by Ty Drago
“That’s solid,” Tom said dryly.
“Actually, it is. Especially when one considers the alternative. Defy me and I will give orders that every boy and girl in this rathole be slowly broken, torn apart piece by piece, screaming and in agony. Is that what you want?”
Tom didn’t reply.
“You’ve fought a good fight. Better than any we’ve ever encountered. I have nothing but respect for the Undertakers. But the time has come for this charade to end. You don’t have a chance. You never really did. I offer you an honorable, dignified death. I suggest you choose it over the slaughter that’s coming.”
Tom looked at Susan. She was crying, but she didn’t say a word. He turned next to Julie and Amy, who watched from another part of the Infirmary, their faces masks of barely contained terror.
And finally he looked at Emily. Little Emily Ritter.
Who pretended to be asleep.
“Why?” he said into the microphone.
“What?”
“Why be so generous?” he asked thoughtfully. “You dudes live to cause suffering. Why offer us an easy way out?”
“You ask too many questions, boy,” Cole growled. “Just take the deal!”
Tom stared at the image on the monitor for a few more seconds. Then he raised the microphone to his lips and said, “I’ll get back to you on that.”
And clicked off.
“What’s going on?” Susan asked.
“He knows,” Tom said, feeling ice water in his veins.
“Knows what?”
“About the Angels at Fort Mifflin.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “How?”
“Not sure. But he’s offering to kill us quick and painless because he’s worried about what might happen if we keep him and his peeps out for too long. Someone tipped him off. And if he knows …”
He snatched up one of the sat phones and dialed.
After a few rings, Sharyn said, “Jeez, bro … remember the whole ‘Only call if you gotta’ speech?”
“Cavanaugh knows you’re there,” Tom said. “It don’t matter how, but she does.” For a long moment, he hesitated, almost telling his sister to run, to take Will and the rest and disappear. Maybe it would be better if those four survived, even if it meant the rest of them died.
But then he looked again at Emily, sweet fake-sleeping Emily, and thought, Sharyn’d never go along with it anyhow.
So he said, “Whatever you’re gonna do, do it now!”
On the monitor, Cole growled at the nearest of his hesitant underlings, ordering him to advance. When the deader, a Type Four, hesitated, Cole seized him by the arms and ripped him apart.
The act was so abrupt and so savage that Susan, who’d been watching, had to turn away in horror.
But Tom didn’t. He just kept watching.
The effect on the other Corpses was slow but certain.
They moved.
“Time’s up, boy!” the Corpse commander roared, looking once again into the camera, his stolen face twisted with hatred and splattered with blood and gore. “We’re coming for you all!”
Chapter 41
THE IDEA MACHINE
“We could blow up their rides out in the lot,” Sharyn suggested. “Distract ‘em.”
“We’ve done that before,” Helene said glumly. “They wouldn’t fall for it twice.”
“We could cut the power to the stadium lights,” Sharyn said. “Sneak past ‘em in the dark.”
“Done that too,” I said.
“Okay … maybe one of us could run through the fort, draw ‘em away from the East Magazine.” Then, reading our expressions, she added, “Done that too, huh?
“Twice,” Dave replied.
“We’re outta moves,” Helene said miserably.
We all huddled behind the Artillery Shed, the building nearest to the place where we’d cleared the ramparts. It wasn’t far from the spot where, six months and about a lifetime ago, Helene, Dave, and I had listened to Kenny Booth rally his own dead troops.
Like I said: a bad night.
But maybe not as bad as this one.
“No, we’re not,” the Burgermeister said.
“Not what?” Sharyn asked.
“Outta moves. We just gotta make up a new one.”
Then, to my horror, they all looked at me.
“What?” I exclaimed.
“Man with the plan, little bro,” said Sharyn. She tried to be light about it, but the desperation was plain in her eyes.
“Dude, we need your magic,” the Burgermeister added. I noticed that he sidled close to Sharyn, not quite touching her.
Helene said nothing.
I slid down the Artillery Shed wall until I crouched on my haunches in the grass.
This. Was. Not. Fair!
“You can’t put this on me,” I told them all in a harsh whisper. “I’m no genius! I’ve got nothing. You hear me? Nothing!”
We had twenty Corpses between us and the Anchor Shard. It was only a few dozen yards away. Yet, it might as well have been on the other side of the planet. No way were we getting to the crystal, at least not in time.
Suddenly, it felt like everything that had happened, all my stupid risks, last-minute rescues, and crazy half-baked schemes, had been for nothing. For here we were, standing on the precipice, and with no way to forge the gap.
We’d need an army to cross the fort and reach the East Magazine in time.
Or a tank.
Or if not a tank, then at least—
My mind came to a screeching halt.
I remember thinking, Crap. If this works, they’ll never stop talking about it.
Slowly, wearily, I stood up. The three of them were still looking at me expectantly, as if my collapse and outburst had, in their eyes, simply been part of the inspirational process. Just another cog in the Idea Machine.
And the worst part?
