by Ty Drago
“Balanced?”
Tom spun around and whipped his arm out. The knife flew across the room, whirling end over end until it hit the opposite wall and stuck there.
I felt my eyes widen. “Whoa!”
Grinning, Tom retrieved the knife.
Buttons 4 and 5 released power screwdrivers—one bladed and the other Phillips-style. Number 6 activated a flashlight, small but very bright. “The battery’s rechargeable,” Tom explained, handing the knife back to me. “It lasts about a week. I’ll give you the charger too.”
“My dad made this?” I asked again.
“Sure did.”
“And Sharyn’s sword? Did he make that too?”
He nodded.
I frowned and said, “I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“Tom, I loved my dad—but he couldn’t change a light switch without shocking himself. I mean, one day when the bread got stuck in the toaster, he tried to pry it out with a butter knife and got half-electrocuted. Mom almost called an ambulance.”
He looked confused. “Straight up?”
“Straight up.”
“Well, that makes no sense. Your father told me he made them—the pocketknife and the wakizashi both. He even made a joke about it. Dream children, he called them.”
“Maybe he had them made someplace,” I suggested.
Tom considered this. “The sword maybe. But the knife? Uh-uh. Sharyn and me know this city, and I’m telling you there ain’t no such shop in Philly. Sure, there’s a couple of custom knife makers, but there’s nobody who could put a thing like this together. I always figured your old man had some kind of workshop at his house, maybe in the basement, with some high-tech tools. I swear I half-expected you to already have something like this.”
I shook my head. “No way.”
Tom laughed a little nervously. “Well, guess we just have to just chalk it up to one of life’s little mysteries.”
“I guess,” I replied, although I wasn’t happy about it. My dad making Japanese swords and super pocketknives? Not likely!
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I can’t accept this.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“But my dad gave it to you for your birthday!”
“That makes it mine to give to his son,” Tom replied matter-of-factly.
“But why?”
The Chief leaned close. “Partly because I am sorry for all the stuff I dumped on you when you first blew in—and partly because I do expect major things from you, Will. You got guts. More than I seen in any recruit in a long time—if ever.”
“Guts? Yeah, right, Tom. I’m scared to death!”
“We’re all scared to death,” the older boy said with a shrug.
“So far the only brave thing I’ve done was challenge you to a fight.”
“And how many first-week Undertakers do you figure do that?”
“Dave challenged Sharyn on his second day!” I replied.
Tom chuckled. “That was more stupid than brave. Besides, all Dave did was act tough and try to scare a girl. Well, he wised up quick to how far that crap flies with my sister.”
“She’s a good fighter,” I said. Then correcting myself, I added, “A good soldier.”
“You got no idea.”
“You’re a good soldier too,” I added.
“Thanks, bro.”
“You might even be better than she is.”
Tom laughed again. “Just do me a favor and don’t tell Sharyn you think that. I don’t need the bruises.”
I smiled. “Okay.” Then I hefted the knife again. “Are you sure about this, Tom?”
“Way sure.”
“If you ever want it back—”
“I won’t. But thanks for the offer.”
“Thanks for the gift.”
“So…we’re cool?”
“We’re cool,” I said.
“Good.” Tom stood. “Rest up. You got the morning off, but after lunch, it’s back to business. You’ve still got six nights on that cot before you and the rest of the recruits grad to Haven. And Will?”
“Yeah?”
“Promise me you won’t play with that pocketknife. It ain’t a toy. It’s a tool and a weapon. Make sure you learn the buttons. The last thing you wanna do is pop the wrong thing and end up cutting or zapping yourself. Sharyn won’t dig it when I tell her I gave it to you. She figures you’re too young.”
I replied, “Tell her that there are children in the Undertakers but not a lot of childhood.”
Tom grinned. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
CHAPTER 23
The Long Last Night
After the field trip, things at First Stop changed.
Tom and Sharyn met with each of us in turn, asking us which crews—if any—had appealed to us. Dave liked the Monkeys, Ethan the Chatters. Maria and Harleen favored Hacking, while Amy, always the quietest of the bunch, just tended to cry when asked to commit herself. Nobody had even mentioned the Brains so far.
For myself, I was thinking Schooler, although when pressed, I couldn’t quite say why. I couldn’t tell one end of a hammer or test tube from another and was a loss at computers, and the idea of talking on the radio or flipping through newspapers all day made me almost physically ill.
In fact, the only thing I had shown any talent for since coming to First Stop was combat.
Besides, Helene was a Schooler, and for reasons I couldn’t explain, that mattered.
Fortunately it wasn’t a decision that I had make right away. All new Undertakers started their lives at Haven as Moms working under Nick Rooney—a gig that could run anywhere up to three months depending on recruitment.
Three months! I could barely believe I’d been away from home for almost two weeks!
But lately I’d kind of gotten used to ignoring such thoughts.
It was now my last night at First Stop. Lights out was hours behind us, and both of my roommates were asleep. But not me. I lay wide awake on my cot, turning Tom’s pocketknife over and over in the faint city light that filtered through the edges of the boarded-up window.
