by Ty Drago
“Where’s Greg?” Millie asked as Tom approached their chairs.
“Where he belongs,” Tom told her.
Mitchum rose on shaky legs. “Mr. Jefferson. I can’t begin to —”
But Tom held up a hand. “No speeches. I ain’t in the mood. How much did Gardner know about Haven?”
The senator blanched. “As much as I did.”
“The layout of the place? Jillian told me she drew a map.”
“Yes.”
“Entrances and exits?”
“Yes.”
Tom nodded. “They’re gonna hit us tonight. They’re gonna hit us with everything they got. Helene and me gotta get back to Haven while we still can. Once Cavanaugh hears that Gardner’s blown, she’ll bottle up all the ways in and out.”
He turned to leave, but Mitchum grabbed his arm. “I was trying to help!”
Tom whirled on him. “You just don’t get it! You can’t help! No adult can help. You’re blind! That by itself ain’t your fault, but you’re blind to the fact that you are blind! All these months, you knew the Corpses were all around you. You knew you couldn’t see them. You knew there was no one you could trust … and yet one of ‘em managed to cozy right up to you!”
The senator looked sick. “He was such a bright young man,” he moaned. “I never imagined—”
“Take your hand off my arm.”
“Son—”
Tom brought his face within inches of Mitchum’s. Beside them, Millie gasped, maybe at what she saw in Tom’s eyes.
“Don’t,” he said slowly, “ever call me ‘son.’”
Then he turned, went back to Helene, and said, “Ritter ‘em, and then let’s go home.”
But the girl replied, “Tom, Haven just called. They heard from Will. They’re close … and they need help.”
Chapter 29
AFTERMATH
“Jules?” Helene said.
She’d just appeared in the doorway to the foyer, taking in the mess left behind by Dillin’s last stand. For a moment, her gaze met mine. Then her eyes settled on her little sister, who been helping me tend to Dave and Sharyn.
The younger Boettcher girl took one look at the older Boettcher girl, and flew into her arms.
Unfortunately, battlefield reunions tend to be short.
Tom showed up an instant later, coming in through the kitchen door. “I dropped Helene off and parked ‘round back. Cops are already on the scene. Not many, but more’s comin’. Sis, you okay?”
Sharyn, who’d come around just after the fight was over, nodded through the tears in her eyes. “But Hot Dog’s hurt, bro. He’s hurt bad.”
The chief came forward and silently assessed the stump at the end of Dave’s arm. “Okay …” he said, his expression carefully calm. “Okay … it’s a good field dressing. We can move him. Will, you solid? Your hand looks pretty bad.”
Actually, my hand was screaming.
“Let’s do it,” I told him.
It took all of us, working together, to get Dave’s unconscious bulk out through the kitchen and into the back of the van. As we did, I actually heard Philly’s Finest enter the Water Works from the front, guns drawn. Fortunately, the blood and body parts littering the dining room stopped them in their tracks before they found us.
A near miss in a day that had seen too many of them.
Tom drove. I took shotgun. The girls stayed in the back with Dave, who still hadn’t woken up.
That scared me.
We left Fairmount unchallenged and reached the underground garage below Love Park without any problems. Nobody said much during the drive. There’d be time to swap stories later.
We parked in the far corner of the lowest level and carried my handless friend through an old fire door and into Haven’s northern entrance. Once there, my mom rushed us all into the Infirmary, where she and Amy Filewicz, her assistant, went to work at once. As Mom did triage—that’s where you examine everyone quick to see who needs attention first—Amy made sure the beds were ready.
Then she fetched the Anchor Shard.
I watched the girl work, a million things running through my head. Amy had once tried to kill me while under Corpse control. Long story. Book One. Since then, she’d spent her every waking moment trying to make up for it. She was, for all intents and purposes, a nurse—a role that she took very seriously.
Amy.
I shook my head. Too much to deal with right now.
