The Undertakers: End of the World

Chapter 1

Dreamer

Folks don’t sweat in dreams, do they?

Ready? the dude in the broken glasses asked.

The dreamer nodded, readying her javelin, feeling the familiar cold steel of its shaft in her strong fists. This wasn’t the real javelin, of course. The dude in the broken glasses, the one who kept bringing her to this strange place while she slept, had told her that the real javelin was too unique and important to risk in a training exercise. But he assured her that this one was the same length and weight as the genuine article.

Whatever. It worked well enough. And she was getting good with it.

But then, she’d always had a knack with pointy things like this.

This was her fifth simulation tonight and the sweat of the last four stung her eyes.

Even in her scariest nightmares, and Heaven knew she’d had her share of those, in which she was either running from Corpses or defending the people she cared about from those undead invaders, she never sweated. Oh sure, when she woke up with a gasp of alarm or even a terrified cry, she was often soaked in cold, sticky perspiration.

But never during the actual dream.

Until now.

Her eyes looked everywhere at once as she turned in a slow circle, surveying the dimly lit room. This place had a high ceiling, with walls and a floor all covered in white tile. It was big too, maybe sixty feet by thirty.

But with the lights off, it seemed even bigger.

And more menacing.

That’s ‘cause I know what hides in this darkness.

There!

The first mechanical monster charged her left flank, just a flash of movement, a shadow against other shadows. She got the impression of something large, with ten legs and a single piercing red eye.

No time to parry. So she dove, rolled, and felt the charging thing rush past her. Then, finding one knee, she thrust one of the javelin’s two pointed ends up and out. It was one of the dozen moves that she’d been painstakingly mastering.

In these dreams, that is.

Her thrust struck home, the javelin’s point jabbing deeply into the ten-legged monster’s flank, knocking it over. The dreamer, still holding the weapon’s other end, went with it, using its weight to leverage her to her feet before yanking the javelin free and spinning around, poised for the next assault.

Two of them came at her this time, ten o’clock and one o’clock. Their maws were wide open, rows of teeth shimmering in the darkness.

She went left, running straight at her nearest attacker, only to leap at the last second, putting one bare foot atop the monster’s bulbous head and vaulting over it. As she did, she let her body tumble rearward, executing a backflip that allowed her to drive the javelin viciously into the creature’s steel spine. As the weapon’s point sliced through the thick armor, the dreamer’s momentum pulled the javelin along, slicing open the creature’s metal plating, exposing rent gears, severed cables and electronic circuitry that sputtered in its death throes.

The monster collapsed.

The dreamer landed smoothly on her feet behind it.

And that’s when the other one struck her.

As quick as she’d been, she hadn’t been quick enough. She’d stupidly allowed the last monster to anticipate her, and now she was paying for it, her body a mass of pain as she was slammed against the floor and sent sliding along its tiled surface.

Somewhere in the surrounding darkness, she heard the dude with the broken glasses gasp in alarm.

Wincing, the dreamer rolled with the blow, controlled it, and managed to get her feet under her and the javelin up just as the ten-legged thing pounced at her for the killing blow.

This time, the weapon’s point rammed straight up under the creature’s chin, if you could call that place under its mouth a chin. Bracing herself, and ignoring the sharp agony that lanced up her left arm—wrenched, but not broken—the dreamer pushed harder, and harder still, until the javelin exploded out the top of the monster’s head.

It toppled over as the other had.

The crystal! the man in the broken glasses cried. There’s the crystal!

The dreamer looked up and saw it.

It shone brightly, high overhead, an enormous construct of glowing glass. It hung there, supported by nothing, pulsing with strange, unnatural energy.

Pure evil.

Pushing away her pain and ignoring the sweat stinging her eyes, the dreamer planted one foot on the last monster’s broken, lifeless body and yanked the javelin free. Then she spun, reared back, and hurled the shining shaft of pointed metal upward.

She watched it fly, cutting the air like a laser beam, almost seeming to glow itself.

It slammed into the hateful, malevolent crystal, piercing it deeply, and sending a splintering web of cracks running along the face of it.

