The Undertakers: End of the World (6 page)

“Then … about a week later, we did. It turns out he’d died, along with hundreds of others, during a battle that had broken out on Market Street. There were maybe a dozen deaders around him. Tom had a shotgun. It looked like he’d been shooting Corpses in the head … you know, to destroy the brain and trap them in their hosts. But when he was overwhelmed, he … shot himself.”

It felt like a hand was squeezing my heart.

Future Steve added dismally, “He didn’t want the Corpses to … use … his body. So he made sure they couldn’t.”

Practical to the end. That was Tom.

But I’d just
seen
him, only a couple of hours ago, in Haven. My Haven.

Thirty years.

How had it all come to
this
?

I touched Emily’s shoulder—my sister’s shoulder, though I was only beginning to accept the fact that this woman and the little girl I’d left behind in Haven were one and the same. Steve and Amy were proving a little easier, probably because I hadn’t grown up with them—hadn’t helped change their diapers!

“Em?” I asked hesitantly.

“Yes, Will?”

“What about … Helene?”

Her heart-shaped face, already rendered pale by the uneven lamplight, turned almost ghostly white. With a long, measured sigh, she said, “The chief’ll want to tell you about that personally.”

“Is Helene the new chief?” I pressed.

She didn’t answer.

“What about Sharyn? At least tell me if
she’s
still alive.”

Emily nodded, but there was something behind that nod. Something I didn’t like.

“And our mom?”

At that, my sister stopped between steps and took my hand in hers. “Mom and Hugo died together, about a year ago. The Corpses killed them. It was right after we’d all moved into the new Haven. I’m … sorry.”

So was I, though a part of me weirdly dismissed the idea.

In fact, I found myself dismissing a lot of what I’d seen and learned since following Amy through the Rift. This future was just too—
dark
, too utterly different from anything I’d ever imagined. So empty. So bleak. Tom couldn’t be dead. My mother couldn’t be dead. The world couldn’t be dead!

It
couldn’t
.

Finally, we reached a landing at the top of the staircase.

“That’s a tough climb,” I remarked, breathing hard. The rest of them, I noticed with some annoyance, barely seen winded.

“We’re used to it,” Amy said.

Then she went up to a single heavy steel door that looked newer than the surrounding brickwork, and knocked. Instantly, a panel slid aside and a camera lens, like a large dark eye, peered out at her. No one said anything. No passwords were asked for or given. Instead, after a few seconds, the camera lens withdrew and the door clicked.

Amy pushed it open.

“Welcome to Haven, Will,” she said without even a trace of joy or pride.

Beyond the door was a bare room, roughly octagonal and about forty feet wide. The floor looked to be made mostly of concrete and cracked tile—a lot of cracked tile in the future—surrounded by walls of crumbling plaster intermixed with tall, recessed windows, all of which had long ago been bricked up. A narrow elevator shaft occupied the center of the room.

Bare bulbs that hung on wires from the high ceiling offered the only light.

By that light, I saw that there were people here. Dozens of them. Men, women and children in rags, all huddled in small circles. Many were sleeping on old cots or thread-worn blankets. Others ate from cold cans of beans or vegetables, some with bent spoons but most with their fingers. Their eyes were dull with exhaustion and fear. Most of them barely registered us as we stepped in among them.

“Who are they all?” I asked.

“Refugees,” Emily replied. “People we’ve rescued from around the city. There aren’t many survivors in Philly. But those we find we bring back here, give them food and a safe place to sleep. It’s all we can really do at this point.”

“This place,” I said, looking back at the elevator. “It’s … familiar.” Then it dawned on me. “This is the Tower Museum!”

She nodded.

“I’m going up to the lab,” Steve said. “I want to initiate
Maankh
production.”

Amy added, “And I want to check on my patients in the Infirmary. I’m worried we might have another round of typhoid to deal with.”

“Okay,” Emily said. “We’ll ride with you. I’m supposed to take Will straight up the chief.”

