The Undertakers: End of the World

by Ty Drago

  No! I can undo it. I can undo it all!

  Reboot.

  “Listen everyone,” I said as they gathered around me. “Something’s happened. I get that no time has passed here. But for me, I’ve been gone for more than twenty-four hours.”

  Most of them swapped confused looks. My mother scowled and said, “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  But Tom simply asked, “The angel?”

  I nodded.

  “You got a lot to tell us, bro?”

  I nodded again.

  “Cool. Burt, could you and Alex go grab some chairs? I figure we got another hour ‘fore Hugo gets back. Let’s use it.”

  Hugo. Hugo Ramirez.

  My future step-dad.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  It was my mom who answered. “After you and Helene left the Infirmary, Hugo made some calls and managed to get us some ambulances, no questions asked. So at least the wounded are being taken care of. But, with all that’s happened here, he warned us that the FBI would arrive in force by dawn. That’s only a few hours away.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then let’s get to it.”

  So I told them all of it, or at least most of it. Some of the details they didn’t need to know. For instance, I told Tom that he’d died and, insofar as I knew, how it had happened. But I left out the statue in City Hall’s courtyard; he wouldn’t have liked that. I told Amy about her being the angel that everybody knew visited me from time to time. But I left out the part about her turning mole again and trying to kill me. I mean, what was the point? And, of course, I told them about Steve and his inventions, and about Maxi Me, and about Emily.

  “She was amazing, Mom,” I said when I’d finished. Then, looking around, I asked, “Where is Emily, anyway?”

  “Sleeping, back in our room,” my mother responded. She had tears in her eyes. “Oh God, Will. Is all of this … possible?”

  Steve remarked, “Maybe not.”

  Everyone went quiet.

  Burt elbowed his brother.

  “Ow! Well, it needs saying! Will, you just lost your best friend. Isn’t it possible that you maybe fell asleep and had a dream?”

  “Or a stroke,” Alex muttered darkly.

  I looked from one of them to the next. Even Helene seemed skeptical.

  So I fixed my gaze on Tom. “What do you think, Chief?”

  He replied without hesitation. “I think it all went down exactly the way you’ve told it.”

  “You always believe him!” Alex snapped.

  “Only when he’s on the level,” the chief replied. “Besides, what he’s sayin’ is corroborated.”

  The Monkey Boss blinked. “What? By who?”

  “By me!” Sharyn exclaimed. Then, when everyone looked at her, she grinned. The Co-Chief of the Undertakers always did have a flair for the dramatic. “I know about this javelin thing. Except it ain’t Project Four … F-O-U-R, like the number. It’s F-O-R-E, like what you yell when you golf. It’s an old British army term to warn soldiers when a big explosion is coming. That’s where he got it from.”

  “Where who got it from?” Steve asked.

  Sharyn’s grin widened, “You, Steve-o.”

  Steve looked positively thunderstruck.

  “Well then that makes even less sense,” I said with a groan. “Steve … Professor Moscova … told me with his dying breath that ‘two plus two’ is four. At least that was true when I thought it was ‘four’ the number. But two plus two equals ‘fore’ doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It’s gibberish,” the man’s younger self remarked, a strangely sour expression on his face.

  Alex said to Sharyn, “So you say you’ve been having these dreams?”

  “Straight up.”

  “Where some old guy who looks like Steve’s been teaching you how to fight with some kind of magic spear?”

  “A javelin,” she corrected. “A spear’s only got a point on one end. This has points on both ends.”

  “Whatever!” Alex snapped. Alex—Young Alex—tended to do a lot of snapping. “How long have you been dreaming this?”

  Sharyn shrugged. “Maybe a month.”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone?”

  Tom said, “She told me.”

  “Yeah,” his sister added. “Who else do I gotta tell?”

  I knew she’d also told the Burgermeister, but had apparently decided to keep that to herself.

  I understood.

  Alex opened his mouth to say something more. Then he shut it again.

  Steve cleared his throat and asked her, “Did you know the guy training you was … me?”

