Queen of the Dead

by Ty Drago

  “Looks like the Corpses have caught themselves a pretty big fish,” Tom explained. “Now, we don’t know why they would’ve taken the risk of snatching a Fed, but they did, and it seems pretty clear that we need to do something about it.”

  Another nod, and this time, the screen showed an overhead view of the prison’s layout.

  “Agent Ramirez is in here…somewhere. We need to find him, boost him, and get him back to Haven. Then we need to find out what he did that spooked Cavanaugh into pullin’ this stunt.”

  Chuck Binelli—a veteran member of the Angels—yelled out, “How do we know they haven’t moved him? I mean…the Deaders must figure Will and Helene grabbed the ID.”

  It was Sharyn who replied, “We know he’s still there ’cause we been watching the place ever since Will called it in. Nobody’s come in or out.”

  “But that probably won’t last,” Tom added. “Which is why we need to go in now…today.”

  “In the daytime?” Burt Moscova, another Angel, asked. “Talk about risk!”

  “I know,” the Chief admitted. “This one’s gonna be particularly dangerous, but I think it’s worth it. A small team led by Sharyn will hit the place hard, find Agent Ramirez, and hopefully make it to the streets again before the Corpses even know what happened.”

  “Hopefully?” Chuck muttered.

  “Yeah,” said Sharyn, grinning. “That’s the bad news. The good news is that we got us a new trick to stick up our sleeves. And you dudes are gonna love it!”

  Tom motioned to the back of the room.

  Steve Moscova stepped forward.

  A small, skinny kid with dark hair and a round face hidden behind thick glasses, Steve was the science geek who dreamed up our weapons and other gadgets. He was also Burt’s older brother, though he’d gotten his Eyes later, a point of some embarrassment for him. In truth, every Seer was unique, though the ability was often shared by all the children in a given family.

  Seeing the Moscova brothers together always made me think of my little sister, Emily. She was only five years old and wouldn’t get the Sight for another six years—if she got it at all.

  The Corpses had to be gone by then.

  It was a quiet vow I’d made to myself.

  Steve carried a bath towel, clean but worn, which he laid out atop the television and unrolled.

  Inside were six syringes.

  Each was identical to the one I’d seen Sharyn use back in the alley, and each was filled with the same clear liquid.

  “I call these ‘Ritters,’” Steve announced, smiling, “in honor of the first person to ever kill a Corpse.”

  As the room broke into applause, I felt my face redden. Helene, who was sitting behind me, playfully elbowed my ribs.

  Still grinning, Steve waited until the noise died down. Then he started talking again—now all business. “A single Ritter contains fifteen cubic centimeters of concentrated saltwater. If fully injected into the chest or abdomen of a Corpse, the result is a sudden and violent disruption of the host body’s tissue structure.”

  “English?” Burt suggested.

  Steve sighed. “It makes the Corpse blow up.”

  Another round of applause, this one mixed in with assorted whoops and shouts of “yeah!” and “awright!”

  Then one of the girls, an Angel named Katie Bell, called out in her especially high-pitched voice, “How does it work?”

  “We don’t really know,” Steve replied. “There’s no real physiological reason for saltwater to have such an effect on a cadaver, so it must be linked to the nature of the invaders themselves. But there’s no denying that it does work. Sharyn tested a Ritter on a Corpse just a few hours ago, and the results were…compelling.”

  “Compelling!” the Boss Angel exclaimed. “That ain’t the word for it! That Deader popped like a balloon! Pieces of him are probably still rainin’ down all over that alley!”

  This brought another round of cheers.

  “We can kill ’em!” Chuck shouted. “We can finally kill ’em!”

  “But…” Steve said. “There’s a catch.”

  The cheers died down.

  “Always is,” Chuck muttered.

  “Depending on the size of the host body, full effectiveness can take up to ten seconds, during which time the Corpse remains dangerous.”