I’d ridden the tower elevator before, both as a kid and as an Undertaker. I’d always found the ride slow but interesting, as the old elevator clattered its way up through the empty interior of the huge, cast-iron pinnacle of the tower, past the backside of the four antique clocks that faced each compass point, counting off the minutes and tolling the hour. I wondered vaguely if they still did that.

Probably not.

To my surprise, the interior wasn’t empty anymore. Where once the tiny elevator had been an express from the ninth floor museum to the Observation Deck at the top, this one now made several stops along the way.

“The tower has thirteen floors,” Emily explained as the old elevator car clattered upward. “Back when we were kids, these floors were all empty. Some were even open to the elements. Now, we’ve sealed everything up, partly for warmth and partly for security.”

“Where are you getting the power?” I asked. “I mean, the whole city’s dark. So where’s the electricity for the lights, and for running this elevator, come from?”

It was Steve who answered. “Gas-powered generators. We have ten of them set up, and we’ve scavenged enough gasoline to keep them running, non-stop, for up to two weeks, if necessary. They’re all on the eighteenth floor.”

Emily added, “Each floor in Haven is dedicated to a specific purpose. The lowest floors, the ninth and tenth, are for the caring of refugees.

“And the eleventh,” Amy added, “is the Infirmary. My stop.”

“See you later,” I told her as the elevator clunked to a halt and Amy slid its latticed iron doors aside.

She looked back at me, blond and pretty as always. I expected her to give me that “angelic” smile of hers, the one she’d offered up so many times before when I’d been injured or desperate. But she didn’t. She simply nodded, stepped off the elevator, and disappeared from view.

“My lab’s on the thirteenth floor,” Professor Moscova said. “So I’m next.” Then he turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder. The gesture was very grown-up. I wasn’t sure I liked it. “I know none of this is what you expected, Will. But, for whatever it’s worth, there
is
a plan.”

“What plan?” I asked Emily, once Steve exited the elevator and it was just the two of us, brother and sister, heading up to meet the new chief. “What plan could possibly fix
this
?” After all, the world lay in ruins, Corpses stalked the streets, and mankind had become an endangered species.

She replied after a pause, “The chief will explain.”

We passed eight more floors, each one—as Emily had said—serving a different role: kitchen, armory, sleeping dormitories, storage rooms, mechanics, and so on.

The whole arrangement was very Haven.

We stopped at the second to last floor, number twenty-one, just below the tower’s Observation Deck. Being so close to the top, it was the smallest space yet, just a tapering octagonal area with workstations and computers set up around the central elevator. A number of grown-ups occupied them, manning what looked like old ham radios.

“We call this Command,” said a voice. “Capital ‘C’.”

I turned to my right, honestly expecting to find some older version of Helene standing there. I could almost picture her light brown hair and those amazing hazel eyes, perhaps now wrapped up in a face that had witnessed too much suffering.

It would have been bizarre. But, after everything else, I thought I could have handled it.

But
this
.

It was a man, not a woman. He stood maybe five foot ten and was totally bald. A scar ran from the top of his head all the way down one side of his face, vanishing into a bushy red beard that covered everything below his nose. As his piercing eyes studied me, I could almost feel their energy.

For my part, however, all I could do was stare—open-mouthed.

“Will,” Emily said, trying to be dramatic about it but coming off as simply weary. “Let me introduce the Chief of the Undertakers, William Karl Ritter.”

Talking to Myself

Forget the “Holy Crap Factor.”

What hit me now knocked “holy crap” right out of my vocabulary.

Seriously, I’ll never mention it again.

For a second, I thought I might faint. Yeah, I know that sounds lame. I mean, you guys
know
me. I
don’t
faint. I’ve seen some stuff that would stop most dudes’ hearts cold, and I’ve always stayed on my feet.

But …
this
!

The world seemed to tilt sharply as my knees buckled. Emily immediately stepped up to steady me. I felt her touch, but didn’t register it. My eyes, my attention, the whole of my being, was focused on the man standing six feet away from me, wearing jeans and an old black T-shirt, his hands clasped behind his back.

“I’m okay,” I muttered.

“You might want to sit down,” she said.

“I’m okay,” I insisted, taking a deep breath.

