Dark Days

by James Ponti

  “Eagle’s Marek, right?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. It was just nervous chatter.

  “That’s right, and full detail refers to all the cops that protect him. He normally only travels with all of them if something big is happening.”

  The message continued. “There is a change of schedule. Rather than WSS, he is headed to Test C.”

  “What are WSS and Test C?” I asked.

  “WSS is Worth Street station, it’s one of the RUNY construction sites,” he said. “But I don’t know what Test C is. I’ve never heard that one before.”

  I took another bite of my slice of pizza and checked my phone again. It was now 3:57. I had to calm my nerves. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was an exercise we’d learned in jeet kune do. Real masters could do it and significantly lower their heart rate. It also helps clear your mind, and it must have worked because once I tried it I only needed about twenty seconds to figure out what Test C was code for.

  “Beth!” I said as I bolted from the table toward the door. I’d forgotten that I had the earbud in, and when I started running it popped out of my ear and flew back at Alex, flicking him in the face. I was halfway to the Chrysler Building before he caught up to me on the sidewalk.

  “What’s going on?” Alex asked as he ran with me stride for stride.

  “Test C,” I said, picking up speed. “It stands for The Empire State Tungsten Company. Marek just changed his plans to go there. They must have figured out who Beth really is.”

  Eagle’s Nest

  I sprinted full speed until we reached the entrance of the Chrysler Building. That’s when I decided I should at least try to blend in. After all, it’s a workplace and we didn’t want to attract any extra attention. I took a deep breath and calmly walked through the revolving door. When I got inside, I was surprised to see Grayson and Natalie in the lobby. They could tell I was upset.

  “Marek is heading to the office,” I explained.

  “We know,” Natalie said. “We saw him walk through Grand Central with his police escort. We followed him outside to see where he was going, and when he went into the building we put two and two together.”

  “We called to tell you,” Grayson said. “But you didn’t answer.”

  I must not have heard my phone ring as I ran down the street. I beelined straight for the elevators, and the others were right behind me.

  “We’ll bust in if we have to. I can’t let them hurt my sister,” I said. “I should never have asked her to do this. This is all my fault.”

  We got on an elevator and I jabbed the button for five a few times, rapid fire.

  “You’ve got to calm down, Molly,” Alex said. “No matter what is happening, keeping calm is our best approach.”

  I closed my eyes and waited for the ding to signal that we’d reached the fifth floor. Until then I practiced my jeet kune do breathing exercise so I could focus all my energy and anger. By the time the elevator stopped, I was ready to take on an undead army all by myself if I had to.

  The bell rang and I opened my eyes just as the doors opened onto the fifth floor. I was prepared to storm into battle, but then I saw something that made me stop cold. My sister was standing there waiting to take the elevator back down to the lobby.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked confused. “I thought I was supposed to meet you at the pizza place.”

  My mind spun rapidly, trying to figure out what was going on.

  “Beth?”

  “Actually, today I am playing the role of Sabrina, aspiring data entry specialist. I think the interview went really well.”

  I still couldn’t make sense of it all.

  “But what about Marek? Didn’t he come into the office?”

  “You mean Mr. Big Shot with the bodyguards,” she said. “Oh, he came in all right. Everyone got very excited and rushed into a back room. Some big deal is about to go down. It was perfect, because they just kind of left me there unattended and I was able to get this.”

  She held up a flash drive.

  “What’s that?” asked Grayson.

  “Only everything you ever wanted to know about the Empire State Tungsten Company, and more.”

  It’s amazing how quickly the mood changed from panic to joy. Beth stepped on the elevator and we were all ready to high-five. She had executed the plan better than we could have hoped, and our anxiety had all been a mistake.

  “Seriously,” I said catching my breath, “that’s amazing. You’re amazing.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Natalie said as she reached down to press the button for the lobby.

  “Stop!” Alex reached out and grabbed her arm. He was listening in on the walkie-talkie, and something made him grimace. “They know we’re here.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Grayson.

  “The four of us are together in one place,” he explained. “We set off the alarm.”

  In our panic, we had all completely forgotten about the trackers.

  “Then we better hurry up,” said Natalie.

  “It’s too late. Since Marek’s in the building, there are already some Dead Squad members in the lobby,” he replied. “We have to go up.”

  He pressed the button for sixty-one, and the elevator came to life and started climbing.

  I looked up at the numbers changing on the display above the doors and felt a new sense of panic. “Are you sure we need to go that high?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, Molly, but you’re just going to have to deal with your fear of heights,” said Alex. “This is an emergency. They’re going to outnumber us, so we need to get high enough to really weaken them.”

  Actually, it wasn’t my fear of heights that had me concerned. I was worried about Natalie. Going that high would weaken her, too. I tried to check her reaction without drawing attention to what I was doing. I could tell she was nervous. Neither of us wanted a repeat of what happened in Washington Heights. The vision of her spitting out black liquid was already haunting me. I figured we could stay up there for about fifteen minutes at the most before the height would begin to affect her. That didn’t leave me much time.

  “Why the sixty-first floor?” asked Grayson. “That seems kind of random.”