  Burt raised his hand, an old classroom gesture that he seemed to be the only one to bother with. I suspected he kept doing it because he knew his big brother liked it. “So…we gotta get in close enough to stick a Deader and then back away fast enough so he doesn’t kill us before the stuff can work?”

  “Well…” Steve stammered. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”

  “Ain’t as bad as all that,” Sharyn assured us. “You hit the dead dude with a few shots of juice from your Super Soaker or pistol. Then, when he’s down, you let him it have it with the…Ritter.”

  As she said this last part, Sharyn winked at me.

  Inwardly, I groaned.

  “Just don’t hit bone,” Steve warned. “You can snap the needle. The best spot is right here.” He pointed to his stomach, roughly where his navel would be. “The soft abdominal tissue. It’ll take some force…I’m using large gauge needles…but once you penetrate the skin, the plunger only needs a second to empty the barrel.”

  “Each of you gets one of these,” Tom announced, “along with your usual equipment. But use it only as a last resort. I’d be happier if none of you has to get that close to a Corpse. Now Sharyn’s gonna walk y’all through the plan we’ve worked out, so listen up. We don’t know what the Corpses got in mind for Agent Ramirez, but we can make some pretty good guesses. Be ready to split in an hour. Good luck, Undertakers.”

  Then, with a nod to his sister, the Chief left the rec room.

  Sharyn grinned broadly. “Dudes, this mission’s gonna rock! This here’s the first time y’all might get the chance to actually waste a Corpse! Well…except for Red, of course.”

  More applause.

  “Come on,” I muttered. “Enough.”

  “’Fore we split,” the Boss Angel continued, holding up an empty Ritter, “I’m gonna walk y’all through how to use one of these and how not to get bit, beaten to death, or strangled in the process. Hot Dog…that’s your cue!”

  Dave’s here?

  This was supposed to be an Angels-only meeting, with the exception of the Hacker running the laptop. The fact that the Burgermeister had been invited was an interesting surprise, especially because I knew how badly he wanted to join Sharyn’s crew.

  Under the circumstances, I’d have thought he’d be grinning, glad to be a part of an Angels’ mission in any way at all. But he wasn’t. In fact, he looked resigned, maybe even grim, as he rose out of a chair in the back and trudged forward to stand beside Sharyn. Once there, the giant kid towered over the Boss Angel—at least half a foot taller and maybe a hundred pounds heavier.

  But I knew she could kick his ass.

  Fact was, we probably all could.

  Before he had gotten his Eyes, Dave Burger had been a force to be reckoned with in his neighborhood. A local fighter, even a bully. But here in this world of the walking dead with its very real dangers, he’d found out quickly that he lacked the speed and—sorry, Dave—the smarts to stand up against kids half his size who’d been trained in what Sharyn called “street karate.”

  But here he was, and I couldn’t help but wonder why.

  Eyeing the Burgermeister up, Sharyn hastily screwed the needle off the end of her syringe.

  “There!” she announced, showing everyone her handiwork. “Harmless. Hot Dog, stand right there. Now turn a little so’s everyone can see your front. Cool! Just like that. Now…”

  The Boss Angel addressed us, “Last night, I had old Vader with me an
d used that to convince the Deader’s arms to be elsewhere. That made stickin’ him a whole lot easier. Y’all won’t have that advantage, so there’s a number of ways you can play it.

  “First, you can come up at ’em from the front. Hot Dog, I want you to do your best to tag me. Don’t hold back, dig?”

  “I guess,” he muttered. Then, as if reaching some internal decision, he came forward suddenly and swung his meaty fist at Sharyn’s head.

  She ducked smoothly under it.

  He swung the other fist, a sweeping haymaker that, if it had landed, would probably have knocked the girl’s head right off her shoulders.

  Sharyn moved as though made of liquid, weaving under the arcing arm, sidestepped, and, with Dave momentarily off balance, drove her fist—with the syringe in it—hard into the Burgermeister’s belly. Then she made a show of hammering down the plunger with her thumb.