“It’s fine, Em,” the man said in a firm but gentle voice. Very commanding, I thought.
And why not? After all, he’s the Chief of the Undertakers.
“Let him be.”

But Emily stayed beside me anyhow, one hand on my elbow and one on my upper back, as if that would stop me from hitting the floor if all my circuits misfired. “You should have let me warn him,” she said to—I had no idea what to call him!—the chief.

“What could you have possibly said?” he asked patiently. “Whatever you told him would have had this effect, and then he’d only have had to suffer through the same thing again now, face to face. Best to wait and get past it all in one go.”

Emily looked unconvinced, though I kind of saw his point. I’ve always found dread to be worse than shock. And if she, or Amy, or Steve had told me in advance that I was about to meet
myself
as a forty-something adult, I think my brain would have obsessed about it until it shut down like an overworked engine.

This guy was dead right about my reaction.

Well, of course he is.

He’s
…
me.

“I’m okay,” I told my sister and was a little surprised to find that this
third
time I meant it. Taking another slow, deliberate breath, I straightened up, stepped away from her, and looked unflinchingly at the man with the red beard.

For several long seconds, no one said a word.

Finally, the chief smiled and asked, “Em, would you give us a little privacy?”

“Do you really think I should?” she replied. “I mean—”

“I’m okay,” I said for like the fourth time, giving her as confident and reassuring a grin as I could manage.

She looked at our matching smiles and nodded unhappily. “Two of a kind,” I heard her mutter.

Then she stepped back into the elevator and pressed a button. With a loud clatter, the ancient machine carried her down and out of sight.

Around us, I noticed that the men and women manning the computers were all staring. None of them spoke, but they were obviously fascinated.

Must be quite a spectacle.

Like a twisted take on a Disney movie.

Mustering what few brain cells were still firing, I faced Chief William Karl Ritter. But, before I could even begin to find my tongue, he abruptly turned and walked off, heading around the elevator shaft and away from the workstations and their witnesses. For a long moment, I stood rooted where I was, unable to move, barely able to think.

Does he expect me to follow him?

Well, he did mention something about privacy, didn’t he?

So, with some effort, I got my legs working again and I set off after him.

After
me
.

About halfway around, he stopped beside a long table, on which a map of the world had been laid out. Colored pushpins had been stuck into it at various locations. I counted nine of them. One, I noticed, was jabbed into Philadelphia.

Finally, the bearded man faced me.

And waited.

Long seconds passed.

I tried desperately, even frantically, to think of what to say.

Finally, I pointed to the top of my head and asked, “When?”

“In my thirties,” he replied with a laugh, rubbing his bald scalp. “Helene made me shave it. Said I was starting to look like Larry from The Three Stooges.”

“Sounds like something she’d say,” I remarked. Then the implications hit me and I asked, “Helene and you …” I lost my voice, swallowed, and found it again. “Helene and
me
… are still together in our forties?”

He held up his left hand. There was a thin gold band around the third finger. “She never left my side. Not through high school. Not through college. Never.”

His use of the past tense shook me to my core. I stared at the ring and then up at man who wore it. “What … happened … to her?”

“We’ll get to that” he replied after a long, unhappy pause. “For now, you just need to accept that she’s gone. Like our mother and Hugo. Like Dave. Like Tom. Like Chuck and Ian and Tara.”

I asked, “So you … replaced Tom as chief after he died?”

He shook his head. “All I did was come after him. No one could replace him.”

I kind of liked that.

Then he went on. “Of course, for almost thirty years, there
was
no chief. The Undertakers’ job had ended. For a while, there was a lot of media attention, once the truth about the Corpses finally got out. After all, it was a pretty sweet story: a bunch of kids single-handedly saving the world from an invasion that only they knew was happening. Children make the best heroes; everybody thought so.

“But, eventually things quieted down. The Undertakers disbanded and everyone went their separate ways. Oh, some of us stayed in touch. Helene and I saw Tom and Jillian quite a bit. Sharyn less often. The rest … well, we pretty much lost track of them all. I never did find out what happened to Nick or Katie, for example.”