The Burgermeister remained unconscious.
His hand was forever gone. If the Malite hadn’t eaten it, the Anchor Shard might have been able to reattach it. At least that was my mom’s theory. “But now, all I can do is make sure the stump is closed up and doesn’t get infected,” she said, looking up at each of us, Sharyn in particular, and adding, “I’m so sorry.”
Sharyn tried a snarky smile. “Well … dude was too big, anyhow.”
But then, when her brother went to her, she fell against him, sobbing openly.
“Will he die?” I asked my mother.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “He’s low on blood, but that’s something the shard’s good at: stimulating the generation of new blood.”
I nodded, relieved.
My own hand throbbed. Amy had cleaned and bandaged it, but the real healing would have to wait until Dave was finished and then Sharyn, in case she had a concussion. It wouldn’t have been her first. We only had one Anchor Shard.
My mom, who hadn’t laid eyes on me since I’d left for Allentown a month ago, said, “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” I replied. And I had.
“Are you … okay?”
“No. But what difference does that make?”
Then, as tears filled her eyes, I gave her a quick, one-armed hug and went to check on Julie.
The little girl sat on the next gurney, her body trembling. Helene sat beside her, holding her close. When I joined them, both looked at me with glistening eyes.
Helene hopped off the gurney and put her arms around me.
Then she kissed me.
I’d been playing eighth-grader at Merriweather Intermediate for weeks. And, while I can’t say I dreamed about kissing Helene every night, it was close enough. There’d been times, living in that tent in the woods behind the school, when I thought the loneliness would kill me. True, the Burgermeister had been there.
But the Burgermeister—thank God—wasn’t my girlfriend.
So, even though I figured Tom and Sharyn, Julie and Amy, and even my mom were looking on, I took the kiss and gave it back. That’s what you’re supposed to do with kisses. A little something I learned recently.
After the kiss she hugged me again. Fiercely.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she whispered.
“Me, too,” I said.
When we finally separated, I noticed Julie chewing her lower lip. Her attention seemed to be anywhere but on us. Then I glanced at my mom and saw her doing pretty much the same thing.
It would have been funny if I hadn’t been so down.
“Thanks,” Helene said to me, pulling me aside.
“For what?” I asked. Stupid, I know.
She rolled her eyes, “For getting my sister here, safe and sound, you idiot!”
“I didn’t do it alone. Sharyn and Dave helped.” Then, in a voice that cracked just a little bit, I added, “And Principal Dillin.”
Tom and Sharyn approached. “How’s the hand?” Sharyn asked.
“Hurts. How’s the head?”
She smiled. “Hurts.”
“But I’m still standing,” I said.
“Me too, little bro. And that rocks.” Then the Burgermeister groaned and, with a relieved sigh, Sharyn hurried over to his gurney.
That left Tom, Helene, and me alone in a corner of the Infirmary.
The Chief asked, “Up to a quick debrief?”
I nodded.
He nodded.
&nbs
p; And we spent the next ten minutes swapping stories.
“Dillin died to save us,” I told the chief when I’d finished. “He came to Earth knowing full well he wouldn’t survive the trip, and he was okay with that. He was … one of the noblest people I’ve ever met.”
Tom’s reply surprised me. I’d expected skepticism, maybe outright dismissal of the idea of a “noble” Corpse. Instead, he said, “Sounds like the dude was an Undertaker.”
And so he had been.
“But what’s it all mean?” Helene asked. “What’s going on?”
The chief replied, “Before I wasted him, Gardner told me that we’d pushed Cavanaugh too far. That she’s gotten so pissed that she’s decided to skip all that Malum subtlety and art crap and jump right to the ‘unmaking.’ The gloves are off. She knows where we’re at and she’s gonna hit us here… soon and hard.”
Helene’s face paled. “We gotta get ready.”
