The Undertakers: End of the World (27 page)

“So … what do they do?” Burt asked. “The
Malum
, I mean. Do they open a Rift on their end and then use Anchor Shards to punch holes into other worlds, like Earth?”

I nodded. “Except they don’t have to open a Rift into the Ether. They’re already
in
the Ether.”

Again, they all looked at me.

“Yeah,” I said. “That part threw me for a while, too. But, according to Future Steve, the
Malum
actually live in the Ether. They always have. They’re ‘native’ to it … that was the way he put it.”

“How?” Steve asked. “If the Ether is solid … then how do they live there?”

“They tunnel,” I told him. “For thousands of years before finding the Eternity Stone, the
Malum
lived in dens or warrens that they dug through the stuff between dimensions. And, crammed in together like that, they formed clans that fought each other over space and food.”

“What do they eat?” Tom asked. “What
is
there to eat, where they’re at?”

“Selves,” I replied. “They eat Selves. Each other’s Selves.”

“Ugh,” Burt said, turning a little green. “Cannibals. I wish I could say I was surprised.”

I said, “But then, according to Professor Moscova, they stumbled across the Eternity Stone. At first, they didn’t know what it was. Really, they
still
don’t know. But, eventually, they found out what it could do. They started sacrificing Selves to it, thousands of them, noticing that the crystal got stronger the more lives it … consumed. Then, finally, a long time ago, it started spewing out energy. And the energy opened up a huge Void in the Ether, giving the
Malum
more space than they’d ever had before, even thought they
could
have. It basically made their modern world.”

“How’d he figure all this out?” Steve asked. “My older self.”

So I told them about Enigma.

They listened as I’d listened, first with disbelief, then distrust, and finally a kind of wary acceptance.

“What else did this Fifth Column dude tell the prof?” Tom asked. “Where’s the Eternity Stone now?”

“It guards the
Malum
homeworld,” I replied. “It sits right at the border of that huge open Void where they all live. And it’s big. Bigger than most buildings. But it still floats. According to Enigma, the crystal hovers above the ground. The
Malum
keep feeding it, maintaining it. It’s ancient, powerful, and very, very strong. But, with Enigma’s help, Professor Moscova was able to figure out the … structure … of the thing, and work out a way to destroy it.”

“Almost sounds like magic,” Burt remarked.

“‘Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic,’” Steve quoted.

“Albert Einstein?” Tom asked.

The Brain Boss shook his head. “Arthur C. Clarke. Even so, what this … Professor Moscova … managed to accomplish is
amazing
!”

Burt laughed. “Finally! Somebody who’s smarter than my brother. Too bad it turns out to be
him
!”

Steve, as usual, ignored the jibe. “So, if Ether is the solid matter between dimensions, then it must occupy space. There must be actual distance to travel from one dimension to another, just as there’s distance to travel between planets.”

“Yeah,” I replied, dredging my memory for more details of Professor Moscova’s lecture. “Your future self said to think of Ether as a mountain, with Earth as a ‘village’ on one side and the
Malum
homeworld as a ‘village’ on the other. Eternity Stone energy digs a tunnel between the villages.”

“But how long a tunnel?” Tom asked. “And can you walk it? Or do you gotta … fly or something?”

“The professor never made the actual trip,” I said. “He couldn’t. He didn’t have a full and working Anchor Shard. The best he could do was open tiny Rifts with a Rift Projector powered by a big sliver. But that was enough to let him study the way the tunnel works. And he told me about it. I mean,
all
about it. A big time lecture. It was like being back in school!”

“Sounds like my bro,” Burt said with a grin.

“Shut it,” Steve told him, almost off-handedly. Then to me: “So? What did I … he … I … whatever … find out?”

“That any tunnel created by shard energy is called a Void and that it always runs straight from the Anchor Shard to the Eternity Stone, almost as if the Eternity Stone is calling the smaller piece of it home.”

“More magic,” Tom remarked.

“More
science
,” Steve corrected. “Maybe some sort of natural magnetism.”

