The Undertakers: End of the World

by Ty Drago

  They dragged me over to the dais and shoved me down next to Emily. As my knees slammed painfully against the wooden floor, I risked a glance at Steve, and saw in horror that he was in even worse shape than I’d thought. His pale face was way more bruised than William’s and Emily’s. Whatever had happened, he’d taken the brunt of it.

  “They beat him,” my sister whispered. “He wouldn’t tell them how he’d created the Rift Projector to bring you here, so they beat him half to death.”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” William added. “I told you, you’re too important!”

  “What difference does it make?” I shot back. “Without the shard I’m dead along with the rest of Haven. Besides, if you were me … and we both know you are … what would you have done?”

  My future self scowled but didn’t reply, and I suddenly wondered if I looked that stupid when I was proven wrong about something. If I somehow did survive all this and make it back home, I’d have to ask Helene.

  My Helene.

  “Shut up!” the deader behind the chief snapped, slapping him hard enough to nearly knock him over again.

  Across the room, Corpse Helene was talking with some of her deader underlings. She glanced over at us—at William and me specifically—before nodding curtly to her minions and sauntering over.

  “We have a rather unique family reunion here, don’t we?” she remarked. “Not including poor Professor Moscova, of course.”

  Again I glanced at Steve, who still hadn’t moved, much less spoken. His eyes were open, but glazed.

  Can you be unconscious with your eyes open?

  Corpse Helene leaned closer, peering at both the chief and me. “Though, I must admit, I find this miracle he’s wrought quite fascinating. Two Will Ritters! Imagine! Now I can avenge my mother’s death twice over. But tell me: What do you suppose would happen if I killed the younger one? Right now. Just … I don’t know … put my thumbs through his eyes.” She faced William. “Would you … cease to exist?”

  None of us responded. I tried not to show the terror that seemed to leach the warmth from every inch of my body. The thought of this monstrosity’s bloated, purple fingers digging into my eye sockets—

  “No,” a voice replied.

  I started. At first I wasn’t sure who’d spoken. But then I looked back at Steve.

  “What did you say, Professor?” the new Queen of the Dead asked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch it. Decomposing cochlear nerves and all that.”

  “No,” Steve repeated. His voice was reedy and it clearly hurt him to talk. “Will’s been … taken out of his timeline. His death … wouldn’t impact the chief’s … existence.”

  “Is that so?” Corpse Helene replied. “Well then, I shall let young Mr. Ritter keep his eyes and his life, for a while anyway. Besides, I’ve a more interesting experiment in mind.” She straightened, turned away from us, and mounted the dais to her throne, settling down on it once again. “Malum!” she called, and the room immediately went silent. Grinning, she spread her arms and announced, “Today, let us do something new, something unprecedented in our long and glorious history! Today, let us offer these four pitiful humans bavarak!”

  From the grunt-like cheers that filled the Assembly Room, I got the distinct impression that “bavarak” wasn’t the Malum word for a hot bath and a hearty meal.

  The new Queen’s head swiveled in our direction. Another smile—even worse than the last one—spread across her bloated, receding lips. “On Earth, your kind wastes … or used to, anyway … much of its time and energy on sporting events: football, baseball, hockey, soccer, and the like. On my world we have few such distractions. But there is one contest that has always captivated us. We call it bavarak.

  “Loosely translated, it means ‘trial by combat.’ Often, when we unmake a world, we bring back prisoners specifically for bavarak. They are placed in a public arena. We even allow them a handheld weapon of their choosing, just to make it more entertaining. Then, we release two or more of our kind on them. We have a class of Malum bred specifically for this purpose. They tend to be dim-witted, but wonderfully savage. I’ve personally witnessed a hundred such events, and in every case the prisoner’s lifespan is … brief.”

  I shuddered despite myself and said, “I think I prefer baseball.”

  She chuckled. “Sadly, I have already vowed to end the life of every last human, so you will be spared that grisly demise … at least on the Malum homeworld. But there’s nothing to say we can’t come up with our own version of the event here, on Earth.”

