by Ty Drago
The ferry came to a smooth stop with its front end nearly touching the lip of the Malum homeworld.
For several painfully long seconds, nobody did anything. Kids and monsters just looked at each other. Finally, with careful steps, Tom walked to the end of the lighted rectangle and stepped over the narrow gap and onto the nearest slab. Several Malum surrounded him at once. As they did, Sharyn reflexively started forward, her hand back on Vader’s grip. But Helene touched the girl’s shoulder and, to my surprise, kept her from charging to her brother’s defense.
One of the creatures asked, “Who speaks for you?”
I blinked, astonished. I’d heard Corpses talk in their native tongue, which we’d always called Deadspeak. That language was weirdly halting, as if every word was a separate sentence. And I’d heard Corpse Eaters—half-human and half-Malum—talk, but that had been like concepts drilled forcefully into my brain, more like transmitted ideas than words.
This was—English.
Except the Malum who’d asked the question hadn’t so much as opened its mouth. Their mouths, after all, were more for killing and eating than conversation. And, while they had tongues, I’d seen what they looked like and figured they wouldn’t be much good for anything as nonviolent as a “chat.”
No, this question had been projected, not spoken—normal English transmitted telepathically.
At least, that was my best guess.
Tom, as usual, seemed unfazed by this latest surprise. Crossing his arms and addressing the speaker evenly, he replied. “I do. I’m Tom Jefferson, Chief of the Undertakers.”
“Undertakers!” the others said, chanted really, in near perfect unison. Then they began to murmur. It’s hard to imagine ten-legged monsters murmuring. Trust me: I was there and still couldn’t quite imagine it.
“Jefferson,” the speaker said, its red eye glowing like a round little flame in the center of its bulbous head. “And where is Ritter?”
At the sound—if you could call it “sound”—of my name, I stepped hesitantly forward. Helene tried to grab my hand, but I slipped clear of her grasp and walked to the edge of the ferry. “I’m Will Ritter,” I said.
Instantly, the Malum launched into a chorus of “Ritter! Ritter! Ritter!”
I swallowed.
I knew that, amongst these creatures, I was kind of like the “bogeyman.”
So tell me: Do bogeymen poop their pants?
Because if the situation got any scarier, this one might.
“Why have you come?” the speaker demanded. At the same instant, its mouth opened wide, revealing more teeth than could reasonably fit in there, as well as a long forked tongue with tiny sharp pincers at the end of both its tips.
If this was some kind of show of menace, like a lion’s roar, it had zero effect on the chief.
“We’re here to end the war,” he said matter-of-factly. “Once and for all.”
The monsters opened and shut their mouths, making hard snapping sounds, kind of like bear traps clamping closed over and over again. It was an eerie, alien noise, and it set my teeth on edge.
Then I remembered that, here, we were the aliens.
“Silence!” the speaker declared and, instantly, the rest of them all went quiet.
Royal, I thought. Gotta be.
“End the war?” the speaker mused, two of its pincered legs tapping thoughtfully atop the black slab, like someone drumming their fingers. “How?”
Tom didn’t reply.
“By offering peace? Perhaps humanity’s ‘hand in friendship’?”
Again, Tom didn’t reply.
“Or another way, perhaps,” said the speaker, going suddenly still. “You’re clearly warriors, not diplomats. You’ve come with your cowardly weapons, ready to do battle. But how could just four human children—”
Then, without warning, the speaker’s head rolled along its body in that bizarre manner they had, coming to rest near where its butt should be. With its blue eye, its gazed up at the huge crystal, hovering maybe fifty yards away. It was so massive that it seemed to tower over everything around it: the flat, endless Ether; the countless man-sized holes; the ever-increasing mob of Malum.
And us.
“You’ve come to destroy the Eternity Stone,” the speaker said, more statement than accusation.
Once again, Tom didn’t reply.
“My foremothers found it countless millennia ago,” the speaker said, sounding wistful. And believe me, it’s totally bizarre when a ten-legged monster with four eyes and a rolling head sounds wistful. “They fed it and used it to make the world you see around you. And here the crystal has been ever since, held aloft by its own energy, which we continue to maintain through the sacrifice of thousands of our lowest classes, those who are bred merely to die, so that their Selves can strengthen the Eternity Stone.”
“How nice,” Helene muttered.
“But it’s a small price to pay, considering what the crystal gives back to us. It showed us, for the first time, that ours is not the only world. That other places exist beyond our Ethereal home, beyond the impenetrable Ether. Other races. And, gradually, our new purpose became clear. My people united for the first time in our history, driven by a common goal.”
“Which was?” Sharyn asked.
“To rid the cosmos of all who are not us! And the Eternity Stone made that possible. Not only did it show us these other worlds, but we learned that, by breaking off small pieces of it … again at the cost of many Malum lives … we could pierce the Ether and pursue our newly discovered calling.”
“Nice history lesson,” Tom remarked. “But you wanna know what all that sounds like to me? It sounds like a whole crapload of reasons for us to come over here, kick your asses, and waste the damned thing.”
