The Undertakers: End of the World

by Ty Drago

  But did setting us free mean they had to let us destroy the artifact that occupied the very center of their lives and culture?

  Probably not.

  “We’re outta time,” Tom said. “Go. Now.”

  “Come with me,” I begged, still not looking at him. “Please.”

  “I can’t,” he replied, sounding genuinely unhappy about it.

  So I said, “There’s a statue.”

  His brow furrowed. “What?”

  “In the future. There’s a statue of you that stands in City Hall courtyard.”

  “No there ain’t.”

  “There is. I swear there is. I didn’t mention it before ‘cause I knew you wouldn’t like it. But it’s there. You’re standing tall and facing east and your fists are clenched, like you’re ready for a fight. And you know what else?”

  “What?” he asked, looking horrified.

  “You’re wearing a suit and tie.”

  “No!”

  “Yeah.”

  He groaned. Then, he said, “Well, good thing we’ve undone that future. Now that statue’ll never get made!”

  “Come back with me,” I said. “Or I’ll make sure they put up another one. A bigger one. Right in City Hall courtyard, exactly where the other one would’ve gone.”

  “You wouldn’t do that to me!”

  “Try me,” I said. “In fact, I’ll make it my life’s mission to take William Penn off the top of City Hall and replace him with Tom Jefferson, suit and tie and all!”

  He glared at me.

  I glared back at him.

  Then he grinned, and I wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one. “You’re really something else, you know that? In my whole life, I ain’t never met anybody who could get under my skin like you do.”

  “Come back with me,” I said, not grinning.

  “Will, you’re not being logical.”

  “You want logic? How’s this? If you stay, I’m staying. Then one of two things’ll happen. Either you’ll throw that thing and we’ll both die here or the Malum will wise up and take us out.”

  “You won’t do that to your family,” he said.

  “Why not? You’d do it to yours. Thing is Tom; you are my family! You and Sharyn both. As much as my mom and sister. And I will not abandon you. Period. End of story.”

  He was still staring at me, but at least he wasn’t glaring anymore.

  “Well?” I pressed. “What’s it gonna be, big brother?”

  “And what if we don’t make it?” he asked. “What if we both die?”

  I got up in his face. “Then I’ll shrug at you in the afterlife and say, ‘I had to do it,’ and you can suck it up!”

  He put his hand on my shoulders and eased me back.

  “Okay,” Tom said with a firm nod. “We’ll do it your way. Come on. Let’s finally end this thing.”

  Together we ran the fifty yards to the Eternity Stone. It was exactly where it had been, big and oblivious, its light so bright that it was hard to look at. Off in the distance, the Malum continued to watch us.

  “Why aren’t they attacking?” I asked. “They gotta know what we’re up to.”

  “Maybe they don’t,” he replied. “They let us go and maybe they’re wondering why we ain’t left yet. Maybe the other Royals still haven’t shown up and they’re afraid to act without a command. Or maybe they can’t quite believe we can destroy the Eternity Stone. In their mind, it’s always been here, a constant in their lives. It is called the ‘Eternity Stone,’ after all.” Then, after a moment’s consideration, he added, “Or, maybe …”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Maybe, on some level, they’re ready for us to destroy it.”

  I kind of liked that last one.

  “Do it,” I said.

  Tom dropped his skateboard, raised Fore and leaned back, balancing on the heels of his feet, until the javelin pointed skyward—at the crystal.

  Dude looked like a Greek statue, I swear.

  I watched him hold his breath, watched him steady himself.

  And then he threw.

  The javelin cut the air like a knife, soaring at an almost ninety degree angle. I’d once heard a term that means something being fired or thrown just right. “Flying true,” they call it.

  I’d never really gotten what that meant until now.

  Fore flew true, striking the Eternity Stone somewhere in the lower quarter of its mass. On impact, the javelin flashed an electric blue as its point buried deeply into the crystal, sending cracks, as thin as the threads of a spider web, running in all directions.