  She seemed to be expecting some kind of response. I didn’t give her one.

  Unperturbed, the new Queen explained, “Here is how it shall be: The four of you will be taken from here to Market Street. There, in an arena of sorts created by a wall of my minions, one of you will do battle with a number of my strongest warriors.”

  I asked, “What do we get if we win?”

  “You won’t,” Corpse Helene replied with a laugh.

  “But what if we do?” I pressed.

  “Then I’ll release you. Let you slink back to Haven with your tails between your legs to wait for death. Doesn’t that sound reasonable?”

  “We won’t do it!” Emily exclaimed.

  “Yes, we will,” said Maxi Me.

  Both Emily and I looked at him. Steve didn’t.

  The chief said, “We’ll fight your trial by combat … on two conditions.”

  “You have no conditions,” the new Queen replied, her smile melting away. “You either entertain us or you die in agony right now.”

  “Skip the threats,” William said. “Here are my conditions, and you might even like them. First, I’m the one who fights for my people. Me … against four of your best Malum. All I ask is that you give me Vader, the sword you took from Will. It’ll make the sport more interesting.”

  To my surprise, Corpse Helene actually seemed to consider it. “It’s a tempting offer. But I have a counter-proposal that, while not strict to the rules of bavarak, nevertheless appeals to me. I shall pit six of my best … against both Will Ritters. If either of you survives, I’ll release him along with your sister and Professor Moscova.”

  “No!” William declared.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He glared at me. I didn’t meet his eyes.

  “And I get my pocketknife,” I added.

  Corpse Helene touched a blackened nail to her pale, bloodless mouth. “Very well, then. I agree.” She lifted her stolen arms high in the air and announced, “Preparation for bavarak will commence immediately! I will personally select six of our warriors to slaughter the humans for our amusement. Have we fully recovered from young Mr. Ritter’s electromagnetic tomfoolery?”

  Tomfoolery? Really?

  A Corpse stepped forward. He was dressed more or less the same as the others, in rags not too different from the ones the surviving humans wore. But he had a familiar look to him. I’d run into enough of his kind to know a toady when I saw one. “Yes, Mistress! Fresh radios and flashlights have been secured and distributed.”

  Corpse Helene nodded and grinned wolfishly. “Then contact our people. All of them. Leave enough on watch at City Hall to ensure that no more rats slip the trap, but invite the rest to watch. They have thirty minutes to meet us on Market Street.”

  Dead Toady Dude nodded respectfully and hurried off to obey.

  The Queen’s head swiveled in our direction. “What fun!” she purred. Then, to the deaders at our backs, she said, “Bring them. But don’t injure them.”

  The four of us were pulled roughly to our feet. Steve wobbled unsteadily and looked about to fall over. Without thinking, I tried to catch him, only to have his weight pull us both back down to the floor.

  As we landed, he whispered something to me. Just one word. Well, a number really.

  “Four.”

  “What?” I asked.

  That, of course, was the name of the strange “electri
c javelin” that Sharyn had told me Steve had been training her to use. But why tell me the word now? I certainly had no weapon like that, and wouldn’t have known what to do with it in any case.

  “Four,” he said again.

  Maybe the poor dude’s brains got scrambled from the beating he took.

  But somehow, I didn’t think so.

  “Sharyn told me about it,” I whispered. Already, our deader guards were reaching down, grabbing us both. “But I don’t—”

  Then I was pulled back up onto my feet, while Steve was unceremoniously thrown over the shoulder of one of the bigger Corpses. He groaned and bled a little more, tiny red drops from his mouth and nose drizzling down onto the cracked tile floor. But he said nothing else.

  As they marched us through the excited horde in the Assembly Room and turned us toward Independence Hall’s big front doors, Maxi Me sidled up beside me. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

  “I getting tired of you telling me what I should and shouldn’t do.”

  “You’re important!” he snapped, which earned him a hard warning shove from the deader at his back.