  He gasped and doubled over as Sharyn jumped back about six feet.

  “Kill!” she announced. “Stick, plunge, and back off. It’s that simple.”

  Dave straightened, more surprised than hurt by the blow.

  “Thanks, Hot Dog. Y’all see where that hit? Right above the navel. Nothing behind there but soft stuff. Now let me show you the rear attack.” She motioned to Dave, twirling her finger.

  Sighing, he turned obediently around.

  “This is trickier,” she admitted. “From the front, you got this whole section here…from the solar plexus to the pelvic bone. From the back, though, the sweet spot’s smaller and a little harder to nail. You want to hold the Ritter like this”—she flipped the syringe over in her hand so the business end, needleless, stuck out of the top of her fist instead of the bottom—“then it’s about quiet. Don’t count on a Corpse showing you his back in combat. The only way you’re likely to get a chance like this if you sneak up on his smelly butt.”

  She made a show of creeping up on Dave, who fidgeted nervously, knowing what was coming.

  “When you hit, use both hands—one to stick and one to plunge. Like this.”

  Sharyn rammed the syringe into Dave’s lower right side, making him wince. Then, shifting her weight, she hammered in the plunger with the heel of her other hand. A second later, she was six feet away again.

  “You want to make the hit just above the kidney. Too high and you scrape a rib. Too low and you hit the hip bone. You can go for the butt, but Steve-O says the juice needs a lot longer to work in fat than it does in muscle or tissue.” She grinned. “Questions?”

  Chuck asked. “How many Deaders have you nailed this way?”

  “Four,” Sharyn replied. “That’s what I spent last night doin’, riding around the city and wasting Corpses. The last one was with Will in an alley near the prison. For all the others, I was alone.”

  “Why alone?” Helene asked, “How come we didn’t know about it until now?”

  “Top secret,” the Boss Angel replied. “We’re turning up the heat here, brothers and sisters. For the first time, we got us a practical yet lethal weapon to use against the Deaders. Until we were sure it worked, Tom and I figured we’d keep it quiet…just in case somebody…” Her words trailed off.

  But we all knew what she meant.

  In case somebody got grabbed by the Corpses, who had this God-awful way of getting someone to talk.

  “Any other questions?”

  “How big a group is going?” Burt asked.

  Sharyn considered this. “I’m going. So are Will and Helene because they’ve had a look at the place…at least from the outside. I’ll take three others.”

  Every hand went up, including Dave’s—though, of course, his was ignored.

  Shouts of “Sharyn!” and “Ooo! Ooo!” flooded the room. There were between ten and twelve Angels at any given time. While a lot of kids like Dave itched to join, others tended to transfer out after a particularly close call. Well, either that or—

  Enough said.

  Sharyn scanned the room, looking a lot like a teacher panning for student volunteers. “Chuck,” she said at last. “Burt. And Katie.”

  Groans of disappointment followed the announcement.

  The Boss grinned. “What? Y’all that eager to get yourselves killed? Chill. If this was a night job, I might take the whole crew. But because it’s daytime, I want to keep this small and quick. Next go ’round, dudes. I promise. For now, I need the team to meet me in Tom’s office. We got some stuff to look at ’fore we hit the streets.”

  The meeting broke up. Helene and I stood and looked at each other. She grinned. “‘Ritter,’ huh? Face it, Will—you’re famous! You just can’t get away from it!”

  I didn’t reply.

  Want to know why I was so uncomfortable at that birthday party earlier? It wasn’t the surprise party itself. It was the sad fact that in the four months I’d been living at Haven, that was the only such party I’d ever attended. And this despite the fact I knew a half-dozen kids who’d had birthdays come and go unnoticed during that time. Why me and nobody else?

  Because I was Karl Ritter’s only son.

  And that wasn’t the end of it. Now I had a weapon—a brand new Undertakers weapon—named after me! They could say it was because I’d killed Booth, and I felt sure that was part of it. But it wasn’t all of it.