Maybe they were right.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we’ll do.”
It took ten minutes—minutes we couldn’t spare—to drop back down off the rampart and follow the outer wall of the fort counter-clockwise. The route was risky; it would be so easy to get spotted by one of the deaders patrolling the ramparts, but we didn’t dare risk the time to re-navigate the marshes.
We made it.
Ahead lay one of only two ways into Mifflin, an arched brick tunnel built through the ramparts called the East Entrance. Straight across from it, a wooden bridge spanned the moat—yeah, it’s got a moat, and a pretty one. From there, an access road led north to the employee parking lot.
That’s what we were after.
“Look for SUVs or pickup trucks,” I said. “Something with four-wheel drive. Not too big, though … the bridge and tunnel are pretty narrow.”
The parking lot stood dark and deserted, the only light coming from the fort. Maybe a dozen cars were in evidence—apparently some of the deaders had either walked or carpooled.
Sharyn and Helene picked a black Ford Escape, a smaller SUV. The Burgermeister and I climbed into a red Toyota Tacoma, a medium-sized pickup.
As part of my Angels training, I’d learned how to hotwire a car. I won’t bore with you with the specifics. Suffice it to say that I used my pocketknife blade to pop the steering column. Then I found the right wires, stripped them, and touched them to each other in just the right way.
Nearby, in the SUV, Helene was doing the same with a small combat knife she liked to carry.
“If this works,” Dave said from the passenger seat as I worked, “they’ll never stop talking about it!”
“I know,” I groaned.
The Tacoma’s engine started.
We took it slow at first. While both Helene and I had learned how to drive, neither of us was what you’d call an expert. So we maneuvered our way out of the parking lot and down the access road to the bridge, our Tacoma in the front, their Escape behind us.
The engines sounded loud, way louder than I’d counted on. It worried me. Surprise was important. We wouldn’t get a second shot at this.
The bridge creaked and moaned as I carefully eased the Tacoma across it. For a second, I thought I heard the wooden boards cracking under the truck’s weight. But I kept going, and we made it to the other side.
As we slowly approached Mifflin’s East Entrance, I checked the rearview mirror, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw Sharyn and Helene clear the bridge as well.
So far, so good.
Now … if we can just fit through the tunnel.
We did, barely. In fact, there at the end, it sounded like the paint job at the top corners of the truck’s cab got scraped down to the metal by jutting bricks.
But then we were through.
I hit the brakes and killed the engine. Then I waited until, behind us, Sharyn and Helene did the same.
I pulled out my pocketknife, letting my thumb hover over the 8 button.
My pocketknife has a special tool that you won’t find in the Boy Scout’s catalog. It’s able to fire off an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP for short. This burst of energy basically fries every working electronic device within its range.
It would kill the lights, no doubt about it.
“You sure it won’t kill these cars, too?” Dave asked.
“Pretty sure,” I replied. Steve had once told me that EMPs couldn’t fry electronics that weren’t actually turned on. This meant that, as long as our stolen cars weren’t running, they wouldn’t be affected.
At least, I hoped that was what it meant.
“Do it,” Dave said.
I hit the 8 button.
The lights went out, throwing the entire fort into sudden, perfect darkness.
Then I reached under the steering column and tapped the battery, ignition, and starter wires again.
The moment of truth, I thought.
The truck’s engine roared back to life.
“Yes!” the Burgermeister declared, pumping the air with his remaining fist.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. Then I slammed us into drive, flipped on the headlights, and stamped down on the accelerator. The Tacoma leaped out of the tunnel and onto the grounds of Fort Mifflin.
“Okay!” Dave exclaimed, rolling his window all the way down and sticking his right arm, with its pickaxe, out into open air. “Let the Deader Demolition Derby begin!”
Now you know why I drove.
Chapter 42
PARTY FAVORS
Tom
The northern sentry room filled up as twenty or so Corpses crowded in and went to work on the reinforced door at the far end. They hammered at it, snarling and snapping like a pack of dogs.
Tom watched them for a few moments. Then he called Chuck and said, “Let ‘em have it.”
Chuck let ‘em have it.
The nozzles that had been mounted in the sentry room’s ceiling opened up, raining liquid down on the heads of the dead. At first, the Corpses didn’t seem to notice the spray. Then, gradually, a few did, turning their stolen eyes upward. They seemed confused, as if they’d expected saltwater and were surprised that it wasn’t working on them.
No, not saltwater. At least, not yet.
Tom said into the sat phone, “Light ‘em up.”
Chuck lit ‘em up.
The electrical wire that he’d run into the sentry room fed into a small square box mounted near the floor. The box was Steve’s brainchild, and it did just one, very simple thing.
It generated a spark.
The gasoline that rained down from the ceiling erupted into flame, engulfing every Corpse in the hallway and at least a dozen more in the parking lot beyond the open door. Tom watched as the creatures moaned in panic, throwing themselves against the walls and each other as the flames consumed their stolen bodies.
