The Undertakers: End of the World (15 page)

I made it.

Standing up precariously, I said a little prayer and jumped over the narrow gap that remained between the canoe and the concrete dock. Not the most graceful leap in the world, but it got me there.

Blowing out a sigh, I thought,
And that was the easy part!

There were fresh footprints left on the dusty floor—three sets of them—and, following them, I discovered yet another rusted sewer ladder that took me up to street level.

There was, of course, a manhole cover. So I pulled out the Hugos, fitting one onto each of my hands, and hit their only control button with my thumbs. Instantly, both gadgets hummed to life, vibrating hard enough to make my palms tingle. As I pressed them to the underside of the cover, I watched it rise smoothly from its mounting, as if it weighed nothing at all.

Nice work, little sister!

I moved the manhole cover aside as quietly as I could and poked my head up.

The city was dark and eerily silent. The rain clouds were still moving east, and drops of water began to pelt me as I dragged myself up onto the street. The intersection of 8th and Market stood empty. No Corpses, which was good news.

But no Undertakers, either. I hadn’t been able to catch up with them.

Not really a surprise. But a dude can hope, right?

I was about three blocks west and one block north of where I needed to be. So, keeping low and darting from deserted storefront to deserted storefront, I made my way toward Chestnut Street.

Chestnut Street was—or had been—a shopping district, lined with stores and restaurants. They were all gone now, most of them burned down to nothing, little more than square wells of thick shadow on both sides of the narrow road.

Peeking around the corner from 8th, I scanned the darkness.

No one.

Then, abruptly,
someone.

A pair of Corpses, early Type Fours by the look of them, were loitering in the middle of Chestnut Street, about halfway between 7th and 8th. It was so dark that I might not have noticed them if they hadn’t been sharing a flashlight. Both were facing away from me and casually chatting, though not in English. Instead, they used Deadspeak, that weird telepathic language that was the
Malum’s
native tongue. I did my best to eavesdrop without being seen, but they weren’t saying anything very interesting.

In real life, unlike on T.V., the good guy rarely overhears exactly what he needs to know. Trust me. I’ve done the research.

These particular deaders seemed to be discussing what it was they most missed about their true
Malum
bodies. Specifically: pooping.

Yeah, I know. Sorry.

Tucked away in the shadowy ruins of what used to be a jewelry store, I waited until I was sure the two of them weren’t going to suddenly turn around. Then, making as little noise as possible, I crept up on them from behind, pulled out the first
Maankh
, and shot the one on the left.

He exploded. No pause. No warning. Just a
whomp
sound as his body turned to ash in a split second. Afterward, for a moment or two, something of what had been inside the vaporized cadaver remained, just a lump of helpless, seething energy. Then it faded into nothing.

No more poops for you, dude.

His buddy whirled on me, his lipless mouth spreading in a vicious sneer as he lunged. His teeth were black, and maggots dripped from between them.

Whatever.

I pulled out a second
Maankh.

He stopped in mid-charge.

“This is what I just used on your friend,” I said. “You saw what happened to him?”

Hesitantly, he nodded, his neck muscles creaking.

“So you know what’ll happen if I shoot
you
with it?”

He nodded again, looking fearful.

“You got a choice,” I told him. “You can answer my questions and walk away. Or you can die right here on this alien world. Which will it be?”

“I. Kill. You. Boy!”

“English!” I snapped. Then I shot the
Maankh
at his right leg.

I wasn’t exactly sure if this would work the way I wanted it to, though the technique had proven effective with Aunt Sally, the saltwater-bolt-shooting crossbow that had, I supposed, been this gadget’s grandmother.

As I’d hoped, the Corpse’s leg disintegrated, pants and all.

With a moan the dead guy toppled over, hitting the street hard enough to shatter the bones in his right arm.

I pulled out a fresh
Maankh.
This time, when I pointed it at his head, he cowered and threw up his only remaining workable hand. “What do you want to know?” he begged.

“Better,” I said. “What time is the attack on Haven, tonight?”