Yes! the dude in the broken glasses exclaimed. As had often happened before, something in the sound of his voice struck the dreamer as familiar.

I almost get who he is …

It didn’t break! the dreamer exclaimed.

It will, the dude said, emerging from the shadows to her right. It’ll take a little over four minutes for the harmonic resonance to build up, but then it’ll shatter spectacularly. You’ll need to be gone by then.

Gone from where? she asked.

He didn’t reply.

Abruptly, the crystal vanished. The javelin, she now saw, was buried in the room’s high ceiling, having pierced one of the white tiles.

An illusion, as always. Hologram was what the dude called it.

But illusion or not, after something like two dozen tries, I finally crushed it!

The lights came on, which was freaky, since there were no visible lamps.

The dreamer regarded the three broken creatures around her. Robots. Just metal and computer chips and what she supposed had to be some pretty hardcore programming. But the dude in the broken glasses had assured her that they were as close to the real thing as he could make them.

And the dreamer, who’d seen the real thing up close and personal, agreed.

The dude in the broken glasses wore a broad, toothy smile. The dreamer was certain that she knew that smile, and not just from her nocturnal visits to this strange place. She knew it from somewhere else, somewhere in the waking world.

But, try as she might, she couldn’t—

That was very well done, he said.

Thanks, the dreamer replied. Does that mean I graduated? Am I done comin’ back here?

The man’s smile faded and he shook his head. "Not yet. You did get hit, after all. We need to practice until you don’t. We need to get you to the point where those things don’t lay a claw on you. Even so, you’re doing wonderfully. Well beyond projections!"

Thanks, she said again. But it’d help if I could practice with the javelin on my own time. These dream sessions are cool and all, but they ain’t really enough to let me master a new weapon.

The dude in the broken glasses shrugged. They’re all we’ve got.

Ain’t you ever gonna tell me who you are? the dreamer asked.

Probably not, he replied. "But you’ll likely figure it out one day. For now, we should call it a night. Time’s short for me this evening. He’s coming."

Who’s comin’?

The dude considered before answering. Then, with a shrug, he replied, Will Ritter.

The dreamer blinked in surprise. "Red’s coming here?"

Well, not to this exact room. But he’s coming to this place and time.

"And what place and time is that?" the dreamer demanded, bothered by the fact that poor Will was somehow being dragged into—whatever this was. Though, she supposed it shouldn’t surprise her. Will Ritter was always in the thick of things, especially where the Corpse War was concerned.

But, as usual, the dude in the broken glasses didn’t reply.

She’d been coming to this strange room for close to a month now, night after night, repeating the same exercise over and over. Each time she would fight the ten-legged monsters and then try to destroy the crystal. She didn’t know what it was all for. She didn’t know why it was happening, and had never been able to coax a straight answer from the man in the broken glasses, not even to the most obvious question:

Where am I?

Then, suddenly, an alarm sounded.

It rang somewhere outside the room, not blaring but loud enough to be easily heard. The dude in the broken glasses spun around with a startled gasp.

What’s that? the dreamer asked.

They’ve found us! he replied, and the panic in his voice sent a sharp chill racing down the dreamer’s spine. No! It’s too soon!

Too soon? she begged. For what?

He looked at her, a little desperately, she thought. But then he steadied himself and said, You’ve done great work, but it looks like this is our last session after all. Thank you for your efforts and your patience during this past month. You’re as strong as I remember you being. I’ll send you home now.

Wait! the dreamer exclaimed as the dude in the broken glasses took a gadget from inside the threadbare white lab coat he wore. Some kind of flashlight. "What’s goin’ down? What is all this?"

And, for once, her mystery man gave her an answer.

Sort of.

It’s the end of the world, Sharyn.

Then he pointed the flashlight thingy at her, and she knew what was coming. For an instant, white light filled her vision. And an instant after that, Sharyn Jefferson, Co-Chief of the Undertakers, awoke on her cot in Haven, and remembered that Hot Dog was dead.

Chapter 2

The White Room

I didn’t so much step into the future as stumble into it.

As Amy Filewicz—not the quiet twelve-year-old girl I knew, but the beautiful blond woman that she’d grow up to become—took my hand and led me through the dark rectangular Rift in spacetime that had appeared in my dank bedroom in Haven, the Undertaker’s subterranean HQ, I tripped.

