Dark Days

by James Ponti

  Then she looked right at me.

  “So how is that your fault?”

  It turned out she didn’t blame me. None of them did. I don’t know why. I mean, I still blamed myself, but it was an incredible relief.

  Once I’d gotten my apology out of the way, we tried to fill in the blanks for Natalie about what happened that night. Not surprisingly, her memory was incomplete.

  “How much do you remember?” asked Alex.

  “Let’s see,” she said, straightening her posture. “I remember Molly calling us all to the steps in front of the library. And I remember the showdown in the old printing press room. There were a lot of bad guys and not so many good guys until Molly’s mom and her Omega team arrived. Then there was a big fight, and that’s where it starts to get fuzzy.”

  Grayson asked, “Do you remember who you were fighting?”

  Natalie nodded. “I think it was the big redhead, right? Edmund.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “It was Edmund.”

  “So what happened to him after he was done with me?” she asked.

  We exchanged glances for a moment before Grayson answered.

  “Alex happened to him,” he said.

  “It was unbelievable,” I added. “Edmund didn’t even get to throw a punch. Alex saw what he did to you, and he unleashed the wrath of krav maga and killed him on the spot. And when the others saw what he did, they all pretty much ran away.”

  The memory of this quieted us all for a moment, until Natalie looked over at Alex and said, “Always my hero.”

  “That’s funny, because a few minutes ago you didn’t even recognize my face,” he joked. They shared a look and it was pretty great. It was a look of total trust and friendship. During their time in Omega they had each saved the other too many times to count.

  “So what’s the plan?” she asked, breaking the moment.

  “What do you mean?” I replied.

  “Marek’s back and Dead City is more dangerous than ever,” she said. “How is Omega responding?”

  The boys and I shared a nervous look, and then I turned back to Natalie.

  “We’re not,” I said. “Omega has terminated all activity.”

  Through the Looking Glass

  At first Natalie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She scanned our faces, looking for any glimmer of a smile or some other hint that we might be joking.

  We weren’t.

  “Omega has terminated all activity?” She said it like it was some foreign phrase. “What does that even mean?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like,” Alex replied. “Everything and everybody is shut down.”

  “For how long?”

  He shrugged. “Indefinitely.”

  We told her about an emergency team meeting we had with Dr. Hidalgo, during which he informed us that Omega had been too exposed. All Omegas past and present were in danger, and as a result the Prime O and the executive council had no other option but to enact what he called a “lockdown.”

  “He said there’s even a chance it might never come back,” added Alex.

  “You had a team meeting?” she asked. “Without me? The team captain?”

  “You weren’t exactly in condition to meet,” Alex reminded her. “Besides, you were sort of there.”

  “Yeah,” I said with a half laugh, remembering how it all transpired. “We had to have it in the hallway right outside your room.”

  “And why is that?” she asked, still perturbed.

  I looked at Grayson to see if he wanted to tell her, but he avoided eye contact, so I explained it instead. “Because Grayson refused to leave the hospital until you regained consciousness.”

  “Dr. H was not happy about it,” Alex added in a total understatement. “He wanted a more private setting, but Grayson would not budge. G said he’d quit Omega before he’d leave. He stayed in that lobby for thirty-seven hours.”

  Natalie went to say something, but she stopped herself. This bit of information caught her completely off guard, and all the anger building up inside her drained in an instant. When she still couldn’t think of the right words, she stood up silently, walked across the room to Grayson, and buried him in a hug.

  I didn’t always know where I fit in; but, with regard to the rest of my Omega team, Natalie was the brain, Alex was the muscle, and Grayson was always the heart.

  That was the end of our Omega conversation. For the rest of our visit we just hung out and talked about less stressful things, like the foods Natalie planned to devour once her doctors cleared her to eat whatever she wanted. Spicy noodles and pepperoni pizza were high on the list. We made a list of where we wanted to go together. It was nice.

  By the time we left, Nat looked worn-out and I worried that we’d stayed too long. On my way to the door, though, she pulled me aside for a private conversation.

  “Any word from your mother?”

  “Not since that night,” I replied.

  “Have you looked at the clock by the zoo?” she asked.

  My mother and I had a secret spot near the Central Park Zoo where we left emergency messages for each other. Natalie had discovered it just before Christmas.

  “I check every day,” I answered. “But there hasn’t been anything there.”

  Natalie thought this over and said, “Keep looking. I’m sure she’ll reach out to you soon.”

  I nodded as though I agreed, but in truth I was more hopeful than confident.

  “And when you do see her,” Natalie continued, “tell her I said thanks. I don’t remember much about New Year’s Eve. But I remember her taking care of me. I’m pretty sure she saved my life.”

  “I’ll tell her,” I said. “Now you better get some rest.”

  I gave her an awkward hug, awkward because I still felt guilty about everything. The fact that my mother saved her life was a reminder that I had a hand in endangering it in the first place.

  Alex, Grayson, and I walked to the subway station together. Or rather, Grayson and I walked together while Alex followed a few feet behind us, keeping an eye out for any evil one-eared police officers.