“Midnight!” he exclaimed.

So, Corpse Helene had been telling the truth about that much at least.

“And how do you expect to make it past the saltwater defenses?”

He didn’t reply.

“Need another reminder?” I asked him, bringing the business end of the
Maankh
down until it almost touched his forehead. “I can always find another one of you wormbags and start over. Maybe the next one’ll have more to say.”

He actually yelped in alarm. Like all bullies, Corpses turn into sniveling cowards when cornered. “We have a human agent in Haven who will shut them off for us.”

Sabotage. But had Amy had the chance to do the damage before I’d confronted her?

“Guess what?” I said, “I wasted your mole.”

It really hurt to say that, and having to lend a crapload of bravado to it made the pain even worse.

But it had the desired effect. The Corpse looked genuinely stricken.

“Now,” I said, “you’re gonna tell me about Independence Hall. I wanna know how the place is laid out, how many Corpses are there right now, how I can get in unseen, and where I can find the people and things that are on my shopping list. Tell me the whole truth and I
might
let you live. But the first time I think you’re lying or holding back, I’m gonna waste you and start over again with the next deader. Got it?”

He nodded vigorously. “Got it.”

“Start talking.”

He started talking.

When he was finished, I shot him in the face and walked away as he vaporized.

“That was for Amy,” I muttered.

In my defense, I
did
say “might.”

Independence Hall, where the Declaration of the Independence and the United States Constitution had been signed, sat on Chestnut Street between 5th and 6th. It was a big colonial brick building with a tall steeple, flanked by matching two-story wings. In my day, it had been a major tourist attraction, and getting inside meant buying a ticket and standing in line for a tour.

In the future—
this
future, anyway—the tours were long over. The building still stood, though some of its bricks were missing and its steeple looked like it desperately needed a good coat of paint.

And something told me the dead guys guarding it weren’t selling tickets.

As I watched the place from the shadowed alcove of a marble-fronted store across the street, I gave the radio one more try. But, as Amy had predicted, Maxi Me, Emily, and Steve weren’t responding. When they’d set off, they hadn’t bothered explaining
how
they were going to get into Independence Hall and I hadn’t asked.

Now, I really wished I had.

There was light here, mostly flashlights held by deader patrols. Both the front and back doors were guarded. The front opened onto Chestnut Street and the back onto Independence Square, which occupied the whole city block behind the building.

Scratch a direct assault. There were way too many of them.

That left sneaking. I’m good at sneaking.

According to the gone-but-not-forgotten Corpse I’d just wasted, when they’d built this grand old place, our founding fathers had seen fit to put in a basement.

Sneakers—the
people
, not the shoes—love basements.

Unto the Breach

I started by making my way along 6th Street, staying low and following the western edge of the square. Shadows hid my every step. Behind and to my left, Independence Hall’s steeple towered above the ruined park, its tapered sides looking gray in the gloom.

In my own time—thirty years ago—this square had been heavily treed, with brick pathways and trashcans and dog walkers and squirrels and stuff. Today, it looked like a detonated minefield, the trees nothing but blackened stumps, the green grass replaced with rain-soaked mud.

And Corpses.

I counted at least a dozen of them. They wandered the park, conducting lazy, half-hearted patrols, each carrying a flashlight. Their guard was down, which wasn’t a good sign. A high degree of alert
might
have given me hope that William and the others hadn’t arrived yet, that I’d somehow beaten them here. But all this easy, relaxed behavior made it painfully clear that Corpse Helene’s trap had already been sprung.

The three Undertakers had either been captured or, more likely, killed.

It’s selfish, I know, especially since one of them was my sister and another was
me
, but the first thing I felt was panic. My hopes of getting home might already have been shot. I could be stuck here, at the end of the world.

Come on, Ritter. You need to be better than that.

I slipped across 6th street, hopped up onto the northern edge of the square, and hunkered down behind one of the waist-high burned out tree trunks. A good spot. Here, I was safely out of sight of the patrols. Better still, by peering over the top of the trunk, I could just make out Independence Hall’s West Wing, a squat, two-story building that was attached to the main hall by an arched brick walkway.