  An instant later, a roar rose up from the wall of Malum, and Tom and I turned to see every ten-legged monster in the world charging toward us.

  “Nice throw,” I said.

  “Thanks,” he replied. “Now let’s split.”

  Snatching up his board, he turned and ran. I kept pace, struggling to pull the second board out of its harness on my back while, behind us, the crystal cracked further. The sound was thin and strange, almost musical. Under that sweet sound, faint but getting louder, was the boom boom boom of thousands of Malum feet crossing the Ether.

  I wondered fleetingly what they meant to do. Kill us, of course. But what difference would that make now? Whatever damage we were capable of causing we’d already caused.

  Or maybe Tom had been right. They were finally ready to see the Eternity Stone destroyed. And now that it had been, they’d decided to do the same to us, just on general principle.

  Sounds pretty Malum, huh?

  The two of us reached the lip of the Void, the landing where the Energy Ferry would have been, if I’d ridden it here. In front of us stretched the Sea of Ripples—the maze of half-pipes between us and home. And behind us, no more than twenty yards back, came the thundering horde. Not far away, the crystal had begun to visibly vibrate, and the area around where Fore had “wounded” it looked almost as if it was throbbing.

  Tom said to me. “Ready?”

  I nodded. “The Sons of Ritter ride again!”

  He grinned.

  Then we jumped off the edge of the Ethereal slab together, dropping side-by-side into the first half-pipe.

  I’d always known that Tom could skateboard. I’d always known he was good at it. But he wasn’t good at it; he was great at it, way better than me.

  Sometimes, I think that might be a good catch phrase for the dude.

  “Tom Jefferson: Way Better Than Will Ritter!”

  Yeah.

  Anyway, he handled each new pipe as if he’d done this a thousand times, barely straining, barely shifting his weight, every move calculated and minimal. By comparison, I felt like a clumsy idiot, struggling to keep pace, all the while terrified that I’d miss a mark and break either my board or my neck.

  And, if that happened, I knew Tom would never abandon me.

  So to keep him alive, which had after all been the point, I needed to keep me alive.

  It took us more than a minute to reach the lengthwise half-pipe, and another minute to serpentine our way along it. I was skating faster than I ever had in my life, my mind’s eye focused on the collapsing Eternity Stone, all the while trying hard not to think about the Ether that would entomb us if we didn’t make it back to the Rift in time.

  I knew we were in trouble when we passed the three minute mark, and the air seemed to change around us. I felt wind at my back, faint at first but getting stronger. Finally, at the top of a pipe, I risked a hasty look back over my shoulder, and what I saw nearly froze my blood.

  The Eternity Stone was gone. In fact, the entire Malum homeworld had disappeared. In its place was a hard, flat vertical wall at the tunnel’s back end, a wall that seemed to be moving, coming closer.

  Gaining on us.

  The Ether was filling up, from the point of injury outward.

  “Faster!” I called to Tom, who nodded. Then, incredibly, he went faster, crouching lower on his boa
rd and catching enough air on the next rise to let him jump an entire pipe and drop smoothly down into the next. I followed, putting all I had into it, praying that I could match his effort.

  And I did.

  Maybe not as smoothly. But I did.

  I could see the Earth end of the tunnel ahead of us. No more than a hundred yards. There hovered the Energy Ferry, right where I’d left it, just below the Rift. A face—no, two faces—peered out through the shimmering doorway, though we had to get two half-pipes closer before I could tell who they were.

  Helene and Jillian.

  “Tom!” I exclaimed.

  “See ‘em,” he called back. “Gonna be steep!”

  He was right. The last half-pipe’s far slope rose high, just as it had on the Malum side. But this time the ferry blocked the top of the rise. No ollie would work here. We’d have to abandon our boards and reach for the lip of the ferry with everything we had. One glance over my shoulder showed me that the Ether was still closing in, blowing a hard wind before it as the air corridor created by the Anchor Shard was forced back through the Rift.

