by Ty Drago
And Helene had been right—it was better than running.
“I’m really sorry, Doug,” she said again. Then she pulled out her own Ripstick as we dashed out the door.
“Let’s do this,” she told me.
We kicked off and hit our boards, jumping the curb and slipping into the “parade” of deaders. They barely noticed us and, as long as we didn’t show that we could See them, that would continue. These dead guys were on a mission—all of them—to hunt down one girl in a blue blazer.
I didn’t want to think about what would happen if we didn’t find her first.
We headed east, following the flow of the deader hoard. Helene led the way, weaving in and out amid the uneven parade of Corpses, calling out shouts of “Coming through!” and “’Scuse us!”
I followed her, wheel for wheel, shifting my body weight just enough to skirt around the next obstacle. The smell was horrific! These dead dudes were at all levels of decomposition: mostly Type Twos, Threes, and Fours, but with a few Fives mixed in as well. Fives are way far gone, so dry and brittle that they can barely walk. The entities inside these stolen bodies, the Malum, are always looking for fresh cadavers to inhabit. But there’s a caste system with Corpses, and lower classes lose dibs on the better host bodies.
I didn’t see any Type Ones at all and, despite the situation, that made me smile—because I knew why.
At 6th Street, the hoard split, with some turning north toward Market Street and some south, toward the stadiums. The majority kept going straight and so we did too, hoping—praying even—that the girl in the blue blazer was still running along South Street.
Not that we didn’t have our own problems; if this deader mob wised to us, we’d be torn apart in seconds. As we continued along the next block, I had to keep damping down my heebie-jeebies.
But at least we were gaining ground.
We passed Cheesesteaktees, a Philly memorabilia shop, Olympia Sports, Game Stop, and Lady Love, a lingerie place my mother would never let me set foot into. All the while, people—regular, living people—paused in their Saturday morning shopping to gape at the inexplicable river of single-minded men and women rushing past them.
Without the Sight, the whole thing must have looked as if someone had spotted Elvis at Unica Footwear!
When a particularly huge Type Two loomed in front of me, I crouched down at the last second and rolled right between his tree trunk–sized legs. He was a giant, six-foot-six six at least, and host cadavers that big were hard to come by. Curious, I risked a glance upward and crossed my eyes.
My heebie-jeebies throttled up into full-blown panic.
Oh no…
I knew this particular dead guy. I’d fought him just a few months back. If fact, I’d driven a sword through his skull while he’d been trying to choke Helene.
Small world.
Corpses tend to have expressionless eyes that don’t give much away and this dude was no exception. But his Mask told me volumes. He recognized me, too.
Before he could make a grab for me, or even yell a warning, I straightened up and called out, “What is this? Some kind of ‘Occupy Philly’ thing? Where’re all you dudes going?”
“Shut up, kid!” This came from a nearby Type Five, his dry skin the color of parchment and his eyes so sunken that they were hard to spot. With his every step, I could hear the crunch of old tendons and when he talked, his jaw sagged to one side. Shiny, black beetles bumbled out from between his teeth. He was a mess.
He was also shuffling along right in front of the giant.
Faking a wobble on my skateboard and sudden alarm, I cried, “Watch it dude!” Then I put my hand on the Type Five’s fragile shoulder, as if scrambling for support. A shove was all it took. He toppled over, hitting the curb with a loud crunch that only a Seer would have heard. Then his head snapped off, tumbling across the sidewalk.
I moment later, as I rolled clear, Dead Giant Guy tripped over Headless Gutter Dude and crashed thunderously to the street.
I called back, “Sorry, man!” Then I scanned the mob for reactions.
There were none. All of them—except the fallen giant, of course—had bought it. For now.
Believe it or not, I hadn’t killed Headless Gutter Guy. Killing deaders isn’t that easy. All I’d done was “break” his stolen body. The Malum inside the decapitated cadaver would be trapped, immobile, until one of his buds decided to help him Transfer to a new host.
