by Ty Drago
I almost expected him to take the opportunity to kill me, which wouldn’t have been hard. But he didn’t seem to even notice I was there. All of his attention remained on the principal, who came after him with a glint in his dead eyes that I’d never seen before.
Well, I’d seen it; Corpses wore it a lot.
But never on Bob Dillin’s face.
Seething hatred.
“Lots of ingredients in the cellar,” he told the Special.
Why is he saying these weird things?
Then, like a bolt of lightning, comprehension hit me.
My right hand was a useless knot of pain. But the left one worked and, with it, I managed to get first to my elbows and then my knees. The world threatened to spin. I firmly told it not to—and it listened, mostly.
Walking was out of the question, at least for now, so I crawled. And since I still couldn’t use my right hand, it kind of went like this: left hand, right knee, right elbow, left knee.
Slow going. But I managed to reach the thing that Dillin had tossed my way.
A pouch, one of those clear plastic freezer bags.
And inside it was what looked like a big glob of hastily mixed white paste.
The Zombie Prince seized Parker’s collar and yanked him to his feet. Parker, in turn, grabbed Dillin’s bicycle shirt. Then the two of them started spinning around, fighting for advantage, slamming each other into everything and anything handy.
“Julie,” I said, surprised at how weak my voice sounded.
The girl still stood on the other side of the jagged hole in the floor. She looked at me. She didn’t speak.
I said, “Help me.”
She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t stop to consider the dead men who so ferociously fought only a dozen feet away. She just came.
And, between the two of us, we got me standing again.
She led me over to the side wall. I leaned against it, trying to ignore the pain and dizziness, willing my vision to clear.
“How’d you know Dillin was going to do that?” I asked her.
“I saw him in the foyer,” she replied in a whisper, “standing at the top of the stairs that lead down to the cellar. He shushed me and then made one of those ‘I’m gonna reach up through the floor and grab him’ gestures.”
What in the world does an “I’m gonna reach up through the floor and grab him” gesture even look like?
But that was a question for another time.
“Hide,” I told her.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. I know what to do. Hide.”
She nodded and ducked under the nearest table. I would have preferred it if she’d left the dining room—heck, the restaurant—but she was too much of an Undertaker for that.
The two Corpses finally broke apart. Warily, they circled one another, eyes locked. Both deaders had suffered a truckload of damage.
The principal lunged.
But Parker was ready.
He caught Dillin’s arm and swung him in a wide arc, yanking his sneakers off the floor, and ramming him face first into a wooden archway.
The Zombie Prince crashed to the floor. As he did, his gazed locked on my mine, full of silent message.
I forced my legs to move.
But not toward him, not toward the fighting. Instead, I staggered over to Sharyn and the Burgermeister, who lay almost side by side on the carpet near the kitchen door. Sharyn had a lump the size of an egg on her forehead. But her pulse, when I checked it, was strong. Dave was in worse shape. His makeshift tourniquet had held so far, keeping any more of his blood from gushing out of the stump left behind by the last Malite. But his face was ghostly, and his pulse felt slow and thin.
If we didn’t get him out of here, he was going to die.
That awareness fueled me. It’s amazing what you can do when a friend’s life is at stake.
I went to the wall behind him and took hold of Vader. The sword was still buried deep in the sheetrock and, given my condition, it took a lot of effort to yank it free. But I managed it.
Behind me I heard the crash of glass. Turning, I saw that Parker had managed to hurl Dillin through one of the windows and out onto the porch. But the Zombie Prince recovered almost at once and leaped back through, his face and clothes shredded by the shards of glass.
I opened the freezer bag. Sniffed its contents.
Salt.
Of course.
Salt mixed with water and what? Flour? Corn starch? Whatever had been handy in the storerooms below the restaurant, I supposed.
Whatever would make it glutinous.
Sticky.
Awkwardly tucking Vader under my right arm, I used my left hand to scoop out a fistful of the stuff and smear it along the length of the blade.
Dipping my arrow in the poison.
Dillin must have spotted what I was doing because when I looked up at him, he was smiling—at least insofar as he could, since his own face wasn’t much to look at anymore. Then he grabbed for Parker, pulling him into what boxers might call a “clutch.”
They grappled like that, face-to-face, spinning in angry circles and crashing into everything.
“Do it!” he yelled to me.
“Get clear!” I yelled back.
Balancing myself as best I could, I started toward them.
Parker craned his head, finally interested in what I was doing. When he saw what I’d done to the sword, he must have put two and two together, because he started struggling harder against Dillin’s grip, repeatedly butting the Zombie Prince in the face with his forehead.
He’d do this, I knew, until both their stolen skulls cracked.
He’d pull out all the stops.
Because if he didn’t, he would die. Really, permanently die. And Corpses feared that more than anything. All of them.
Except one.
“Will! Please!” Dillin yelled. “I can’t hold him!”
I could see what had to be done. If Parker got free, then he’d be on me in a second. No slow approach this time. He’d pounce like a lion and rip me apart before I could even begin to defend myself.
I came within three feet of the struggling dead men.
