The Undertakers (8 page)

I stared at him. “How do you know that?”

Tom replied, “Because he called us before he died.”

“Called you?”

“We got special wrist radios that we use. Maybe you've seen them. Well, after that Corpse shivved him and left him for dead, he somehow found the strength to call us and spill what went down and where he was. Sharyn and I got there as fast as we could, but by then the cops had already surrounded the dump. We couldn't do nothing but watch from an alley as they carried him out on that stretcher with a sheet over his face.” He looked down at me. “I'm really sorry, bro.”

“It's okay,” I said, although it wasn't.

“No, it ain't. Now all we can do is honor what he was. Your dad changed everything for my sister and me. He took a couple of juvie felons and turned us first into reformers and then into soldiers. That's why we set up this room for him. It's a shrine—a memorial. We loved him, Will. I guess I just wanted you to know that. That's why I brought you in here.”

I looked at the pictures and thought about what Tom had said. A lot of this still felt like a betrayal, although I was starting to get why my father had kept it secret. Since coming here, everyone had been badgering me about how important it was that I not go home, that doing so would put Mom and Emily in danger. For the first time, I understood that those were actually my dad's words being passed down to me through the mouths of strangers. I began to see the truth in them.

It broke my heart.

“I don't want to stay here, Tom,” I whispered.

“I know it.”

“But I have to…don't I?”

“No, bro. You don't. You can bail anytime you want. Nobody'll come after you a second time, I promise.”

“But doing that'll probably put Haven in danger, right?”

“Right.”

“And my mother and sister too?”

“Yeah.” Again that strong arm settled around my shoulders. My dad used to hold me that way. Since his death, I couldn't remember anyone else doing it.

“Thing is,” Tom said, “we don't think the Corpses know why some kids can See them when everyone else can't—but we know it's got them freaked. You, me, Sharyn, Helene—all the Undertakers—we're the flies in the ointment, the bugs in the system, the ghosts in the machine. Get it? They can't afford to let us keep breathing. So when they find kids with the Sight, they kill them.”

“How many have died?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Ain't no way of knowing that. Not every boy or girl who suddenly starts Seeing Corpses ends up an Undertaker. Most of them end up dead.

“But ruthless as they are, the Corpses ain't stupid. They don't kill for killing's sake or folks would start asking questions. That's why they didn't grab you or ice you right off. They waited to see if you'd get the Sight—waited til you became a danger to them. Once that happened, they tried to snatch you, probably to arrange one of their little ‘accidents.' It's the same with your family. So long as the Corpses got no reason to think they know something they shouldn't, your mom and little sis are safe.”

I put my face in my hands. “I can't go home.”

“Nope.”

I looked up at him. “Can I stay here?”

Tom actually laughed a little. “Will, that ain't never even been a question.”

“But what can I
do
here? I don't know anything about wars! I can't fight, and I sure can't build walls or rewire things. What good would I be?”

“We'll teach you the skills you need,” Tom assured me. “And for whatever its worth, I believe in you. You're Karl Ritter's only son, and that's saying something in my book. Be an Undertaker, bro. Help us fight the Corpses. In return we'll help you get home someday.”

With that he stepped back and held out his hand.

I looked at it, somehow understanding that this wasn't just a
Hi, how are you?
handshake. This one meant something. This one was
binding
.

After a moment's thought, I shook it.

First Stop

When I awoke after my first fitful night as an Undertaker, my pillow was damp with tears. Most of the other kids were already awake and gone from the dorm. Stiffly I followed them.

Breakfast consisted of cold cereal, milk, and juice. It made me long for Mom's cooking. Today was Thursday. My mother had the afternoon shift, which meant she'd be home making pancakes, this time just for Emily.

Except, of course, she wouldn't. She'd be out looking for me.

I wondered if she'd slept as badly as I had.

The idea made me sick to my stomach.

Overall the Haven dining experience was a lot like lunchtime at school. Everyone sat with their friends, leaving me to pick a lonely spot near the end of one of the long tables. There I sat, trying to dredge up some interest in corn flakes and a bruised apple, when Sharyn plopped down across from me.