Tomorrow we’d all be going to Haven. At least we’d be out of this dingy dry cleaners and back someplace where the air didn’t smell like rat droppings.
It struck me with a shudder that I could barely remember what my bed at home felt like. The thought tightened that now-familiar knot in my stomach.
The pocketknife. Think about that instead.
Tom had always believed that my dad made it. I knew that couldn’t be right. Still, I was pretty sure that he hadn’t picked it up at Kmart either. Alone in the dark over these past nights, I’d explored every one of its gadgets. There wasn’t a single serial number or manufacturer’s mark on it anywhere. Wherever this thing had been made, it hadn’t been done on some assembly line.
Besides, it was too—well—perfect for that.
Every one of its springs sprung soundlessly. Every one of its buttons clicked smoothly. I’d asked for and gotten enough stupid crap for my birthday and Christmas to recognize quality when I saw it.
So where had it come from?
Footsteps.
I glanced over at the shut bedroom door.
More footsteps—tentative, sneaky.
Faint light peeked under the closed door. It floated past, barely there at all.
It might be Kyle, of course, doing his First Stop Boss thing. Except it hadn’t sounded like Kyle, who had a pretty heavy footstep. These steps had been light, soft—maybe barefoot. Nobody went barefoot at First Stop. The floor had too many splinters.
Weird.
It was curiosity more than anything that got me out of bed. I pulled on my sneakers. As I tiptoed past Dave’s bunk, the Burgermeister rolled over in his sleep, mumbling something about Baby Ruth candy bars and a girl named Sarah. Against the opposite wall, Ethan never stirred.
I gingerly opened the door, remembering its squeaky hinges, and peeked down the corridor. Despite the lousy lig
ht, I could just make out someone standing at the end of the hall. She—for the person was too small to be anyone but one of the girls—was peering out into the training room.
As I watched, the mysterious girl opened the training room door just enough to allow her to slip quietly through.
What the heck…?
I followed, tiptoeing along the grimy hallway and finally pausing almost exactly where the girl had just been standing. The training room door stood partway open. Through the gap I could see two Undertakers playing cards by the light of a battery-powered lamp.
The boy was Kyle.
The girl was Tara Monroe, the Monkey Boss. Apparently it was her turn to play senior Undertaker on site at First Stop.
I was almost certain that Tara hadn’t been the girl in the hallway just now. So where was she?
Neither of the escorts noticed me slip into the shadowy training room. I looked around, searching for some sign of where the unidentified girl had gone—and spotted a quick flicker of light off to my right. It came from the front of the empty shop—there and gone in an instant, but it was enough.
Cautiously I followed that light to the open threshold that connected the training room to the unused storefront. Here the front wall was entirely glass and all boarded up. The door leading to the street, through which customers had once come in with their shirts and trousers, stood firmly padlocked. The floor was layered in dust.
Nobody was supposed to be in here. There were too many gaps in the boards where they might be spotted from the street, even at night.
But someone was here. I could just make out a female voice coming from the opposite side of the long narrow room. I squinted but couldn’t see anyone. Whoever she was, she must be crouched behind the dusty old Formica counter that ran along the far wall.
I inched closer, my heart drumming.
Gradually the words became more distinct and their tone more urgent.
“…I can’t. They’ll hear me. They’re playing cards in the next room. No, I asked. They never had a key to the front door—only to the big steel one that leads into the alley. But the front is just wood. Can’t you just, you know, kick it in?”
I paused. I didn’t know what I was listening to, but it sounded wrong. Worse, I still couldn’t tell who was talking. Slowly, not even daring to breathe, I slipped Tom’s knife from my pants pocket.
The voice whispered, “Who? Oh, yeah. He’s here. But why’s he such a big deal? I mean, it’s Sharyn and Tom you really want, right? They’re the chiefs. They run the whole show. Look, we’re all headed to Haven tomorrow. Why don’t you just wait one more day?”
I wondered if I should run back and fetch Kyle and Tara. I vaguely remembered Tom telling me to do that very thing if something just like this happened. But maybe this was innocent. I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, didn’t want to be a snitch.
The girl whispered, “No, I don’t know for sure if Will’s going with us. Is he why you won’t wait? I still don’t see—”
At the sound of my name, my already hammering heart shifted into overdrive. I suddenly leapt around the corner, my thumb pressing the pocketknife’s 6 button.
Its flashlight illuminated the face of Amy Filewicz.
She was hunkered down behind the counter, barefoot and dressed in gray sweats—no Barbie pajamas at First Stop. She stared up at the light, wide-eyed with horror, the color draining from her cheeks. With one hand she pressed a tiny cell phone to her ear.
Her other hand gripped a kitchen knife.
A big one.
CHAPTER 24
The Mole
What are you doing?” I demanded, although I already knew the answer. Amy was a mole. And surprisingly my first reaction was relief.
I knew it wasn’t Dave!
She stared up at me, her face ashen, her lower lip quivering. She was utterly silent.
And then she wasn’t.
Jumping to her feet, Amy shrieked into the cell phone, “Will’s found me! He’s right here!”
Then she dropped the phone and lunged at me with the knife.
