Dead City

by James Ponti

  “I told you,” Grayson half spoke and half gargled.

  “Perfect timing,” Natalie said as she turned to us. “How does my makeup look? Be honest.”

  I hoped this wasn’t part of the test, because she looked terrible. My experience with makeup was absolutely zero, but even I could tell this was bad. Luckily, Alex answered first.

  “Awful,” he said. “You look like a corpse.”

  I expected Natalie to slug him, but instead she smiled and asked, “You’re not just saying that, are you?”

  Grayson spit the mouthwash into the sink and then patted a washcloth across his lips. “Nope. You look totally dead.”

  “But still cute,” she added.

  “Oh yeah,” Alex answered, rolling his eyes. “Dead . . . but cute.”

  “What about me?” Grayson flashed a big smile, revealing that the liquid had turned his teeth the same blend of yellow and orange as the teeth of the zombie who had attacked me in the subway station. “Do I look cute too?”

  “No. You look hideous.”

  “Nice,” he replied. “Hideous is exactly what I was going for.”

  I couldn’t have been more confused. “Let me get this straight,” I said, trying to hide my nervousness by sounding carefree and humorous. “For my final exam we’re doing really bad makeovers?”

  Natalie gave me a finger wag. “You wish it were that easy. No, for your final exam, we’re going to a party. The makeovers are so we can get in.”

  “What kind of party needs bad makeovers?”

  “A flatline party,” Alex said.

  “I’m guessing that’s not some kind of Sweet Sixteen.”

  “Flatline parties are for the undead,” Grayson explained. “Their name comes from the flat line that appears on a heart monitor when a patient dies. These parties are their only opportunity to come together in a group and just be themselves.”

  “They like to say that the only thing with a beat is the music,” Alex added. “Strictly zombies. No breathers allowed.” (“Breather” is undead slang for the living.)

  “Which is why we need to look dead,” I answered, finally getting it. “So we can crash the party.”

  “Exactly,” Natalie replied. “As part of your final exam, you have to pass yourself off as undead for thirty minutes.”

  “Great,” I said halfheartedly. “Acting and makeup. My two favorite things.”

  Suddenly, I was worried. I’d thought my test was going to be about finding standpoints and breaking codes. Things I knew I could ace. I had absolutely no confidence I could convince a group of zombies that I was one of them. What if I failed? I wondered if any retakes were allowed.

  The three of them took turns helping me with my makeup. They used foundation, powder, and eye shadow to give my face a hollow, bloodless appearance, and then rubbed some gel in my hair to make it look dried out and frizzy.

  When they finished, they scanned me over to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.

  “How do I look?” I asked.

  Grayson smiled and then answered, “To die for.”

  The others groaned as they turned to him.

  “You’ve been waiting all day to use that joke, haven’t you?” Natalie asked.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “Why should it matter when I thought of it?”

  “Because it matters,” Alex said.

  While they continued to give him a hard time, I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. Surprisingly, I did look kind of dead. Maybe I could pull this off after all. “So, where is this party?”

  “Good question,” Alex answered. “As part of the whole no-breathers policy, they keep that information pretty secret.”

  “But we can find out,” Grayson added. “That is, if you know how to get to J. Hood Wright Park.”

  He said it like a challenge, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Alex and Grayson had been trying to stump me ever since Natalie bragged that I knew the city parks better than they did.

  “Is this part of the test?”

  “Why?” asked Alex. “Don’t you know the answer?”

  “Yeah,” Grayson said eagerly. “Don’t you?”

  I paused for a second to get their hopes up and then said, “Actually, it depends on whether you want to enter by the rec center on Fort Washington Avenue or near the overlook on Haven Avenue,” dashing their hopes. “Personally, I’d recommend the rec center. To get there we can get on the C train at 72nd Street. Switch over to the A at 168th. Continue north toward Washington Heights and get off at 175th.”

  Natalie cackled. “You only make yourself look silly when you try to stump her,” she said as she gave me a fist bump. “I told you she was a natural.”

  A natural, I thought. My confidence was growing.

  We got to the park at that time of day when the city is its most beautiful. It was just before sunset and the sky had an orange glow that made the George Washington Bridge look like a painting at the Met. I was able to admire it for all of about thirteen seconds before Natalie took charge.

  “The test starts now,” she said. “Find the zombies.”

  A lump formed in the back of my throat. This was really happening.

  I tried to come up with a strategy. The park stretches for three blocks on each side. Because a cluster of buildings in the middle blocks your view, you can see only about a third of it at a time. I decided to start in one corner and walk toward the center.

  “Don’t make it obvious that you’re looking,” Alex said. “Act natural.”

  Yeah, I thought. Nothing’s more natural than hunting zombies in a park full of children.

  On the playground, kids were chasing one another back and forth across a mini-size version of the George Washington Bridge. Their laughter filled the air, and I felt the urge to protect those children. I scanned the parents watching them play, but didn’t see anyone who looked out of the ordinary.

  We walked through an archway to the other side of the buildings and came to a table where three white-haired men were playing an intense game of dominoes. One was singing along with a Spanish song that played on the radio. They may have been old, but they were very much among the living.