“Mornin', Red! You ready to start your training today?”

Training? Tom had mentioned that yesterday when I'd promised to become an Undertaker. At the time it had seemed like a vague thing, not quite real. Apparently it was.

“I guess.”

“Cool! Hey, I dug up some fresh clothes for you. Should fit you better'n what you've got on now. It's all here.” Grinning, she showed me a lumpy plastic trash bag.

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

“No sweat. So eat up, and let's roll!”

Curiosity briefly overshadowed my despair. “To First Stop?”

“You know it!”

“What exactly is First Stop?”

She grinned. “It's this cozy little spot we keep for training new recruits. We run classes about twice a month. A new one just kicked off, but I figure we can slip you in with no hassle.”

“But—why not just train people here? There's plenty of room.”

“It ain't about room,” Sharyn said. “It's about security. Sometimes the Corpses snatch some poor Seers before we can get to them. Then the Corpses somehow brainwash them and send them to find us as spies. We call them
moles
. Their mission is to scope out Haven's locale and then drop the dime on us. And if the Corpses ever get a hold of
that
bit of info, they'll roll in and ice the whole place!”

Helene had said as much to me yesterday during our fight. I tried to imagine the Big Room overrun by the walking dead—and shuddered.

Sharyn continued, “So early on, your dad and Tom rigged up this place for training recruits off-site. That way if a mole does slip in, we just close down that First Stop and find another.”

“And what happens at this…training camp?” I asked.

“Loads! You learn how we fight, our gadgets, our rules and regs—all things Undertaker. On the flip side, we scope you out and make sure you're on the level and not just a Deader stooge.”

“But I'm not a mole!” I insisted.

Sharyn reached across the table and tousled my hair. I didn't like it. “Of course you ain't, Red! When I said
you
, I meant like the general
y
ou. No way we'd have let Helene bring you straight here instead've to First Stop, like usual, if we'd figured you might be bent!”

Special treatment. No wonder that Alex Bobson kid had given me such a hard time yesterday.

“How long do I have to be there?”

“You'll roll on back to Haven a week from Tuesday, along with the rest of your class.”

“Oh,” I said glumly.

“Hey—it's cool! First Stop don't suck much. We keep you hopping, and the time flies. 'Sides, you get to learn all our tricks! Don't get better'n that!”

I studied her, trying to figure out if she was being ironic. With Sharyn there was no telling.

“Can I see Helene before we go?” I asked. I wanted to apologize for yesterday's fight.

Sharyn's smile faltered. “No go. Sorry. Tom sent her back up to Manayunk to scope out things since you two split yesterday. She ain't gonna be back til past midnight.”

“Isn't that dangerous?”

Sharyn leaned over the table and said quietly but firmly, “Will, everything we do is dangerous. Now eat, and let's bail. You got a big day ahead of you.”

Twenty minutes later, the two of us were making our way up the spiral ramp and back onto Green Street, this time riding two Stingrays—an opportunity that would have thrilled me before yesterday.

From there Sharyn led me along a complicated route that finally ended at a boarded-up storefront in a rundown neighborhood somewhere north of Center City. The sign over the door read
Professional Dry Cleaning
, although the place looked like it had been out of business for years. After a careful look around, she and I walked our bikes down a side alley and stopped outside a grimy old service door.

“Listen up,” she said. “Before we go in, there's a couple things I got to tell you. First, this is Day Three for most of the recruits. Day One, we get them settled. Day Two, we get them talkin', telling us how they ended up wanting—or needing—to join the Undertakers. Get it?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Except that ain't all we're doing. We're also scoping them out and checking if any of them got the makings of moles. Today, Day Three, the real stuff starts, and first off is what Tom calls his
orientation speech
.

“Now, til this mornin', none of these dudes have met the Chief. So when you get in there, remember: you ain't met Tom before neither. The story is that you just got boosted, and we're bringing you right in. You cool with that?”

I shrugged. “Sure.”

