Last Siege of Haven

by Ty Drago

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

  Copyright © 2015 by Ty Drago

  THE UNDERTAKERS – LAST SIEGE OF HAVEN by Ty Drago

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by Month9Books, LLC.

  Illustration by Zachary Schoenbaum

  Title design by Victoria Faye of Whit&Ware

  Cover design by Najla Qamber Designs

  Cover Copyright © 2015 Month9Books

  “Victory is a commodity. It has a cost. Always.”

  —Anonymous

  This book is dedicated in friendship and gratitude to film producer Andrew van den Houten and screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick for their brilliant and tireless efforts to bring The Undertakers to the silver screen.

  Gentlemen, you do me proud!

  Chapter 1

  BACK IN SCHOOL

  The last day of the war started with two eleven-year-old girls clutching at me in terror, while a third girl stood protectively between us and a half-dozen of the walking dead, who closed in like lions around a wounded wildebeest.

  Oh, and did I mention the Zombie Prince?

  Um … maybe I’d better dial things back about ten minutes.

  Let’s start with the snarling teacher.

  “Mister Kessler,” the teacher snarled. “Why don’t you list for us three things that Walter Raleigh, or people in his employ, brought back to England from the New World?”

  I don’t much like teachers. But I hate teachers who call you by your last name, especially when it isn’t your last name. And I really hate it when the teacher who’s calling you by a last name that isn’t yours is—well—dead.

  Okay, that probably hasn’t happened to you. But, trust me, it stinks on ice.

  My name’s Will Ritter. I’m an Undertaker. That means I spend my days battling Corpses, invaders from another planet, or dimension, or something. We’re not quite sure. These beings, who call themselves the Malum, are actually super-scary ten-legged monsters on their homeworld. But they arrive on ours with no bodies at all—just man-sized lumps of dark energy that wouldn’t last ten seconds in our atmosphere if they didn’t immediately possess and inhabit dead bodies. These they wear like suits of clothing until the cadavers literally fall apart around them. Then they abandon them and find another, and so on.

  Thing is: most people can’t see them. To every adult on the planet—and most kids—Corpses look like regular folks: policemen, neighbors, bus drivers.

  Teachers.

  End of info dump. You’ll pick up the rest as we go along. For now, just get this: my history teacher, Ms. McKinney, was a Corpse. And if she wised up to the fact that I knew she was a Corpse, she’d kill me.

  But at least that was a familiar kind of fear. This “getting called on” thing was something else entirely.

  Before this gig, it’d been a while since I’d gone to school.

  “Well, Mr. Kessler?”

  That was my cover name: Ryan Kessler. The Hackers, the Undertakers’ computer crew, gave it to me when I first took this Schooler gig almost a month ago. Since then, I’d been Ryan, not Will. It had taken some getting used to, but eventually the lie had become second nature.

  “Um … tobacco,” I said.

  “Yes. That’s one.” She’d left the backboard, and was shuffling down the aisle toward me.

  She smelled awful and, whenever she moved, flies as big as marbles flew in and out of holes in her neck and face. She was an early Type Three. That’s the one-to-five measuring system we use to describe how ripe a Corpse is getting. Threes are bloating, their tissues filling up with gases as they decompose. In the next week or so, unless she traded up to a fresher cadaver, Ms. Marcy McKinney—her name and history as fake as my own—would swell like an overripe melon, filling her budget pantsuit until her eyes popped out of her head.

  The kids around me, of course, saw none of it. They weren’t Seers. To them, Ms. McKinney was simply a short, skinny redhead in her fifties, alive and, to their eyes, completely normal.

  We call it their Mask. It’s the face Corpses show to the world, and only Seers—a few, select kids like me—can recognize the stomach-emptying truth behind it. It’s not an ability anybody asks for; it just happens to us one day. “Getting your Eyes,” we call it.

  “Two more, Mr. Kessler,” she said, coming to stand by my desk. Her voice sounded thick, as if she were drowning. As if she could. The dead—no big surprise—are really hard to kill. Ms. McKinney’s voice box was just rotting, that’s all.

  I racked my brain. I’d studied this last night, sort of. Well, you try to study by the light of a kerosene lamp while huddled in a tent in the woods outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania! True, it was June, with only one more day of school left, and, yeah, that did mean it was warmer than, say, February. But it also meant that I shared the small tent with a fistful of mosquitoes.

  And one big roommate—who snored.

  “Potatoes,” I said.

  “That’s two.” She kept glowering. “And the third?”

  “I …” But the final answer wouldn’t come. A blank. Nothing. Whatever the third thing was the old British dude had snagged in the Americas, I couldn’t remember it.

  Every school kid knows, in such a situation, there’s only one kind of miracle to hope for.

  And I got it.

  The bell rang.

  You could almost hear the room exhale. Suddenly, forty eighth-graders were in motion—collecting books, pencils, and paper, as they began spilling out through the hallway door.

