by Ty Drago
Then the Burgermeister's big body was hurled over the nearest counter, knocking down more than a dozen pots and pans in a rain of bangs and crashes that rang through the small kitchen like crazed church bells.
The Corpse whirled on us and, this time, Helene tagged him. A stream of saltwater caught him in one eye and he stumbled backward. Then, as he started convulsing, I snatched a butcher's knife off the countertop and drove it deep into the base of the deader's skull.
Trapped gas, so foul-smelling that it hit me almost like a physical wave, wafted out from around the puncture wound. I staggered back, one hand cupping my mouth and nose. It had been hours since I'd last eaten — a fact that my stomach seemed determined to ignore. Meanwhile, the Corpse's neck and head actually seemed to deflate. Without anything to hold it in place, the knife fell free as bugs, mostly black carrion beetles, began scrambling through the open wound.
But I'd hit the mark. The deader fell, his spinal cord — or what was left of it — severed, his stolen body useless.
“Will!” Helene screamed.
Three more attacked from different directions, a coordinated offensive pattern. These dudes had gotten strategic on us. They'd used their little black boxes to track us here. Then, instead of immediately charging, they'd taken the time to flank us and block all exits.
Remember when I told you that Corpses are smart? Well, that's true — though some are definitely smarter than others. And, in combat, dumb deaders are like rabid dogs.
These weren't dumb.
Beside me, the twins began screaming. I didn't blame them.
The first Corpse, a Type Two female in a white lab coat, her once dark hair mostly gone and her skin as black and oily as a rotten banana peel, lunged for Helene with hands like talons. The girl dodged and ducked, sidestepping the deader and delivering a single punch to her armpit that momentarily crippled the left side of her body. With a low moan, the Corpse staggered, struggling for balance. Never one to ignore an advantage, Helene spun around and delivered a wicked wheel kick that nailed the deader in the back of the head, sending her crashing into one of the stoves.
As the remaining two Corpses closed in on me, I tapped the 2 button on my pocketknife, activating its Taser.
Yep. EMP generator, lock picks and a Taser.
Jealous much?
At the same time, I yelled to Michael and Robert, “Get into the far corner and stay out of way!” I'd have suggested they hide, except it wouldn't do them any good — not with those chips in their necks.
They looked so terrified that it was hard to tell if they'd heard me or not, but no way did I have time to repeat myself. One of the deaders was already lunging for me, the gray skin of his hands pulled tight across flesh that had mostly rotted away to nothing. His lipless jaws opened wide to bite. When I fed him a mouthful of Taser, its current actually made the lower half of his skull glow under his thin, translucent skin.
It was freaky.
But he went down, hard.
The last deader halted when I turned my pocketknife on her. She was another Two, much fresher and stronger than her zapped buddy. Smarter too, because her dead eyes narrowed as they watched the arc of blue electricity dance between the Taser’s twin prongs.
When she spoke, her voice was a gurgle; her vocal chords were literally melting inside her neck from rot. “There are more coming, Undertaker.”
“I know,” I said. Helene came and stood beside me. She held up her water pistol, which had to be almost empty by now.
“Even more than you think,” the Corpse hissed. “You have something that belongs to us.”
“Do I? My bad.”
“Leave now,” she demanded. “And we might let you live.”
“Don't think so,” Helene and I said together — a total accident, but it actually came out sounding cooler than you'd think.
“We have a small army out on these streets!” the deader exclaimed. “What do you have?”
Helene and I swapped a quick smile. Then I replied, “We have a Burgermeister.”
Yeah, it's kind of a movie reference.
The fist that slammed into the side of the Corpse's head was as big as a Christmas ham and twice as hard. The deader's neck snapped like a piece of chalk, and her head lulled to the side, her lifeless eyes wide in what I could only assume was astonishment.
Then she went down.
Dave rubbed his fist. “Felt that,” he grunted. But was smiling.