  “So you keep saying,” I replied hotly, though I managed to keep my voice low. “But nothing I’m doing can be surprising you all that much!”

  Again, he glared at me. Then, despite himself, the corners of his bearded mouth turned a little upward. “For the first time, I think I get why I drove everyone so nuts.”

  The deader behind him shoved him again.

  William stopped halfway down the steps to the streets and whirled on the rotting minion. “Did you hear what the Queen said?” he demanded. “Don’t injure us. What do you think she’ll do to you if I take a tumble down these stairs and break my arm or something?”

  The Corpse’s expression instantly changed from gleeful abuse to nervous anxiety.

  “Yeah,” Maxi Me said, getting right up into the dude’s dead, maggot-riddled face. “That’s right. She’ll rip you limb from limb for screwing up her party. So quit shoving!”

  He turned and continued down the steps. After a moment, the deader, looking weirdly sheepish, followed.

  So did I.

  “Well,” I muttered. “You are me, after all.”

  Again, that hint of a smile touched his face. “Always hated bullies.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course, you do.” Then, in a softer tone, “Will, I hope you’ve got some kind of plan here. Because, I have to tell you, mine’s completely hosed.”

  “Sure, I do,” I told him, which wasn’t entirely true.

  What I had wasn’t a plan, exactly.

  It was—a hope.

  Chapter 20

  Trial by Combat

  The block between Chestnut Street and Market Street in that part of Philly used to be called Independence Mall. Back in my day, it had been a public park, where people ate lunch and you could hire a horse and carriage to give you a ride around Old City, with the driver pointing out the sites and telling you history, some of which he even got right. It was also where, in a modern pavilion of glass and brick, tourists lined up to see the Liberty Bell.

  But now, in this ruined shadow of a once amazing town, this park was nothing but scorched earth, and the pavilion had long since been destroyed, leaving little more than a jagged foundation.

  As the Corpses marched us past it, Emily and Steve in the front—with Steve still being carried, fireman-style, across a deader’s back—and me and Maxi Me behind, I wondered vaguely what had become of the big old bell that used to be housed in that place.

  So much lost …

  Corpse Helene’s “bavarak” invitation had evidently gotten around quick. Market Street was filled with the dead. Hundreds of them. They’d set themselves up in a loose circle, maybe eighty or ninety feet across, a makeshift arena with lifeless, leering faces for walls.

  As we neared, this wall parted to make a path for us, and we were led to the very center of the clearing. There, our escorts signaled for us to stop.

  We waited.

  Emily glanced back at me, the first time she’d done so since we’d left Independence Hall. She looked terrified, very much like the little girl I’d left behind in my Haven—two days and thirty years ago.

  “It’s okay,” I said, mustering what I hoped was a brave smile.

  At the same, exact instant, the man standing beside me said, “It’s okay,” and mustered what I’m sure he hoped was a brave smile.

  Um … let’s not do that a lot.

  “I think Steve’s passed out,” she said, wringing her hands.

  Maxi Me nodded grimly.

  The rain suddenly worsened, becoming a cold, steady downpour that draped a gray curtain over the already dark city night. The only illumination came from flashlights, all held by Corpses occupying the front line of the surrounding horde. It didn’t do much to chase back the shadows.

  Around us, the deaders went suddenly still. A moment later, our guards made watchful bows as the wall of the dead parted again, this time to admit Corpse Helene and her entourage, which included Dead Toady Guy.

  The new Queen of the Dead had evidently taken the time to change her clothes, having traded the sundress for jeans and a sweater. Her host body, however, was the same late Type Two as before, bloating and purple. I didn’t look at her Mask; I knew what I’d see.

  Why bother changing, when whatever you wear’s just gonna get soaked in this rain?

  But Corpses, especially Royals, were weird like that.

  “Malum!” Corpse Helene declared the moment she’d stepped into the center of the arena. “Today we witness the first ever bavarak conducted on this world that has been the cause of such misery and dishonor for our people. Today, a man and boy will face their death at the hands of six of your brethren, which I have personally chosen.”