She nodded. “Now, the second thing—you're gonna be living with these kids for a while, and you're probably gonna get friendly with them. That's cool. Only when you do, don't spill no info on Haven. That's important, Red.”

“Security?” I asked.

“We've got to watch our backs.”

“What if one of the recruits
does
turn out to be a mole?”

She grinned. “Then we tag them, bag them, and drop them at a hospital ER. After that we ditch the First Stop and find a new one.”

I looked at her, astonished. “And that's happened?”

“Twice.”

Sharyn opened the service door with a key and ushered me into a poorly lit room about the size of the boys' dorm at Haven. Half the floor space was roped off and layered in mats. A dozen rusty old folding chairs had been lined up on the other half. A single hanging bulb over the matted area provided the only light.

Five kids sat in the folding chairs watching Tom, who stood atop the mats looking tall, powerful, and thoroughly in charge. The Chief was speaking, although he paused for just a moment as we entered. As his eyes found mine, Tom offered me only the barest hint of a smile.

“—ain't alone in this,” he was saying. “You're just five outta hundreds of teens and preteens who picked up what we call the Sight—the ability to cut through whatever scam the Corpses pull that keeps everyone else from recognizing them for the rotting carcasses that they are.

“I wish I could say we got it all figured out. We don't. I wish I could say this war'll be over soon. I can't. But I
can
promise you two things straight up. The first is that you're safe here. We'll teach you everything you need to help us fight the Corpses. The second is that if you do decide instead to bail, you'll be facing major risk. Corpses hunt Seers, and when they find them, they kill them.

“I know this ain't fair. I know most of you got homes that you miss. I know you're scared. But this is war, and in war, sometimes children got to grow up fast—in this war, especially, because the only ones fighting it is
us
.

“But understand this: it's a war we can win. This place you see here may not look like much. But trust me, it ain't all there is. This dingy old place is kind of like a small gear in a much bigger machine—a machine that was assembled by a great man as a way to fight back against this invasion. We are that machine. We are the Undertakers.

“Work hard, learn your lessons, and sooner than you think, I'll show you what I mean.”

The Chief of the Undertakers stood tall atop the mat, his strong face illuminated by the light of that single hanging bulb. He gazed down on the recruits, somehow appearing larger than life—filling the mat, filling the whole of the available space in First Stop. When he spoke, the kids listened in rapt attention. They believed him. They believed
in
him.

This is what a leader looks like.

Tom said, “Remember, you ain't alone. You got us, and we all got a job to do. Because in this war, we ain't the first or last line of defense. We're the
only
line of defense.”

Street Karate

In the silence that followed, I looked over the recruits. There were two boys and three girls. The smallest girl was a tiny blond who barely seemed old enough to be Seeing Corpses. She looked like she might be crying.

Tom nodded to Sharyn and me. “A new recruit joined up today,” he said. “His name's Will Ritter. Now, I know y'all got a couple of days' head start on him here, so I hope you'll help him along. Will, why don't you grab a chair?”

I obediently took a seat beside the little blond girl, who gave me a shy smile. I did my best to smile back.

There were definitely tears on her cheeks.

I knew just how she felt.

Tom said, “Today we get down to the real deal. I'm gonna turn y'all over to my sister Sharyn now—she's gonna demo some of the Undertakers' customized combat techniques. But before I go, I'll take some questions. Anybody?”

A thin boy wearing wire-rimmed glasses raised his hand. “Has my mom's hairdresser always been, well…dead?”

“Solid question, Ethan,” Tom replied. “How long's your mom been seeing this dude?”

Ethan shrugged. “A little over a year, I guess.”

Tom nodded. “That jives. See, Corpses ain't really dead people. They're invaders from somewhere else who inhabit dead bodies. We think it's how they survive and get around in our world. They slide into a dead person, take the body over, and wear it like a suit until it rots around them. Then they Transfer to another. But whatever body they're wearing, they always somehow project an image of the same false identity. That's why it's handy to be able to recognize individual Corpses by the Masks they wear rather than the bodies they're in. There's a trick to doin' that. We'll be showing it to y'all.

