by Ty Drago
“What’s going down?” I asked Amy when I reached her.
As I did, the elevator arrived. Amy pulled its rattling door open and waved me inside.
“The Corpses are attacking,” she said, matter-of-factly. “The chief wants me to bring you up.”
“To that operations room?” I asked.
“We call it ‘Command’,” she reminded me. “And no. To the deck.”
“Oh,” I said.
City Hall’s Observation Deck sat atop the tower, right below the thirty-foot statue of Billy Penn, which was still perched atop the big building’s pinnacle, the largest statue to sit atop any building in the world. There’d been a time, back in the 1980’s, when this had been the highest point in the city, when a “gentleman’s agreement” had existed never to erect a building taller than Billy’s hat. That admittedly stupid idea had finally been abandoned and major skyscrapers had quickly surrounded the tower, dwarfing it.
Now, however, all of those skyscrapers had either been burned down or collapsed. So, once again, the “gentleman’s agreement” held sway.
I supposed there was a little irony in that somewhere.
A minute later, the elevator reached its final stop. As Amy pushed the door aside, I smelled fresh air; I hadn’t realized how rank it was in that dorm. Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that the air wasn’t really all that fresh—that, carried on the wind, was a stench. A familiar one.
The dead.
Amy led me through the small iron enclosure housing the elevator and out onto the narrow circular walkway that surrounded it. It was sometime in the early afternoon. I must have slept for longer than I’d thought. Then I looked past the railing and all thoughts of time went right out of my head.
I’d been up here before, both during the daytime and nighttime. But never when the only view was of a shattered city.
From this height, the ruin of Philadelphia was like a knife to my gut. The toppled skyscrapers were bad enough. But the rest of the city, nearly everything from City Hall east to the Delaware River, had been burned to ashes. Independence Hall still stood—I could see its steeple rising in the distance. But the Liberty Bell’s glass pavilion was gone. So were the National Constitution Center and every square inch of the park called Independence Mall. Left behind was a wasteland of scorched concrete and debris that reached to the limits of my vision. On the other side of the tower, looking west, Love Park was still there, though the buildings around it were nothing but shattered husks.
Yet that silly “LOVE” sculpture, in front of which I’d once taken a sniper’s bullet, had somehow survived. Something about the way its four colorful letters peeked up out of the rubble made me think the “oversight” had been deliberate.
Corpses were sometimes known to have a nasty sense of humor.
“Over here,” said a voice.
Maxi Me stood at the railing, beckoning my way.
I went, looking back at Amy, who had wordlessly returned to the elevator. Evidently, this was supposed to be another private audience.
William said, “I’m sorry. I’d hoped we’d have some time to prepare you for this, but they showed up sooner than expected.”
“What’s happening?” I asked him.
In answer, he pointed over the railing. In my day, there’d been a wall of windows running all the way around the deck, so that you couldn’t really look straight down. Those had been removed, a fact made clear by the chill wind that sliced through my shirt and blew my hair around.
I suddenly wondered what month it was. It had been June when I’d left my time.
I filed the question away for letter and stepped up to the railing, peering over it.
Deaders filled what was left of the streets, thousands of them. They surrounded the entire building, clamoring and snarling and clawing at the hundred-year-old masonry walls. More of them than I’d ever seen. More of them than I’d ever imagined.
And I found myself thinking miserably, I’m sorry, Burgermeister.
As I watched, a wave of them perhaps a hundred strong threw themselves at City Hall’s brick façade, finding handholds and climbing. A second wave followed, until deaders lined the outer walls, scaling the huge building the way an army of spiders might scale a stack of bricks.
“Does this happen a lot?” I asked.
“Two or three times a month,” he replied.
“What do we do?”
He glanced at me, perhaps amused at my ready use of the word “we.” Then he raised his radio to his lips and said, “Make it rain.”
Looking down over the railing, I spotted at least a dozen of those small-wheeled sprinklers, like the kind that hang from middle school ceilings. Each was mounted onto the end of a pipe that jutted out from the tower walls. A few seconds after Maxi Me delivered his command, they all spun into action, hurling a torrent of water down on the Corpses.
Almost immediately, the top row of climbers began to convulse. They lost their grips on the building’s brickwork and toppled down into their friends, who were subsequently knocked off the wall and into the others below them, and so on. Within moments, the first and second waves were nothing but spasming, helpless piles of bodies littering the base of City Hall.
I grinned. “Saltwater.”
“Saltwater,” he said.
The “rain” kept going, soaking the Corpses more and more, until the ones on the top of the piles stopped twitching altogether. It would have been nice to think them dead, but I knew better. Saltwater couldn’t kill Corpses, though enough of it could permanently mess with their stolen bodies, trapping them in useless prisons of flesh. They’d be stuck like that, until and unless their buds could find them new cadavers to possess.
Which raised a question.
“Where are they getting the bodies?” I asked. “I mean … if all this started with the dead rising two years ago, and most of humanity got wiped out in the first six months, then where are these Corpses finding fresh bodies? The ones they’re wearing can’t be more than a month old, right? If there really are billions of deaders on Earth, then how are they keeping a steady supply of hosts coming?”
