Queen of the Dead

by Ty Drago

  In Deadspeak, he said, “Watch. Girl. Die.”

  Helene!

  The word filled my mind, pushing away everything else. Sharyn lay unmoving near the entrance to Cell Block Six, with Katie cradling her head. Burt and Chuck flopped on the floor like landed fish, their chests heaving as they tried to convince their lungs to expand and let in air.

  And Helene hung helplessly in the giant’s grasp, her eyes wide, her face going purple.

  Again, I tried to find my feet. My head felt twice its normal size.

  You just got a bad bump! I told myself. Most of it’s shock. Move!

  I staggered a step. Two. It was like navigating one of those moon bounces.

  Move! Or she’s gonna die!

  I moved, one foot in front of the next, with the prison hub pitching and yawing around me like a boat on rough water. Finally, I saw the giant’s huge, broad back looming before me. Only then did I realize I had no weapon. My pocketknife was God knew where, lost someplace in the room. My Super Soaker was history. And something told me my fists weren’t going to do a thing to this Dead Superman.

  Then I spotted Vader.

  It lay where Sharyn had dropped it, just a few feet away. I reached for it, leaning over, struggling to keep my churning stomach in line as my trembling hand closed around its hilt. When I straightened again, the room was still spinning, though not quite as badly.

  At least I could keep my balance, which was good because I needed it.

  Helene had stopped gasping. I couldn’t even hear her struggling anymore.

  Oh God…

  I raised the sword, and with a great heave, I drove its point into the base of the giant’s skull. I heard a scrape that set my teeth on edge as the blade glanced off his collarbone. But I kept going, getting my shoulder under the sword’s guard and pushing upward with my knees.

  Corpses don’t feel pain. That’s both an asset and a liability. Pain, you see, has a purpose.

  It tells you when you’re in trouble.

  But this giant felt nothing at all as Vader drilled all the way into his brain.

  I heard rather than saw Helene fall to the floor, felt rather than saw the giant topple sideways. He hit the floor so hard that the impact vibrated up through my shoes. I almost fell too, but after some struggle, I managed to step forward over the helpless giant and catch the wall with one hand. It steadied me.

  “Sharyn’s hurt bad!” I heard Katie yell. But at that moment, I didn’t care. Well, I cared. I mean, of course, I cared. It was just that—

  “Helene?” I croaked.

  I slid my back down the wall until I sat right beside where the girl lay. Trembling, I put a hand on her shoulder and shook her.

  She didn’t move.

  Oh God. Please…

  “Helene!” I coughed, a bit louder this time. Then I shook her again.

  With a loud gasp, she sat bolt upright and drew in a mighty lungful of air. Her face, despite the cold, appeared soaked in sweat, and the eyes that found mine looked glassy.

  “You okay?” I asked—pleaded, really.

  When she replied, her voice sounded raspy. “Think so.”

  My heart started beating again.

  “Jeez!” Chuck moaned as he and Burt finally caught their breath. “What a freak that dude was!”

  I managed a nod. “My pocketknife’s…over there,” I said, pointing to where I thought it might have fallen.

  “I’ll look for it,” Burt said.

  Chuck came over to us. “You two okay?”

  “I’m good,” I said. And I was. My stomach had settled, and the room wasn’t spinning anymore. Well, not much. “Helene?”

  “I’m good too,” the girl replied. Then she fixed me with her hazel eyes. I noticed that one of them had some blood in its white part, probably from the near strangling. “Thanks, Will.”

  I nodded, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and almost faint with relief. We helped each other to our feet and staggered over to where Sharyn lay, her head resting in Katie’s lap. The younger girl looked up. There were tears on her cheeks. “She’s hurt bad. She won’t wake up.”

  “We gotta get her out of here,” I said.

  “Where’s the FBI dude?” Helene asked.

  Burt, who was dutifully scanning the hub floor, pointed toward the doorway to Cell Box Three. “He’s in there. I passed him as I was coming in. I think he’s unconscious.”

