. He explained that the Omegas were more like spies than police and that there was an unknown number of other teams. The only person who knew all the identities was the Prime Omega. The identity of the Prime Omega was top secret, and we had to communicate with him through special encryption software on Grayson’s computer.

  One Friday, Grayson told me the story of how the zombies originated. We were walking through the Prospect Park Zoo and had just stopped in front of the sea lions.

  “It all began in 1896,” he started to explain. “A group of miners was digging one of New York’s first subway tunnels when an explosion killed all thirteen men in the crew.”

  He stopped midstory when a family came up and stood next to us at the railing.

  “Let Daddy take your picture in front of the seals,” said the father.

  Grayson turned to him, and, knowing what I knew about his lack of social grace, I fully expected him to correct the father by pointing out that they were, in fact, sea lions and not seals. I was pleasantly surprised when instead he offered to take their picture so that the whole family could be in it.

  “Everyone smile,” he said, before adding, “including you sea lions.” (All right, so he couldn’t totally resist. After all, this is Grayson we’re talking about.)

  He took the picture and handed the camera back to the father. A few moments later, they were walking toward the next exhibit, and I said to Grayson, “I knew you were going to correct him.”

  Grayson just smiled and resumed the story of the subway miners. “Anyway, the explosion that killed them also blasted open a deep pocket of Manhattan schist.”

  “What’s Manhattan schist?” I asked.

  “It’s an extremely dense and strong type of bedrock,” he answered. “The only place on earth it’s found is underneath Manhattan. Without it, New York couldn’t have all of its skyscrapers. It’s what makes the city possible. And it’s also what makes the undead possible.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some energy force from the minerals in that bedrock brought the miners back to life,” he explained. “But they weren’t really alive. They were undead.”

  “And Manhattan schist is still what keeps them from dying?” I asked.

  He nodded. “That’s why the undead can’t leave. And why they stay mostly at ground level or below. That rock is like their oxygen. The farther away from it they are, the weaker they get.”

  We looked out at the sea lions for a minute, and I pointed out something that I had observed.

  “You never call them zombies, do you?”

  He shook his head and smiled, maybe a little pleased I had noticed. “No, I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they don’t like it,” he said simply. “At least the ones I’ve talked to. When you hear the word ‘zombie,’ you think of bad horror movies and flesh-eating monsters. That’s just not accurate. I figure if they don’t like it, the least I can do is respect that.”

  “Just like sea lions don’t like to be called seals,” I pointed out.

  “That’s exactly right.” He turned to a sea lion and called down to it, “You hate that, don’t you?”

  The sea lion barked back, almost as if he was answering, and we both laughed.

  Unlike Grayson, Alex had no problem using the z-word. That was pretty obvious when I showed up for my first lesson: “Seven Ways to Kill a Zombie.”

  Don’t get me wrong. Alex is a total sweetheart and an incredibly nice person. I just think four years of hand-to-hand combat with the undead have made him not too worried about hurting their feelings.

  Alex was in charge of my physical training. We did martial arts together on Tuesdays, and for Thursdays he convinced me to join the school’s fencing team. He said it would be good to get weapons practice. I thought I’d hate it, but it’s awesome.

  “Zombies feel no pain, and most of their organs are no longer functioning,” he told me that first day. “So most traditional methods of fighting are useless. When it comes to killing zombies, it’s all about going for the head.”

  We were lined up on the mat in traditional combat positions.

  “I’m going to come at you like a zombie,” he said. “I want you to show me what you can do.”

  I looked up at him. Very up. He was at least six inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier.

  “It’s not exactly a fair fight,” I offered.

  “It never is,” he answered with a confident smile. Of course he was confident; he didn’t know that I had been a star pupil in my Jeet Kune Do class.

  The last thing he said as he moved toward me was “Remember to go for the head.”

  The philosophy of Jeet Kune Do revolves around fluid motion. You are taught to imagine yourself to be like water, which is exactly what I did as he approached me. I dipped down low, spun to the left, and popped up right next to him. This caught him completely off guard. Before he could react, I landed two punches on his jaw and sent him sprawling across the mat.

  “You mean like that?” I said, more than a little pleased with myself.

  It took him a moment to answer, but when he did he was smiling. He was rubbing the side of his face, but he was smiling.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like that.”

  Wednesdays and Saturdays I did field practice with Natalie. She was great. She taught me how to identify the undead, how to follow someone without being seen, and how to find “indicators.” Indicators are beyond cool and are what you use to find former Omegas.

  Once you’re an Omega, you’re one for life. The saying is “Omega today, Omega forever.” When you graduate from MIST, you become what’s known as a “sleeper.” Sleepers are available to help current Omegas. But since everyone’s identity must be kept secret, you have to use a code to find the sleepers. The key element of that code is an indicator.

  I saw my first indicator one Saturday morning when Natalie pointed out a small red Omega symbol that had been spray painted on the sidewalk.

  “Here’s one,” she said.

  “That’s an indicator?” I asked. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d think it was just a stray mark left over by a work crew.

  “No, that’s called a ‘standpoint,’” she said. “But if you stand on that spot, you should be able to see the indicator.”

  “Isn’t that kind of dangerous?” I asked. “The symbol being so public?”

  “The key to indicators is that they’re hidden in plain sight. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be able to find them. Besides, I think you’ll see that it’s not as easy as it sounds.”

&
nbsp; We’ll call that an understatement.

  I stood on the symbol for about five minutes, looking in every direction, searching for anything that might be an indicator, but nothing looked like a code or a clue to me.

  “Okay,” I finally admitted. “I give up.”

  Natalie smiled. “What about that shop right over there?” she asked as she pointed at a plant and flower store called Home Gardens.

  “What about it?”

  “Take the last three letters of ‘home’ and the first two of ‘gardens’ and what do you get?”

  “O-m-e-g-a. Oh my God, it spells ‘Omega’!” I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly it seemed so incredibly obvious, like when you find out how a magic trick is done and can’t believe that it fooled you.

  “You got it,” she said. “The woman who runs the shop was an Omega about ten years ago. She comes into the school sometimes to lecture to the botany class.”

  “Do we go inside and introduce ourselves?” I asked.

  “No! The rule is that you only make contact with a sleeper if there is an imminent need,” Natalie explained. “That’s crucial. We have to protect our identities and theirs. For now, you just lock it away in your memory until you need it someday.”

  The concept of hidden in plain sight is important. In fact, the key to virtually every Omega code hangs right out in the open in most of the classrooms at MIST. It’s the periodic table of elements.

  “You’re going to have to learn the periodic table,” Grayson told me one day. His parents and brothers were at soccer practice, so we were kicking back and drinking cream sodas in his kitchen.

  I cracked a smile. “That’s easy. I already know the periodic table. It has one hundred eighteen different elements, and each one of those has an atomic number, symbol, and weight.”

  “I know you know what it is,” he answered. “But I mean you’re really going to have to know it. Memorize it inside and out.”

  “That’s easy,” I said with a laugh as I repeated myself. “I already know the periodic table. If you want to test me, feel free.”

  He gave me a skeptical look. “Okay. I’m going to list off a series of atomic numbers. I want you to tell me which elements they represent.”