I don’t know what I tripped over, exactly. My own feet, I suppose. I tried to recover, but ended up with my cheek smacking painfully against a floor made of large white tiles. At least I’d managed to turn my head at the last second and avoid a broken nose.

At first glance, the white tile looked smooth and perfect. But then, being this close to it, I noticed lots of scrapes and cracks. There were even spots where black mildew stained the grout.

This place isn’t new.

Are you all right? Amy asked me worriedly.

I used to think of her as an angel, a strange entity who appeared to me after I’d been gravely injured, which happened more often than you’d think. During those brief and often frustrating visits, she always spoke in riddles, offering hints about herself and the world she came from, but very little solid information.

On the other hand, she’d also healed me on many of these occasions, and had even saved my life more than once.

You see, my life was pretty much always in need of saving.

My name’s Will Ritter. I’m thirteen, or maybe fourteen—it’s complicated—and I’m an Undertaker. That’s kind of a resistance movement, a small army of kids. Just kids. Until last night, we’d been fighting a desperate, secret war against an invasion of alien creatures who possess and occupy the bodies of the dead. We call them Corpses. They call themselves Malum.

Or, at least they did, before we defeated them.

Winning a war to save all of humanity isn’t as cool as it sounds. Trust me on this. One of my best friends died to make it happen.

Dave the Burgermeister Burger.

Remember that name. I know I will.

But in the aftermath of that victory, as I sat in our room and stared miserably at Dave’s empty cot beside mine, Amy appeared. And appeared is exactly the right word. She opened a doorway from her time to mine. By then, I’d figured out who she was and, more or less, what her occasional visits to me had been about.

To be honest, I hadn’t been all that happy to see her. The last twenty-four hours had seen too much pain and loss. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for another round of I can’t tell you from my tight-lipped, if sometimes helpful, angel.

But then Amy had surprised me by freely admitting who she was, and had even offered to answer all of my questions.

But only if I agreed to come back with her.

Back to the future. And, yeah, that’s a movie reference.

So here I was, sprawled like an idiot across tomorrow’s tile.

I’m fine, I moaned, climbing to my feet. My cheeks burned, and not entirely from hitting the floor. Sorry.

She smiled. Amy had a very gentle smile, kind of like my mom’s. I’d always thought so.

So, I said, looking around. This is the future?

We were in what I thought of as the white room. I’d been here quite a few times, occasionally for long stays. Once, after getting shot in the back, I’d spent a full year on a hospital gurney in this place, though Amy and her people, whoever they were, had kept me in a coma the whole time, so that I wouldn’t wise up to what was happening to me.

I’d slept through an entire year of my life.

Now do you get the thirteen-year-old, maybe fourteen-year-old thing?

From my perspective, it’s the present, Amy told me.

Sure, I replied.

Now that I wasn’t seeing it through a haze of pain and confusion, I realized that the white room really wasn’t all that mysterious. Sixty feet long and maybe half that wide, white tile covered its every surface—walls, floor, and even the ceiling, which was really high. What’s more, these tiles seemed to glow softly. I’d always wondered where the light in here came from, since there were no windows and no visible lamps. Now I knew.

The walls themselves glowed, so gently and uniformly that it was hard to notice.

The light really does come from everywhere.

A future-thing, I supposed.

I noticed a hospital gurney, a familiar one, as well as a couple of molded plastic chairs. All were white.

What is this place? I asked.

A temporal clean room, she replied.

A what?

Whenever we would pull you from the past, we always had to quarantine you. We couldn’t risk you seeing or hearing something you shouldn’t. So you stayed in here until we were ready to send you back.

So all the time I spent in the future was spent right here?

Yes.

On that gurney?

Yes.

I looked back the way we’d come, but the bizarre doorway had gone. No sound. No cool special effect. It had just vanished. Then Amy crossed the room to a small table near the far wall and picked up a gadget. It looked like a cube, about six inches to a side and as white as everything else, which was why I hadn’t noticed it.

What’s that? I asked.

