by Ty Drago
“So she’ll wait just a few more hours, and then come at us when it’s dark.
“That gives us time … to get ready.”
I checked my watch. It was four forty-five. We had a little over four hours.
The chief went on. “As of now, everybody’s duties get changed. Hackers, you’re gonna leave your computers. Elisha and y’all will be settin’ up defenses at the western entrance. See Chuck Binelli ‘bout that. Sammy, one o’ your Chatters is gonna stay on the police scanners, in case something comes in. The rest report to Burt Moscova, who’s takin’ the lead at the northern entrance. Schoolers, see Katie at the southern entrance. Those three are the captains for however long this fight lasts. Listen to ‘em. They know what to do.
“Alex Bobson and the Monkeys will be supplyin’ the raw materials y’all will need.
“The Brains’ll be settin’ up some special little tricks we got in mind. They’re also workin’ on a brand new weapon that Will brought back today … somethin’ that might give us a bit more of an edge. You’ll get the info on that later from your captains.
“And the Moms, under Nick Rooney, are gonna make sure everybody’s got food and water for the duration. Mrs. Ritter and Amy’ll be on medic duty and might call on some of y’all to help with that, as necessary.
“Meanwhile, my sis is puttin’ together a small team to sneak out of Haven. Their job is gonna be to reach Cavanaugh’s Anchor Shard and unplug it. We just need to hold off the Corpses ‘til then. Everybody clear?”
Everybody was clear.
“Cool,” the chief said. “Then let’s finally end this thing!”
There were cheers. We might all be scared. But we were soldiers.
And soldiers fight.
“I want Will,” Sharyn said as the kids began filing out of the cafeteria.
“I’m coming, too,” said Helene.
“You got your sister to worry over,” Tom told her.
“Julie can help with the wounded. I’m coming.” Then she looked at me as if she expected me to argue.
And smiled when I didn’t.
“Anybody else?” Tom asked his sister.
Sharyn looked from him to me. Then she looked over at Alex Bobson.
The Monkey Boss wasn’t my favorite guy in the world. But he always came through in a pinch.
This felt like a pinch to me.
The boy nodded grimly.
Sharyn said to her brother, “Maybe one more.”
Five minutes later, Sharyn, Helene and I found Dave in the small bedroom he and I shared. He was sitting on his cot, staring at the wall and slowly stroking the healed rounded stump that used to be his right hand. Though his blood had been replenished, thanks to the Anchor Shard, he still looked pale.
I tried to tell myself it was the candlelight.
He looked up as the three of us came in.
“Hey, Hot Dog!” Sharyn said with a forced brightness that didn’t fool anybody.
He didn’t reply.
“Does it hurt?” Helene asked.
The Burgermeister shook his head.
I sat down on the cot across from him. He looked at me. Then he said, “I’m a cripple.”
“No, you’re not!” Helene snapped.
“No way!” Sharyn exclaimed.
“Yeah, you are,” I said.
The girls glared at me like I’d just sprouted horns and a tail.
I ignored them, keeping my eyes on Dave and—more importantly—his eyes on mine. It was a trick I’d learned from Tom. “You lost your hand,” I told him. “It’s gone and it’s not coming back. It sucks, but it happened, and it means your life’s not ever gonna be what it used to be. Your job now is to get right with that … and find a way to keep going.”
His eyes actually welled up. I could count on less than five fingers how many times I’d seen Dave Burger cry. The number was sure as heck a lot smaller than my own.
“I don’t know if I can, Will,” he muttered.
I leaned closer. I didn’t touch him. No supportive hand on the shoulder. He wouldn’t have liked it. “You don’t have to know if you can,” I said. “Not yet. For now, you just gotta believe that I know you can. So does Helene. So does Sharyn.”