“Already on it. But we’ll get to that in a bit.” He turned to me. “You say Dillin had something important to tell me. Since he ain’t never gonna get the chance, I’m guessin’ he told you. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I’m not really sure I understand it.”
“Spill,” Tom said. “Then we’ll figure it out together.”
I thought back to those last moments in the restaurant. Trust had come slowly where the Zombie Prince was concerned, a fact that he seemed to take—as he took everything—in stride. But in the end, he’d proved himself a soldier, like me, except more fatalistic, or maybe more realistic.
He’d known he was going to die. He’d accepted it. Embraced it. His only concern had been making the death mean something—dying on his own terms.
Dying well is its own reward.
And, along the way, he’d become my friend.
“There’s this door,” I said.
They all looked at me, confused.
I explained, “The Corpses come to Earth … all of them … through this door they’ve made between their world and ours. Dillin called it the ‘Rift.’”
“That’s been Steve’s theory,” Tom said. “He thinks they got another Anchor Shard.”
“They do,” I told him. “And it’s been hooked up and running for all these years, keeping that door open so that more Corpses can come in.”
“He thinks if we can unplug the shard, it’ll stop the invasion,” the chief remarked.
“It’ll do more than that,” I said.
“So what?” Helene asked. “We don’t know where it is!”
I looked at them both and replied, “I do.”
Chapter 30
GIVING HIM A HAND
“Lilith Cavanaugh’s been taking this slow,” Tom told us. “And she’s played it smart.”
We were in the cafeteria, which was crammed with Undertakers, more than had ever before tried to fit into this crumbling chamber. Kids filled every seat. Kids lined the walls. Kids flooded the aisles. Kids spilled out into the hallway beyond the only door. I’d never seen anything like it.
It was really rare for all of us to be in the same place at the same time.
Tom had pulled a chair to the front of the room and climbed onto it. It was something he’d done before. It helped him to be seen by as many of the kids under his command and protection as possible. Well, seen and heard.
He said loudly, “She’s been plannin’ this for at least a month, scheduling three different police events all around City Hall, all around us, and all for this evening. The media’s been callin’ ‘em ‘urban peace-keeping simulations’ or ‘training exercises.’ The Queen ain’t been settin’ them up herself, of course. Lilith Cavanaugh’s dead as far as the world’s concerned. She jumped out her sixth-floor office window almost two months ago.” He managed a grin. “I know, ‘cause I was there.”
That actually earned him some laughs and applause.
Standing nearby, Helene and I swapped glances. We were thinking the same thing: those were likely to be the last laughs he got today.
I flexed my right hand. It felt good. The Anchor Shard had done its job.
I glanced over at Sharyn. She’d been healed up too, and now stood at her brother’s side—though, from her expression, I could tell that, right now, she wanted to be somewhere else, with someone else.
The only Undertaker who wasn’t here.
The chief continued, “But she’s got cronies positioned in just the right spots in city government, and they’ve been settin’ this up. Just today, she brought in two new Corpses to be co-police chiefs, since the last one got iced by Helene.”
A few more cheers and applause. Helene blushed uncomfortably.
Tom said, “Both these chiefs are somethin’ called ‘Specials,’ a particular breed o’ Malum that’s hardwired for combat. They’re tough. Very tough. But they ain’t unbeatable. Will already managed to waste one, the one called Parker, this afternoon at the Philly Water Works.”
Still more cheers. I ignored them. I hadn’t taken out Parker.
Dillin had.
“But that still leaves Cole, who’s gonna be commandin’ the Malum attack. Undertakers, they’ve gathered up at each of Haven’s entrances … and our best guess puts their numbers at close to fifteen hundred. They’ve already closed ranks and sealed off the exits, trapping us in here.”
No applause this time. No laughter. Just graveyard silence.