  And the noise of it! It was like the sound of paper being ripped to shreds, only magnified a thousand times. Deafening and terrifying.

  But we were almost there.

  “Ready?” Tom called to me.

  “Ready!” I called back, wondering if it was true.

  Then the two of us dropped into the last half-pipe. Down, across and up.

  And up.

  And up.

  At the top of my arc, as that moment of zero G hit, I jumped for all I was worth, both my hands reaching for the edge of the ferry. Beside me, no more than three or four feet to my right, Tom did the same. But he was taller than me, stronger than me, and a better skater.

  I could tell right away that he would make it and I wouldn’t.

  I tried to think of something to say. To tell him it was all right, to go ahead and be safe. To tell him that I was glad for what I’d done, but that he should apologize to everyone for me. Especially my mom. Especially Helene.

  For an instant, just the barest fraction of a second, I understood what Tom had said about it being a question of necessity, not bravery.

  I’d traded my life for my chief’s.

  And that was okay.

  Which is why I was glad when I saw Tom’s big hand grab the lip of the ferry.

  And astonished when his other hand reached down and caught my wrist.

  “Gotcha, bro!” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Tom!” I called. “There’s no time! You have to—”

  But that was as far as I got. The muscles in his arm bunched up and he bent his elbow and, in a feat of strength beyond anything I’d ever seen, lifted me up. No, not lifted, threw. He threw me up past him, past the edge the ferry, and all the way onto the lighted platform, where I landed hard enough to knock the wind out of me.

  Instantly, other hands were on me. Helene’s. She was pulling me up by my armpits and, at the same time, screaming in my ear, “Get up! Don’t you die, William Karl Ritter! You stay alive so I can kick your ass!”

  Then I was on my feet and moving, stumbling beside her toward the Rift. At the same time, I looked back at Tom. Jillian was there, yanking on his wrist, dragging him up onto the Energy Ferry. And behind them, the Ether was coming, roaring toward us.

  The Void between the universes was closing shut!

  Suddenly, I was through the portal and on my back on the dusty floor of the Big Room. Others were closing in around me. Burt and Steve and even Alex. Sharyn was there too, sitting against the wall with her arm splinted. Amy knelt beside her, looking fearfully in our direction.

  Helene asked if I was all right. I barely heard her. Rolling over, I stared back at the doorway but, of course, could see nothing through it.

  Seconds passed. A lot of them. Too many.

  Then Jillian appeared, jumping through, pulling on an arm. Tom’s head popped into view a second later, followed by his shoulders. The chief’s face was awash with sweat, but he was grinning, because he’d made it. We’d both made it. Except he hadn’t made it, not yet. He still had to get the rest of his body through the Rift. And there was no time left.

  Zero. Zilch. Nada.

  But Tom Jefferson was fast. Strong and fast and, with Jillian all the way through, he came right after her, fairly diving head first from that world into ours.

  He almost made it.

  As the Rift slammed shut with sudden, brutal finality, Sharyn started screaming.

  Chapter 44

  The Statue

  Six months.

  Six whole months later.

  So much had happened.

  The Undertakers were famous now. World famous. News of the war had spread like wildfire. And the attention paid was overwhelming. Agent Ramirez and Senator James Mitchum, two of the few adults who had known about the Corpse War, had taken point on managing the public reaction. Some people, politicians mostly, were still calling it all a hoax. But they were getting fewer and further between. There was too much evidence, too many bodies that couldn’t be explained.

  To most of humanity, we were heroes.

  Of course, we never told anyone about our last mission, about the trip across the Void. As far as the world knew, and ever would know, the war had ended the night before and the Corpses were gone for good.

  Like I said: Why muddy the waters?

  Everyone went home.