  Ms. McKinney eyed me dangerously. Then she straightened and shouted in her sticky voice, “Final test tomorrow! Everything we’ve studied all year will be on it! I don’t care if it’s the last day of school! It’s fifty percent of your grade, so be prepared!”

  Groans.

  Only a Corpse calls a test for the last day of school.

  Pure evil.

  I’d gotten up with the others, a little more slowly maybe, given my close call. I wasn’t the last one out the door, but I was close to it, when the teacher suddenly said, “Stay a minute, Mr. Kessler.”

  Crap.

  I paused and turned, hoping I hadn’t heard her right. She waggled a purple, lifeless finger at me and pointed to the guest chair beside her desk.

  My heart sinking, I took a seat.

  As she settled into her own chair, her knees popped loudly. Tendons had just torn, I supposed.

  “I’m worried about you.” She sounded almost kindly.

  Leaning forward, Ms. McKinney clasped her hands in front of her on the desktop. As she did, maggots squeezed out through cracks in the flesh of her wrists. They were tiny, like little squirming grains of rice. The sight of them would have grossed out almost anybody else. But I’d seen bigger maggots than these.

  Much bigger.

  That’s another story.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You seem tired today. In fact, you’ve seemed tired all week. How are you sleeping?”

  “Okay, I guess.” I wasn’t about to tell her about the tent, its mosquitoes, or my snoring roommate.

  “Everything
okay at home? You and your folks settling into your new house?”

  “Sure.” There was, of course, no new house and no “folks.” My mom and sister were back in Haven, the Undertakers’ HQ, thirty miles away in Center City, Philadelphia. I hadn’t seen either of them in a month, though we talked on the phone two or three times a week. Mom’s idea.

  As far as Merriweather Intermediate School was concerned, I had a mom and a dad, and we all lived in the suburban house we’d just bought, the details falsified with practiced ease by the Hackers.

  “I know how hard it can be to come into a new school, especially at the end of the year,” Ms. McKinney told me gently. “And I want you to know: if there’s anything I can do to help, just say so.”

  “Um … thanks.”

  “Ryan?”

  “Yes, Ma’am?”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “I’ve noticed how you look at me.”

  I involuntarily swallowed. Nerves. She noticed.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She tilted her head. As she did, flakes of skin and wisps of dead hair sprinkled the shoulder of her suit. “You know what I mean.”

  So, either she suspects I just got my Eyes … or she thinks I have a crush on her.

  I hope it’s the Eyes thing.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the open hallway door. Through it, I could see swarms of kids moving back and forth in that funny kind of reluctant haste that’s reserved for the five minute break between classes.

  “Want to leave, Ryan?” Ms. McKinney asked, and though she tried to hide it, I caught the edge of menace in her voice.

  Sure, I wanted to leave. But not quite the way she meant. In truth, even if I’d escaped with the rest of the history class, I’d have hung around in the hallway, waiting until the last possible second to head for my fifth period lunch. Watching.

  Watching for Julie.

  I had Ms. McKinney for fourth period eighth grade history. Julie had her for fifth period sixth grade history.

  That was no accident.

  Julie was the reason I’d come to Merriweather.

  Watch Julie. Monitor Julie. Protect Julie.

  My mission: Guard a little girl until the end of the school year. And do it without her knowledge.

  That’s me. Will Ritter. Guardian Angel.

  “I asked you a question, Mr. Kessler,” the teacher snarled. Her “Come to Me with Your Problems” bit was apparently over. She’d sucked at it, anyway.

  “No, ma’am.” I kept my eyes focused on the door.

  Any second now.

  Ms. McKinney said, “Look at me.”

  I looked.

  She leaned way over the desk, her dead face—putrid and bug infested—inches from my own. Then she hissed, “What do you See, Mr. Kessler?”

  Yep. It’s the Eyes thing.

  “I … um … see the next class coming in.”

  And they were. Sixth graders had started slogging in from the hallway, backpacks over their shoulders, weary expressions on their faces—expressions that turned curious when they saw Ms. McKinney and myself.

  The teacher sat back and smiled, showing me her hideous toothless maw. The other kids, I knew, saw only a friendly, welcoming grin. After all, they were her adored pupils, and Marcy McKinney was teacher of the year.

  Corpses are, above all else, completely full of crap.

  “Go to your next class, Ryan. We’ll talk again.”

  I stood up with my own backpack, turned toward to doorway to leave—

  —and froze.

  Julie Boettcher, small and brunette, stood at the classroom’s threshold. Her thin, eleven-year-old body had gone statue still, her expressive brown eyes locked on Ms. McKinney. Her face, usually slightly darker in complexion than her sister’s, had gone pasty white—and, as I watched her, her bottom lip began to tremble.

  She just got her Eyes!

  Every Undertaker remembers all too well that moment when they started Seeing Corpses, and got their first glimpse of the real world and the monsters that inhabit it. All the shock and horror and confusion of that initial moment shone like a beacon on this girl’s face.