“That’s a good question,” Maxi Me said. He sounded surprised.
“Thanks,” I replied, annoyed and not sure why. “Now how about an answer?”
“There were billions of them,” he explained. “Back when the war started. But you’re right. As they killed more and more people, they gradually started running out of bodies to possess. So, they began … farming us.”
“What?”
Below us, the deaders were trying to regroup. Those who could recover from their saltwater shower were already getting up; those who couldn’t were ignored by the rest of the horde, which just looked on, quiet and watchful. They didn’t seem particularly angry about what had happened to their buds. I supposed this defense had been used before. But, if so, then why bother trying to storm City Hall, if they knew the saltwater would simply drive them back?
Maxi Me said, “Their numbers have dwindled. What was once billions is now down to maybe a hundred thousand, which still out-numbers humanity a hundred to one. That army down there is probably all that’s left of them in Philadelphia. But remember, the Corpses don’t want to conquer our planet. They only want to destroy all intelligent life. So, as long as they keep their overwhelming ratio, that goal is all but certain.”
“You said ‘farming’.”
“Well, that’s how they keep the ratio. Sometime after the first few months, the Corpses stopped killing everyone they encountered. The young and strong they simply captured, locking them up in makeshift concentration camps. There they were kept, fed, maintained … like chickens in a pen. Then, whenever the Corpses needed to shore up their numbers, they’d just …” His words trailed off, though I’d already guessed where he was going with this.
People were being harvested, used to supply the deaders with fresh hosts.
Smart. Organized. Ruthles
s. Very Corpse. Lilith Cavanaugh would have approved.
William said, “We don’t think they bother with it anymore, at least not on a grand scale. This war is winding down. Oh, we’ll keep trying to hold them off for as long as possible. But eventually they’ll come at us with real force, overwhelm our defenses, get inside the building, and kill every man, woman, and child in Haven. By then, I’m guessing those push pins I showed you in the map downstairs will all have been pulled out. Humanity’s had it.”
Hard words. Terrible words. But, given everything I’d seen so far, not surprising.
At that moment, there was some kind of commotion below us, on the east side of City Hall, along what used to be called Market Street. The Corpse lines were parting to admit a single figure. She was female, but I couldn’t determine much beyond that. Too far away.
Her host was a Type Two or late Type One, and she was obviously in some kind of charge. All the rest of the deaders stepped out of her path, bowing respectfully as she approached the base of the great building and turned her head upward.
Beside me, William visibly stiffened. Recognition? Dread?
A little of both, I thought.
The Corpse Lady held out her hand and one of her minions obediently stepped up and placed a battery-powered bullhorn into it.
“Chief Ritter!” she called. Her speech was raspy, her vocal chords already starting to liquefy. But her voice sounded strong and so loud that it echoed off the stone walls.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
Instead of replying, Maxi Me raised his radio and said, “Pipe me through the external speakers.”
There was a click, and then an odd shrill squeal that seemed to come from the statue above us. I looked and saw a speaker, one of those big public address ones that they use—or used to use—in ballparks. From the way the sound carried, I got the impression that there were others like it mounted onto the great building’s outer walls.
“What do you want?” the chief demanded.
“Only to serve notice,” Corpse Lady replied. “The time has finally come. We’ve played with you and your pitiful band of survivors long enough. I suggest you make your peace with whatever god interests you. At midnight … nine hours from now … we shall return and kill you all.”
William seemed to take this threat in stride. “Bring it on,” he said. “We’re not exactly defenseless.”
She laughed, an awful sound made more awful by its amplification. “You mean your saltwater sprayers? I think you’ll find them quite useless.”
“They worked well enough just now.”
Corpse Lady scoffed. “That was no attack. I was merely ‘knocking on your door,’ as you humans say. Paying my regards. Getting your attention.”
I watched Maxi Me struggle for words. But before he could muster a reply, the monster down below offered up another comment. A strange one.
“She still lives, you know.”
At that, William went nearly white. Still, he didn’t reply.
Corpse Lady said, “Sometimes she calls for you … in her sleep, of course.”
“What’s she talking about?” I asked.
Again, no reply, though William’s eyes traveled along the Observation Deck to some kind of—something—that was mounted onto the railing about six feet from where we stood. Whatever it was had been concealed beneath a heavy canvas tarp.
From his expression, I got the feeling that Maxi Me was considering it. Maybe considering using it. Whatever “it” was.
“Who is that?” I pressed.
He looked at me with an expression so pained that it hurt to see it. “Check out her Mask.”
I blinked. “I thought these Second War Corpses don’t use Masks.”
“She’s the one exception. Have a look. You deserve to know.”
So I looked, holding my eyes in that particular way that allows me to glimpse the false face that a deader displays to those who don’t have the Eyes to see the truth.
As I said, she was very far away, but the trick worked nonetheless. A human face shimmered into view on top of the dead one. Light brown hair. Large eyes. A long face and full mouth. Funny: if I’d been closer, the difference in years would probably have fooled me, kept me from identifying her.
