by Ty Drago
“The school bus.”
“What about it?”
“We can get ‘em back to Haven in that!” he exclaimed, again in a hoarse whisper. “It'll be tight, but they'll all fit.”
Well, yeah. That was kind of why I'd wanted the bus in the first place, but I didn't see any point in telling him that. “Um … good idea,” I replied. “But it's parked across the street and around the corner. If we take the kids out the front, we got a small army of deaders in the way, and we take them out the back, we got the maggots to worry about.”
But the Burgermeister rolled on, talking very fast. “So we don't take 'em anyplace, not yet. One of us goes and gets the bus and drives it right in here! Full throttle! Mowing down as many wormbags as possible on the way. You know, like we did out on Spring Garden Street. Then we pile in the twins and split!”
He looked at me, his eyes wide and bright with unaccustomed inspiration.
I tried to think of a flaw in the plan. I didn’t see one, except —
“That means one of us still has to go back through the maggots,” I said.
“Oh …” he said, looking crestfallen. Then he brightened. “But we got the dog whistle!”
“No we don’t,” I said. “I dropped it when you flung me.”
“Oh ...” he said again.
“Besides, the whistle doesn't work on the maggots when they're being zapped,” I reminded him. “Steiger told us that.”
“Uh huh,” he muttered.
“I guess I could kill the power again,” I suggested. “Like I did before, with an EMP.”
And, just like that, he brightened again. “Yeah!”
“But one of us would still have to wade their way through those ... things and somehow climb up to the other door.”
This time, he stayed bright. “Got that part covered. He pointed to the rear corner of the huge garage — a spot only a dozen feet from where we stood.
A workbench stood there, loaded with old tools. It made sense, I supposed. After all, the Corpses must have built that pen with something. But I still didn't see what Dave was so fired up about.
Then I did.
An aluminum extension ladder.
“Nice,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Smart,” I said, meaning it.
He grinned. “Yeah.”
“So … you want to stay or go?” I asked.
We looked at each other for several seconds. Finally, he shrugged. “I'd better go. I can drive that bus ... probably better than you could.”
“Probably,” I admitted.
“You cool with that?”
I nodded.
“I figure it'll take me maybe ten minutes to get to bus and another five to get back here.”
“Sounds about right,” I said. “Can you handle that ladder on your own?”
He snorted. “Piece o' cake.”
“Then in fifteen minutes, I'll figure on you driving through the front door.”
Dave shook his head. “Don't 'figure' on it.’ Count' on it.”
“Unless the fire trucks are blocking the driveway into the parking lot.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Or the Corpses already found the bus and moved it.”
“Oh. Right.”
I looked at him. He looked back at me. “Think it's worth the risk?” he asked.
“I think it's a solid plan, Dave. Every plan's got its risks, right? Just be ready to ... you know ... change it if you got to.”
“Okay,” the Burgermeister said. “If I do find the bus but I can't get in with it, I'll ... blare the horn. I mean really lean on it, to let you know.”
“Good idea. In fact, do that anyway. If you get the bus back, give me two hard honks before you come rushing in. It'll be the signal.”
“Got it! Two honks.”
“And one really long honk if it's a no-go.”
“One really long honk.”
All this may sound like a lot of talking, given where we were — two Undertakers swapping urgent whispers in the back of a darkened garage the size of the airplane hangar. And you'd be right, if the deaders who ran this place weren’t all still watching the fires burn out in the parking lot.
What is it about fire that fascinates even alien intelligence?
On the other hand, who cares?
Dave reached into his coat pocket and handed me a syringe — a big one. This was his ‘Ritter’. Yeah, I hate the name, but I love what it does. It kills Corpses. Permanently. “For Steiger,” he said. “We both know you’re gonna go after him. Stick that wormbag for me, will ya?”
“I will,” I promised, taking the syringe.
We set our watches. “Go,” I told him. Then I held open the fire door and kept watch as he fetched the ladder, trotting back with it one-handed as if it had all the weight of a floor mop.
“Good luck,” I said.
“Piece o' cake,” he said again.
“Burgermeister?”
“Yeah.”
“Don't get killed.”
I tried to keep it light, but there was a lot of hard truth behind my words. And he knew it.
He looked back at me. “You, neither.”
And just like that, I was alone.
Well, except for the Corpses. And the kids in the pen.
But I felt alone.
Raising my pocketknife, my thumb found the 8 button and pressed it. There were lights in the garage’s high ceiling, big-bulbed lamps wrapped in wire mesh. Their illumination wasn't much, not compared to the glow from the parking lot fires. But when they all went out at once, I knew my second EMP had hit its mark.
I took advantage of the shadows that had deepened around the pen and went toward it, keeping one eye on the goings on at the front of the garage. There was a lot of Corpses there, and if even one of them spotted me —
“Pen” was the right word for it, since it looked more like a place you'd keep livestock then people. There was even a trough in the back for drinking water. Seeing that made me madder than I'd been all night. And, trust me, that's saying something.
I found the door. It was solidly constructed and firmly locked. I'd expected a simple padlock, but what I found was a numeric keypad. Steiger loved his tech.