Dead Giant Guy, however, was nowhere near immobile. In fact, he was already on his feet—and seriously pissed.
Except he didn’t raise the alarm—not in English and not in Deadspeak, the weird, telepathic language that Corpses sometimes use. For a moment, I didn’t understand his silence. Then I did. I’d humiliated him the last time we’d met. This was his chance for payback.
Great.
The hoard crossed 5th Street, still headed east. Helene was abreast of me now, several yards to my right, skirting the curb. Fortunately, we’d cleared the frontline of this “reverse 23” search party—and ahead of us lay a city block’s worth of nice, empty South Street.
I could hear heavy footfalls on the pavement behind me, the giant in pursuit. But I wasn’t worried. With open space in front of me, the Black Eyed Peas and I could outdistance a jogging dead man.
Ahead I spotted Blue Blazer Girl sprinting down the center line. She was tall, with black hair tied into a neat ponytail. Her jacket looked like thin polyester, not great for a chilly Saturday morning. I couldn’t help but wonder where she’d come from and why she was dressed like a hotel maître d’.
I’d have to ask her once we caught up.
Then, just as Helene and I got ahead of the hoard, a second wave of Corpses spilled in from both ends of 4th Street. Dozens of them. They flooded the intersection like an incoming tide, blocking the way ahead.
Blue Blazer Girl was boxed in. And so were we.
A Number 23.
I heard Helene curse
Ahead, the girl stopped in her tracks, with the eastern wall of Corpses thirty feet away from her. I glanced over my shoulder. The western edge of the deader mob had stopped, too. Hundreds of pairs of seemingly sightless eyes fixed on the girl.
Only now, they were fixed on us, too.
Deaders aren’t stupid. A couple of skateboarding kids being rude on South Street was a tolerable annoyance. But this new turn of events smacked too much of Undertaker.
We’d been made.
Then, as if to drive the point home, Dead Giant Guy pushed his way through the ranks. His head was watermelon-sized and just about as hairless. His skin was blackish-gray and his teeth, when he smiled, were the color of rotten eggs.
He waved at me.
“Oh crap,” I muttered. Then, as I braked my board, I did something I’d really hoped I wouldn’t have to do. I started talking into my wrist.
“Haven? This is…um…” No mission name. “…Will.”
There was a long pause. Not a lot happened with the Undertakers on Saturday mornings. We are kids, after all, and most of our fighting is done at night.
At last, an almost absurdly deep voice said, “Will?”
“Hi, Dan.”
Dan McDevitt was a Chatter, one of the crew that managed communications with Undertakers who were out on one mission or another.
“You on mission?” his baritone asked. “I don’t have a profile.”
I glanced around. Helene was watching me. The Corpses were watching me. The girl in the blazer stood statue still, about a hundred feet away—probably frozen with terror.
“Not exactly,” I said. “Listen, Helene and I are on South Street, between 4th and 5th. We’ve pegged a Seer, but there are deaders on us.”
“Jeez. Okay, I’ll wake Sharyn. How many deaders are we looking at?”
My gaze bounced between our crowded flanks.
“Um … kinda looks like all of them.”
“We’re on our own,” I told Helene.
“I figured,” she said.
Then she kicked off and rolled down the street toward the Seer. After a moment’s hesitation, I followed her.
Blue Blazer Girl didn’t even glance our way until we stopped beside her. Her attention was fixed on the wall of Corpses filling 4th Street. They’d started marching toward us, murder and triumph in their collective, ghoulish expression.
“Hi,” Helene said.
The girl turned. She was older than I’d thought—maybe sixteen—with brown eyes and delicate, pretty features. She wore blue trousers, a white dress shirt, and of course the blue blazer, which I now saw sported an official-looking pin that I didn’t recognize.
But there wasn’t time for intros. So instead I recited the Terminator-esque line that Helene had used on me the first day I’d gotten my Eyes. “Listen … I know you’re scared, but if you don’t want to die, then come with —”
That was as far as I got.
