by Ty Drago
The Undertakers, he stressed, don’t kill people.
We’re just kids, and Booth knows it. In fact, he’s counting on it.
At last the meeting ended. Tom reminded everyone to stay for the ten o’clock memorial. Almost immediately the gathering broke up into little groups—all discussing the goings-on.
I watched from a distance as Tom jumped off his chair, went straight to Elisha Beardsley, and started talking to the Hacker Boss.
“That was pretty short, huh?” Dave remarked. “I don’t think he talked for more than five minutes, and the rest of it was stupid questions.”
“Not all stupid,” I said.
Actually the stupid questions seemed like the only ones he really had answers for.
“It’s always like that,” Helene told them. “Tom keeps these things short. Anything more than, like, ten minutes, and everybody starts falling asleep. We’re Undertakers, and we’re not used to sitting and listening to speeches. We need to be doing something.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I said. Without another word, I headed off toward Tom and Elisha. As I got close, I overheard a little of their conversation.
Elisha said, “He doesn’t go every Sunday night—just once a month or so.”
“And you dug this up how?” Tom asked, clearly impressed.
“His private calendar on the NBC-10 network.”
“Way cool, Elisha!”
Grinning proudly she said, “The truth is, Heather’s the one who finally broke through their firewall. She worked on it all afternoon.”
“I got to remember to thank her for the effort,” Tom promised.
“You should. Heck, she already thinks you’re dreamy.” Elisha laughed, and Tom made a playful show of pretending to punch her.
“Where’s he go on Sundays?” I asked, marching right to them.
Startled, the two kids looked at me.
I added, “We’re talking about Booth, right?”
“Um—hi, Will,” said Elisha.
“Keep digging,” Tom instructed her. “Find out how he gets there and how long he stays.”
Nodding, Elisha disappeared into the dwindling crowd.
I turned to Tom. “Where’s Booth go on Sunday nights?” I asked again.
“Bro, we need to talk.”
“We are talking.”
“You know what I mean.”
Of course I did. “Sorry about this morning,” I told him.
“Don’t be,” Tom replied. “You said what you felt.”
“I thought maybe I embarrassed you in front of the crew bosses.”
The older boy grinned. “Well, you did that too.”
“Sorry,” I said again.
“Thanks. But that ain’t what we need to talk about.”
“Tom, are you gonna kick me out?”
“What?”
I steeled myself. “I mean—I understand if you are. I just want to know so I can—well, get ready, I guess.”
To my surprise, Tom burst out laughing. “Will! If I tossed out every Undertaker who got in my face at a bosses’ meeting, my own sister would’ve been out on the streets years ago! Forget it! It ain’t important.”
“Oh. Sorry. Then what did you want to talk to me about?” I asked, although inside I was sighing with relief.
“Well, if you’d quit your apologizing, I’d tell you.” He was still laughing.
“Sorry,” I repeated before I could catch myself.
With an effort the Chief got his amusement under control. Then in a more serious tone, he said, “Listen. I think we’d better hold off on the Angel thing.”
I frowned. A moment ago I’d been deeply relieved not to be exiled. But now I was just as deeply disappointed. “How come?”
“Well, partly because some of the bosses ain’t digging it. Now, if it was just that, I’d say let’s ride it out. But the other part is that right now, you ain’t in the right frame of mind for that kind of work.”
“The right frame of mind?” I asked, suddenly irritated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re pissed off—and you got every right to be. But an Angel in the field’s got to stay cool. Anger can make you reckless, and I won’t risk nobody running off and going outside the scope of a mission. It can get their fellow crewers into trouble.”
“I wouldn’t do that!” I exclaimed.
“Didn’t say you would. But you are pissed.”
“Of course I’m pissed! Look at everything that’s happened! Look at Tara and Kyle!”
Tom shrugged. “Just give it a month. Until then I’ll put you on any other crew you want. Then when you’re more settled, we’ll try the Angels thing again. I still do think it’s the place for you—once you’re really ready for it.”
“I’m ready now!” I insisted.
“No, bro. You ain’t.”
“But in a month, the mayor’s election’ll be over!”
“I know.”
All of a sudden, I got it. “You’re afraid I’m gonna go after Booth!” I snapped.
“Crossed my mind.”
“Would it be such a bad thing?”
“It could get you killed,” Tom said. “I figure that counts as a bad thing.”
“So what? It’s my life, isn’t it?”
Tom’s eyebrows rose. “Maybe you should tell that to your mother and Emily, huh?”
I looked away.
Tom waited.
Finally, feeling defeated, I said, “Do I have to be a Mom?”
“Not if you don’t want to be.”
“The other recruits’ll get jealous.”
Tom shrugged. “They’ll get over it.”
“Why do I get special treatment?”
“Because you’re a special case,” he replied. “You know that.”
And I did, although I still didn’t entirely understand why. Could it really be because of who my father was? Tom seemed—well, smarter than that.
“I’d like to try out the Brains,” I said.
Tom looked surprised. “You wanna work for Steve?”
“Is that okay?”
“Sure. I just didn’t expect it. Well, go ahead and report to the Brain Factory whenever you’re ready. Make sure you tell Steve it’s only for a month.”