The attack was so sudden and savage that the kid I’d been two weeks ago would have been dead before I had time to blink. But this Will Ritter had spent many hours in combat exercises, and my body reacted automatically before my mind could really process what was happening.
Instinctively I sidestepped, grabbed Amy’s wrist, and twisted hard.
The girl cried out in pain. The knife fell from her fist, clattering to the dusty floor.
“Tara!” I screamed. “Kyle!”
Cries of alarm rose from the training room, followed by approaching footfalls.
Amy’s pain turned to panic, but instead of pulling away, she stepped forward and drove her knee up toward my stomach. I saw it coming and twisted so she caught more rib than belly. It still hurt, but at least I didn’t lose my wind.
Wide-eyed and snarling, the girl’s head lashed downward, her teeth biting into the back of the hand that clutched her wrist. I yelped, the beam of my flashlight splashing crazy shadows across the wall. Desperately I flipped the knife over, pressed the 2 button, and tapped Amy’s shoulder with the Taser.
Big mistake.
Electricity raced down the girl’s arm and—since I was still holding her—right up my own.
I was knocked backward—all of my limbs going numb and the pocketknife flew from my hand. I landed hard, raising plumes of dust. Blearily I watched Amy stiffen and then sink to the floor, her fearful eyes turning glassy.
The footsteps reached the threshold.
“Will?” Tara asked urgently. “What’s going on?”
Beside her, Kyle held up the battery-powered lamp. He shone it around the room.
“Amy?” he asked, bewildered.
Tara knelt beside me on the floor. I tried to say something, but my lips felt like they’d fallen completely off.
“What happened here?” the Monkey Boss asked me.
“M-m—” I stammered. “Mmmooo.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
Kyle rushed to Amy’s side, still holding the lantern. She’d been stunned too and lay twitching against the wall, her hand inches from the fallen knife.
“Nnnnnn,” I struggled, trying to warn him.
“Come on,” Tara suggested. “Let me get you outta here.”
She came around and lifted me by my shoulders. She was surprisingly strong.
I managed to raise one arm and point feebly in Amy’s direction. Concentrating, I yelled, “Mmmmoooollllle!”
Tara blinked. Then as I watched helplessly, her confusion became understanding and her understanding became alarm. Suddenly and not very gently, she dropped me back to the floor and started forward.
The boy knelt beside Amy, trying to soothe her. He touched her shoulder.
“Kyle!” Tara exclaimed.
Still twitching but regaining more control with each passing second, Amy managed to reach out and close her small hand around the nearby knife.
What happened next is forever burned in my memory.
The blade came up hard and fast. Kyle gasped, his eyes going horribly wide.
At the same instant, the padlocked front door burst open.
Corpses poured into the room.
There were four of them, all Type Twos or early Type Threes and all dressed in police uniforms. I hadn’t seen one since the Laundromat, other than in pictures, and I’d almost forgotten the horror of them. Their bodies reeked of death, the stench flooding my nostrils and bringing tears to my eyes. The uniforms they wore were moist with the fluids expelled from their putrid bodies, and their hair hung in dead strands from atop their slick, grotesquely decayed faces.
“Kyle!” Tara wailed.
But the First Stop Boss didn’t reply. He was slumped with his back against the wall, clutching at his stomach. The lamp had fallen from his hand and now lay on the floor at his feet. By its light, I could see Amy’s pale face, her own eyes almost as wide as Kyle’s. She was tr
ying to stand up. The knife was still in her hand. There was blood on it.
Meanwhile, the Corpses began to spread out, trying to block off both of the room’s exits.
Still standing over me, Tara tore her eyes away from Kyle and drew a water pistol, firing a stream into the face of the nearest Corpse. He let out a sound a bit like a whimper. Then he sort of staggered off to one side, crashing blindly into one of his pals and knocking him over. The two of them tumbled to the floor, raising dust.
Apparently unconcerned, the remaining two spread apart, trying to outflank us.
“We. Want. Boy!” one of them said in Deadspeak.
Tara’s only reply was to level her pistol at them, holding them at bay. Her expression was frightened but determined.
Sensation had returned to my arms and legs. I was still dizzy and a little nauseated, but that might have been as much from the smell of the dead bodies in the room as from the Tasing I’d given myself.
Turning my head, I peered over at the room’s far corner where Tom’s pocketknife lay.
“Get up, Will!” Tara told me. “Quick!”
But I was suddenly thinking that wasn’t such a good idea.
Instead I rolled over, scrambled to my knees, and shot forward.
In the shadowy room, the nearest Corpse didn’t spot me immediately. I managed to crawl right between his spread legs, my hand reaching for the pocketknife.
“Will!” Tara cried.
“Look out!” Amy suddenly exclaimed at the same moment.
With an outraged moan, the Corpses both turned.
Tara fired, catching one of them in the back of the knee. The Corpse stumbled immediately, struggling to keep its balance as its whole leg went numb. For the moment, at least, he was as helpless as his fallen buddies.
That left only one—the one nearest to me.
Throwing myself forward another two feet, I groped for the pocketknife just as a slimy fist clamped around my ankle.
Suddenly I was dangling half a yard above the dusty floor, caught in the iron grip of a lifeless hand.