The kids watched me approach with empty eyes and empty faces. As I neared, though, a few stepped up to meet me. Twins of course: two identical girls and two identical boys. Eleven or twelve maybe. Not much younger than me, though they looked younger. They looked a lot younger.
“Who are you?” one of the girls whispered.
“You need the code,” the other girl whispered.
The boys said nothing.
“My name's Will,” I said. “And I'm here to get you all out.”
They exchanged looks of what I can only call skepticism. If I'd been a cop in uniform or a soldier in full combat gear, they'd have been behind me all the way. But I was a skinny, grubby thirteen-year-old kid — much like themselves — and, while these kids had all learned the hard way that there were bad guys in the world, they hadn't yet been shown the flip side of that coin.
“I'm an Undertaker,” I told them. “We fight these things.”
“They're zombies,” one of the boys said.
“No, they're Corpses,” I replied. “Zombies don't kidnap people. Corpses do. But that doesn't matter. Just trust me: I'm not alone and I'm going to get you all out.”
“How?” the first girl asked.
“You need the code,” her twin repeated.
“No I don't,” I said. Then I traced the cage back the way I'd come, following it around the corner until I found a good spot, just about where it met the wall. Here, the shadows were as thick as mud.
The four had followed me, and a few others besides. They watched me with their empty eyes, except those eyes now had a tiny flicker of light in them.
I whispered. “How many of you are there?”
The first twin girl answered, “Ninety-six.”
The first twin boy
added, “There used to be ninety-eight, but two boys escaped earlier.”
“I know,” I replied. “I met them. They're the ones who told us you were here.” Then, after a pause, I added, “They saved you all.”
A soft murmur rippled through the big group — a little louder than I would have liked. I put a finger to my lips, glancing nervously at the mob of the dead filling the mouth of the garage.
No movement. No sign of alarm.
“Where are they?” the second twin girl asked.
I swallowed. I'd expected the question, but it still hit me pretty hard. For a second, I felt the answer — the real answer — on my lips. But what good would that do them? So instead I said, “Someplace where Steiger won't ever be able to hurt them again.”
Not a lie, exactly. Just a painful, carefully worded truth.
They all seemed to like the answer, crowding even closer to where I stood.
Ninety-six Seers.
That was a lot of kids. I stood there for several seconds, thinking furiously. If I brought them all out now, what would I do with them between now and Dave's signal? So many kids, all scared and desperate, running around loose in the garage was bound to draw attention. The smartest thing to do was leave them here, “safe” in their pen, for the next few minutes while I went about my — other business.
But I couldn't do that. They'd see it as abandonment, as more dashed hope, even if I talked myself blue trying to convince them otherwise. No, I had to take a degree of risk.
So what else is new?
I pulled out my pocketknife and snapped open its blade, four inches of shining metal — way harder and sharper than steel.
“Listen up,” I said. “I'm going to cut a big opening in the wire. But I don't want all of you to come out of them. Not yet. There's something I need to do first.”
“What's that?” the first girl wanted to know.
I asked, “Steiger ... he's been experimenting on you guys?”
They all nodded. “He's a zombie, and he's been trying to get us to see him as ... not ... a zombie.”
“He makes us drink stuff,” the second twin boy said. “Awful stuff.”
“What's this stuff look like?”
“It's changed colors a few times,” the first twin girl replied. “But the last one was purple. He made a bunch of us drink it ... calling us out by numbers.”
“That's what he says we are now,” the first twin boy added. “Numbers. He told us to forget our names ... that we wouldn't be needing them anymore.”
An image of the maggot pit flashed through my mind, and I shuddered.
“Has any of it worked?” I asked. “The stuff he makes you drink, I mean. Has any of it affected how you See the Corpses?”
For several long seconds, none of them replied. Then one the twin girls raised a small hand. “The last one ... the one that he gave us today ... that worked on me.”
“On me, too,” said another boy, somewhere in the back of the group.
“And me,” said a third. “It’s kind of a relief, you know? Not see their rotting faces anymore.”
I'll bet it is.
I felt my stomach lurch. So Dead Nurse with Mayonnaise Jar hadn't been lying or bluffing. Steiger had actually done it. He'd found a way to cure the Sight.
“Okay, listen,” I said. “In about ten minutes, a school bus is going to come roaring in here. By the time it does, I'll be back. But just in case I'm not, when you see that bus, I want you all to come out fast and run for it. I mean run, got it? There'll be a big kid named Dave driving it. He'll get you out.”
The second twin boy asked, “Is he an Undertaker, too?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “One of the best I've ever known. You can trust him. But ... this is important ... none of you can come out until you see that school bus. If you do, this whole thing could get blown. Got it?”
The ones I'd been talking to nodded. So did a few of the others. The rest just looked blankly at me.
Once again, I checked the front of the garage. The mob of the dead was still there, still diverted. If they'd even noticed the lights going out a second time, it didn't show.
But, as far I could tell, Steiger wasn't among them.
“Any idea where I Steiger is?” I asked.
A bunch of them pointed at the fire door behind me. The one that led to the maggot pit.