  I glanced back at Ms. McKinney, but the history teacher hadn’t noticed Julie yet. Her eyes—dead and seeming sightless—remained fixed on me.

  Reactions are different for everyone. Some new Seers faint. Others run. Others curse or scream.

  Julie did none of those things. She was a Boettcher. Like her big sister, Helene, fellow Undertaker and—let’s just get this out of the way now, okay?—my girlfriend, Julie had liquid steel running through her veins. On some level, she’d sensed the danger in revealing her newly discovered Seer talent. So, again as I watched, she steadied herself, took a deep breath, and stepped into the classroom.

  Wow, I thought. Sixth-graders are tougher than I remember.

  But then two more girls, a blond and a redhead, walked through the door, took one look at Ms. McKinney, and started screaming.

  Chapter 2

  AFTER THE BELL

  Fantastic.

  Ms. McKinney didn’t jump to her feet when the girls started pointing at her, shouting “zombie” accusations and hugging each other. Instead, she seemed to uncoil in her chair and rise like a panther poised for the pounce.

  Julie stood off to one side, halfway to her desk. She’d paled all over again, her attention—as well as the attention of all the other kids in the room—locked on the bizarre confrontation at the front of the class.

  “Girls,” Ms. McKinney said coldly. “Stop this foolishness right now. I’d like to see you both out in the hallway.”

  I’ll bet you would, I thought.

  Then I pulled out my gun and shot her.

  Okay, it wasn’t a real gun. Just a water pistol. But the saltwater inside was way more effective on the Corpse teacher than a bullet would have been.

  McKinney recoiled as my shot caught her full in the face. She slammed against the smart board and went into spasms, dropping to the floor and convulsing wildly as the saltwater messed with her ability to control her stolen body.

  Now all the kids started screaming.

  “I’ll get help!” I shouted.

  Then I grabbed Julie’s hand, brought my mouth close to her ear, and whispered, “My name’s Will. Your sister sent me. We’re going. Now.”

  I pulled her toward the door. She hesitated, but only for a second. Then, with a final frightened glance at her flipping and flopping history teacher, she followed me.

  “Come on, you two!” I called to the blond and redhead, who were still screaming.

  They looked at me, wild-eyed with hysteria.

  So, I shot them too.

  Just one squirt each in the face. The screams stopped instantly and they snapped “Hey!” in perfect unison.

  Girls hate it when you squirt them in the face with a water pistol. Every boy learns that one pretty early on.

  “Come on!” I said again, still holding Julie by the hand. “Now!”

  The “start of class” bell rang—had it really been just five minutes since Ms. McKinney had been grilling me on Walter Raleigh?—and the hallway stood mostly empty as the four of us broke into a run.

  I led the girls away from the school’s front entrance, strategizing with every step. Angel training. That’s the crew I belong to, the Undertakers’ squad most often in combat with deaders. True, this past month I’d been playing Schooler, which is more about infiltration than fighting. But after what I’d done to my teacher, something told me the whole Ryan Kessler thing was over.

  McKinney would recover fast. When she did, she’d be on the horn with the other Corpses stationed here in Merriweather. There were seven that I knew of, including the principal, who called himself Robert Dillin. The trick would be to get Julie and the other two Seers safely off school grounds before Dillin and his cronies came looking fo
r us.

  “Where … are … we … going?” the redhead asked breathlessly as we ran.

  “Who … are … you?” the blond added, just as breathlessly

  “Hang on,” I told them both, pulling out my sat phone and hitting the right speed dial.

  Three long rings later, my roommate’s voice answered, “Yo, dude!”

  “I’m blown,” I told him. “I’ve got three Seers with me.”

  “Oh, crap. What about Julie?”

  “She’s one of them.”

  “Oh, crap.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Yard work.”

  “Front or back?

  “Side. We’re laying mulch.”

  “Meet me behind the building.”

  “On my way. Hey, Will?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Does this mean we’re done with that tiny tent in the woods?”

  “Guess so.”

  “Good. I ain’t into cuddlin’, man.”

  “Funny,” I told him. Then I shut the phone—grinning, despite myself.

  Jerk.

  The long hallway ended in a T-junction. I looked left and right. Right was clear. Left wasn’t.

  A Corpse, dressed like a science teacher, stood about thirty feet away. He was a Type Five, way far gone, with no hair left, and limbs made thin and brittle by loss of moisture and muscle tissue. He regarded us with sunken eyes, his lipless mouth working.

  “Just be cool,” I told the girls.

  “Just be cool,” Julie echoed from beside me.

  Blond and Redhead started screaming.

  Fantastic.

  The deader made a dry, raspy noise that was probably supposed to be a growl. Then he came after us. He didn’t run; I doubted if that withered old body of his could run. Instead he staggered, his skinny arms reaching, his bony fingers like claws.

  They really look like zombies when they do that.

  “This way,” I said, grabbing Julie’s hand and leading the girls to the right, two of them still screaming.

  Doors began opening up and down the hallway as the noise attracted the attention of the various teachers in their various classrooms.