  “Be safe,” Alex instructed us when we split up to head to different platforms—he was going uptown toward the Bronx, while Grayson and I were riding toward Midtown.

  “We will,” I said. “I promise.”

  Grayson had been particularly quiet during our visit, and as we rode the C train I tried to figure out what was bothering him.

  “So are you going to tell me what’s the matter? Or am I going to have to guess?” I asked. “I think Natalie looked good.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. She did. Better than I expected.”

  “Then why do you seem so disappointed? That should make you happy.”

  “It does make me happy, but . . .” He hesitated for a moment before saying, “With that cop today. Did you see what I did when he ripped off his ear and threatened us?”

  “No,” I said. “What did you do?”

  “Exactly,” he replied. “I didn’t do anything. I just stood there. Frozen.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Neither of us did anything.”

  “Alex would have,” he said. “It’s just like Natalie said, he’s always the hero. I don’t know. I guess it’s not in my DNA. I just don’t have the . . . heroic gene or whatever it is.”

  “Did you miss the part where she hugged you and cried because she thought you were a hero?”

  Grayson sighed and shook his head. “I’m loyal . . . but Alex is brave. There’s a huge difference. One you admire and one you depend on.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re not just loyal, you’re also crazy. Because only a crazy person could draw that conclusion.”

  He shrugged.

  We were almost to Thirty-Fourth Street, where I had to switch trains, so I didn’t have much time to straighten out his thinking. That’s when I remembered something Natalie told me right after I’d been attacked in the Roosevelt Island subway station.


  “The very first day you and I met, when that L2 attacked me, do you know what Natalie said about you?”

  “That I was good with computers?” he said lamely.

  “No. She warned me not to underestimate you. She said that you were amazing, and she was right. So don’t underestimate yourself. You’re a total rock star, Grayson. Natalie knows it. Alex knows it. And I certainly know it. You should know it too.”

  He gave me a begrudging smile, although I couldn’t tell if I had really solved the problem or just softened it for a moment.

  The subway doors opened and I gave him one last look before I got off the train.

  “Say it with me,” I told him. “Rock star.”

  He laughed. “Go catch your train.”

  “Rock star,” I said again as I exited onto the platform.

  I lingered there to watch him pull away. I felt bad he thought that way, but I guess it wasn’t that different than me blaming myself.

  Ten minutes later I caught the train going to Queens. Except, I didn’t ride it all the way home. Instead, I got off at Fifth Avenue so I could check for a message from my mother.

  I had downplayed it when I was talking to Natalie, because I figured she had enough to worry about, but I was really nervous about my mom. The moment Marek returned, Mom was in danger. She should have run away right then, but she stayed with Natalie until the ambulance arrived. That gave the undead plenty of time to set a trap for her somewhere underground. Every day that had gone by without a message made me worry a little more that she hadn’t been able to escape them.

  Luckily, it had stopped snowing and the afternoon sun was peeking out from an otherwise gloomy sky. That meant there were people walking around the park, and I didn’t stand out as much.

  The Delacorte Clock is just past the entrance to the zoo. It sits on a row of archways, and features sculptures of animals playing musical instruments. (My favorite is the penguin drummer.) Every hour and half hour the animals dance around as a nursery rhyme chimes.

  It was twelve thirty and the clock was playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” when I slipped in alongside a group of tourists who had stopped to admire it.

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief the moment I saw the message. It was a series of numbers written on a piece of masking tape stuck to the middle arch. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never notice it. And, even if you did see it, it wouldn’t make sense unless you knew the basic Omega Code, which uses numbers that correspond with the periodic table of elements. They were:

  13/53/58 49 74/8/60/68/57/60 8/10/61

  Since (unlike my friends and me) you probably haven’t memorized the periodic table inside out, I’ll translate. The numbers correspond to the following elements: aluminum, iodine, cerium, indium, tungsten, oxygen, neodymium, erbium, lanthanum, neodymium again, oxygen again, neon, and promethium. If you write out all of their elemental symbols you get:

  Al/I/Ce In W/O/Nd/Er/La/Nd O/Ne Pm

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was one of my mother’s favorite books. She used to read it to me at bedtime when I was little, and sometimes we’d visit the sculpture of Alice right there in Central Park. I was certain that’s where Mom would be waiting for me at one p.m.

  That was thirty minutes away, which gave me just enough time to take a couple of false turns and backtracks to make sure no one was following me. Considering my run-in with Officer Pell, I wanted to be extra careful.

  It’s funny how something you haven’t thought about in ages will unexpectedly come back to you as clearly as if it happened yesterday. That’s what happened as I was cutting back along a pathway and suddenly remembered my mother’s favorite line from the book.

  “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

  She loved that line and liked to quote it to me. She thought it was so smart, but at the time I didn’t really understand why. Now, though, it made total sense. As much as I sometimes wish that I could go back and erase the mistakes I’ve made, I really am a different person now than I was just a few weeks ago. And I’m a very different person than I was before I became an Omega.