“You Undertakers?” she asked.
Helene and I swapped looks. “Yeah,” I said.
“Great!” Blue Blazer Girl exclaimed. “Try to keep up!”
Then she turned left and bolted down South Leithgow Street.
Now Leithgow isn’t a “street,” but more of an alley running between Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Beyond the Wall, a poster and art store. The road is narrow and flanked by three-story buildings. Cars can squeeze through it, but only barely.
Maybe the girl in the blazer was hoping the Corpses had somehow missed that potential escape route. But I knew better.
“Wait!” I called, but she ignored me.
Helene cursed again. Then the two of us kicked off after her while, on both of our flanks, the walls of Corpses surged forward. Every deader in town was chasing us, and we were running into what was basically a canyon between man-made cliff faces.
Seriously stupid!
Ahead, Blue Blazer Girl picked up speed. She was fast, and that gave me a flicker of hope. If the three of us could squeak through before—
Then more Corpses appeared at the far end of the block, spilling into the narrow street like sand pouring into a funnel.
We’re dead.
Seeing them, Blue Blazer Girl changed direction, making a beeline for a head-high brick platform that stood against the right-hand wall, supporting an air conditioner. Bounding upward, she caught the platform’s edge with the tip of her left shoe.
But instead of climbing atop the air conditioner, her right foot connected with the appliance’s thin, metal surface just long enough to redistribute her body weight—backward. Then, before our eyes, she executed this crazy leap, riding her own momentum through a long arc that carried her clear to the other side of the narrow street.
At the last moment, she somehow twisted in mid-air and grabbed a protruding window box that formed part of the opposite building, latching onto it with her hands and the balls of her feet. There she hung for a half second before launching upward again—this time from the top of the lower window to the ledge of the upper.
Bending her knees like coiled springs, she kicked up and back, vaulting across the street a second time and somehow catching the lip of the roof with one hand. Then, again using her own momentum, she swung up and over the rooftop, disappearing from sight.
Helene and I stood frozen, our mouths hanging open.
Ahead and behind us, the hoard stood frozen, their mouths hanging open, too.
Then Blue Blazer Girl’s face appeared over the edge of the roof. “Come on!”
“She’s freakin’ Spider-man,” I said.
“Sorry, Doug,” Helene muttered.
We abandoned our boards, running to the brick platform and scrambling up onto the air conditioner. There we stood, maybe seven feet off the ground, looking helplessly up at the building’s smooth brick wall and distant roof.
Footsteps flooded the street. The Corpses were moving in.
And we had no place to go.
Overhead, the girl sounded exasperated. “Hasn’t Tom taught you anything?” This unexpected reference to our chief, Tom Jefferson, staggered me. But we didn’t have time to figure it out before she called down, “The drainpipe!”
We looked to our left. A thick, black drainpipe was mounted vertically along the wall beside the air conditioner.
Helene looked at me. I looked at her.
“You first,” I said. She didn’t argue. Grasping the pipe with both hands she hoisted herself up, bracing her feet against the bricks on either side of it. Then she climbed—one hand, one foot, the other hand, the other foot.
I waited until she’d made it up maybe six feet, until the dead were crowded around the air conditioner and grasping at me with gnarled, rotting fingers, before I followed. Swallowing back a wave of panic, I tried to mimic what Helene had done so smoothly. And I managed it—sort of. I’d like to say it was harder for me because I was a little heavier.
But the sad truth is that Helene was better at most things.
I cleared the Corpses’ reach barely in time, ignoring their frustrated moans and focusing on what I was doing. One mistake and I’d drop like a stone. Then, if I was lucky, I’d break my back on the air conditioner before the hoard ripped me apart.
My heart trip-hammered. My palms sweated.
Above me, Helene reached the roof. I still had about ten more feet to go. Then eight. Then six.
That’s when the pipe started shaking—hard.