“So, yeah, man, your mom's hair dude's always been a dead body—but probably not always the same dead body.”

Ethan didn't look happy about the answer.

A tall girl with short dark hair and an olive complexion raised her hand. “Some Corpses are women, right? I mean, they look like women—dead women. But underneath are they, you know—female?”

“We're not one hundred percent sure about that one, Maria,” Tom replied. “But we think the Corpses got gender just like humans do. Male Corpses possess male dead bodies and pose as dudes; female Corpses pose as women.”

The last boy in the group looked bigger and older than the rest. His round face, half-hidden beneath a long mop of yellow hair, seemed to wear a perpetual scowl, as if he were mad at the world.

The kid had
bully
written all over him.

“Well, duh!” the big boy chimed in. “What else would they do?” Then he looked around as if expecting everyone to laugh at what he figured was a funny joke. When nobody did, he sulked.

Ethan raised his hand again. “Um…are the Corpses just here—I mean, in Philly? Or are they everywhere?”

Tom replied. “Near as we know, the invasion has started here in Philly, and most of them are still in this area—although, in the last year, more of them have spread out to New York, Baltimore, Washington…”

Ethan gulped, but he didn't lower his hand. “Then there must be other groups like this one in those other cities, right?” he asked, sounding almost desperate.

He wants the Undertakers to be big,
I thought.
He wants to believe he's safe inside a really huge organization.

But Ethan came away disappointed. “Maybe there
are
other groups like ours out there,” Tom replied. “But so far, we ain't found any. And believe me, we been looking. Sorry, Ethan.”

The boy paled and lowered his hand.

“Any more questions?” Tom asked.

“I've got one,” I said almost without thinking. “How can we win this war when we don't even know how to kill a Corpse?”

A nervous murmur rolled through the rest of the recruits, and I realized I'd just fouled up. I was supposed to be new here, right? So then how did I know that the Undertakers had no way to kill Corpses? Inwardly I cringed.

Somewhere in the shadows, I heard Sharyn groan softly.

“We got ways to hurt them,” the Chief replied carefully. “We can even force them to Transfer to other dead bodies sometimes. But it's true that nothing we got yet has done any Corpse permanent damage. Not that we ain't working on it.” Then, treating me to a hard look, he said flatly, “What I don't get is just how
you
knew about it, Will.”

I swallowed.

Tom understood full well how I knew what I knew. I could only figure that putting me on the spot like this was a kind of test. It had been my mistake, so I had to fix it.

I thought furiously. Around me the other recruits were silent, expectant.

Finally, faking a shrug, I replied, “When they came for me, I had my dad's service revolver. I emptied it into one of them, and he just kept coming. How are you supposed to kill
that?
”

Tom held my gaze, his expression grave. Then he smiled. “Sounds like you had yourself a time, Will. Now, if there's no more questions, I'll pass you over to Sharyn. Listen up, learn what you got to learn, and I'll see y'all again soon.”

He left the mat, stepping over the rope boundary. There was no applause.

His sister emerged from the shadows and offered her brother a high five. He accepted it, although I got the impression that he wished she wouldn't do that.

Then Sharyn fairly bounded onto the mat, her dreadlocks dancing around her head like tight black springs. Since our arrival, she'd pulled off her sweatshirt. She now wore jeans and a black tank top with the words
Mopey Teenage Bears
—whatever
that
meant—splashed across it in big pink letters. Her arms were long, lean, dark-skinned, and muscular: an athlete's arms.

Sharyn positioned herself near the center of the mat and rubbed her hands together. “I'm Sharyn Jefferson, and I'm gonna be showin' y'all what we
can
do to Corpses!”

Instantly the big kid's hand went up. “Um…but you're a girl.”

Sharyn nodded. “So I am! Thanks for noticing!”

“And
you're
gonna teach
me
how to fight?”

She cocked her head curiously. “You're the dude who came in yesterday, ain't ya? What's the name? Dave Hot Dog?”

The boy frowned. “Burger.”

