Dark Days (6 page)

Needless to say, the spaghetti was delicious and the dinner was great fun. Beth told us about a job she was applying for to work as a counselor at a drama camp run by the parks department.

“That sounds great,” said Dad.

“If I get it,” she said, “we'll put on three different plays during the summer.”

“No operas?”

“No operas.” She laughed.

“That reminds me,” Dad said, turning to me. “Have you thought about what play you want to see for your birthday? I want to make sure we get good tickets.”

For years we'd celebrated my birthday by going out to dinner and a Broadway show. It was great, and something I really loved. But the truth is, one of the reasons it became a tradition was because I never had enough friends to have a party. This year, though, things were different.

“Actually,” I said, a little worried about how he might react. “I was thinking of having a party instead.”

“I thought you loved Broadway.”

“I do. It's just that I'd kind of like to do something with Alex, Grayson, and Natalie.”

Right then the opera music hit a particularly dramatic moment, and Dad pretended to be the character as he lip-synched for a few seconds. “He's so sad because his daughters are leaving him for drama camp and parties with friends.”

Beth and I both rolled our eyes.

“Just kidding,” he said. “What kind of party do you want to have?”

This is where I was stumped. I knew I wanted to have one, I just didn't have any experience as to what one might be like.

“I don't know. Do you have any ideas?”

“We can get a clown or a magician. If you want I can get you all a tour of the fire house and you can slide down the pole.”

“Yes, Dad,” Beth said, exasperated. “She's turning six and she's wants a clown and a magician. Or better yet, we can get her a fairy princess.”

“I'm sensing sarcasm,” Dad joked. “Do you have any suggestions, Beth?”

“Yeah,” I said eagerly. “You've got a lot more experience with . . . you know, being with people who are having a good time.”

Beth absently twirled a forkful of spaghetti on her plate as she thought it over. “You want something fun but easy. Good for guys and girls. With low social pressure that will provide lasting memories.”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” I said. “I want a party that's all those things. And I especially like the fact that there isn't any clown or magician. Although, sliding down the pole in the fire house actually did sound kind of fun.”

“As fun as Coney Island?”

Coney Island is awesome. It's a collection of amusement parks, roller coasters, and attractions all along the boardwalk in Brooklyn. It was the perfect party suggestion.

“That's it,” I said. “That's exactly what I want to do.”

“I like it too,” Dad said. “It's been a couple years since I rode the Cyclone.”

Beth and I both gave him a look, and he took the hint.

“Of course, you were probably thinking of just the kids riding the rides.”

“I'll ride with you, Dad,” said Beth. “And after that we can listen to some of
my
music.”

“Gee,” he said in his goofy dad voice, “I wonder which will make me dizzier.”

It wasn't until later, after we'd finished putting away the dishes, that I saw the envelope. It had arrived in the mail that day and was addressed to me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten an actual letter, so I was excited.

I opened it in my room, but rather than a letter there was a folded piece of paper and a small article clipped from a newspaper. The article was dated a week earlier and was about our favorite evil lord of the undead, Marek Blackwell.

It said Marek and the mayor had negotiated a deal for him to take control of some of the city's abandoned subway stations. His plan was to turn these ghost stations into underground entertainment complexes with restaurants, shops, and even some apartments. He called it RUNY, Reinventing Underground New York.

In the article it was hailed as a vision for the future, turning unused space into something good. But I knew something else. Underground and surrounded by Manhattan schist, these entertainment complexes would be the ultimate destination for zombies.

In a way it was kind of genius. Marek said he was trying to build a better life for the undead. This actually did that. As I considered this, I looked at the paper and saw a single question written with blue felt tip pen in block letters. It said:

WHERE IS HE GETTING THE MONEY TO DO THIS?

O
ne of the great things about having a dad who's an amazing cook is that the leftovers that make their way into your lunch tend to be much better than those of your classmates. So, unlike the other kids who'd brown-bagged it and brought PB and Js or tuna fish sandwiches, I was savoring every bite of a rosemary chicken panini. Dad even packed a sweet and spicy dipping sauce with it. It was the kind of lunch that could inspire jealousy. At least, it could have if I hadn't been eating alone.

You see, of the roughly five hundred students at the Metropolitan Institute of Science and Technology, I was the only one who thought it was a good day to eat outside. MIST is a science magnet school that draws kids from all over New York City. They're really smart, certainly smart enough to know that you don't sit outside when it's almost freezing. And though the gothic buildings that make up the campus look like they belong in a horror movie, the view from the picnic tables is nice enough that I was willing to ignore the temperature.

I was nibbling on my sandwich and watching a red-and-white tugboat push a barge up the East River, when I heard footsteps approach from behind. I didn't even have to look to see who it was. Grayson's walk is distinctive: He goes fast until he's almost there, then nearly comes to a full stop and takes a breath before taking the final few steps at regular speed. It's like he's always in a hurry but never wants you to know it.

“Hey, G,” I said as I took another bite and kept watching the tug do its job.

“Hey, Molly,” he said warily. “How are you doing?”

“Fantastic,” I replied, maybe a bit more enthusiastically than the situation warranted. “I've got a great lunch. I've got a great view. What more could I want?” I turned and looked right at him, trying my best to punctuate my enthusiasm with a convincing smile.