Within seconds, half of them were incinerated to the point where they could no longer stand. Seconds after that, the hallway floor was littered with twitching, fiery bodies.
And seconds after that, the dark energy started appearing.
Fascinated, Tom saw indistinct, man-sized shapes emerge from disintegrating bodies that could no longer protect them. These figures had no physical form—the Malums’ Selves, the part of them that had crossed the Rift.
Fear and hatred radiated from them as, one by one, each of them died.
The hallway went quiet.
“Cool!” Chuck exclaimed over the phone.
***
In the subway spur, three hundred Corpses, Cole included, rushed for the door to Haven’s southern entrance. As they neared it, Tom lifted the sat phone and dialed Jillian.
“Step One,” he told her.
On the monitor, the Corpses hesitated a second time as four small sections of the wall on either side of Haven’s southern entrance popped open. The newly revealed gaps were only nine inches square, just wide enough to let the business end of four air cannons emerge.
Air cannons were actually easy to get. Stadiums used them all over the country to launch T-shirts and other soft, harmless projectiles into gimmick-hungry crowds. Powered by compressed air, they could shoot hundreds of feet.
But, for their purposes, the Undertakers only needed dozens of feet.
The first cannon fired, not with a boom but more of thwump, its load overshooting the stolen heads of hundreds of deaders before smashing into the ceiling of the spur. There the projectile burst in an expanding cloud of falling crystals.
Salt crystals.
The second cannon fired. Then the third.
Each projectile weighed less than three pounds, but its packaging had been constructed to send the salt in a hundred different directions on impact.
The fourth cannon fired. Then the first fired its second volley.
From somewhere within the horde of snarling, moaning dead, Tom heard Cole’s voice. “Forward! Attack now! Quickly!
As the cannons continued to fire, and as more and more salt peppered—pun intended—the faces and shoulders of every deader in the subway spur, Tom raised another sat phone to his lips.
This time, he was talking to Hugo Ramirez. “Step Two, Hugo.”
“My pleasure,” the agent replied.
There came a rumble from the ceiling above the spur.
Ramirez had planted a small explosive charge in the sewer system just above the subway tunnel. Nothing disastrous—all it did was rupture the right pipe.
The ceiling collapsed as toilet water, lots of it, spilled down.
The Corpses flew into a panic.
The cannons kept firing, this time lower, their contents slamming into heads of fleeing dead people and bursting all over adjacent dead people. Meanwhile, Cole’s voice roared over the general chaos. “Attack! You cowards! Attack!”
But even as he said this, the sewage and the salt mixed, and more and more of his soldiers fell. At first they convulsed, writhing in the mud. Then, as the mud thickened and the exposure to saltwater increased, their control over their stolen nervous systems collapsed completely.
Not dead. Just trapped.
I’ll take it, Tom thought.
***
Meanwhile, at the northern entrance, where the narrow corridor led from the sewer door right to Haven’s threshold, Corpses were crowding through single file. They didn’t seem to appreciate the deafening heavy metal music being piped in all around them.
Then again, it wasn’t for their entertainment.
A dozen deaders filled the confined space. Then two dozen.
Enough.
Tom picked up the third phone and dialed. “Burt,” he said. “Do it.”
“You got it, Chief.”
Mounted high in the shadows at the top of the long corridor were dozens of cages, the noise coming from within them drowned out by the roaring music. At the press of a button, these cages popped open and their contents tumbled down onto the unsuspecting dead.
>
Cats.
Since moving into Haven, the Undertakers had been dealing with the cat problem. A century ago, in an effort to fight the rat infestation in City Hall’s cellars, cats had been introduced. But they’d done more than just clear out the rats—they’d replaced them. Now, after generations born without daylight or human contact, these animals were feral and, when cornered, very aggressive.
Since moving in, the Monkeys had set up humane traps to capture these noisy, dangerous pests. The original policy had been to release them somewhere away from people. Then, about a month ago, Tom had instituted a new policy.
Now, they trapped and kept them.
The creatures that rained onto the heads of the Corpses bore little resemblance to “kitties.” They were scrawny, muscular, bad-tempered biting and clawing machines.
The loud music didn’t help matters.
Their captivity hadn’t helped either.
Neither did the fact that the corridor stank of rotting flesh.
These cats loved rotting flesh.
The chaos caused by angry, hungry cats shredding the faces of the startled dead was perhaps the most satisfying of all the party favors. While they could feel no pain, the Malum nevertheless recoiled in terror as their eyes were torn out by creatures that seemed to be everywhere at once.
Then, in the midst of such chaos, Burt killed the lights.
***
Tom said into all three phones, “Solid work, everyone. Get ready for the next wave.”
Susan Ritter was at his side again. “Think they’ll give up?”
He looked at her. “Do you?”
Before she could answer, another voice sounded through one of the monitor’s speakers.
“Chief Jefferson …”
Cole.
Tom studied the image of the Corpse commander, who stood amongst his fallen peeps. Around him the air cannons had gone silent, the rainfall of filthy water having dropped to a trickle.