  The sculpture of Alice is bronze and about twice the size of an actual person. It features her sitting on a giant mushroom, surrounded by the White Rabbit, the Cheshire cat, the Dormouse, and the Mad Hatter. One thing I’ve always loved about it is that you’re allowed to climb up onto the mushroom and sit next to her.

  I walked up to the sculpture, leaned against it, and waited. About five minutes later I saw my mother walking toward me. She wore black jeans, a black leather jacket, and a Yankees cap. She crossed the ground quickly, taking long, fast strides.

  “Are you okay?” she asked with urgency as she neared me.

  I nodded and she gave me a huge hug.

  “I’m so sorry about what happened on New Year’s,” I said near tears.

  “It wasn’t your fault, baby. I thought he was dead too.”

  I started to cry. Not big tears, but tears. I was overwhelmed by everything that had happened. Right then, she wasn’t a zombie killer, she was just my mom.

  “What about you?” I said, clearing my throat. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “There were a couple close calls, but I’m fine.”

  For a moment I just sat there and looked at her. Finally I asked, “Why did you put up the message?”

  She gave me a perplexed look and asked, “What message?”

  “On the Delacorte Clock. The message to meet here, right now.”

  Her expression changed as she considered this.

  “I thought you put that message up,” she replied, a sense of uneasiness taking over us both. We were being set up by someone who knew our code. Our eyes widened and we started to run away, but it was too late.

  Marek Blackwell was walking right toward us.

  Row, Row, Row Your Boat

  My mom’s first instinct was to shield me from Marek. She stepped forward to move directly between us, and subtly adjusted her stance so that her knees were bent and she was up on the balls of her feet, ready to fight.

  “Now, now, there’s no need for that,” he said, holding up his hands in mini surrender. “This is a peaceful meeting.”

  One thing about Marek that always surprises me is his wardrobe. He doesn’t dress like you’d expect an evil dark lord of the underground to dress. He wears sharp clothes like a successful businessman. This was a snowy Saturday afternoon, and while most of the people in the park were bundled up in jeans, sweaters, jackets, and knit caps, Marek wore a dress shirt, a black tie, and a dark burgundy overcoat with a fur collar. He even had on a fedora. If you randomly saw him in a crowd, he’d be the first person you’d trust. Let that be another reminder that you really can’t judge a book by its cover.

  “I have no desire to hurt either one of you,” he continued.

  He moved pretty well for a guy who’d been rebuilt with body parts from dead relatives, although he still had the limp I’d noticed on New Year’s Eve.

  “What if we want to hurt you?” asked my mother.

  He stopped walking and looked right at her. “Well, then that’s when these gentlemen would get involved.”

  He motioned to a group of four policemen who had taken strategic positions nearby. Each one wore the same red shoulder patch that Officer Pell had worn earlier in the day. This new partnership between Marek and the New York Police Department was troubling.

  “I may not be at full strength,” he said as he exaggerated his limp for a couple steps, “but these young men are a different story.”

  He stopped a few feet from us, maintaining a safe distance.

  “Then what do you want?” asked my mom.

  “What? No pleasantries? No hello? No ‘So glad to see you didn’t die when I threw you off the George Washington Bridge’?”

  “You mean when you were trying to kill my daughter?”

  He flashed a politician’s smile. “You make a good point. I probably deser
ved that.”

  “I’ll ask again,” she said, agitation in her voice. “What do you want?”

  “Peace,” he answered. “I want peace. For more than a century the Omegas have hunted my friends and me, and I want that to end. Actually, let me rephrase that. I insist that it end. Don’t let my current physical condition mislead you. If there’s one thing New Year’s should have demonstrated, it’s that we are stronger than ever. I am building a better life for my people, and that can’t happen as long as you continue to attack and harass us.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” said Mom. “You and I have been doing this for a long time. We have a history together and I know you can’t be trusted.”

  “We have been doing it for a while,” he said. “And I think we’ve both suffered greatly as a result. That’s why I wanted to make this offer directly to you. If you and I can come to peace with each other, everyone else should be able to do the same. I think it’s time we lead by example.”

  “So what’s your offer?”

  “We go our separate ways. It’s as simple as that. My people will hurt none of yours and your people will leave us alone. All I’m asking is that you make your lockdown permanent.”

  I didn’t like the fact that he used the same term, “lockdown,” that we used in our private meetings. Somehow he was getting information from inside Omega.

  “And what do we get in return?” Mom asked.

  “You get to live normal lives,” he said. “You get to be with your husband and your daughters. You no longer have to hide out in abandoned sewers and send secret messages with codes on clocks. My brother Milton can even go back to teaching children about science instead of training them to kill the undead.”

  “The brother you vowed to kill no matter what?” said Mom.

  Marek thought about this for a moment. “That was more than a century ago,” he said. “I’d like to think that our family could get past our differences and reunite.”

  Mom did not look like she believed any of this. “And if we don’t accept your offer?”

  “That would be a shame,” he said. “Because from this point on any Omega activity will be considered an act of aggression, and we will respond with all-out war. War like you’ve never seen. Trust me when I say you don’t want to face an undead army. Think about this: We knew you were coming to Times Square. We know about the lockdown. We even know the code you use to talk with your daughter.”