  “It’s not,” said Alex. “Whenever we’re going into an operation I try to work out escape plans in case something goes wrong. I researched the building last night and discovered that the sixty-first floor used to have an observation deck, but now it’s closed and abandoned, which makes it an ideal place for us to hide and wait them out.”

  “Wait them out?” I asked. “Is that our plan?”

  “Unless you’ve got a better one,” he said.

  I didn’t, but I knew that one wouldn’t work because waiting was exactly what Natalie couldn’t do. “What do you think?” I asked her. “Do you have a different plan?”

  It was the first time I ever saw her at a loss for words. She didn’t say anything, which the others probably took as her agreeing to the idea. Instead of Natalie, the next person who talked was my sister.

  “I know I told you guys that I’d do the favor no questions asked,” she said. “But since the favor part’s over, would someone mind telling me what the heck is going on?”

  I was a mental mess. I still hadn’t recovered from the thought that Marek was going to attack Beth. I was worried about taking Natalie up to a dangerous height. And a team of zombies was about to come and attack. I didn’t really have any room in my brain to come up with a good explanation, so I just blurted out the truth.

  “Omega is a secret society that protects the city from the undead. Marek is their leader and now they’re coming to fight us.”

  For a moment the only sounds in the elevator were the whirring of the motor and the lame music playing over the speaker. The five of us were silent until the bell dinged and the doors opened.

  “You mean zombies?” she said, incredulous.

  “Actually, they hate being called the Z word,” Alex said as h
e got off and held the doors for the rest of us. “But that’s exactly what she means.”

  I thought back to when they first told me about Omega. We were at Grayson’s house, and I was ready to storm out because I thought they were making fun of me. But Beth’s reaction was . . . different.

  She smiled as she considered it and tried to read our expressions. “You know, I almost believe you guys.”

  “Well, in a couple minutes I think you’re going to be convinced,” Alex replied. He unplugged his earbuds from the walkie-talkie and turned it up so that we all could hear.

  “Affirmative, Home Base, Eagle is secure. Omega is between the fifty-eighth and sixty-third floors, and we are sending up a team to isolate. We are go to engage Omega.”

  “We caught a break there,” Alex said.

  “How is that a break?” asked Grayson. “They’re coming up to isolate us. That doesn’t sound like a break.”

  “But they don’t know the exact floor we’re on,” he said. “The trackers are designed to show where you are on a map, not how high you are in the air. That should buy us an extra minute or two to get ready.”

  He led us down the hall and forced open a door to reveal a big room that was in the middle of a remodeling project. It was filled with scaffolding, tools, and giant plastic sheets hanging from the ceiling. There were also picture windows that looked out over a terrace and toward downtown. Even for someone normally terrified of heights, I had to admit that it was an amazing view of the city.

  “I read about it last night,” Alex said. “They’re turning it into a restaurant called the Eagle’s Nest.”

  “Not eagle because of Marek’s code name?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “Because of them.”

  He pointed out toward the terrace. At each corner there was a giant silver eagle-gargoyle.

  “They’re beautiful,” Grayson said. “I’ve always wanted to see them up close.”

  “Gargoyles are supposed to scare off bad spirits,” Alex said. “Let’s hope they scare off zombies, too.”

  In my desperation I came up with a plan to get Natalie downstairs.

  “I think we need to get the flash drive to safety,” I said. “Let’s give it to Natalie and she can take the stairs. That way the information will be protected.”

  “They’ve probably stationed someone in each stairwell,” Grayson said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Even so, Natalie can handle one zombie by herself, and once she does it’s all clear sailing.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Alex said, much to my relief. “But we can’t afford to lose Natalie, she’s too good a fighter. We should send Beth. No one on the Dead Squad knows who she is.”

  “You don’t know me either,” Beth said to Alex. “Not if you think I’d leave my sister in this situation. If there’s going to be a fight, I’m going to be part of it.”

  “It’s not like in the movies,” Grayson said. “These are what we call Level 2s. They’re aggressive, determined, and . . . really disgusting,”

  Beth smiled. “You just described all the boys at my school. I’ll be fine.”

  I loved Beth’s attitude, but I had to keep my focus on Natalie and getting her downstairs. “We need to get the flash drive out of here,” I said forcefully. “And it has to be Natalie!”

  “What is going on with you about this?” Grayson asked. “We need Natalie with us because some very scary creatures are about to come here looking for us.”

  “They’re not creatures!” I snapped. “And they’re not zombies! They’re people. They’re undead, but they’re still people.”

  Natalie smiled. “It’s okay. I know what he means.”

  “We are almost out of time here,” Alex said. “So if you two want to explain whatever is going on here, it would be great.”

  Natalie took a deep breath and turned to the boys.

  “I’m undead.”

  Before they could even respond, the elevators chimed in the hallway. Someone was coming for us.

  61 Stories

  I watched their faces as they reacted to the news. Grayson looked sad, but Alex seemed angry. This was what Natalie and I had been so worried about. Neither one of us knew how he would take the news.