His gaze flicked up to the girls, who both nodded gravely. Then it came back to me. After several seconds, he said, “Know what the worst part is? I screwed up again. We’d set up this trap for Parker. Me, Sharyn, and Julie. We heard him trashing the kitchen, looking for you, so I went in there to lure him into the dining room. Then Sharyn was gonna do her thing with the sword. Sweet as you please.”
“Solid plan,” I said.
“Except I let him get the drop on me. If you hadn’t been there, he’d have wasted me.”
“That’s … not quite the way I remember it,” I said.
But he wasn’t listening. “Then, when you got me outta there and we ran into that stinkin’ flying pigeon … I wanted to bat it down, maybe stomp on it. But I blew that, too. And that’s why this happened!” He held up his right stump.
“It happened,” I said evenly. “’Cause you put your hand up to keep that Malite from chewing my face off.”
He didn’t look convinced.
As I watched, he tried to bury his face in his hands. Except he no longer had hands, not two of them anyway, and all he managed to do was poke himself with the stump. His huge shoulders sagged.
Sharyn said, “We’re gonna sneak out and get the Anchor Shard. We’re gonna end the war.”
He didn’t reply.
“And we want you to come with.”
That made him look up in surprise. “Me?”
“Yeah. You.”
“But I can’t fight. I can’t even write my own name!”
Sharyn replied, “Well, maybe I got an idea ‘bout that.”
She motioned to someone in the corridor. After a moment, Alex appeared. The Monkey Boss looked as grim as ever, and in his hands was some kind of bundle, wrapped in an oily cloth. “Hey,” he said to Dave.
“Hey,” Dave said back.
“Sucks about the hand.”
“Thanks,” Dave said.
It was the warmest conversation the two of them had ever had.
Dave nodded at the bundle. “What’s that?”
Alex squeezed past Helene and sat on the bunk beside the Burgermeister. “Sharyn had me put it together. At first, I thought it was nuts, but as I got into it … it turned out to be pretty simple.”
“Show it to him,” Sharyn said.
So Alex placed the bundle in his lap and opened the cloth.
It was a pickaxe.
Or, more accurately, it was the head of a pickaxe. The blades were hard iron, the points sharp. One went one way and one went the other, both slightly curved. It looked a little like a funky letter “T”, maybe eighteen inches across.
Except it had no handle. Instead, there were two thick leather straps and some kind of harness.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Dave asked, scowling.
“Hold your arm out straight,” Alex told him.
The Burgermeister did so, the palm of his left hand facing the floor.
Sharyn sighed. “Your other arm, doofus.”
Without comment, Dave lowered his left arm and raised his right. The stump caught the candlelight. It wasn’t smooth or round, as you might expect, but puckered, almost like the face of a fish.
I’m sorry, Dave.
“Yeah?” he said sourly. “So?”
“Hold still,” Alex remarked. Then, leaning close, he fitted the head of the pickaxe over the stump and ran the leather straps along the Burgermeister’s thick forearm. Next, he fitted the harness just above the elbow and cinched it tight before sitting back to check his work.
Dave looked at it blankly.
Now, instead of a right hand, he had a wicked pickaxe.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” he asked.
Shary
n rolled her eyes. “Pick your nose.”
Helene said, “We’re thinking you should spend a few hours practicing with it. Then you should come with us tonight and see if you can plant it in the foreheads of a few deaders.”
The Burgermeister hefted his new, weird appendage. “Feels a little heavy.”
“A little heavy?” Alex remarked. “I can’t think of anyone else at Haven who could possibly use it!”
“He can,” I said.
“Maybe,” Dave added. Then he said it again, more thoughtfully, this time, “Maybe.”
Was there just the tiniest hint of a smile? No, probably not. You don’t lose a hand and then start smiling a couple hours later. But at least the despair seemed to be gone, for now.
“Thanks,” he said to Alex.
“No sweat,” the Monkey Boss replied. Then, as was his way, he left the room. No goodbyes. No “see you laters.” Sharyn slapped him on the back as he passed, a gesture that he didn’t even seem to notice.