  Trying to act “natural,” I pretended to watch the domino game. Meanwhile, I was able to scan another third of the park. A group of kids was playing baseball, a family was cleaning up after a birthday party, and a couple was pushing a stroller along the walkway. Once again, all were living.

  I was stumped.

  I turned to the others, who were also pretending to watch the domino game.

  “Are you certain?” I asked them quietly.

  Natalie nodded.

  Then I remembered something.

  “Schist,” I said.

  All three of them smiled.

  In the corner of J. Hood Wright Park is a large outcropping of Manhattan schist. In fact, it’s one of the largest aboveground formations anywhere. I looked toward the rocks and then toward Natalie. She nodded again.

  The domino game ended, and I gave a little polite applause for the winner. Then I started to walk to the southwest corner of the park.

  The rocks were the color of pencil lead, and had been smoothed by centuries of wind and rain. Two little kids were climbing on one corner of them, and on the opposite side were two couples.

  At first glance you wouldn’t think there was anything unusual about the couples, but I remembered my field training with Natalie. The first thing I noticed was that despite warm weather, all of them were wearing long sleeves. The undead often do this to protect their skin. Then I saw that one of the guys was wearing makeup and had done a bad job blending it in along the neckline. Finally, when one of the girls laughed, I saw that her teeth looked just like Grayson’s.

  I sat down on a bench across from them, and the others joined me. We acted normal, like a group of friends having a relaxing Saturday.

  “Nice work,” Grayson whispered.

  “Are they going to have the party here?” I asked.
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  Alex shook his head. “No. This is just where they meet before they go. We’re going to have to follow them to the party.”

  And just when I thought the test couldn’t get harder, he added, “We’ll have to go down into Dead City.”

  The City That Really Never Sleeps

  We’re going into Dead City?” I asked nervously. “Really?”

  Alex gave me an encouraging pat on the back. “Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  “Good,” I replied. “Because it sounds creepy, gross, and disgusting.”

  “Oh,” Natalie chimed in, “then it is as bad as it sounds.”

  “Yeah,” added Grayson. “Creepy, gross, and disgusting pretty much nails it.”

  The three of them laughed.

  “I’m glad my final exam amuses you all,” I said as I joined them and laughed too.

  Dead City, or DC, is what the Omegas call the maze of abandoned tunnels, sewers, aqueducts, and catacombs that wind their way underneath Manhattan. It’s where zombies are free to move around without attracting attention from the living and where the bedrock walls of schist to recharge their bodies.

  Dead City is also incredibly dangerous.

  Omegas are allowed to go there only in groups of three or more. Natalie, Grayson, and Alex talked about it during training, but this was going to be my first actual visit. And if I’m totally honest, I’ll admit that as creepy, gross, and disgusting as Dead City sounded, part of me was excited to see what it was like.

  First, though, we had to keep an eye on the four zombies in the park. They were our key to finding the flatline party. For a group of undead, they were a pretty lively bunch. They were joking and laughing about something when a man approached them. He talked to them for a moment before he continued walking toward the middle of the park. The four of them, however, headed in the opposite direction, toward the street.

  “Here’s the next part of your test,” Alex said. “He just told them where the party is. What do we do?”

  The three of them looked at me.

  “Follow,” I said.

  “Him or them?”

  I hesitated for a second, worried that it might be a trick question. “Them.”

  “Okay,” Alex said. “Show us what you’ve got.”

  I looked at Natalie, and she gave me a confident nod. I knew I had to take charge and show them the surveillance skills she had taught me.

  “A-B shadow technique,” I said, using the terminology from training. “Grayson and me in the first group, Natalie and Alex in the second.”

  From her smile I could tell that I was off to a good start.

  Grayson and I waited on the bench for about thirty seconds before we began to follow the four zombies to the street. Thirty seconds after that, Natalie and Alex started following us. That’s the key to A-B shadow technique. Because they were following us, Alex and Natalie were too far back to be seen by the people we were following. Every two blocks our two groups swapped places, making it less likely for them to notice any of us.

  “You’re doing great,” Grayson said as we walked away from the park down Haven Avenue. “Really great.”

  “Thanks.” I figured Grayson might offer moral support. That was partly why I picked him to be in my group.

  We followed for about six blocks until the four of them turned down an alley. I kept an eye on what they were doing while Grayson bent over to tie his shoelace. This was the signal for Alex and Natalie to catch up to us.

  One of the zombies lifted a grate from the ground, and the four of them quickly climbed down through the opening. The last one pulled the grate back over his head as he disappeared underneath. By the time Natalie and Alex reached us, the zombies were gone.

  “Right over there,” I told them. “All four went down through a grate in that alley.”

  “What do we do now?” Natalie asked.

  “We’ve got to hurry up and go down there so we can follow them underground,” I said.

  “How do we do that and keep them from seeing us?” asked Alex.

  This one stumped me for a moment before I figured it out. “It won’t matter if they see us down there, because they’ll assume we’re undead, just like they are.”