  As Helene helped Katie, I went to look.

  Just beyond the archway stood a wheeled gurney, the collapsible kind like paramedics use. On it laid a man in his thirties, with short, dark hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. His eyes were shut, and his mouth hung slack. Definitely alive, though he looked heavily drugged.

  “Hey,” I said, shaking his shoulder as I had Helene’s. It had worked then, so maybe it would work now.

  It didn’t.

  I checked his pulse. It was strong. At least the guy wasn’t likely to die on us. But moving him out of here was going to be a problem. A bunch of kids didn’t just wheel a gurney out onto Fairmount Avenue without drawing some stares.

  Frowning, I returned to the hub.

  Helene, Chuck, and Katie were huddled around Sharyn. Burt had found my pocketknife. Seeing me, he tossed it over. “Wish I had one of those,” he said wistfully.

  “Yeah?” I said, surprised by how smoothly I caught it. “Considering how much I’ve been losing it lately, maybe it’d be better off with somebody else.”

  “I think Sharyn’s in big trouble,” Katie reported, sounding miserable. “I checked her eyes. One pupil’s big. The other’s small.”

  “Is that bad?” Chuck asked.

  “It’s not good!” the girl snapped at him.

  Helene said, “We gotta get her back to Haven.”

  “And Ramirez too,” I added. “He’s out cold. Drugged maybe. No way he’s walking out of here.”

  Chuck muttered, “What a screwup.”

  “At least we’re all alive,” I told him. That thought made me risk a glance at Helene, hoping I wouldn’t catch her looking at me. I did. She smiled, and I turned away again. My stomach shuddered strangely—probably still a little queasy. “But we’re not going to be able to get Ramirez and Sharyn into the van. Not carrying them. Not in broad daylight.”

  Helene added, “And with all these Corpses down for the count, you know there are more on the way…and soon!”

  “What do we do?” Burt asked.

  I didn’t know. Then I did.

  “Check these Corpses for cell phones,” I said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Chapter 12

  Lilith’s Morning

  “An ambulance?” the Queen of the Dead asked incredulously. “They stole an ambulance?”

  “Yes. Mistress,” the big fool from the prison answered in the Ancient Tongue.

  “English!” she cried, rising from behind her chair. She slammed one fist against her desktop, and when she lifted her hand away, she noticed that some skin and fluid had stayed behind, smeared against the heavy varnish.

  This body is withering. I’ll have to arrange for another.

  The two of them were alone in her office on the fifth floor of City Hall. The fool standing across from her was wrapped in a new body. His old one, a particularly large specimen—difficult to find—had been rendered useless that morning at Eastern State Penitentiary. Apparently a sword had been driven through his brain pan.

  The Undertakers.

  “Yes…sorry, mistress,” the fool stammered. “English.”

  The Queen sneered at him. “And just how did a handful of human schoolchildren go about stealing an ambulance?”

  “After the boy incapacitated me, he used my mobile phone to call an ambulance. He told the emergency dispatcher that they�
�d been part of a school field trip to the prison and that a part of the ceiling in the hub had collapsed. Then he and one of the girls went to open the gates while the others arranged the room.”

  “Arranged?” Lilith demanded. “What does that mean?”

  The fool explained, “They cleaned up the mess as best they could and dragged the remaining bodies into one of the old prison cells.”

  “Including you?”

  “Yes, mistress…though in my case, it took three of them. My host body was somewhat large.”

  Unlike your intellect. “Go on.”

  “Well…once we were all piled up in the cell, I could no longer see what was happening, but I heard the boy and girl return a few minutes later with two emergency medical technicians. The EMTs were pushing something on wheels, a gurney probably. The Undertakers’ manner immediately changed. They started to all talk at once…and they sounded frightened, shaken, very different from what they’d been in battle.”

  Clever, Lilith grudgingly admitted to herself. “And the EMTs accepted this story?”