“She was right,” I said, leaning over and pulling the little black box off the female, while Helene used the butcher's knife to sever the spine of the one I'd just Tased. “There's more coming. They're tracking Michael and Robert with these!”
“How?” the Burgermeister asked.
“That 'funny little gun' they talked about? I've seen one like it, back before my dad died. The veterinarian used it to lowjacked our cat. The range ain't great ... maybe six blocks ... but if it was enough for the deaders to find us once, they'll do it again. And soon.”
“Then let's split!” Helene declared.
“You heard that Corpse,” I told her. “There's a small army of them out there. We'd never make it back to Haven. Heck, we probably wouldn't get out of the neighborhood!”
She threw up his hands in frustration. “They what do we do?”
Instead of replying, I simply smiled.
“Oh, I know that look,” Dave said with a grin. “Okay, Will ... what's the play?”
So I told them.
It took us less than a minute to set things up. Then we grabbed the twins and found the restaurant's back staircase behind a narrow door set between two refrigerators. All the shops on this street were converted row homes, and most of them had long since relocated their stairs from the front of the house to the back — you know, so customers wouldn't wander into places they shouldn't. These particular steps led up to an office and some storage rooms, all deserted. Whoever owned this Chinese restaurant didn't live on the premises.
Just as well, considering what I had in mind.
Up there we found the fire escape that this house shared with its neighbors on either side. “Take the twins out there,” I told Dave and Helene. “Follow the catwalk as far as it goes and then wait for me.”
“Will?” Helene asked anxiously. “Are you sure you know what you're doing?”
I tried my best to give her a James Bond grin and quipped in what I hoped was a British accent, “Don't I always?”
From her expression, I'd missed the mark.
“Not even close,” the two of them replied, once again in perfect unison.
That one wasn't cool at all.
I headed back downstairs. By now, it had begun to stink something awful. So I kept the door into the kitchen shut — and waited.
I didn't have to wait long.
The restaurant's front and back entrances crashed open together. No stealth approach this time. I cracked the staircase door open just enough to see Corpses — all dressed in either scrubs or lab coats — pour into the small kitchen. Ten of them. Then twelve. Then fifteen, with more still coming. They scanned the room, taking in their fallen pals as well as the complete lack of kids.
As I watched, one of them — a male Type Two — checked his little black box. “Upstairs!” he declared after a moment.
I pushed the door wide open. “You looking for Michael and Robert?” I asked, trying not to cough.
All their dead heads turned my way as if pulled by the same string. It's always really creepy when they do that.
I managed a smile. “I've got 'em.”
“Give them to us!” the Type Two demanded.
“Know what else I've got that you don't?” I asked him.
He didn't reply.
I lifted the lit Coleman lantern that I'd found in the kitchen's pantry, probably kept handy for blackouts just like this one.
“A sense of smell,” I said.
Then I threw it at him, turned and ran, taking the stairs two at a time.
; I actually heard the lantern crash, its little flame suddenly exposed.
The Chinese restaurant's cramped kitchen exploded.
That's kind of what happens when you turn all the stove burners to high, blow out the pilot lights, wait a few minutes for the room to fill with natural gas, and then set it on fire.
As I ran for my life up the stairs to the second floor, I felt the walls shake. Heat welled up in the space below me as the kitchen was engulfed by flame. Within seconds, all that trapped energy would find this stairwell and use it like a chimney.
I really needed to not be here when that happened.
I cleared the final step and threw myself into the second floor hallway. An instant later, a ball of fire turned the stairway to ash and ripped through the archway at my back. The fire escape — now literally a “fire escape” — stood at the end of the hallway, through an open window. I ran for it, sweat burning my brow and my heart slamming against my ribcage like it meant to get out of me before I could get out of here.
Behind me, the walls and ceiling were ablaze. And heat, relentless and oddly predatory, nipped at my sneakers and caused the back of my jacket to smoke.