Hugging it, I looked down. A new face had appeared amidst the sea of cadavers. Dead Giant Guy grinned up at me, head and shoulders above the rest, his huge hands around the pipe, his bloated, purple fingers working to pull it free from the wall. Any second now, I’d lose my grip and drop right into the big wormbag’s crushing arms.
The giant knew it, too. His grin widened.
Then a brick hit him in the face.
It struck end-on with terrific force, turning his already rotting nose to mush and planting itself deep between his eyes. His facial bones shattered and his cheeks caved in around the brick, until the dead dude’s pupils were looking directly at one another.
Dead Giant Guy staggered back, flailing his big arms and sending the nearest of his peeps flying. For just a few precious moments, everything was pandemonium. But those moments were enough.
I climbed. I won’t say it was any easier, but fear’s a great motivator. Within seconds, I felt Helene’s hands grab my forearm and pull me up the last couple of feet.
Then I dropped gratefully onto the flat tar roof, my hands and face lathered with sweat.
“You okay?” Helene asked me.
I nodded. “Nice throw…with the brick.”
“Wasn’t me.”
I turned to Blue Blazer Girl. “Thanks. I’m Will Ritter.”
“You’re welcome, Will,” she replied. “Jillian. Jillian Birmelin.”
“Beer Mellon?” I asked.
“Birmelin,” she said.
“Sorry.”
She shrugged. “Nobody gets it right.”
Standing up, I peered down at the mass of deaders filling Leithgow Street, and thought about the hundreds more who choked every road and alley for blocks around. Sooner or later, they’d figure out how to get onto this roof.
And that’s when I thought: this is my life.
Well, it is.
“Okay…now what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jillian admitted, sounding frightened for the first time. “There’s so many zombies!”
“Don’t call ’em zombies,” Helene and I said in perfect unison. It was embarrassing.
“Why not?” the girl asked.
Helene started to explain, but there wasn’t time. So, instead, she turned my way and said, “We’re trapped.”
“Yeah. I get that.”
“Um…this is usually where you come up with a really good idea.”
I rubbed my grimy face with my grimy hands, thinking furiously. I hated it when she put me on the spot like this! How was I supposed to dream up a miracle with so many—
Wait a second …
“How do you feel about a really bad one?” I asked.
The rooftops around us formed a landscape of sharp angles and weird, boxy shapes. Sheer walls rose from lower roofs to higher ones. Narrow service alleys ran between buildings, creating treacherous gaps that you couldn’t see until you were right on top of them. There were chimneys, some brick and some metal, industrial-sized air coolers, sheds, vents, antennas, and even a small greenhouse. Some of the roofs were flat, others sharply pitched. Some were tarred, others graveled, and still others shingled.
I took all this in. Then I looked at the rooftop across the street, and considered the mass of eager, scrambling dead between us and it.
“Any chance we can get across Leithgow?” I asked.
Helene frowned. “No way.”
But Jillian said, “Sure.”
We both stared at her.
She rolled her eyes. “It’s called parkour, the art of movement. You never got any of this from Tom?”
We shook our heads. “That’s how you got up here the way you did?”
Jillian nodded. “That was a combination of Wall Pass, Tic Tac, and Precision Jumping.”
Helene asked, “Where’d you learn it?”
“Later,” I said. Any minute now, the Corpses were going to find a way up here. “How do we use it to get across the street?”
“Parkour’s about harnessing your momentum, your balance, and your environment to navigate obstacles as fast and efficiently as possible,” Jillian explained, sounding like she was quoting someone. “See that upper roof?” She pointed to a building on our side of the gap that rose maybe ten feet higher than this one. “Do what I do.”
Then she ran straight to the wall—and up it. Through the whole thing, her upper body stayed straight, so that all of her weight remained neutral. At the last second, just before gravity took her, she vaulted upward using the traction of her shoe against the bricks, grabbed the lip of the next roof with both hands and pulled herself onto it.