  “Good answer,” Alex said. “You’re thinking like an Omega.”

  So far the test was going well, but I knew it was about to get a whole lot tougher once we got underground.

  Alex pulled up the grate, which turned out to be much heavier than it looked. It opened up on a narrow shaft that went deep enough into the ground that I couldn’t see the bottom. Iron rungs had been built into the side of the shaft and formed a ladder.

  “I’ll go first,” Grayson offered.

  “No,” I said. “It’s my test. I’m going first.”

  Alex pointed his flashlight down, but even with the light, I still couldn’t tell how deep it was.

  “Piece of cake,” I said confidently, trying to convince myself as much as them.

  I took a deep breath and started climbing down. One by one the others followed, with Alex going last. He was just pulling the grate back on at the top when I reached the bottom.

  It took a minute or so for my eyes to adjust. Even when they did, everything was still mostly darkness and shadows. A few hundred yards away I could see a faint light bobbing up and down. It was a flashlight being carried by one of the zombies we had followed.

  “This way,” I said, pointing down the tunnel.

  I started to walk, and my first step was right into a pool of water. Luckily, Natalie managed to grab my arm and kept me from falling in. As it was, my jeans were soaking wet all the way up above my left knee.

  “Please tell me this isn’t sewage,” I said.

  Alex laughed. “Believe me, you’d know if it was.” He shined his flashlight across the ceiling. We were in a rounded tunnel about eight feet high in the middle. It must have been old, because instead of concrete it was made out of bricks. “It’s just rainwater. I think we’re in the Old Croton Aqueduct.”

  His light illuminated a narrow walkway on one edge of the tunnel. On the positive side, it was above the waterline, so it was mostly dry. On the negative, the curve of the wall made you walk with a severe tilt to the left. Within a few minutes my neck was starting to hurt.

  As we walked, I tried to keep a mental map of where we were, but without buildings and streets to go by, it was impossible. Even though one of the world’s busiest cities was only thirty feet above our heads, it felt like we were all alone on some alien planet.

  Eventually the aqueduct met up with an abandoned subway tunnel, and we were finally able to stand up straight and stretch out. I rubbed my throbbing neck as I tried to figure out which way to go.

  “Remember not to rub your neck at the party,” said Grayson. “Zombies feel no pain, which means their muscles don’t ache.”

  I would have completely forgotten that. Still, since it was just the four of us now, I kept massaging it. There was some lighting in this tunnel, which made it easier to see where we were going. Unfortunately, it also made it impossible to see the zombies’ flashlight.

  We were on our own. I wasn’t sure about the grading scale for the exam, but I was pretty certain it’d be an F if I got everybody lost in Dead City.

  “What next?” Alex said.

  “First of all,” I snapped, angrier than I intended, “I need you to be quiet and still.”

  Alex smiled, not at all offended by my attitude. He was happy that I was taking charge.

  We all stopped moving and talking, and Dead City became even eerier. I closed my eyes, and one by one I tried to identify and eliminate the sounds I heard.

  First was the steady flow of water along the aqueduct. If you forgot where you were, it sounded just like a waterfall up in the mountains. Next I could hear the faint echo of a subway train rushing along a distant tunnel. One by one I went through the sounds until I heard the one I was searching for.

  “Got it,” I said.

>   The others hadn’t picked up on it yet. “Got what?” asked Natalie.

  “The only thing with a beat.” I pointed down the abandoned subway tunnel toward the faint thumping. “Music.”

  They listened for a moment and then smiled when they heard it too. We followed the sound, which gradually got louder as we got closer. Along the way, we met up with more zombies coming from different directions toward the party. I got nervous but tried to hide it. I also kept telling myself the same thing over and over.

  Do not rub your neck!

  When we finally reached the party, I was speechless. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find, but I know it was nothing like what we actually came across.

  First of all, it was beautiful.

  The party was being held in an abandoned subway station unlike any I had ever seen. The walls and archways were covered with gorgeous tiled mosaics, while the ceiling had brass chandeliers and stained-glass skylights.

  “What is this place?” I asked, staring up at the dazzling ceiling.

  “Subway stations used to be a lot fancier,” Grayson said. “They closed this one back in the 1940s when the trains went from five to ten cars long. Ten-car trains are too long to fit in the curve.”

  “So they just left it empty?”

  “It’s called a ghost station,” Natalie said. “There are ten in New York. This one’s my favorite.”

  The flatline party took full advantage of the location. On one side of the tracks, zombies of all ages were socializing. There were some Level 3s hanging out on the fringes of the group, but most everyone looked like normal, everyday people. They certainly didn’t look dangerous.

  On the other side of the tracks was a long row of tables where merchants had set up shop. Strands of white lights hung from archway to archway, giving the whole station the look of an outdoor street festival or farmers’ market.

  “You’re going to have to make it for thirty minutes on your own,” Alex said.

  Suddenly, I was overcome with panic. “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Natalie reassured me. “We’ll stay close by and keep an eye on you.”

  “And if anything goes wrong, we’ll step in,” Grayson added. “But the whole point is for you to pass yourself off as undead without any help.”