  “It appeared so, mistress. There was a good deal of noise as they examined the girl I’d injured and put her on their gurney. That was when the Undertakers produced the guns.”

  “Guns?” Lilith demanded. “What guns?”

  “Well…our guns, mistress,” the fool replied, shuffling uncomfortably in his new body. It wasn’t a particularly good specimen, much smaller than his last one. And being at least a month dead, the bones cracked noisily under the layers of rotting skin and muscle. But it was the best the idiot could have hoped for under the circumstances. “The Undertakers took our human weapons and hid them under their coats. This was while the boy and girl were away fetching the ambulance.”

  “You’re telling me that these…children…threatened two adult EMTs with firearms?”

  The fool nodded. “They unloaded them first.”

  “Did they?”

  Lilith frowned. Her people at the prison had been “wearing” police officers. As such, each had carried a standard-issue pistol—loaded. But these were just a part of the disguise, never intended to be drawn from their holsters, much less used. In her native world, weapons were considered cowardly, even blasphemous.

  It was a cultural inhibition that could be…inconvenient.

  Still, it had never occurred to her that these props could be taken by the enemy and used against them. After all, bullets couldn’t kill the dead.

  And yet, these…brats…had stolen and made good use of them!

  Something to consider.

  “I believe they forced the EMTs to remove their jackets before handcuffing them. Finally, two of the boys, posing as EMTs, loaded the injured girl and the FBI agent into the ambulance and drove off, leaving behind the redheaded boy and the two girls.”

  “And what did they do?” Lilith asked.

  “As near as I could determine, mistress, they…apologized.”

  “Apologized?”

  “Yes, mistress. I heard him. I think it was the redheaded boy.”

  “Apologized to whom?”

  “To the EMTs, mistress. He explained that they needed to get their friends to safety and that they meant no harm. Then he apparently showed them that the guns they carried weren’t loaded and promised to call the police as soon as they were clear of the prison.”

  “I see,” the Queen remarked thoughtfully. “And how did the captured men react?”

  “Not well. They uttered a good many human curses and threats. But finally, they went quiet, and the Undertakers left. Apparently, they kept their word because a short time later, the police did come, with some of our brethren among them. They found us and saw to our safe removal and transfer. Then I was summoned here.”

  Resourceful, these Undertakers. Children, yes—but clever and courageous.

  And dangerous.

  After last night’s encounter outside the prison had ended with one of her minions missing, Lilith had decided to increase the guards on the FBI agent. Excessive, certainly, to ensure the security of one drugged prisoner—more than enough to discourage any intruders.

  And yet, the Undertakers had come in anyway.

  Ramirez’s abduction had been a risk but a calculated one. Now, however, thanks to this redheaded boy and his friends, that risk had blown up in her face.

  Where have you taken him, you meddlesome brats? And where are you hiding?

  Their last lair had been in an old warehouse on Green Street in the Callowhill section of the city. But that had been abandoned months ago. Where were they now? Somewhere in the city surely.

  Perhaps close.

  Then the fool said, “I thought he meant to…end me, mistress.”

  Lilith looked up. Her minion was trembling. “What’s that?”

  “End my existence,” he explained. “With those needles. You assigned seven of us to that prison. Only three returned. And after what I did to their leader…”

  “Sharyn Jefferson.” She’d recognized the description.

  “Yes, mistress.”

  “Did you at least manage to kill her?” the Queen demanded.

  “I’m not…certain,” the fool stammered. “But she was critically injured. I’m sure she’ll die.”

  Lilith’s glare made him shrink back in fear. “Oh…you’re sure, are you? So, tell me, why did the Undertakers spare you?”

  “They didn’t want to,” he said, visibly cowering. “Most of them wanted to use their last remaining needle to finish me.” The fool actually shuddered. “But the redheaded boy…he stopped them. He said he’d let me live…so I could deliver a message.”

  “A message…for who?”

  “For you, mistress.”

  “What message?” the Queen demanded.