“Okay.” I walked glumly back to where Dave and Helene still waited. The girl was twirling her hair nervously. Dave cracked his knuckles.
The Burgermeister spoke first. “You getting kicked out?”
“No,” I replied. “But he’s holding off on my Angel training.”
“Why?” asked Helene.
“He thinks I’m too—emotional, I guess.”
She considered this. “So where is he putting you?”
“He gave me my choice. I asked for the Brains.”
Dave grimaced. “What for?”
I ignored the question for now. “Booth’s got something going down on Sundays. That’s what Tom and Elisha were talking about. Apparently it’s something that he does every month.”
“What does he do every month?” Helene asked.
“Tom wouldn’t tell me.”
“Guy’s a jerk,” the Burgermeister spat.
“No, he’s not!” Helene replied impatiently. Then to me: “He’s just trying to protect you.”
“I know,” I said. I met Helene’s pretty hazel eyes. “Know anybody on the Hackers crew?”
My question surprised her. “A couple of kids.”
“Anybody named Heather?”
“Sure. Heather DiSalvino. We went through First Stop together. Why?”
I hesitated. Helene was my friend, but she was also an Undertaker and loyal to Tom, despite her promise that if I left, she’d go with me. Still, I couldn’t pull off what I was planning alone, could I? “Think you can find out from her where Booth’s going one Sunday night a month?”
Now it was her turn to hesitate. She looked worried. “Will…” she began.
“I’m not saying I’m going to do anything. I’m jus
t curious,” I insisted. It was a lie, and we both knew it.
Dave frowned, clearly confused.
“Will…” she repeated.
“Come on, Helene. Please?”
She blew out a long sigh and reluctantly said, “I’ll try.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
She smiled back. “Sure.”
CHAPTER 32
Conspiracy
Assembling a radio watch is all about patience and the right tools.”
I was in the Brain Factory, and Steve had just removed the back from a cheap digital watch. As I looked on—the dutiful student—he used a pair of tweezers to expertly fit a tiny transmitter/receiver and an even smaller GPS chip into a space only slightly roomier than a pea. “It’s actually easier than it looks. You just solder the TR and the GPS right onto that silver prong beside the battery.”
“What about a speaker and microphone?” I asked.
“That’s why I picked this brand. It has a memo function so the wearer can record voice messages. The TR chip simply taps into that.”
“Cool,” I said.
“You try the next one,” Steve suggested.
So I did, taking the tweezers and miniature soldering pen. I flubbed the first one but nailed the second. Steve had been right. It wasn’t hard.
“Good! Just add it to the stockpile. The Angels are always breaking them. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep up. Come on, the new batch of saltwater should be ready.”
As we crossed the Factory, the four other Brains treated me to curious, sidelong glances. Everyone at Haven had been doing that all week, ever since news had spread about that last night at First Stop.
Being a reluctant celebrity was something else I’d gotten used to.
As we passed one of the Brain Factory tables, a crewer named Zack showed up with a box in his arms. This he unceremoniously dumped onto the tabletop, spilling an assortment of gadgets.
“These are broken,” Zack reported.
The pile included two Super Soakers, a dozen or more water pistols, a bunch of radio watches—and something that looked a bit like a small crossbow. Maybe a foot long, it was made mostly of wood with a steel cable stretched between its tips.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Grappling gun,” Steve replied. “What happened to it this time?” he asked Zack.
The boy shrugged. “Jammed when firing. We still don’t have the launching coil right.”
Steve groaned, picking up the crossbow and eyeing it from different angles. “Got banged around too much,” he pronounced. “You can see it. Here—the seam in the wood is cracked.”
“A grappling gun?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“When it works,” the crewer replied. “Which isn’t often.”
“And who broke it?”
“Angels,” Zack replied. “Who else?”
“It’s for scaling walls,” Steve added. “Fires a three-pronged grappling hook up to fifty feet straight up. The Angels use it for recon. So far it’s a prototype—the only one we’ve got.” He sighed. “Okay, log them and scrap them. Except the bow. Let’s look that one over again. I still think it’s got potential.”
Zack nodded. “If you say so.” He didn’t sound convinced.
Moving on, Steve and I next stopped in front of a big pot sitting atop a lab table’s hot plate. “Check the timer and temperature,” the Brain Boss told me.
I obediently examined the contents of the pot—five gallons of tap water with seven ounces of sea salt mixed carefully into it. The concoction smelled—well, salty. A thermometer that floated inside read just over one hundred degrees.
“Temp’s right,” I reported. “And it’s been brewing for half an hour.”
“Then it’s ready,” replied Steve.
We spent the next ten minutes funneling the water into a dozen old soda bottles for storage.
“Where’d you learn to do this?” I asked.
“Make saltwater?” Steve said. “It’s not exactly difficult.”
“No. I mean, how did you find out that saltwater worked on the Corpses?”
“Oh…” He grinned. “You really want to know?”
“Sure.”
The other Brains groaned. Apparently they’d heard the story before.
“Know what serendipity means?” Steve asked me.
I shook my head.