This was all about aim. I’d skewer Parker, while missing my friend—yes, my friend. But my head was pounding, and my strength hung by a thread. I’d have to be careful.
Really careful.
As I neared the two of them, still locked in their clutch, I drew back Vader, ready to thrust.
“Get clear!” I told Dillin again.
But instead, the Royal shoved the Special up against the nearest wall, pinning him. Parker gurgled and squirmed, struggling like a panicked animal. Holding him there was taking everything the Zombie Prince had.
He looked back at me, his eyes—stolen eyes, dead eyes—filled with stuff. So much stuff. There was desperation there. And fear. And courage. And something else. Something that looked completely out of place on a Corpse’s face.
Nobility.
“Dying well is its own reward,” he said.
I stared at him, unable to move. But then Parker rallied, nearly pushing off the wall, nearly breaking free.
And I knew I was out of time.
“I’m so sorry,” I said to Dillin.
Then I drove the poisoned blade hard into his back, pushing it in. All the way. All the way through.
And into Parker.
“No!” the Special wailed in Deadspeak.
But the Zombie Prince just said, in the same weird language, “Dying. Well.”
Then the two of them exploded.
The force of it knocked me off my feet yet again, bits of flesh and bone raining down around me. For a second or two, I thought I actually would pass out. But I didn’t. Instead, I simply lay there, my mind reeling, my heart pounding—
—and feeling sick to my very soul.
Chapter 27
CONTROL
Tom
Ten fe
et away, a homeless woman was playing “giant chess” against nobody.
Tom watched her with half an eye. She was stooped over, draped in a heavy hooded coat that didn’t work with the warm afternoon. Beside her sat a plastic basket, probably stolen from a supermarket, into which the woman had piled a collection of junk and scavenged food—most likely everything she owned in the world.
Philadelphia had so many people like her. Ignored. Abandoned. Invisible.
The “giant chess” she played was just that: giant chess, a huge chessboard painted onto the cement in the midst of this large, concrete public park. It had even been populated with three-foot plastic chess pieces. The homeless lady was currently playing both black and white, cackling to herself as she moved one piece, and then ran around the board and moved an opposing piece.
“Do you think she’s winning?” Senator James Mitchum asked.
Tom regarded the man. He was in his fifties, hefty, and dressed for success in a dark blue suit and power tie. He had an American flag pin on his lapel. Tom had heard that everyone in Washington wore one of those.
“She probably hasn’t eaten in two days, man,” Tom told him. “So … what do you think?”
Mitchum’s smile faltered. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Whatever.”
The senator occupied one of the five metal chairs that they’d squeezed around one of the round metal tables that the city maintained in this crowded public area nestled between the inbound and outbound lanes of the Ben Franklin Parkway. Around them, people moved and talked and laughed in the afternoon sunshine. Nearby, vendors sold everything from hotdogs to Chinese food.
To the southeast, skyscrapers dominated the horizon, with William Penn’s statue atop City Hall sitting smack dab in the middle.
In the opposite direction, much closer, the Philadelphia Art Museum shimmered like red gold. A huge, columned building, it sat atop broad tiered steps, up which Sly Stallone, as Rocky Balboa, had gone running more than once. There was actually a statue of the movie boxer on the museum grounds.
As Tom watched, three police cruisers made their way up the Ben Franklin Parkway, heading in the direction of Kelly Drive. Their lights were flashing and their sirens bleated.
Something big’s goin’ down at the river.
Will and Sharyn. Gotta be.
But he’d have to let them handle whatever it was—for now.
Tom had his own agenda.
“What’s happening?” Mitchum turned in his chair to watch the cop cars disappear behind the art museum.
“There were some killings in Fairmount Park,” Ramirez replied. “I heard it on the radio. The entire area’s been closed off.”
“Tragic,” the senator remarked.
F.B.I. Special Agent Hugo Ramirez sat beside Mitchum. Unlike the senator, he showed the good grace to look uncomfortable, even a bit guilty. Ramirez had been to Haven, had seen firsthand how the Undertakers lived and what they had to do. Yet, he’d brought that secret to Mitchum and had approved, or at least cooperated, when the senator had introduced Jillian as a spy.
After meeting Tom’s gaze for a few seconds, Ramirez looked away.
The fourth chair at this crowded table had a woman in it. Mitchum had introduced her as Millie, his confidential secretary. “Privy to all my secrets,” he’d said.
All ours, too, Tom had thought.
The last dude was Greg Gardner.
To all outward appearances, he was kind of a Mini-Me for Mitchum. Same sort of suit. Same sort of tie. Same vaguely condescending air. And he’d been all smiles from the get-go, shaking Tom’s hand with a firm politician’s grip, all the while telling him what an honor this was, and how he’d so looked forward to meeting him.
“Thanks,” Tom had replied.
And so the “job interview” had begun.
Mitchum said, “Let me start by asking you a few questions.”
“Okay,” Tom told him.
“Do you have a college education?”
“You know the answer to that, Senator.”
“Do you even have a high school diploma?”
Tom said, “You know the answer to that one, too.”
“So you dropped out of high school? When?”
“When it felt like the right time.”