With only steps to go I saw the carpet — a frayed oriental runner — catch fire on either side of me. Suddenly, it was as if a curtain of flame had been draped over my vision. The heat seared my face and threatened to boil my eyes in their sockets.
So I shut them — and dove.
Cold air and warm air mixed as I cleared the sill and crashed painfully against the fire escape's metal railing. Still I felt grateful. If the railing hadn't been there, I'd gone right off the edge and down twenty feet into the alley.
But that didn't mean I'd made it — not yet. I tried to get up, but the heat blasting through the still open window slammed me back down with an almost physical impact. Gasping, my eyes blinded with tears, I tried to crawl forward. My body felt like it had been charbroiled. I couldn't seem to get my arms or legs to want to move.
Do it anyway! I told myself. Or you'll cook here, on this fire escape, like a burger on a grill!
Suddenly, a huge hand grabbed mine and I was yanked forward with such force that it felt as if I'd gone airborne. Then I was half-dragged, half-carried the length of the fire escape, only to be dumped into a heap at Helene's feet.
“Got him,” the Burgermeister said proudly.
Helene knelt. “Will? You okay?”
Of course not! I'm a grilled burger!
Except, it slowly dawned on me that I was okay. Not pain-free, mind you, but definitely alive. I blinked up at her, then over at Dave, and then at Michael and Robert, who were looking at me like I wore a cape and had big red “S” on my chest.
I sat up, coughed, wheezed, and then coughed again.
Some Superman, I am.
I felt my face. My cheeks and forehead were hot to the touch and probably beet red, but at least I'd somehow managed to keep my eyebrows. Small favors.
“Jeez, dude,” the Burgermeister said. “You totally wasted that Chinese place.”
I stood up and looked back. Smoke was billowing through the second floor window — thick and black and foul-smelling. The restaurant's other windows were lit by internal flames. The fire I'd started was consuming the place, eating it from the inside out.
I really hoped the owners — whoever they were — had insurance.
“How many'd you get?” Helene asked.
I shrugged. “Not sure. Maybe a many as twenty.”
Dave grinned. “Not a bad night's work.”
“What happens now?” Michael asked. He and his brother stood side by side on the fire escape, their backs up against the cold brick outside wall of one of the adjacent buildings. But those bricks wouldn't stay cold. Fires like this tended to spread. If somebody didn't do something soon, the whole city block might go up — maybe more. Given the neighborhood, it was unlikely that anyone lived here. Unlikely, but not impossible.
Please don't let me have killed somebody ... somebody human, I mean.
I could already hear sirens. Someone had called the fire department, and probably the Philly cops too. That was good, though it meant we needed to be gone from here — and fast. To anyone who wasn't an Undertaker, what I'd done tonight would look like arson. That's the problem with fighting a war nobody knows about: nobody knows about it.
“Now we get the heck out of here,” I replied.
Then another voice said, “All around the mulberry bush ...”
The five of us froze.
“The monkey chased the weasel ...”
I heard the Burgermeister mutter, “What the hell is that?”
Then, through a break in the smoke I saw him. A Corpse stood on the fire escape across the alley, almost exactly opposite us. He wore a white lab coat. No surprise there; we'd seen a lot of white lab coats tonight. But this deader was a Type One. Type One's are pretty rare — very fresh cadavers, less than a week gone. This dude's face, gray with death, hadn't yet begun to bloat or shrivel. His muscles and bones remained strong. Such host bodies were usually reserved for the big bosses in the Corpse hierarchy.
The really dangerous ones.
“The monkey thought it was all in good fun ...”
I spared a moment to look at his Mask. It's a Seer trick, a method of holding your eyes so that you see not only the dead body, but also the illusion that dead body projects to the world — the way the rest of the world sees that particular Corpse.
His Mask was of a man in his early fifties, tall and broad shouldered, with salt and pepper hair and a friendly, confident smile. Picture the stereotypical doctor, and you'll pretty much get it.