I shrugged. “He said the … perceived reality, whatever that means … of the tunnel wasn’t all that long. Maybe no more than half a mile, at least the way we measure stuff like that. But you couldn’t walk it easily because the tunnel’s walls and floor were all ‘scooped out.’ I didn’t quite get that part.”

“Scooped out?” Burt echoed.

Again, I shrugged.

“We’ll find out what it means later,” Tom said. “Go on, Will.”

“But he didn’t think we’d
have
to walk it because he detected a … what’d he call it? … regular power fluctuation. A kind of
something
that moved back and forth along the tunnel, from the Anchor Shard side to the Eternity Stone side. It wasn’t fast, but it seemed to be solid. He even gave it a name: Energy Ferry.”

“A natural means of transport between dimensions,” Steve said, as if such a thing made perfect sense to him. “Something to allow matter and energy to cross from one dimension to the other.”

“That’s nuts!” his brother complained.

“So’s an army of walking, talking cadavers,” Tom pointed out. “But
that
happened. Thing I don’t get is this: If solid stuff … like us …
can
move between the worlds, then why’d the Corpses have to come the way they did, as body-stealing Selves. Why not just bring their real
Malum
bodies?”

I replied, “The professor wasn’t sure. But he
was
sure that we could go safely through the Rift and into the tunnel. He’d done the tests and he knew there was air to breathe. In fact, the way he figured it, every tunnel takes on the atmosphere and temperature of whatever digs it.”

“That part actually makes some sense,” said Steve. “Remember the first time we tried running an electrical charge through the Anchor Shard?” His face fell momentarily. “The day Ian died. I fell through a hole in the floor that the crystal made when it fell off its stool. That hole was our first Rift. I remember my feet dangling through it. I remember air brushing past my legs. I remember that it wasn’t hot or cold, but seemed to be the same temperature as the rest of the Brain Factory. I even remember it having gravity, since my feet felt like they were being pulled in a particular direction. Whatever this tunnel is, it has a ‘down,’ just like Earth does.”

“My head hurts again,” his brother groaned.

“But as for
how
it works,” Steve went on. “I don’t have a clue. And, even if … somehow … there’s air and gravity in the tunnel, what about the environment on the
Malum
homeworld?”

“Your future self wasn’t sure about that either,” I replied. “He said that, as far as he could tell, their end of the Void was a lot different than ours. But he thought the same rules would apply there as in the tunnel.”

“‘He …thought,’” Burt echoed. “So we might get there and suffocate?”

Steve went quiet.

We all did.

Finally, Tom said, “Sounds to me like we gotta just do it and see what’s what.”

The Brain Boss nodded. “Except we can’t do it here, in Haven. We need at least fifty feet to open a Rift big enough to let people through. Not even the Factory’s got room for that.”

“Straight up,” the chief agreed. “But I got an idea. Y’all might even like it.”

“Like it?” I asked.

He nodded, a sly grin on his face. “Yeah. It’ll be like goin’ home!”

Past and Future

Tom and I met with Ramirez in the Infirmary, where Amy was busily collecting the medical supplies that we’d bring to wherever it was the chief had decided to open the Rift.

The FBI Guy was on his cell phone when we came in, apparently arguing with somebody. Finally, he ended the call and rubbed at the back of his neck, looking as if he’d just tasted something sour. “That was the on-site SAIC,” he said.

“SAIC?” I asked.

“Special Agent in Charge. She’s the one the Bureau picked to head the investigation into all the sudden ‘deaths’ around the city.”

The deaths he referred to were actually the abandoned bodies of Corpses—thousands of them—that all just suddenly collapsed when the monsters inhabiting them were destroyed. To the grown-up world, those without the Sight, these “living and breathing people” had just all dropped dead at once. More than that: They’d all dropped dead and
decomposed
at once, turning into week or even month-old cadavers.

To say the event had freaked everyone out was the understatement of the year.

I had to keep reminding myself that, so far, the world didn’t know anything about what the Future Undertakers called the First Corpse War. They didn’t know it had happened, or that it had been won. All they knew was that they suddenly had tons of inexplicable, “instant” dead bodies on their hands, with the biggest number of them being right here—piled up outside all three of Haven’s main entrances.