  She shook her head. “Didn’t know who he was. Though, now that I think about it, he did remind me of you. Thing is: He wasn’t trainin’ me, exactly. More like he was showin’ me the way to train myself. I’d spend hours in that one big room with him while he sent these mechanical Malum after me. They were just robots, but fast and smart robots. AI, he called it.”

  “Artificial Intelligence,” Steve translated. “Highly-sophisticated programming, able to adapt to new situations. Very cool.” He actually sounded a little bit proud.

  Sharyn went on, “And I’d use this fake Fore he gave me to fight ‘em off. Same size and weight as the real thing, but no electrical stuff. I went at it, night after night, until I got pretty good. Then, when we were done, he’d flash this gadget at me … white light … and I’d wake up on my own cot. Even so, I figured they couldn’t be just dreams ‘cause the next morning I’d have the cuts and bruises I got from the last session.”

  Amy said, “She kept coming in so Mrs. Ritter and I could treat her.”

  My mother nodded. “You said they were training injuries.”

  “And that’s what they were,” Sharyn replied.

  “I asked her to keep it between us,” Tom explained. “Too much was going down at the time. No need to muddy the waters with whatever was happening to my sister.”

  Burt said, “So … you can use this Fore to destroy the Eternity Stone?”

  “Yeah,” said Sharyn. “Practiced that too. The guy in the room told me the javelin was programmed to set up something he called a hormonal residence.”

  We all looked at her.

  She added sheepishly, “I might have that last part wrong.”

  “Harmonic resonance,” Steve corrected. “It means the electromagnetic energy running through this … Fore … is at the right frequency to shatter the crystal in the Eternity Stone. It’s pretty brilliant, really.”

  “Not that you’re patting yourself on the back or anything,” his brother remarked.

  “Whatever,” Sharyn said. “Anyway, he told me that, if I managed to plant my javelin in the stone, it would start a chain reaction that would completely explode the thing. He even told me I’d have an escape window. That, once I stuck the crystal, I’d have four minutes to get to safety before it shattered.”

  “That’s great … but we don’t have the javelin!” Helene exclaimed. “What was the point of all the training, all that info, if this Professor Moscova guy never gave you the real thing?”

  I said, “He told Emily … Future Emily … that Sharyn would know how to get it when the time came.”

  Sharyn frowned at that. “Well, seems to me the time’s come, and I ain’t got a clue!”

  “Could we use something else?” Tom wondered. “A gun maybe? Would a bullet be able to break this big crystal?”

  He looked at Steve, who shrugged helplessly. “Not enough data, Chief. Might work. Might just chip a chuck off. Might bounce away completely. Maybe if I could run some experiments on the Anchor Shard Will brought back …”

  “Can’t risk it,” I said. “This shard’s all we’ve got, and there’s no way I can really explain to you everything that went into getting it. The whole world was sacrificed … literally.”

  Tom nodded. “Will’s right.”

  “How about
the other one?” Helene suggested. “The one from Mifflin.”

  “The government’s got that,” Burt replied.

  “No, they don’t,” I said. “That one turned to dust the instant they tried to collect it. It was even more brittle than ours.”

  “You sure?” Helene asked me. “Maybe that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe if we get word to the government guys fast enough …”

  “It’s worth a try,” Tom said. “I’ll talk to Hugo.”

  “Okay, but the sooner, the better,” I told him. “Because, whatever we do, we gotta do it quick. I figure if we can set things up, open a Rift, go over there, and hit them now, while they’re still reeling from their defeat last night, we might be able to pull this off more easily.”

  That’s when my mother stood. “I’m sorry, kids. But none of you is doing any such thing!”

  Chapter 29

  Hard Realities

  I actually felt the blood rush up into my face.

  I mean, seriously, is there anything more embarrassing than your mother speaking out of turn?

  Everyone stared at her in mute astonishment. And my mother stared right back at them, her face set in an expression that I knew all too well. She’d reached a decision, and nothing and no one was going to sway her.

  It was her Mom Look.

  “Susan—” Tom began.