“Oh. My bad. Burger Hot Dog.”

The boy leapt to his feet. “My name's Dave Burger! And I don't got to take—”

Sharyn's smile vanished. “Chill out, Hot Dog.”

“I didn't come here to take no crap!” Dave exclaimed, red-faced. “And I didn't come here to learn fighting from no girl!”

“So you got nothing to learn from me?” Sharyn remarked. “Figure you can drop me easy?”

“This is stupid!” the boy declared.

“That right? Well, how's about you prove it. Like you said: I'm just a girl. So bring it! Lay me on my butt, big man. Bust a move like that, and
you
get to play teacher!”

The other recruits nervously watched this exchange. Although clearly taken aback by the challenge, Dave was either too proud or too stubborn to back down.

Finally, smirking, he stepped up onto the mat, looking the very picture of confidence. “Don't think I'm gonna go easy on you just because you're a girl.”

Sharyn's grin returned. “Never even occurred to me.”

“Just remember, this was your idea.”

“I'm shaking with fear.”

Dave blinked, unsure if she was making fun of him or not. Then he suddenly advanced, his fist hurtling toward the girl's face. He wasn't nearly fast enough. In a blur of motion, Sharyn pivoted, easily sidestepping the rushing boy, and delivered a sharp kick behind his knee.

Dave yelped in pain, dropping to a crouch. Sharyn then yanked his collar hard, twisting him around and down onto his back. He landed awkwardly, pinning one of his bent legs painfully beneath him.

The yelp became a cry.

The girl pressed one bare foot on the boy's broad chest, leaning down.

“Get this, Hot Dog—that was easy,” she said. Just before the boy starting screaming in agony, she removed her foot, straightened up, and faced the rest of the recruits. “Corpses are stronger than us. They're also faster and a whole lot meaner.”

The recruits exchanged nervous looks.

Sharyn continued, “Think that makes them too tough? Well, I've gone up against more Deaders than I can count. You don't beat them with strength. You beat them with speed, brains, and precision.”

Behind her, Dave had struggled back to his feet. His cheeks were burning, and his blond hair looked layered in sweat. Seeing the girl's unguarded back, he grinned and charged, all fists and fury.

I started to shout out a warning—but I never got the chance.

Sharyn ducked, spun, and hit the advancing boy once in the stomach with the blade of her hand. The blow was hard and lightning quick. Dave's lungs emptied in a
whoosh
of air. His eyes went wide. Then Sharyn dropped to a crouch and swept her leg smoothly across the mat, catching him at the shins.

He went down again—hard. This time he stayed down.

The girl stood up and casually explained, “Corpses don't feel pain. You can shoot them, knife them, break their bones, and they'll just keep coming. That's the plus of being dead—maybe the only plus.

“But that don't mean they don't got weak spots, dig? They're walking around in stolen bodies—stolen
human
bodies—which means they've been stuck with the human nervous system. There's parts of the body that control movement of an arm or a leg or even the whole body. They're called
nerve centers
, and pain or no pain—dead as they are—the Corpses rely on them just as sure as we do.

“There's one here.” She raised her arm. “Tag a Corpse with a good kick to the armpit, and the whole arm goes limp for a while.” She lowered the arm and touched her nose. “A hard punch to the bridge of the nose temporarily blinds them. And best of all: plant your fist right here”—she tapped the back of her head—“at the base of the skull, and you'll paralyze them for a time. You'll all be learning these moves over the next week or so.

“Bottom line? Fighting a Deader is all about staying calm, picking your moment, and then applying the right force. Over the next couple o' days, we'll be working on stance and balance. Once you're down with that, we'll roll into moves and attack styles. Before we're through, y'all will have a solid understanding of how we dance this dance. Any questions?”

I raised my hand, amazed. “What kind of karate is this?”

Sharyn pondered the question. “Well, I guess you'd call this MMA,” she finally replied. “That's
mixed martial arts
. It's part boxing, part tae kwon do, part kandoshin.” Then she grinned. “But 'round here, we just call it
street karate
.”