This time, the Malum didn’t chant. In fact, they didn’t respond at all. Every last one of them—and there had to be five hundred by now—went absolutely, completely, horrifyingly still.
Now I understood why the Corpses always did that.
The speaker’s head rolled forward again. And this time, if anything, its red eye glowed even brighter.
Tom, I noticed, didn’t seem nearly as worried as I thought he should be.
If it was possible for something like that to grin, the speaker did so now. “I think not … Undertaker.” Then, addressing the rest of them, it declared, “Kill him.”
As the Malum leapt at him from all directions, Tom raised his pocketknife.
He might as well have been throwing rocks at a freight train.
And I thought: I’m sorry, Chief.
Chapter 35
The Real Enemy
As I pointed the business end of my gun at the Malum nearest to the chief, Tom’s words echoed in my head: “That Binelli is for the stone … period. Do not use it for nothin’ else. Got it?”
And I did get it.
I just ignored it.
A stream of blue-white liquid jetted out of the gun’s nozzle and caught one of the Malum in its flank. The creature let out a sound halfway between a scream and a wheeze. Then it froze. I don’t mean it stood weirdly still; they do that all the time.
I mean it froze.
Not like in the movies, either—not with icicles dripping from its legs or anything. It just kind of stopped moving, one whole side of its body turning a dull black.
A moment later, one of its buds jostled it while going for the chief, and it shattered.
Seriously. It shattered.
“Cool!” Sharyn exclaimed.
“Wow!” Helene added.
I fired again.
This time I hit two of them, the liquid nitrogen bouncing off the back of one and right into the red eye of another. One froze black, just like the first had. The other howled and jumped around in obvious agony—still alive but, for the moment at least, no longer a threat.
Meanwhile, Sharyn and Vader went to work.
Malum, in their natural form, are fa
st—crazy fast. I’d seen that first hand. They were faster than Corpses, and way faster than humans.
Most humans, anyway.
It was frankly hard to say for sure who was the best fighter I’d ever seen, but there were only two contestants. One was Tom Jefferson.
The other was Sharyn.
Leaping across the gap between the Energy Ferry and the Ethereal slab, she dove into the fray, her sword a shining blur. She hit the frozen Malum first, not so much slicing through its thick body as splintering it, sending icy bits flying in all directions. Then, without missing a single heartbeat, she spun and thrust the sword upward, managing to skewer another of the ten-legged monsters as it made to pounce on her.
At the same time her brother, armed only with his silver pocketknife, rammed its small blade deep into the red eye of the nearest Malum. The creature shuddered and made a noise halfway between a groan and a hiss.
Solid combat, but I knew with a sinking feeling that it wouldn’t last. These creatures were too quick and there were way too many of them. As good as Tom and Sharyn were, the Malum would overwhelm them in seconds.
As if to prove my point, two more of the ten-legged monsters took the place left behind when the one Tom had stabbed retreated. Together, they lunged at him, their impossible mouths wide open, their front legs slashing the air, deadly pincers ready to slice the chief into pieces.
I fired the Binelli again, catching each of them right in their maws.
They gagged and then stiffened, allowing Tom to slam his fist into the first one’s head, shattering it like glass, before pivoting and kicking the other hard enough to snap its frozen body in two.
“Thought you weren’t gonna use that gun for this!” the chief called to me without turning.
“I’ve seen the world without Tom Jefferson,” I called back. At the same instant, I froze two more of the monsters as they flanked Sharyn. “And I didn’t like it!”
“I second the motion!” Helene called.
“Wicked!” Sharyn cried, sounding almost gleeful as she splintered two more of the iced-up Malum.
“Okay,” her brother relented. “But, if you gotta use it, don’t waste it. Make us a path to the crystal!”
Now that, I decided, was a great idea.
So, with Helene right behind me toting a backpack filled with liquid nitrogen canisters, I jumped off the ferry and onto the Ether, firing bursts of silver liquid at everything that moved. Well, everything that moved and had more than two legs.
I must have frozen about twenty of them before the Malum, as a group, wised up. Suddenly, the attacks stopped, the monsters becoming wary and retreating several yards. Good thing, too—because, I could feel the nitrogen canister getting light.
“Reload,” I whispered.
“On it,” Helene replied. She grabbed the empty canister attached to the back of the Binelli. As Steve had shown us, she twisted it off and dropped it, then pulled a fresh one from her backpack and snapped it into place. “You’re good.”
The whole process took less than fifteen seconds. Even so, I was half afraid that the surrounding Malum would see their chance and move in for the kill, despite the fact that Tom and Sharyn were now flanking us and waving their respective weapons.
But nothing happened.
In fact, the army of creatures didn’t so much as twitch.
Sidling up beside me, Tom pointed toward the crystal.
Wordlessly, I nodded.
The four of us pushed in that direction. As we approached the line of Malum, a few got brave and jumped forward. I hosed them and Sharyn shattered them. A few more came from the right. They got the same treatment.
“Where’s this gun been all my life?” Helene whispered.
Seriously. We could have used something like this back when the dead stalked Philly! Way better than a Super Soaker or even the crossbow dubbed Aunt Sally, with its Ritterbolts filled with saltwater.
Oh well.