  But she cut him off. “No! This time you listen to me, Tom Jefferson. The war is over. Do you all understand that? It’s over! The truth is out. Hugo told me that Senator Mitchum is preparing a statement in which he’s going to reveal everything: the Corpse Invasion, the Undertakers, the Sight, all of it. That’ll be happening sometime today.”

  Like my mother and Agent Ramirez, Senator James Mitchum was one of a very small number of grown-ups who knew about the deaders. The guy had shown himself to be a hardcore jerk, using trickery and deception to try to exert some influence over Tom and the Undertakers. As a result of his poking his nose in where it didn’t belong, Lilith Cavanaugh found out where Haven was—and kids ended up dead.

  It was nice to hear that the jerk had decided to come clean. And publicly, too.

  Even so—

  My mother went on, “I know what you’re all going to say. Earth’s in danger again. In thirty years, those monsters are going to come back and kill everybody. End the world. And I believe that.” She looked right at me. “I absolutely do. I’ve seen way too much to start doubting now.” Then she turned in a circle, meeting everyone’s eyes. “But you don’t have to stop them! The Undertakers have done enough. You’ve already saved the world once, for God’s sake! And that has cost you all dearly.

  “We’ve lost people … kids. Good brave kids who shouldn’t have died, but did. Still others have been terribly injured. I can’t even imagine how most of you are going to be able to grow up and live normal lives after the misery and terror you’ve experienced. But there’s nothing anyone can do about that. What I can do is make sure none of you have to go through all that again!

  “This mission Will’s describing … it doesn’t need to be you who carries it out. The United States government has soldiers! Army Rangers. Navy Seals. Whatever. They’re the professionals. Let them open this hole, or Rift, or whatever you want to call it, and cross over and nuke that awful crystal if that’s what it takes! Don’t you get it, kids? Your part in this is over … finally, blessedly over. It’s time to return to your families, your schools, your lives.

  “It’s time to go home.”

  She fell silent then—and, with a weary sigh, sat back down.

  I wondered if she was right.

  Could I chuck it all and leave this to the guys with the muscles and the guns? Could my family just go back to our house in Manayunk? Could I just return to school like nothing happened? I’d already missed the rest of the last school year.

  Jeez. I’ll probably have to redo the eighth grade!

  That thought twisted my stomach almost as bad as a horde of Corpses.

  I glanced over at Helene, who sat beside me. She’d been holding my hand throughout most of the meeting, almost as if afraid that, if she let go, I might suddenly vanish. And, given my recent history, I couldn’t blame her.

  Her parents had split up. Her mom still lived in Allentown. I wasn’t sure where her father was. What would “going home” look like for her—or her little sister Julie for that matter, who was a very recent recruit? Could she somehow mend her broken family?

  Besides, Allentown was more than an hour west of Philly.

  Would I ever see her again?

  Then I looked at Tom and Sharyn. The Jefferson twins, whose courage and conviction had defined the Undertakers from the very beginning, had no home outside of Haven. Both were still minors, if only for a couple more months. Would the city take charge of them? Try to force them back into foster care?

  Steve and Burt had a home to return to. So did Amy. But Jillian was orphaned, like Tom and Sharyn. Where would she go? In the future I’d glimpsed, Jill and Tom had gotten married. I wondered if that would still happen.

  And Alex? His parents had been killed right in front of him by the Corpses. Where would he end up?

  Once Mitchum told the world about us, the genie would be out of the bottle. There’d be reporters and investigators and questions and more questions. Everyone would know who we were and what we’d been doing. That kind of notoriety, I’d heard, could be like a spotlight on you all the time—twenty-four/seven.

  Could any of us ever again have a “normal” life?

  And what did that even mean?

  The silence in our little circle went on for another half minute.

  Finally, Tom said, “Susan, I disagree with just about all o’ that.”

  My mom gaped at him as if he’d sprouted horns and a spaded tail.