Mitchum seemed to consider this. Tom’s answer had been truthful, and yet just a bit defiant.
Finally, the senator said, “Those are both obstacles to any employment in my office.”
“I ain’t lookin’ for employment in your office,” replied Tom.
Mitchum blinked. “Then I’m not sure what—”
“Let me ask you a couple o’ questions,” Tom said.
The senator glanced at Ramirez before shifting a little in his chair. “Go ahead.”
“When you offered to help Jillian find out ‘bout the Corpses in D.C., had you already figured on using her as a mole in Haven? Or was it more of a ‘spur o’ the moment’ thing?”
“Senator, I don’t think you should answer that!” Millie snapped.
“Mr. Jefferson,” Gardner said. “I suggest you remember who you’re talking to.”
“Tom …” Ramirez began in a warning tone.
Tom ignored them all, keeping his attention focused on Mitchum, who looked back at him as if sizing him up. “A man in my position,” the senator said, “needs to recognize a potential opportunity when one presents itself.”
“Sorry,” Tom said flatly. “I ain’t got my diploma. Care to talk a little plainer than that?”
“Hugo came to me with what he knew about the Corpse War … and about you and your … organization. Obviously, he didn’t know enough. At first, I had difficulty believing what he had to say, despite our long association and his sterling reputation with the Bureau. But some of what he described applied to Senator Lindsay Micha … the sudden lack of public appearances, her odd bout of camera shyness, very uncommon on Hill.”
“Straight up,” Tom said.
“So, after that first page went missing and was eventually found dead, I started looking at the others. After all, if one of them had ‘gotten his Eyes,’ as Hugo put it, then it didn’t seem impossible that another would as well. That’s how I found Jillian.”
“You just walked up to every Senate page and said, ‘Hey, you see dead people or what?’ to them?”
Mitchum scoffed. “I was subtler than that … finding different pretexts for showing each child an assortment of photos of Micha’s staff.”
“How did you know any of the pics were of Corpses?” Tom asked.
“Obviously, I didn’t,” the older man replied. “I didn’t even know for certain, at the time, that Senator Micha had been compromised. It was what we in Washington call a ‘fishing expedition’.
“In any case, that’s how I happened upon Jillian. She was trying to discover what had happened to her friend, the dead page. Once I confirmed she could actually See these creatures, I offered to help her.
“Later, when she found out who … what … the late senator really was, she called me. She mentioned overhearing your name. I suggested that she go straight to Philly, to find you. As she did.”
Tom asked, “Did she know you knew about the Undertakers? About the war? Or did you leave her in the dark on that?”
Greg Gardner said, “I’m starting not to like your tone.”
But Mitchum held up a hand. “I chose to withhold that at first, Mr. Jefferson. I wanted to see how resourceful Ms. Birmelin could be. There’d have been little point in placing someone in your organization if I couldn’t count on her to keep her head and maintain her cover.”
“Yeah,” Tom said bitterly. “’Cept she started lookin’ for us in our old hood, down South Street, and Cavanaugh sent every Corpse in the world after her. She was lucky to get out alive.”
The senator nodded. “Extremely lucky. And it proved her worth. So I contacted her and told her exactly what I … what her
country … needed her to do.”
“Wrapped yourself in the flag, huh?” Tom remarked.
Millie said sharply, “Senator, this man isn’t here looking for a job. He’s here to … interrogate you!”
“No,” Tom said. “That ain’t why I’m here.”
Millie pressed. “Senator, I strongly suggest we leave.”
But Mitchum didn’t move. Neither did Ramirez or Gardner. Finally Millie, with an exasperated sigh, fell into a sullen silence.
“When did you bring these two into it?” Tom asked, nodding to Millie and Gardner.
“From the beginning. Greg was there when Ramirez first came to me, and Millie’s been my secretary for many years. You can trust them both, Mr. Jefferson.”
Tom didn’t reply.
A couple of Philly cops had arrived on the scene, the only ones Tom had spotted so far. Both were in uniform, and both were a little ways off, standing at the edge of the park.
But they were clearly watching this little gathering.
“Check!” the homeless woman announced from the chessboard, cackling.
Then she hurried over to the other side of the board to make the countermove.
Countermoves, Tom thought.
He said, “We been fightin’ this war on our own for three years, Senator.”
Mitchum nodded. “And you’ve conducted yourselves with distinction.”
“But you figured you’d better … what? Keep an eye on us? That’s why you planted Jill as a spy?”
“I don’t think I’d use the word ‘spy,’” Mitchum replied flatly.
“Tom …” Ramirez said. “It wasn’t like that.”
Millie said, “The senator knows what he’s doing, young man.”
Gardner leaned forward. “He’s been looking out for you, Tom. We all have.”
But, again, Tom’s eyes remained fixed on Mitchum, who regarded him coolly. Finally, flatly, the big man said, “I see what we have here.”
“I doubt it,” Tom replied.
“No, I see quite clearly. For these past three years, you’ve been the king of your hill. But now you’ve discovered … lo and behold … that authorities had an eye on what you’ve been doing. You don’t like that. It threatens your position. It threatens your sense of control.”