But distance tends to blur details like age lines or gray hair. So I knew immediately who it was, and it suddenly felt as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over me.
“Helene,” I whispered.
Chapter 9
The Once and Future Wife
It wasn’t my Helene, of course. Not the strong-willed girl who’d saved my life more times than I could count. And it wasn’t Maxi Me’s Helene either, the lost mother of his two dead sons.
No, this was a Corpse who’d stolen Helene’s image and made it her own.
I’d run into this sort of thing only once before. Back then, a U.S. Senator named Lindsay Micha had been kidnapped by the Corpses and somehow tied telepathically to the sister of the Queen of the Dead. This allowed the sister to assume Lindsay’s identity, taking the woman’s face and voice as her Mask. In that instance, the real Lindsay had awakened unexpectedly and—well, things hadn’t worked out too good for anyone involved.
But why go to all this trouble? Why bother to wear Helene’s face? For that matter, why bother with a Mask at all? The deaders were way past hiding their presence on Earth, right?
Then I looked at William and got my answer.
The sight of his wife’s image was tearing huge ragged holes in his heart. He was an adult—an adult me—but still an adult, which meant he didn’t have the Sight. He couldn’t penetrate the Mask this monster had placed around herself, couldn’t see the rotting cadaver beneath.
To him, she always looked like Helene.
His Helene.
And it was killing him by inches.
Something that the wormbag down there certainly knew.
“When did you lose it?” I asked him. “Your Eyes, I mean. When did you stop being able to See Corpses?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. No one really does, not even Steve, though he has his theories. After all, for almost thirty years there weren’t any Corpses to See. But, sometime between the end of the first war and the start of the second, I went as blind as all the rest. I … grew up.”
Far below us, the thing wearing Helene’s face grinned and called through her megaphone, “Here’s how the rest of your day will go: As we speak, a coordinated attack has been launched against the few remaining human outposts around the globe. Over the next several hours, each of them will fall, one by one, and the miserable carbon-based bipeds within will be exterminated.
“Then, at the stroke of midnight, I will come to this place, and my minions will surge into Haven and lay waste to you all. But you … dear husband … I will save for last.
“And, when you are dead by my hand, I will awaken your beloved wife and show her your head. Oh! Her suffering will be delicious! She’ll be, at that moment, the last human being on the planet, and her end will be slow.”
This is a Royal, I suddenly realized. Not Lilith Cavanaugh, of course; she’d been destroyed along with the rest of them when Dave had ended the First Corpse War. Another sister, maybe? But definitely a member of the Malum royal caste. They were the only ones who talked like debutants, even while describing atrocities.
William made no reply and Corpse Helene didn’t seem to require one. Handing off the bullhorn, she sauntered away. After a moment, the rest the Corpses followed suit, a slow-moving march of the dead, all of them headed east.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
So, we don’t have weeks or even days. We’ve got hours.
When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I asked, “Does she do that a lot? Come by and just … taunt you?”
He shook his head. “She first did it last winter, right after Helene was … taken. Then again a couple of times after that. But, before today, I hadn’t seen
her in months.”
“William,” I said. “We can rescue Helene.”
“No,” he replied.
“She’s alive!” I snapped.
“Yes, she is.”
“Do you know where?”
He nodded. “More or less.”
“Where?”
In answer, he pointed to the white steeple to the east. Independence Hall. Where the Declaration of Independence had been signed.
“She’s there?” I asked.
“That’s the deader HQ in Philadelphia. We don’t know for sure that she’s on site, but it’s a very safe bet. Corpse Helene would want her source creature close.”
He calls her that, too.
Well, of course, he does. After all, I do it and he’s me.
“Then why not put together a team of Angels and go get her?”
Another long silence followed. Then he said, “There are no Angels. Not anymore.”
I remembered how lousy Emily, Amy and Steve had been in combat. Back in my day, last night’s mission would have been all about Angels, the Undertakers crew that did direct battle with the Corpses. My crew.
“All of the Angels are … dead?” I asked, horrified.
He nodded. “One by one. The sad fact is that there are only a half-dozen Undertakers left. And, aside from myself, none of them is trained to execute a rescue.”
A half-dozen. There were more’n three hundred in my Haven.
“What about Sharyn?” I asked.
“She … can’t help us.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer.
“Okay,” I said, feeling my anger rise. “Then you do it! You know she’s in Independence Hall somewhere, right? Go get her!”
“We are planning a raid on Independence Hall,” he said, miserably. “But not to rescue Helene.”
“Why not?” I demanded.
His expression hardened. “All right. Suppose we do put our plans at risk for my wife’s sake. Who knows, maybe I’ll even find her, somehow wake her up, and miraculously succeed in bringing her back here. But what then? What would I be bringing her back to? You don’t get it! We’re all dead. We know it. We’ve known it for a long time. We’re fighting back because … well … that’s what Undertakers do. I absolutely intend to go down swinging. But I’m not kidding myself. Swinging or not, mankind is over. Tonight, by the look of things.”