  Slowly, the chief rose from his chair. “These future Undertakers didn’t reach back in time and grab any Army Ranger or Navy Seal,” he explained. “They grabbed Will. Now why would they do that, given that they were, themselves, all adults? Since when do grown-ups ask kids for help with something like this, even if the kids they’re asking used to be them? The answer is they did it because Chief Ritter and his people got what you’re not gettin’, Susan.”

  “And what’s that?” my mom asked, more than a little bitterly.

  “Where the Corpses are concerned, we are the pros. Ain’t nobody on this planet understands the Malum like we do. How they fight. How they act. How they think. We got ways of dealing with ‘em that the Rangers and Seals don’t. And, outta all of us, the best is probably Will.”

  I stared disbelievingly at him as he said this, and then looked on in horror as the rest—all but Alex and my mother—silently nodded in agreement. Even Helene, who gave my hand a little squeeze.

  “What!” I exclaimed. “Hold up. I’m not—”

  But Tom quieted me with a hand gesture, his eyes locked on my mom’s. “We’re soldiers. Young soldiers, but soldiers in every sense of the word. And soldiers don’t stop fighting just ‘cause we ‘done enough.’ In fact, when you get right down to it, the only argument you can really make for why someone else oughta do this ‘stead of us is the fact that we’re minors. Ain’t that so?”

  My mother didn’t reply, but she didn’t have to. The truth of it was all over her face.

  Tom saw what I saw and slowly nodded. Then he addressed the room as a whole. “Will’s right,” he said. “Our best chance of pulling this off is to hit ‘em now, while we got ‘em on the ropes. Haven’s done. As for the rest of the Undertakers, the ones we sent off to bed, the Hackers and Chatters, Moms and Schoolers … well, I say we do just what Susan suggests and let ‘em go home. And any o’ you who ain’t up for this should do the same. No pressure. No judgment. Like she said, y’all done enough.”

  Then the Chief of the Undertakers squared his not inconsiderable shoulders and announced, “But me? I’m headin’ through the Rift. And I’m gonna see this thing finish
ed, for good and all.”

  “So am I,” said Sharyn, standing up.

  “And me,” said Jillian, ignoring the glare that Sharyn gave her.

  “And us,” said Steve and Burt.

  “And me,” said Amy in her feather-soft voice.

  “Me, too,” said Alex. Then, with a sour shrug, he added, “What else I got to do?”

  “And me,” said Helene. Letting go of my hand, she dropped onto her sneakered feet, standing tall like the rest.

  I looked over at my mom, who sat in her chair, looking small and pale and frightened. Her eyes found mine, and I read the plea in them. It was the same plea, I’d have bet, that soldiers always see in their mother’s eyes. Please. Not you. Anyone but you.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. Then I jumped off the gurney and declared, “Me, too!”

  I watched in quiet misery as my mother leaped to her feet and fled from the room in tears.

  As she did, a man—a grown man—appeared in the Infirmary doorway. He called to my mother as she rushed past him, but she ignored him, disappearing down the hallway. Then, perplexed, he turned toward us, all of us, standing in a loose circle, empty chairs at our backs.

  “Okay,” FBI Special Agent Hugo Ramirez asked warily. “What’d I miss?”

  Chapter 30

  Ether

  Naturally, there was a lot to do.

  Since his crew had either left or was leaving Haven, Steve grabbed Burt and, together, the Moscova Brothers headed into the Brain Factory to start preparing for the Rift opening.

  Meanwhile, Tom and Ramirez contacted Senator Mitchum, hoping to somehow save the Fort Mifflin crystal. But Mitchum responded with the news that it had fallen apart the instant the government science guys had tried to retrieve it.

  Just as Professor Moscova had said.

  Neither the chief nor the FBI Guy revealed to the senator anything about the future Malum threat.

  “It would start a whole thing,” Ramirez told us later, when a bunch of us met in Tom’s office. The chief, Sharyn, Helene, and I were all there. So were Amy and my mother who, as of now, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “First, there’d be a major effort to keep this new threat quiet, out of the news. They’d be worried about general panic, a stock market crash, mass suicides, whatever.”