  “He said, ‘Tell the Queen that Will Ritter, the dude who iced Kenny Booth, says hi…and tell her she’s next.’ Those were his exact words.”

  Will Ritter.

  The boy who killed Booth.

  “Did he really?” Lilith remarked. “Such bravado.”

  The Queen tapped a button on her desk phone with one red-lacquered finger. “Come in here!” she commanded.

  Within seconds, her assistant appeared.

  His name was Gerald Pierce, and she’d chosen him personally from among the rabble who’d welcomed her through the Rift. Since then, Pierce had demonstrated enthusiasm, loyalty—and relatively high intelligence for a Warrior Caste. Also, his host was always fresh. Like herself, Pierce preferred frequent changes, never occupying a single cadaver for longer than two weeks.

  Lilith appreciated such fastidiousness. So many of her minions wore their bodies until the flesh literally fell off their bones.

  Very uncouth.

  “Pierce,” Lilith said. “Please take this minion somewhere and amputate his arms and legs. Then leave him in a morgue drawer somewhere…alone in the dark. In a month or two, I’ll decide whether to let him transfer.”

  “Yes, Ms. Cavanaugh,” Pierce replied. He always used her human title, never “mistress.” It was something else about him that she appreciated.

  “What? Wait!” the fool stammered. “Mistress, please! I—”

  “You…what?” Lilith demanded. “You allowed a band of children to sneak into my prison, kill…not incapacitate, not overcome, but kill…four of my minions and make off with a prisoner who holds extremely dangerous information? Is that what you were going to say?”

  “No. Mistress. Please…”

  The Queen sneered at him. “Consider yourself fortunate that I don’t destroy you myself here and now. As it is, I’ll give you two months solitude to consider your failure. Then we’ll see. Consider that punishment merciful…certainly more so than you’re worth.”

  She faced Pierce. “Get him ou
t of here. Then come right back. It appears the Undertakers have discovered a method for killing us.”

  Pierce looked stunned. And she couldn’t really blame him. Real death was rare among the Malum.

  “Yes, it’s…disturbing,” Lilith said. “Let’s discuss it when you return.”

  “Certainly, Ms. Cavanaugh.”

  Pierce left with the fool following, looking downcast and terrified but obedient. Good. No struggling. No further protests. Perhaps she’d let the idiot live after all. While blind obedience was a weakness, it was one that she could use.

  Sometime later, Pierce returned as ordered. But he wasn’t alone. With him came Martin D’Angelo, Philadelphia’s chief of police. He, like Pierce and the fool from the prison, was of the Warrior Caste and had served Lilith’s predecessor, Kenny Booth. D’Angelo’s Cover was that of a fat human male, and he seemed to favor hosts that matched. The body the chief now wore was at least a month old but large-boned and still thick with rotting meat.

  The Queen frowned. “What’s this?”

  D’Angelo stepped forward and held out the thing he carried. It looked like a shoebox.

  Her first thought was that this was some sort of attempt at humor. Part of her own Cover was Lilith Cavanaugh’s reputation as a staple of fashion, which in this world included the acquisition and collection of “stylish” footwear.

  Had the idiot brought her a pair of shoes as a joke?

  But, no. The Warrior Caste had no sense of humor.

  “Am I supposed to know what that is?” she asked impatiently.

  D’Angelo replied in English, “We were able to secure an anchor shard, mistress.”

  The Queen’s eyes lit up—at least her Cover’s eyes did. The eyes of her host remained as dead as ever. Without a word, she snatched the shoebox, took it to her desk, and hurriedly opened it.

  What she found inside inspired her first genuine smile of day.

  Slowly, reverently, she withdrew the shard. It was perhaps ten inches long and an inch wide. Any human who happened to look upon it might call it “quartz,” but in truth, this particular substance, native to the Malum homeworld, had no Earth equivalent. Much harder that diamond, far clearer than glass, and glowing as if powered from within, the anchor shard was a treasure indeed.