“They’ve found us,” the chief said. “It don’t matter how. Cavanaugh’s been biding her time, waitin’ for the right moment to hit us. Well, that moment’s here, ‘cause school just got out. All through the area, the last middle schools’ve shut down for the summer. So every Schooler, more’n seventy of them, are back home. ‘Course, in a week’s time, some of y’all would’ve gone back out, taking up spots in summer camps and such, always on the lookout for more Seers. But for now, for this tiny window, all of us … all of us … are here. And the Queen of the Dead knows it.
“Bottom line, Undertakers. She’s comin’ for us. Tonight.”
I watched the faces, at least as many as I could see. There was fear. Plenty of it. But mixed in with it was courage. And, mixed in with that: a terrible sense of acceptance. We’d all lived with death for so long. Was it really so surprising that, finally, it had literally come knocking at our door?
I spotted my mom. She was huddled in a corner of the cafeteria with my little sister, Emily, in her arms. Em, at six years old, might have been too young to make sense of everything going on around her. But I noticed she was sucking her thumb, something she only ever did when things got bad.
And that little girl knew more than her fair share about bad things.
As often happened, my mom’s gaze found mine and held it. I could see that she was feeling what I was, what we all were. Only in her case, it was maybe worse, since she was a mother with kids to worry about.
We’re not dead, yet, I silently told her.
Tom, reading the crowd, said, “I know that’s the bad news. But, bad as it is, it don’t mean there ain’t no good news. Undertakers, we’re not defenseless. Far from it.”
He held up the Anchor Shard.
The kids who were crammed into the room had been shuffling nervously and murmuring to one another. But all that stopped when they saw the shard. Tom held it high, until the tip of the strange artifact almost touched the ceiling. As usual, it glowed, as if with its own light.
“This came from the Malum world, wherever that’s at,” the chief announced. “Turns out it’s a kind of key. Run enough electricity through it, and this key opens a door ‘tween worlds. The Corpses call that door the Rift, and it’s how they been gettin’ from there to here.
“Seems the Malum got this giant crystal called the Eternity Stone. They use it to find worlds with intelligent life, like ours. Then they chip off a tiny piece of it and make one of these, which they use to punch a hole into that world … and invade. But chipping off an Anchor Shard from the Et
ernity Stone ain’t easy. In fact, somethin’ like ten thousand low-rankin’ Malum gotta die to provide the necessary mojo. But they do it. And once they’re here, they use the shard to keep that hole, that doorway, that Rift, open, so’s they can keep bringin’ more of their people into our world.”
Again, the silence in the room was almost inhuman, as if the chief were addressing a horde of statues.
He said, “But here’s the great secret, one that Will learned just today from someone he came to trust.” He looked down at me and smiled.
I did my best to smile back.
Then he continued, “If we switch off the power to Cavanaugh’s Anchor Shard, then we do more’n just close the Rift. We do more’n just keep more o’ her people from coming into our world. We cut the connection between these invaders and the physical bodies they left behind. And without that constant connection running through a continually open door, the Corpses die.
“All of ‘em!”
The news hit everyone hard. Heck, I’d known it since before going out onto the river and it still hit me hard.
Unplug Cavanaugh’s Anchor Shard and win the war. Unplug Cavanaugh’s Anchor Shard and win the war. Unplug Cavanaugh’s Anchor Shard and win the war.
It kept repeating that way through my mind, like a song you can’t seem to get out of your head.
Today, finally, we knew what to do.
And we knew where to do it.
Tom said, “Here’s how it’s gonna go down. Will was the last of the Schoolers, and now that he’s back, Cavanaugh’s put her people … lots of ‘em … outside every exit to Haven. She thinks we’re trapped, and she’s both wrong and right. Her people are waitin’ for her order to start the attack, and we’re pretty sure that order won’t come before nightfall … at least nine o’clock tonight. The gloves may be off, but that don’t mean she wants to draw too much attention to what she’s doin’. After all, the Corpses may control the cops, but they don’t control the Army or the National Guard, either or both of which might come rollin’ in if it looks like Philly’s turned into a war zone.