“He went in there?” I pressed. “When?”
The general shrug.
So I tried narrowing it down. “Before the lights went out?”
The first twin girl replied, “First time or second time?”
I swallowed and tried to keep my voice light. “I dunno. You tell me.”
It was her sister who answered. “He went running in there maybe fifteen minutes ago ... right before the lights went out the first time.”
That had been when Dave and I had first tumbled into the maggot pit. Opening the far side door must have triggered some kind of alarm. “And he hasn't come out since?”
They all shook their heads. I didn't ask if they could have missed him in the darkness. Even with the lights out, the burning cars made it easy enough to see. Besides, something told me that these kids had learned to know when Steiger was around. Fear can make you really observant.
Trust me.
I used my knife to cut a kid-sized slit in the chicken wire surrounding the pen. Then I said, “There's your way out. But stay put until I get back ... or until you see that school bus. Got it?”
General nods, though I couldn’t help noticing the way they all eyed the tear in their cage.
If they bolt too soon, we're all dead.
But there didn't seem to be a whole heck of a lot I could do about that now.
So I left them and slipped back into the small room that bordered the maggot pit, shutting the heavy door behind me and creeping over to the other door, which was smaller and wooden. I pressed my ear to it.
Nothing.
Finding it unlocked, I slipped through into a long narrow corridor with doors — a lot of doors. A dozen or more. Inwardly, I groaned. I could spend the next hour searching all these rooms, especially in the dark!
But then I noticed that the dark wasn't completely dark. Light came from two places. The first was a glass fronted door at the far end of the corridor. From the look of it, I thought it might lead to the waiting room that Michael and Robert had described where Steiger had snared his victims. Its flickering glow probably came — once again — from the car fires in the parking lot, shining through the waiting room’s windows.
The second light was more interesting.
It was faint, barely there at all, and came from a door that stood ajar about halfway down the corridor on my right. But it wasn't fire. No, this light totally looked man-made.
There weren't many electronics that could stay working after an EMP. Steiger's homemade all-purpose remote, I knew, was one of them. Maybe he had another.
I went up to the door, moving — as Sharyn sometimes liked to say — on cat's feet. Quiet. Really quiet. Once there, I peeked through the narrow gap between the jam and the slightly open door. I couldn't see much: an office, some instruments on a table, all of it lit by a glow coming from somewhere beyond my limited line of sight.
Then a familiar dead voice said, “I'm sorry, Mistress. We lost power again. One of my staff must have incorrectly reset the fuses. I've switched to my laptop. It’s been off all day, and so wasn’t affected by the boy’s EMP. We’re running on battery now.”
Bingo!
I pushed the door open a little further, just enough to let me snake my head around it.
Dr. Steiger sat with his back to me. He was facing a big, funny-looking laptop computer, whose bright screen had obviously been the source of the light I'd spotted. On the screen, looking seriously pissed, was the face of a female Corpse. I spared a moment to cross my eyes and check out her Mask, but I needn't have bothered. I knew who it was.
Lilith Cavanaugh. The Queen of the Dead.
I remember thinking: Corpses use Skype! I'm not sure why that should have surprised me, but it did.
“How does one 'incorrectly' reset fuses, Steiger?” she demanded. “If your power's out again, doesn't it occur to you that the cause might be the same as before?”
“The boys are dead,” Steiger replied dismissively. “I checked the disposal tank myself a few minutes ago. They're gone.”
Disposal tank? That had to be what he called the maggot pit. But he'd checked it? It must have been while Dave and I had been in the garage. We'd all missed each other by sheer coincidence — one of those “he turned left while we went right” mix-ups that would be funny if things weren't so dire.
“You can't be sure of that until you empty the tank and see their bones,” the Queen insisted.
“I assure you, Mistress. They were both consumed.”
“What did they look like?”
“What?”
“These Undertakers who have been stalking you all night. Describe them.”
“Two boys and a girl ... though only the boys fell into my trap. One was a big subject, strapping and blonde. The other was smaller and thinner ... with very red hair.”
The Queen's dead eyes went wide. “Will Ritter.”
“Who?”
“You idiot! That's Will Ritter. And he's alive!
“Impossible. I left them locked in the pit. There's no way he could have survived.”
“That boy has a knack for surviving when there's no way he could have survived!”
That was actually a little flattering — in an “I hate your human guts” kind of way.
Right now, Cavanaugh couldn't see me. The room was completely dark except for the laptop's light, and I hid in deep shadow. So I used that advantage to scan my surroundings, moving nothing but my eyes. A pair of chairs stood in the middle of the room, bolted to the floor. They were kind of like dentist's chairs — twin dentist chairs — but with different, and scarier, gadgets attached to it. It didn't know what they were for and didn't want to know.
Behind them was a lab table, loaded with still more gadgets and some kind of small metal stand. It was hard to tell what exactly stood on that stand, something skinny and maybe seven inches tall, perched on its end.
“As soon as my staff finishes with the parking lot fires, I'll order that the pit to be emptied,” Steiger told his queen. “Then we'll find what remains are left. It won't be much.”