Then she turned back to the Burgermeister. “I found a place for you to do some practicing. But somethin’ tells me you’re gonna take to that like a duck to water.”
Dave considered, holding up the pickaxe and turning it slowly, so that its twin spikes caught the candlelight.
After a few seconds, he remarked, “Well, I guess the right thing to say in this situation would be … ‘Groovy.’”
I think it’s a movie reference.
Chapter 31
VISITOR FROM BEYOND
Lilith
City Hall emptied on weekdays after six o’clock. The nine-to-fivers all went home and the only people left in the mammoth building were janitors, a few security staff, a handful of late workers—
—and the mayor.
He hadn’t been mayor long. His predecessor had resigned under a cloud of scandal, forcing the city to hold a special election to replace their disgraced leader. Originally, the Corpses had slated Kenny Booth to win Philadelphia’s top seat. But that hadn’t happened. Instead, Kenny Booth had exploded on camera, a mystery that the adult human world still hadn’t solved.
And the mayor’s office went to someone else.
A human.
A particularly foolish one.
Lilith Cavanaugh entered the building discreetly, dressed in a pantsuit, dark glasses, and a wide-brimmed hat that covered most of her face. Lilith didn’t like hats. The hair of her hosts fell out quickly enough as it was. But she needed to avoid being recognized.
None of her minions were with her. After all, what did she have to fear, really? The Undertakers were bottled up in their hole deep below this very building, every exit guarded. With them out of the picture, the city was, for all intents and purposes, hers.
Except Parker is destroyed.
Word had reached her only hours ago. Somehow, Dillin and the Ritter boy had managed to defeat a Special. That, by itself, was troubling. But even more disturbing, the Malites that she’d gone to such lengths to bring across the Void were destroyed as well. Her intention had been to use them as the vanguard of the attack on Haven, wedges to break through whatever defenses those whelps had managed to erect.
Now, that advantage was gone.
But I still have Cole. And, more importantly, I have might. We outnumber the Undertakers five to one.
And wars, the Queen knew, were always won by numbers.
Somewhat comforted, she climbed one the building’s sweeping staircases to the second floor.
No one was around. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear the hum of a floor polisher, but otherwise all was quiet.
Lilith walked, her high heels clicking along the tile floor, to Room 215.
Double wooden doors greeted her with the words:
OFFICE OF THE MAYOR
She stepped inside.
“Excuse me,” the woman behind the desk said, crisply and with more than a little indignation. “Can I help you? It’s after hours.”
Her name was Sarah. She was a thirty-something brunette with a healthy, well-maintained body, and she had served as the mayor’s personal assistant since he’d been just a city councilman. In a vague way, Lilith admired that level of loyalty. Each of her own assistants had failed her to some degree, and none had lasted more than a few months.
Or, in some cases, a few hours.
“Hello, Sarah,” she said, shutting the door and removing her hat.
The woman’s eyes went wide. “Ms. Cavanaugh?” she gasped. “But, you—“
That was as far as she got before the Queen pounced on her.
Two minutes later, now wearing Sarah’s healthy, well-maintained cadaver as her new host, Lilith Cavanaugh opened the door to the mayor’s private office.
It was larger than her own had been, and better furnished. Lots of dark wood furniture and high, sunlit windows. The desk looked big enough to land a plane on.
And the owner of that desk currently sat behind it.
“Hello, Frank,” Lilith said.
The mayor looked up from his reading. He was a big man, with impeccably groomed pepper-gray hair crowning a square head set atop a thick neck and broad shoulders. His gut was substantial and his legs short and dense, like tree trunks. On his nose he wore a pair of reading glasses, which he now removed as he slowly rose to his feet.
“Wha …” he began.
“Eloquent as always,” the Queen remarked.
“Lilith?”
“That’s right, Frank.”
He scowled, stood, and came around his desk, stumbled really, since his attention was so fixated on the woman in his doorway that he didn’t watch where he was going. “Lilith?” he said again.