  Again—Karl Ritter’s only son.

  A lot to live up to.

  And it was a rare day when I felt equal to the challenge.

  Helene read my face. “Jeez. Cheer up! At least we didn’t get into too much trouble over last night’s mess.”

  “We can’t recon together anymore,” I complained.

  She shrugged. “I was half-expecting Tom to put me back into the Schoolers and you back into the Moms! He’s not big on kids ignoring the rules and regs.”

  The Schoolers was Helene’s old crew, the Undertakers who infiltrated area middle schools, looking for and rescuing new Seers. That was how Helene and I had met. She’d found me, alone and terrified and Seeing the walking dead everywhere I looked, and had gotten to me before the Corpses had. After that mission, she’d graduated from Schooler to Angel trainee.

  The Moms were Nick Rooney’s crew. Usually filled with the greenest recruits, the Moms did the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and basically every other duty that nobody wanted. I’d never spent a day on that crew, having moved right from First Stop, the Undertakers’ boot camp, to Angel training.

  But that’s another story.

  Besides, I knew Tom would never have demoted me like that. After all, I’d done far stupider things as an Undertaker than going after that wallet, and I’d always managed to stay in his good graces.

  Bulletproof, I thought.

  Because I was Karl Ritter’s only son.

  “Come on,” Helene said. “Let’s get to the briefing.”

  As I followed her out of the rec room, I glanced around and spotted Dave. He still stood near the front, motionless as a statue—a big statue. He wore a strange expression on his face—sad and kind of wistful. Maybe he wished he was going with us to the prison. Maybe he wished he could just get himself into Angel training.

  I half-expected him to meet my eyes, maybe toss me a silent plea for help. Talk to the Chief for me, that look might say.

  Except the Burgermeister wasn’t looking at me at all.

  His eyes were on Sharyn.

  Chapter 9

  Breaking In

  Undertakers prefer to move about in the city at night.

  As far as we’ve been able to tell, Corpses don’t see in the dark any better than we do. To be honest, we’re not really sure how they “see” at all, given that their eyes are rotting out of their heads. Like with a lot of other Deader abilities, they just do it. Still, we’ve learned that it’s easier to run, easier to hide, easier to keep from getting bea
ten to death or eaten in the dark.

  Occasionally, though, the shadows just aren’t an option. Occasionally, we need to confront Deaders with the sun in the sky.

  At night, it’s about stealth, about hitting them hard and fast and then disappearing.

  During the day, it’s about being smart.

  The signs read:

  The School District of Philadelphia Sponsors

  “Breaking In”

  Where Physical Fitness Meets History!

  The Hackers had photoshopped two of them in less than an hour, printing them out on poster paper and glueing them onto a couple of those plastic folding “Wet Floor” signs you can get at any office supply store.

  Our Angel strike team was dressed in sweats and sneakers, including Sharyn. The five of us stood at loose attention on the sidewalk as she strutted back and forth, wearing a hard gym-teacher expression that made her look older than she was and carrying a big silver whistle that she blew—well—a lot.

  “We don’t got all day, boys and girls!” she announced. “Let’s get this party started! Fetch the ladder!”

  A small crowd had gathered—all nicely human. They were clearly amused by what they were seeing: a handful of kids struggling to pull a heavy aluminum extension ladder from the rear of an unmarked white van. We moved in formation, making little “hup hup” sounds with each step, per Sharyn’s instructions. Frankly, the whole thing felt ridiculous, but it did seem to have the desired effect.

  As we hauled the ladder across a narrow strip of landscaping and stood it up against Eastern State Penitentiary’s thirty-foot outer wall, the crowd’s only reaction was to watch and laugh. Dressed in sweats and “hupping” like soldiers, the operation felt more like street theater than what it was: breaking and entering.

  But at least between our performance and our printed signs, no one was challenging us.

  The great city of Philadelphia was always doing dumb stuff like this.