It’s called a Rift Projector, she replied. It opens the temporal doorway. It was programmed to shut off automatically once we returned.

She dropped the gadget into a pocket of her white lab coat.

I said, "And … that’s what’s gonna get me home?"

She nodded, though I thought I detected a flicker of unease. Back in my room in Haven, five minutes and God-only-knew how many years ago, she’d promised to bring me back to my own time safely. Yet something in her manner, then and now, made me wonder how much of that promise I could really trust.

What year is it? I asked.

I expected her to waffle; straight answers had never been her strong suit. But she told me without hesitation.

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

Thirty years.

I’m thirty years in the future.

Where are we? I asked.

Philadelphia, she said.

Same place we’d left. The same city where the Corpses had first invaded, the Undertakers had first formed, and the war had been mostly fought and eventually won. Familiar ground, at least. Where in Philly?

CHOP.

CHOP, or Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, was a top-of-the line healthcare facility on the west side of the Schuylkill River, near the University of Pennsylvania. My mom, a professional nurse, had studied there for a while. Both my sister and I had been born there.

Okay, I said. What now? And what did you mean when you told me that you’d ‘lost a bet’ when I agreed to come?

She meant, said a voice, that she owes me a dessert ration!

A door that I hadn’t even noticed was there, now stood open. Its facing surface was completely tiled so that it blended in with the rest of the wall. Standing in its threshold was a second woman. She looked a little younger than Amy, and a little shorter. Her hair was also blond, but it was sandier, and cut short so that her ears showed.

She almost looked like—

Mom? I gasped. But that couldn’t be right. This was thirty years in the future, and my mom would be in her sixties. That bizarre thought filled me with a stab of alarm.

I suddenly felt way out of my depth and far from home.

The newcomer smiled. No, not Mom, she said. Then she came forward. There was a smile on her face, but it was a strange smile. Part welcoming and part—what? Nostalgic?

I looked at her, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

Then the penny dropped and, for a second, the room seemed to tilt. That’s how bad a shock it was.

Emily?

Hello, big brother.

Then she came over and hugged me.

The Emily Ritter I knew was a six-year-old girl. This was a grown woman, way older than me. The same age as our mother! A stranger, really. And yet so much of her was familiar. Trying to wrap my mind around it made my brain hurt. I’ve written more than once about a phenomenon that I call the Holy Crap Factor. It’s that bizarre moment when truth seems to turn reason on its head.

Well, my reason was doing handstands right now.

The woman pulled back and looked me over.

This is … weird, she remarked after a few moments.

Tell me about it, I croaked.

"I’ve seen you before, of course. In here, I mean. But you were always asleep … hooked up to machines that fed you and monitored your vital signs. This is the first time I’ve seen you up and around and looking like … well … you."

Looking like me?

Sure, I said, though I wasn’t feeling sure about much of anything right them. Um … what bet?

Emily—hard to call her that—laughed a little uncomfortably. Amy didn’t think you’d agree to come. She said we should have picked a later time … given that, to you, the Burgermeister had just … I’m so sorry, by the way.

Thanks, I said, feeling my throat close up.

She continued, But I was afraid that, once you left Haven, it would be harder to get a lock on you. So we made this ridiculous bet. Now, given the circumstances, I feel bad about it.

I didn’t know what to say to any of that. Frankly, I didn’t know what to think. Too much was coming at me too fast.

Um … I said. Could I … get a drink of water?

What? Emily asked. She looked surprised by the question, which made her face go almost comically blank. When she did that, she reminded me so much of her younger self that it was almost like a physical blow. Oh! Of course.

That’s when the alarm went off.

Shrill but distant, it came from somewhere beyond the open door.

Looking that way, I couldn’t see much beyond a sliver of hallway: another tiled floor, checkered this time, and a wall behind it that had been painted a dingy blue.

Emily and Amy exchanged a look I didn’t like.

Where’s Steve? Emily asked.

Javelin training, Amy replied, giving me a sideways glance.

Steve? I asked. Steve … Moscova?

They ignored me.

He might not hear the proximity alarm from there, my younger sister—my older sister—told Amy. Then, in a practiced move, she pulled a small radio from her belt and clicked its mike button. Steve. It’s Emily.