“You do realize that it's . . .”

“Check the calendar,” I said, cutting him off. “Today is March twentieth, the first day of spring. Spring. As in no longer winter. As in it's totally appropriate to eat on the patio.”

“Yeah, but if you check a thermometer,” he replied, “it's like . . . forty-seven degrees.”

I'll admit that I was being a bit irrational, but it had been more than two months since the boathouse. Sixty-four days, to be exact. And despite some occasional fun moments like family night, they had been sixty-four frustrating days.

There hadn't been any contact from my mother or the slightest hint that Omega might get called back into action. Even worse, there were signs that my friend group was having problems, and, as if all that wasn't enough, it had also been the coldest and snowiest winter in more than two decades.

There was nothing I could do about the first two, and my total lack of social skills left me clueless as to how to fix the third. So I figured the least I could do was celebrate the end of winter. Even if, meteorologically speaking, Mother Nature wasn't cooperating.

“I really am fine, Grayson,” I said. “I just . . . can't spend another lunch period in that cafeteria. I guess I need fresh air more than I need heat.”

He set his lunch on the table and sat down right next to me. “Works for me.”

This is what makes Grayson such a great friend. He was willing to sit out in the cold not because it made sense, but because it made sense to me. And on this day that was just the kind of friend I needed most.

I took a bite of my panini and said, “Thank you.”

He shrugged as if to say it was no big deal.

But it was a big deal. Everything about my friends was. I'd never had a group of friends before this school year, and part of me had always worried that I might never have one. But then Omega found me, and suddenly I had three amazing people whom I could literally trust with my life.

At first glance our foursome seemed like an unlikely grouping. There was glamorous and beautiful Natalie with her chic apartment on the Upper West Side, quiet and athletic Alex whose accent and swagger were straight out of the Bronx, Grayson the megabrain computer geek who lived with his professor parents in a Brooklyn brownstone, and good old awkward me, that weird Bigelow girl from Astoria, Queens.

I'm sure some people wondered why we hung out together. But that's because they couldn't possibly know the big thing we all had in common. It was our job to police and protect the zombies of New York. We were the ones who maintained the peace between the living and the undead. Omega made all of our differences insignificant.

And that was the problem.

Now that Omega was on lockdown, our group had begun to drift apart. We didn't have a case to work on or a problem to solve. We didn't have a reason to be together. And on top of that, Natalie's recovery was going slowly. At first she only came back to school for half days, which meant we rarely saw her. And when she finally did return full-time, she had so much make-up work to do she usually skipped lunch and went straight to the library.

I knew these were all good reasons, but part of me felt like she was avoiding us, or more specifically, avoiding me. Since I didn't have much experience in social situations, I tried to come up with ways to reassure myself that it was all in my imagination. My birthday party was going to be one of them.

“Hey, my birthday's in a couple weeks and I was thinking of having a little party out at Coney Island. Do you think you could come?”

Grayson was midchew so he had to swallow a bite of his no doubt inferior sandwich before answering, “Sure, that'd be great.”

I looked back toward the river and asked, “You think she'll come?”

He could read my uncertainty and knew exactly what I was talking about.

“I think she's struggling,” he said. “She's used to being the smartest and the strongest, and this is all new to her. But I do think she'll come. You're her good friend, Molly.”

I just kept looking off into the distance and nodded. I thought about telling him about the newspaper article that had come in the mail, but before I could decide, someone else joined us.

“Hey, you guys realize that it's cold out here, right?” Alex said as he sat across the table from me.

“Really?” I joked. “I hadn't noticed.”

“Vernal equinox,” Grayson said, using the scientific term for the first day of spring. “We're celebrating.”

Alex laughed.

“Speaking of celebrating, we were just talking about my birthday party. It's in a couple weeks. We're going to Coney Island. Interested?”

“In hot dogs and roller coasters? Always.”

I felt a little stupid. I had worried that we were drifting apart, but neither one of them hesitated before saying they wanted to come to my party. I think I sometimes (okay, maybe always) make stuff like this harder than it should be.

“And guess what,” he added. “I've got an early birthday present.” He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a small catalog. “My uncle Paul brought this over last night, and I thought you might want to look at it.”

He handed it to me.

“It's the uniform catalog for the NYPD,” he continued. “It's got everything from shirts and jackets to special belts that hold all their gear. In the back is a section with all the different squad patches. You can look to see if you recognize the one the psycho cop who ripped off his ear was wearing.”

I hesitated. “We're not supposed to do anything Omega,” I said, unsure if this counted.

“I don't think this is Omega,” he said. “Some guy threatened you two and we want to know a little more about him. We're not on a case and we're not going to do anything about it. We're just trying to protect ourselves, which is the point of the lockdown in the first place.”

I turned to Grayson, who added, “I think he's right.”

“Okay,” I said as I started flipping through the pages. The patches were located in the back, and there were more than I would have guessed. There was a fire truck for the emergency squad and an antique car for the auto crime division. My favorite was the patch for the mounted division, which had a horse on it.

I remembered that the patch I saw that day had a dog on it, but I wasn't sure if it was one dog or more than one. There was a picture of a German shepherd on the K-9 unit patch and a Labrador retriever on the bomb squad patch, but neither was like the one I had seen.