  That part was weird. Helene and Julie were picked up by their father, who was introduced around but seemed too stunned by the reunion to really grasp everything that was happening. Steve and Burt went home, too. So did Amy. Jillian’s sister came up from D.C. to collect her, but she refused to go. A few of the kids refused to go. It was a problem for a while, but eventually it got sorted out.

  Then there were the kids like Alex, who had no home to go back to.

  Family Services stepped in, offering foster care. But Ramirez and Mitchum came through again, setting up a special program that allowed those Undertakers without next of kin to stay together in a pretty cool Center City apartment complex, all of them declared to be special wards of Uncle Sam. The whole thing took a few weeks to set up and, until it was, chaos seemed to be the order of the day. But, eventually, everyone’s lives began to settle down.

  My mom and my sister and I went home.

  Of course, the press wouldn’t leave us be. Not right away. They wanted statements, interviews, photos. The local cops in Manayunk, many of them friends of my dad, kept them away for a while. But the reporters didn’t give up. And I heard it was the same for many of the other kids, too. We were just too big a story, and no way were the news hounds going to drop it just because we were “minors” and had “been through enough already.”

  Once again, Senator Mitchum stepped up to the plate. He got a federal judge to issue an injunction prohibiting any journalist from so much as approaching an Undertaker without first petitioning the court for permission. Nevertheless, more than a dozen T.V. guys, some of them from Kenny Booth’s station, got themselves arrested for trying.

  Finally, just to calm things down, a bunch of us did a live interview with that guy from Meet the Press. I found out later that it was the most watched television show in history, even bigger than the Super Bowl.

  Okay, that was pretty cool.

  Gradually, things began to die down. It seemed to take forever, but it happened.

  The phone calls stopped. The emails stopped. Stuff started happening in the Middle East and Africa that pulled the public’s interest in other directions.

  Even having saved the world, it turns out, can get old.

  Just as well.

  Meanwhile, Mom and Hugo Ramirez started dating. Lately, it had gotten pretty serious. Emily liked him.

  And so did I.

  Which brings us to today.

  Helene and I met up in Philly. We hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks.
She lived with her dad and I lived with my mom. We went to different middle schools, but that might be changing. Helene’s father, who worked for a defense contractor, had been offered a position in Center City, with Helene practically begging him to get a house in Manayunk. If everything worked out, we might—fingers crossed—might find ourselves attending the same high school next September.

  Time’s a river, right? And rivers have currents.

  But on this particular Saturday, a special Saturday, we’d agreed to go together to City Hall. Not down into Haven, which I’d heard was being cleaned out and turned into a museum/memorial, but up here on the street, in the shadow of the massive building.

  The courtyard had been gated off, blocking any access. So we stood there, Helene and I, just outside that padlocked gate, looking in at what occupied the middle of the courtyard.

  A statue.

  The statue.

  His statue.

  We couldn’t see it. No one had. Not yet, not officially. It had been erected only that morning and wouldn’t be publicly unveiled until three o’clock. Both of us had been invited to the ceremony, about which we had … “mixed feelings” I guess is the best way to put it.

  Right now, though, the statue was covered with a heavy canvas tarp.

  “What do you think it looks like?” Helene asked me.

  “Dunno,” I said. The sculptor who’d made it had used photographs for some of the work, and sketches he’d drawn from descriptions for the rest. Both Helene and I had contributed ideas. So had others. But we’d seen nothing that hinted at what the final version had turned out to be.

  It was nine in the morning.

  Three o’clock felt like a long way away. Too long, truth be told.

  “Stand aside!” a voice called.

  Immediately, the two of us stepped back to let Sharyn through. The girl’s broken arm had long since healed, though it had happened the slower, natural way, since the last Anchor Shard had turned to dust when the Eternity Stone had been destroyed and the Void forever filled.

  No more magic. No more inter-dimensional travel. No more war.

  At least, not with the dead.

  In Sharyn’s arms was a big bolt-cutter. Back in the day, I could have made short work of the padlock with my pocketknife. But that was gone too.