She came a few steps into his office.
“You’re dead,” he told her, coming close.
“Yes, I am,” she replied.
Then she backhanded him.
The blow knocked the mayor completely off his feet, up and then down. His big body hit the carpeted floor like a sack of flour. Groaning, he wiped at a trickle of blood near the corner of his mouth, his eyes wide with shock.
Lilith reached down, grabbed him by his thick upper arm, hauled him to his feet, and threw him into a nearby bookcase.
Unread titles rained down as the mayor once again collapsed in a heap.
“Sarah,” he moaned. “Where’s Sarah?”
She knelt in front of him. “Look at me, Frank.” He looked at her. “You want to know where Sarah is?”
He blinked dully. Didn’t nod. Didn’t shake his head. Two hits and already the fight was out of him. Pathetic.
“She’s right here, Frank,” the Queen told him.
Then she dropped her cover.
Sarah hadn’t been dead long. Only a few minutes, so Lilith supposed the wonderful impact of revealing herself to a human was—somewhat diminished. Still, the mayor gasped in horror, perhaps more from the fact that, to his eyes, one woman had just transformed into another, than from the realization that the transformee was no longer living.
“You find that interesting, Frank?” she asked. “Let me show you something else.”
Straightening, she went through the doorway into the outer office and returned moments later dragging a cadaver—her old host.
“Watch this,” she told the fallen man.
Then she transferred from Sarah back into her old host.
As Sarah’s now empty body collapsed to the floor, the rotting cadaver beside it sat up and grinned at the mayor.
“See me,” Lilith said.
And, this time, the mayor screamed.
Yes. That’s better.
“What are you?” he exclaimed, pulling himself up into a sitting position and scrambling away on his buttocks until his back pressed against the shelving. “What in God’s name, are you?”
The Queen nodded, satisfied.
Standing, she fetched two of the leather guest chairs and set them up in front of the ruined bookcase, one facing the ot
her. Then, ignoring his blubbering, she yanked the mayor off the floor and deposited his butt into one of the chairs. The other she took for herself.
“I am Malum,” she told him conversationally. “A member of a conqueror race. Its absolute ruler, in fact.”
“W—what?”
He was in a terrible state. His tailored suit had been torn in the struggle. His face was bruised, his lip swollen, and his perfect hair a sweaty tangle.
“Now, Frank,” she said. “Try to keep up. I knocked you around a little bit specifically so we could get past the denial part as quickly as possible. I am Malum. I am not of this world. I am alien. Get over it.”
He looked about to protest, maybe say something absurdly human like “You’re crazy!” or “Is this some kind of a joke?” If he did, she would hurt him some more.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he coughed, spit a little blood into his palm, looked at it, and wiped it on his pants. Then he asked, “What do you want?”
“Good. A sensible question,” she told him. “What I want, in a nutshell, is your complete and utter obedience. And since we both know that obedience wouldn’t be forthcoming based on friendship or professional courtesy, I’ve decided to go with fear. You do fear me now, don’t you, Frank?”
He visibly paled. Then he nodded.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” she said, leaning closer, giving him a really good look at her rotting face. “I didn’t catch that.”
“I … fear … you.”
“One more time? This body’s ears aren’t what they once were.” Then, just to drive home the point, she casually tore off her only remaining ear and tossed it into his lap.
For a second, she thought he might faint.
He didn’t. He didn’t even knock away the torn bit of flesh. He just stared at it as if it might catch fire. Then, more loudly: “I fear you!”
“I’m happy to hear it,” the Queen said. “That fear might just keep you alive. However, now I have to ask you for a moment’s patience. I don’t like this old host.”
She looked over at Sarah’s dead body, which still lay on the floor where she’d left it. So strong and fresh, perfect for the evening’s activities.
Lilith transferred back into it. Then, as the mayor watched, trembling and speechless, she stood and yanked her old host—slumped, rotted, and missing both ears—off the chair, dropping it to the carpet.