  “Take it back!” he demanded. “You cannot be undead. Take it back.”

  “I can’t,” Natalie replied softly. “Because I am.”

  Alex started taking deep breaths, trying to keep his emotions under control while Grayson went over to her and gave her a hug, just like I expected he would.

  “I’m so sorry,” Grayson said to her. “I’m so sorry.”

  Natalie rested her head on his shoulder for a moment, but before there could be any real emotion between the two of them we were interrupted by a transmission over the walkie-talkie.

  “I’m getting a reading on the sixty-first floor,” said the voice. “I’ll check for visual confirmation.”

  This development snapped us out of the moment. Well, all of us except for Alex. He couldn’t have cared less about the Dead Squadder in the hallway. He was too focused on Natalie.

  “How is this possible?” he asked. “How did it happen?”

  “It was during the fight on New Year’s,” she said.

  “No, that’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean, how did it happen to you? I’ve gone through this a thousand times in my head and every time it’s the same. It’s supposed to be me.”

  We were all confused by this.

  “What’s supposed to be you?” asked Natalie.

  “It’s simple mathematics,” he said. “When you consider the number of times we get into these situations, the odds are that one of us would become undead. But that’s why I always go first. That’s why I always keep a lookout. It’s to skew those odds toward me. My job is to protect you. If it’s going to happen, it’s supposed to happen to me.”

  “It’s not your job to protect me,” she said. “It’s our job to look out for each other.”

  He was totally devastated, and I had no idea what he was going to do next.

  “The reading on sixty-one is very hot,” came an announcement on the walkie-talkie.

  “Let us know the moment you have visual confirmation?” came the reply. “If you do, we will send a team immediately.”

  “Alex,” said Grayson, pointing at the walkie-talkie. “We’re about to have company.”

  “I’m a little busy dealing with something Grayson,” Alex said, perturbed. “I need a second, all right?”

  “I don’t know if we have a second.”

  We could hear the zombie in the hallway as he checked doors to see if they were unlocked. He was getting closer.

  We all looked at Alex, trying to figure out his next move.

  “Fine,” he said, totally annoyed. He took a deep breath and marched right out toward the hallway.

  “What are you doing?” asked Natalie.

  He didn’t answer. Instead he just walked out the door, and we heard the following over the walkie-talkie.

  “I hear a door opening and . . . wait . . . I have visu—” and then static as the transmission went dead.

  Seconds later Alex came back through the door. In one hand he held a walkie-talkie, and with the other he dragged the body of the dead zombie.

  “Here’s an extra walkie,” he said, tossing it to Grayson. “Beth, this is what a zombie looks like. When they attack, go for the head.”

  The speed with which he took care of the situation was amazing, but while we were all stunned, Alex just picked up the conversation where he left off as if nothing had happened.

  “How could you not tell me?” he asked Natalie.

  She looked at him for a moment, trying not to get emotional.

  “I know what you think of them . . . ,” she said, motioning to the dead zombie on the floor. “. . . I mean, what you think of us. . . . I’m one of them now.”

  “You are not one of them,” he said, his voice rising. “You’re one of us! We are a team. It does
n’t matter if you are living or undead, you will always be one of us. Omega today, Omega forever!”

  Natalie blinked a couple times, and when she opened her eyes all the way, a tear streamed down her face. It was black, but it was a tear.

  “Does that mean you still want me on your team?” she said, looking Alex in the eye.

  He wiped the tear off her cheek with his thumb.

  “Always,” he said. “No matter what.”

  She hugged him tightly.

  We heard an elevator ding in the hallway and the sounds of a group of people stepping out.

  “It’s really great that you have this whole ‘them and us’ thing figured out,” Grayson said. “But that noise you hear out there? That really is them, and they are coming for us. So we have to get ready.”

  Alex and Natalie redirected their attention from each other and looked to us. We were out of time and we needed to brainstorm.

  “You’re the one who came up with this escape plan,” I said to Alex. “What do we do?”

  “Natalie’s situation changes everything,” he said. “We’ve got to get her downstairs fast.”

  “Easier said than done,” I said, looking out toward the hall filled with zombies. “How do we do that?”

  “I’ve got it,” said Grayson, excited. “I actually think I’ve got it. They’re looking for four of us. But we’ve got an extra person. Beth can become Natalie.”

  I didn’t understand what he was getting at, but Alex was right with him.

  “That’s brilliant,” he said. “If Natalie gives Beth her jacket and if Beth pulls her hair back like Natalie’s, it just might fool them. At least long enough for what we need.”

  Natalie was wearing a light denim jacket, which she quickly handed to Beth. Beth slipped it on and pulled her hair back in a ponytail.

  “Nat, you hide in here and we’ll go out on the terrace,” Alex said. “They’ll be looking for four people, so when they see us they’ll head out there and walk right by you. That should give you plenty of time to escape. Once they realize it’s really Beth, you’ll be long gone.”

  “That’s not fair to Beth,” she said. “I can make it about fifteen minutes before there’s a problem. They’re in the same situation as I am. Whatever happens is going to be fast and like you said, I’m a good fighter.”