“It means ‘lucky accident.’ It happens sometimes in science. In the nineteenth century, an English doctor named Edward Jenner discovered—by accident—that people who came down with a mild bug called cowpox never got the much nastier smallpox. This resulted in the development of the first vaccination. In fact, the word vaccination, comes from the Latin word vacca…which means ‘cow.’”
“Okay,” I said, suddenly feeling like I was back in science class. “But what’s that got to do with Corpses and saltwater?”
“It was discovered the same way.”
“By accident?” I asked. “Serendipity?”
“Right. Back in school I got this idea for a science fair. I did a salinity test.”
“A what?”
He looked at me as if astonished that I didn’t know. “Salinity: the dissolved salt content in a body of water. I did a study. I used sea salt to manufacture four types of water: brine, seawater, brackish water, and fresh.”
“But—fresh water doesn’t have salt.”
“Sure it does,” Steve said. “Just very little. Less than five hundred parts per million.”
I shrugged. “Okay. So where do the Corpses come in?”
Steve replied, “While I was working on my science project, I started Seeing them.”
“Huh?”
“He was in the school lab after hours,” one of the Brains, a girl named Lisa, said with a sigh.
“It was two days before the science fair,” a boy called Andrew added.
“A janitor came in, and he was a Corpse!” Zack chimed in.
“Steve freaked out, giving himself away immediately, so the dead janitor attacked him!” said another girl whose name I didn’t know.
“Quit it!” Steve snapped. “I’m telling the story!” Then to me, he said, “I kept my cool.”
“He freaked,” the girl said again.
“Quit it, Kelly! Anyway, I grabbed the only weapon I could find—a beaker filled with the seawater I’d made—and threw it in the Corpse’s face. All of a sudden he started twitching and just kind of fell over. Then I ran the hell out of there!”
“I’ll bet you did,” I remarked.
“Later on, after Burt hooked me up with the Undertakers, I suggested to Karl—your dad—that we try the same thing again. And it worked! Something about saltwater disrupts a Corpse’s control over its host body.” He laughed. “Serendipity!”
I didn’t quite get the joke, but I laughed along anyhow. “Cool! So your brother brought you into the Undertakers?”
Steve’s smile faded. “Yeah.”
“But isn’t he younger than you?”
For a long moment, Steve didn’t answer. Then Zack did. “He is—by almost a year. But Burt had already started Seeing and had run away from home before Steve got into the science fair.”
Frowning, Steve muttered, “Not everybody gets the Sight at the same age.”
“Because some go into puberty later than others, huh, boss?” Andrew chimed in. They all laughed a little. Steve blushed a deep scarlet. This was obviously an old joke in the Brain Factory—a little bit of fun at the head guy’s expense.
A couple weeks ago, I might have joined in.
Not anymore.
“I don’t know,” I said casually. “Seems to me that a lot of kids would be dead if Steve had started Seeing when he was supposed to.”
The laughter faded. Steve looked at me, surprised.
I continued, “I mean, if Steve hadn’t gotten into that science fair, we wouldn’t know about the salt thing. And without that, the Corpses would’ve killed a lot more Seers than they have—including me.” I
offered my hand to the boy. “Sharyn’s right. You are a genius.”
Steve stared at the hand. Then he shook it. “Thanks,” he said, and something told me that he meant it in more ways than one.
Everyone else went back to their work, looking a bit embarrassed. Steve cleared his throat. “Um…you want to get another batch started?”
“You got it, boss.”
As I washed out and refilled the pot, Steve fetched the big bottle of sea salt, which the Undertakers bought in bulk.
“Think you can manage this on your own?” Steve asked me. “I’ve got a little work to do.”
“I’m good.”
I watched Steve leave, walking tall, and smiled to myself. Then I set about grinding up some of the big chunks of salt by using a special ceramic bowl and a knobby handheld gadget combo that Steve called a mortar and pestle. The idea was to pound the salt crystals as small as possible. That helped them dissolve faster in the hot water.
Once I finished pounding, I weighed the salt carefully, making sure I was using the right amount. Too much and the mixture would gunk up the guns. Too little and there wouldn’t be enough salt in the water to affect the Corpses.
“Psst!” said a voice.
I looked up, startled.
Dave stood just beyond the limits of the Brain Factory, waving frantically. I glanced over my shoulder. Steve was busy at one of the lab tables, messing around with what looked like little chunks of Styrofoam. Thankfully none of the other Brains were looking my way just now.
“What?” I asked the Burgermeister, keeping my voice low.
“Helene wants to see you. She’s got something.”
I felt a twinge of excitement. At last! We were running out of time. Tomorrow was Sunday. “Where?”
“In the TV room.”
“I’ll be there soon,” I said. “Now beat it.”
“Right.” And off he went, big hands in his pockets and whistling, drawing odd stares from everyone he passed.
I sighed and went back to work.
Shortly afterward I asked Steve for a bathroom break.
“No problem,” he told me.
It was two o’clock, and the Rec Hall was largely empty, most of the crews being busy elsewhere. In fact, the only kids on hand were Moms, who mostly pulled morning and evening duty. A group of them, including Maria, Ethan, and Harleen, was watching a soap opera.