  She made a sweeping backward gesture and, from the direction she’d just come, six Corpses marched into view, three males and three females.

  All were big, muscular, and surprisingly fresh. A couple of the cadavers I even recognized. Their bodies had been hanging from meat hooks in the cellar of Independence Hall.

  Maxi Me and I were going to be facing six deaders in “shinny” new hosts.

  Not good.

  The six of them spread out, moving stiffly on legs that had to still be a little tight from their deep freeze. There might be an advantage there.

  They took up positions in a half circle, facing William and me. There they stood, some grinning, some somber, but all of them expectant and tense with barely contained violence. Like Dobermans on short leashes.

  Corpse Helene declared, “But before we begin, so that the contest can be as captivating as possible, I will now offer aid to our prisoners!” She approached William, who tried to back away, only to bump into our unmoving guards. Grinning at his reaction, the new Queen took the Anchor Shard from around her neck.

  “You’re injured,” she told him. “And you’re weary. This will help with both. Hold him still.”

  Two guards locked their dead fists around William’s upper arms, keeping him in place.

  Then Corpse Helene touched the Anchor Shard to his forehead.

  And healed him.

  The chief’s bruises melted away. His cuts closed and disappeared. Even the slump to his shoulders seemed to ease. “There,” she said, sounding satisfied. “Now perhaps your life will last thirty whole seconds once fighting begins, instead of ten or fifteen.”

  William didn’t thank her.

  Corpse Helene came to me next and, while I wasn’t as hurt as my future self, she touched the shard to my forehead anyway. Almost instantly, I felt strange yet familiar energy flood my body. The bite I’d received back in CHOP disappeared, and the cut I’d gotten from Amy’s blade healed instantly. At the same time, my exhaustion receded, replaced by new strength.

  When she pulled the Anchor Shard back, I said to her bitterly, “That was a mistake.”
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  “We shall see,” she replied.

  “Do Steve now,” I said. “Heal him. He needs it way more than either of us.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. It’s strange when they shrug. “Why would I? Professor Moscova isn’t fighting in this bavarak.”

  I knew better than to beg. “If he dies, we won’t give you as good a show.”

  “Really? Even with your sister’s life still in the balance?”

  When I didn’t have a reply to that, the Queen laughed and stepped away.

  “Release them,” she told the guards. “And join the multitude. Take the woman and the injured professor with you, but keep them at the front. I want them to see what happens.”

  As our Corpse escorts hurried to obey, Emily surged suddenly forward, reaching for both William and me. “Don’t do this!” she begged us. “You can’t win!”

  Honestly, it was a pretty pointless thing to say. I mean, it’s not like we could have just backed out even if we’d wanted to.

  “Don’t count us out, yet, Em,” Maxi Me told her.

  The deaders dragged her back.

  And the chief and I turned to face the six Corpse champions.

  “His sword,” I said to the new Queen. “And my pocketknife.”

  “Of course,” she replied, gesturing to Dead Toady Guy, who came immediately forward. In his hands were Vader and my golden pocketknife. These he passed out to William and me, his expression a horror mask of hungry anticipation. William took the wakizashi from its sheath and held it in a firm, two-handed grip. His form looked solid.

  I wasn’t very good with a sword.

  But apparently someday, I’d get better.

  Meanwhile, I hit the 2 and 3 buttons on my knife, popping the Taser and five-inch blade. It wasn’t as good as a sword, but it was all I had.

  Unless—

  Corpse Helene retreated to the edge of the arena, with her guards and her toady surrounding her.

  “Now!” she shouted.

  And, just like that, the bavarak began.

  As the six Corpses advanced on us, Maxi Me and I immediately closed ranks, putting our backs against one another and pointing our weapons outwards. We did it without thinking, the synchronized tactic so automatic that I didn’t even really notice it until after it happened. Then, in a voice tight with tension, I heard the chief whisper, more to himself than to me, “Same brain …”