Except, of course, it was a lie.
“Pop goes the weasel!”
Steiger.
“Well done, Undertakers,” he said, treating us to a slow clap that was way more about condescension than congratulations. “In one fiery swoop, you've managed to severely undermine my staffing levels.”
“Happy to help,” I muttered.
He was out of reach, both of a water pistol and my Taser. And something told me he knew it. Something told me this particular deader knew all sorts of things I was going to wish he didn't.
“That EMP was an especially interesting trick. I'd very much like to know how you did it.”
I said nothing – though, behind me, I swear the Burgermeister was actually growling.
Behind him, the twins cowered in undisguised terror.
“It slowed down the hunt, I admit. Fortunately, the 'minder' chips I implant in my subjects have certain safeguards against such things. I designed them myself, you see.”
“Good for you,” I said. The ladder off the fire escape waited just a dozen feet away. We could get down to the alley and be long gone before the firemen even got started fighting the blaze. But would it be that easy to escape Dr. Lab Coat over there? Type Ones were the fastest and strongest of all. And he seemed awfully confident for somebody whose “staffing levels” had just been “undermined”.
“Necessary,” Steiger explained. “Can't risk my subjects running off, not with all the time and trouble that went into finding them.”
“What do you want them for?” I demanded, shouting across the smoke-filled gap between us.
He laughed — a truly awful sound. “Professional secret, I'm afraid. Still, all this fuss and bother has convinced me that these two specimens in particular ...” He pointed at Michael and Robert, who seemed to shrivel up inside themselves with fear as Helene stepped protectively in front of them. “... are beyond recovery.”
“You got that right!” Dave exclaimed.
Steiger reached into his lab coat and pulled out a gadget of some kind — bigger than the black boxes his cronies wore.
“Pop goes the weasel,” he said again. Then, grinning, he pressed a button.
The twins gasped.
Then they fell.
Helene cried out and dropped beside them, shaking them both. When they didn't respond, she touched two fing
ers to Michael's neck. Then Robert's. When she looked up at me, her face was a mask of horror and disbelief. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.
Despite the nearby fire, despite the heat, I felt suddenly cold.
“What did you do?” I screamed across the alley.
“Another little precaution,” Steiger replied, putting away his killing toy. “A drop of toxin was delivered to their carotid arteries. Instant and painless. A mercy, really.”
“You poisoned them ...” I said, trying to take it in. After everything they'd gone through, this — monster — had just murdered two innocent kids as casually as I might swat a pair of flies.
“Quite so. Now then, Undertakers, I'm afraid I must leave. You've created quite a bit of extra work for my remaining staff, and I need to be sure we stay on schedule. Good night and good health!”
I gazed down at the boys on the fire escape floor. Their faces were peaceful. They could have been sleeping. But, of course, they weren't. The Corpse had murdered them. After all, that was what Corpses did. More than any of their other, countless crimes: they murdered children.
“Look at me!” I screamed, whirling back on Steiger, who had turned away. He paused and glanced back from across the alley, wearing a bemused expression. “Remember my face!” I called to him, yelling through the smoke and open air between us. “Before this night is over, you're gonna see it one more time! Just one more time, wormbag! Right before I kill you!”
To my horror, he merely smiled. “I look forward to it ... Undertaker.”
Then, with the bizarre agility that Corpses sometimes demonstrated, he climbed the side of the building opposite our own and disappeared over its roof.
“Will ...” Helene said. She put a hand on my shoulder, but I shook her off.
“Dude,” Dave added. “We ... um ... we gotta split. Cops'll be here, if they ain't already.”
He was right. But I couldn't move — not just yet. Instead, I just stared at the empty rooftop where Steiger had vanished. “Listen to me,” I told them both. “We're not done tonight. Not by a long shot. We're gonna find that deader. And we're gonna find the rest of those kids he's got in that pen of his. We're gonna get them out ... all of them.”