Eventually, the truth
would
come out. But, for now, the whole thing was a scary mystery. And most adults had only one way of dealing with a scary mystery. They’d surround it, analyze it, and try to squeeze it into their narrow, grown-up view of the world.

“What’s the deal?” Tom asked the man. “What do the authorities
think
happened?”

Ramirez replied, “The working theory right now is that some kind of biological contagion was, or maybe
is
at work. Some terrorist thing that turns people into rotting dead bodies in a single second.”

“They’re gropin’ for a ‘rational explanation,’” Tom said. “And I can’t blame ‘em. They ain’t got Eyes.”

“True enough. Right now they’ve managed to determine that the epicenter … the source of the ‘event’ … was down at Fort Mifflin.”

And this was completely right. That was where the Burgermeister had pulled the plug on the Anchor Shard. Apparently, the effects of the Rift closing spread out from there, until every single Corpse on Earth was destroyed.

The FBI Guy went on. “Thing is, the largest concentration of the ‘infected dead,’ as the SAIC calls them, is right
here
… in and around City Hall. The remains of Cavanaugh’s attack.”

“Why ain’t the SAIC sent her people in here yet?” Tom asked.

Ramirez replied, “I’ve managed to convince her to delay sending agents down into the sub-basement to investigate. For obvious reasons, I don’t call it ‘Haven.’ I told her it’s a confined space and that the ‘contagion’ might still be active. So she’s agreed to hold off until a Hazardous Materials team can be brought in from the Center for Disease Control down in Atlanta. I sold the idea to her by pointing out that there’s no real hurry, since there’s no reason to think there are any survivors down here. Just dead bodies. They don’t even know
I’m
on site. As far as the outside world is concerned, this place is empty of life.”

“Smart,” Tom told him.

“One thing working with the Undertakers teaches you is how to think on your feet,” Ramirez replied. “City Hall above us, and everything for two blocks around, has been declared a quarantine zone. It’s already being evacuated and, within the hour, barriers will have been set up to prevent anyone and anything from entering or exiting the area. But there
are
still a few holes in the net. I mean, I could get the rest of you out of here, if we do it quickly. But pretty soon, those holes will close. I’m just glad we were able to evacuate most of the Undertakers a couple of hours ago, before the Bureau arrived in force.”

True enough. The first thing Tom and Sharyn had done after our Infirmary meeting was get ninety percent of the Undertakers out of their beds and into a bunch of buses that Ramirez had chartered. Then they were all carted to a series of hotels and put up for the night on the Undertakers’ dime.

In a few hours, when the grown-up workday started, Ramirez said he would call Philly’s Department of Human Services and start the process of contacting everyone’s parents. Katie. Nick. Ethan. Maria. Harleen, Sammy, Elisha, and most of the other three-hundred-plus Undertakers would be going home.

I had no idea what kind of story the FBI Guy had concocted to explain where these kids had been and what they’d been doing in the months, sometimes
years
, since they’d disappeared from their families.

But I guessed it would have something to do with Senator Mitchum’s big announcement later today.

So much of it’s over now. Out of our hands.

Just this one thing left.

The only ones who’d stayed behind in Haven were what Tom called the “Core,” though I suspected this was only because those particular kids happened to have been in the Infirmary when I told my story. Eight Undertakers—nine, if you counted my mom. And ten, if you added in Emily, my six-year-old little sister.

Ramirez said, “The bottom line is that the authorities will take it slow. They’ll stay out for a while, Tom. But no more than half a day. If you’re really going to do this thing, you need to leave soon.”

“I know,” the chief replied. Then he turned to me. “We split in a half-hour. Is there anything you gotta do before that?”

“My mom,” I said.

He nodded. “Go do it. I’m gonna gather the rest. Meet back here in twenty minutes.”

“Okay,” I told him.

Right.

Like
anything
was “okay.”

I headed over to my family’s room like a guy walking to the gas chamber. Inside, I found Emily asleep on her cot, looking small and helpless. Weirdly, a part of me had expected to see the
other
Emily, the older one, the one I’d gotten to know in a world that—if we did our job—would never happen. Seeing my little sister still
little
was stranger than you might imagine.