I didn’t know what was in that building now. But, back in my time, it’d been a museum of sorts, where some pretty cool documents and other Revolutionary Era stuff had been kept. But I wasn’t interested in the
main
floor.

No, I was interested in the flight of stairs just inside, the one that led down into the basement.

Independence Hall, according to the Corpse I’d interrogated, had a full, original basement that ran from the West Wing, under the hall proper, all the way to the East Wing. Down there, he’d assured me, I’d find the first item on my “shopping” list.

Step One was to get past the deader guards hanging out in the square. There was only one of them directly between the West Wing and me. He stood just twenty feet away, his flashlight pointing at the ground at his feet. By its splash of light, I could tell that the dead dude was simply standing there, as motionless as any statue. They do that sometimes. When a Corpse is bored, their stolen bodies go weirdly still. No foot shuffles. No head scratches. Just—nothing.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t spring into action if I alerted him. And if the Undertakers had radios, it seemed a fair bet that Corpse Helene’s minions would have them too.

So.

I pulled out my pocketknife, William’s pocketknife, built by Future Steve out of mined Ether
and given to me because time is a circle, or a river, or a river with a circle in it.

Skip it. You don’t need the headache.

I pressed the
8
button.

I didn’t feel the electromagnetic pulse that hammered everything around me for a quarter of a mile. The deaders, I knew, wouldn’t feel it either. But any electronics they had on their person were now fried. That meant their radios wouldn’t work. Neither would mine, of course, but I didn’t mind that. It wasn’t like I’d been successfully talking to anyone, anyhow.

It also cooked their flashlights.

Every single light in Independence Square winked out.

Cool.

I pocketed the knife and selected another
Maankh.
After the interrogation on Chestnut Street, I only had seven left, so I needed to use them carefully. Strategically.

From my hiding place, I pointed it at the deader who still stood between me and the West Wing of Independence Hall. From the way his silhouette moved in the darkness, I sensed he was shaking his flashlight, trying to figure out why it had suddenly zonked out on him.

I fired.

The Corpse exploded in a near-silent puff of dust. For a few seconds, his man-size red energy Self lingered. Then it disappeared as well.

And, as far as I could tell, none of the others saw or heard a thing.

Cooler.

The guard’s disintegration had opened up a clear path for me, sort of. Now, I could
see
the door to the West Wing, but there were still too many Corpses nearby, close enough to maybe notice if I ran up and tried to force my way into the museum
.

It was time to get “cute.”

Believe it or not, the dead frighten easily. So I pulled out another
Maankh
and aimed it at the shadowy form of a second Corpse. This one stood a little apart from the rest, like the first guy had. But unlike the first guy, this second dude was as far from Independence Hall as possible, way over by the southeastern corner of the square. I didn’t know what kind of range these little cylinders had, and I sure as heck didn’t want to waste one of them, but this was my best bet of getting inside the West Wing.

Why? Because, while the deader I’d just hosed went unnoticed, I needed this dude’s dusting to be
seen
.

So, holding my arm out stiffly and sighting down from my shoulder, I took aim.

And took aim.

And took aim.

I steadied my heart rate as best I could, a trick Sharyn once taught me.

Then I aimed some more.

And fired.

Dead Guy #2 popped, leaving behind nothing but a pair of dust-covered shoes. An instant later, the two Corpses standing nearest him almost jumped out of their stolen skins. They began looking frantically around, but without working flashlights, they couldn’t see much of anything. Nevertheless, I ducked behind my burned-out stump and waited, my heart rate jumping right back up to where it had been before I’d fired.

If they found me, I was dead.

But, if they
didn’t—

As I’d hoped, the other Corpses guarding the square converged on the area, snarling and talking nervously, both in English and Deadspeak. One pulled out a radio, spoke into it, scowled, shook the thing, and tried again. Then he shrugged at one of his dead buds, who repeated the effort. Within moments, they were all doing it.