I could no longer see the Royal that had been talking to us earlier. Apparently, it had melted back into the crowd when the fighting started, and I simply wasn’t familiar enough with these ten-legged things to be able to recognize one from another. But I made a mental note: The moment I heard that weird voice again, I’d freeze it solid.
In combat, always hit the leadership first.
Ten yards later we still didn’t seem any closer to the Eternity Stone. By now, the Malum had stopped attacking. Instead, they simply harassed us, blocking our path, slowing us down, leaping back when I fired a jet of nitrogen at them, and then closing the gap behind us, preventing any escape.
I didn’t like it. The creatures had adapted to the danger and were now trying to goad me into draining my ammo. Worse, it was working. Before I knew it, the second canister was empty. As Helene replaced it, the Malum got even bolder, rushing at us, forcing Tom and Sharyn to slash at them with sword and pocketknife.
There was a single close call. One monster got near enough to slash at Tom with one of its pincers. The chief jerked his head out of reach, but still ended up with a nasty cut across his chin. A little lower or a little slower, and the creature might have decapitated him.
As it was, I spun on the attacker and froze it stiff. Then Tom, wiping away at the blood on his neck with one hand, shattered it with the blade of his pocketknife.
We advanced another ten yards. Now, finally, the Eternity Stone seemed close, or at least closer. It towered over our heads, a gigantic glowing quartz.
Helene screwed in the fourth and final canister, just as we surged ahead a final time. All the while, the Malum kept their distance, threatening us with little charges—two or three of them in each instance—but still not attacking in any numbers.
Yet there were hundreds, maybe thousands of them now, and they could overwhelm us anytime they wanted to.
Apparently, they didn’t want to.
That worried me—a lot.
They know where we’re going and what’ll happen when we get there.
So why aren’t they trying to stop us?
As I thought this, we broke through the last of the Malum line and into a broad open clearing of sorts. The floor, as everywhere on this side of the tunnel, was made of flat polished Ether.
Except here, at last, the Eternity Stone hovered directly overhead.
We’d made it, and not a bit too soon. I was already halfway through my final cartridge.
“Do it, bro,” Tom commanded.
I aimed the Binelli’s nozzle at the Eternity Stone. The lowest edge of the huge crystal was right in front of me, ten feet away and only four feet off the ground.
No way could I miss.
I pulled the trigger.
But, at the very instant that the stream of silver liquid blasted forth, the Eternity Stone moved.
As the four of us stared in helpless horror, the crystal levitated further up, away from the floor and toward the ceiling. And it did it fast, really fast, so that as I lifted the gun to follow it, my nitrogen stream fell short and dropped back down, slashing the black Ether a few yards ahead of me, freezing it solid.
“No!” Helene cried.
I tried to squeeze the trigger harder, as if that would make any difference. Of course, it didn’t. The Binelli was giving me all it had, and it just wasn’t enough.
A few seconds later, the last cartridge ran dry.
I heard Sharyn utter a moan of what I can only call despair.
Tom put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s over, bro.”
And it was.
A voice spoke. “Well fought, Undertakers. But hopeless.”
Slowly, we all turned toward the ranks of Malum that surrounded the clearing. There, standing in front of its horde of buds, stood the speaker.
“You planned that,” I said.
“I did.” the creature replied. “There are those among us who can command the crystal to move in small ways. I am one of these. Your little invasion has ended,
Will Ritter, in the only way it could have.”
It struck me that I’d heard that phrase—or something close to it—before.
And suddenly I knew who we were facing.
“You’re her daughter,” I said.
The speaker paused. “What?”
“You’re the daughter of Lilith Cavanaugh, the Queen of the Dead.”
Another, longer pause. “One of them,” she replied carefully.
Then I remembered what Corpse Helene had said about her rise to power. It had taken time for her to overcome her rivals for the throne. She’d had to be careful, clever. But all that was still in this creature’s future. For her, it hadn’t happened yet. She was still just another Royal—powerful, but not supreme.
“What happens now?” Tom asked, readying his pocketknife. Beside him, Sharyn raised Vader.
Helene and I swapped a look that had a lot inside of it. Resignation. Regret. I spared a moment to think about Emily and my mom. I’d never see them again.
But maybe Jillian, Burt, and the rest would learn from our failure. Maybe another attempt would be made, a better attempt, a more successful attempt.
Maybe someone else could save the future.
“Now, you all die,” the future Queen replied.
As if by some silent command, the ranks of Malum, thousands of them, advanced on us. They took their time about it, marching in slow, easy steps, savoring our terror.
I dropped the Binelli and stepped forward before any of the others could stop me.
“I demand bavarak!” I called at the top of my voice.
Chapter 36
Strangers in a Strange Land
Everything stopped.
It was crazy. Almost as if a switch had been flipped, every single Malum within sight—and there were so many!—went totally still.
For several seconds, the four of us stood there, the Eternity Stone hovering and pulsing high above our heads, and the only weapon we had that was even remotely capable of destroying it lying empty and useless at my feet. We all exchanged worried looks as the seconds ticked by.
Finally, cautiously, Future Queen asked, “How do you know that term?”