When she released the mike, a thrum of static filled the room.

Jammed, Amy said, sounding breathless. This isn’t a patrol. They know we’re here.

"Who knows?" I demanded, only to be ignored again.

Typical grown-ups.

My sister said to Amy, You get Steve. I’ll take Will out through the south fire exit. Try to join us there if you can. Otherwise, meet us at the boat.

Will do, my angel replied. Be safe.

You, too. To me, she said, We need to get the hell out of here … now.

Then she grabbed my hand and yanked me toward the open door and the hallway beyond it. As we ran, I thought to myself, Mom would be pissed if she heard her using that kind of language.

Funny what runs through your head when you’re totally freaked.

Chapter 3

The Impossible Enemy

The moment Emily pulled me out into the hallway of Children’s Hospital, dragging me along as if she was a grown-up and I was a kid—which, of course, nailed the situation perfectly—I got my first inkling that things in tomorrow weren’t, well, good.

In the white room, the tiling had looked worn. Out here, it was positively ancient. Maybe a third of the one-foot-diameter squares were missing, showing old dried grout and rotted plywood underlayment. Many others were in pieces, their jagged shards littering the floor. The rest looked so dingy that they weren’t checkerboard black and white anymore, but an almost uniform gray.

The walls and ceiling were no better: spider webs and holes; dangling fluorescent lights; medical signs that either hung precariously from rusted nails or had fallen and now littered the floor like autumn leaves.

What happened here? I asked as we hurried around first one corner and then another, finding more of the same. No doctors or patients. No people at all. Just ruin.

Later, my sister told me. I’ll explain it all. I promise. Right now—

At that instant, the swinging double doors at the end of the hall, the kind that emergency gurneys are always getting pushed through at high speed, were torn off their hinges.

And the living dead poured in.

My heart stopped. I swear it did.

That’s not possible!

There had to be a dozen of them. Type Fours, mostly. That was our rating system for degrees of decomposition: One to Five. Fours were a month dead and pretty far along. Normally, the Corpses didn’t use them in combat. Too fragile.

But here was a whole bunch of them, and they were charging.

Emily gasped and put on the breaks, whirling around and pulling me back the way we’d come. At the same instant, she used her free hand to snatch the radio from her belt again. Into it, she called frantically, Amy! Steve!

Lemme go! I said.

She ignored me, still dragging me along behind her. Behind us, the wall of deaders kept coming. A fresher Corpse could run seriously, terrifyingly fast. But the tendons and ligaments in Type Four legs had shriveled and dried, making them slower and stiffer, much like their movie zombie cousins.

Emily, I snapped. Let go of me!

No! she exclaimed. We have to find Amy and Steve and get out of here!

I dug in my heels and yanked my hand free from hers. She stopped and stared at me, her face—still heart-shaped—flushed with panic.

"There is no way out, I told her. They’ll be coming in through every possible exit. They want us to run, box ourselves in somewhere in the building where more of ‘em will be waiting."

My sister, her eyes wide, seemed to consider this. Then she visibly swallowed and nodded.

Do you have any weapons on you? I asked her, glancing over my shoulder.

The Corpses were maybe twenty feet away now, their milky eyes glaring hatefully at us, their withered arms outstretched. And they were moaning. Sometimes they moaned; I had no idea why.

She pulled out a water pistol. It was an old one, taped in places, probably to seal up cracks. It was filled, presumably with saltwater. But it was small. Too small. To add to that, I had my pocketknife, which could be of some use against one or two of the walking dead. But here there were too many of them.

We needed a bigger gun.

Luckily, I’d stopped in this particular spot for a reason.

Will— she began.

Save the pistol, I told her, turning toward the advancing Corpses. I’ve got an idea.

I waited until the horde—a smallish horde, I’ll grant you, but still a horde—came within eight feet of us, until I could smell their musty odor and see the grotesque clouds of dust they produced as their skin literally shook from their rotting bones. Then I reached to my right and pulled the fire extinguisher off the wall.

I had no idea how long the thing had been hanging there, or why it had remained untouched when the rest of the hallway lay in such ruin. And I didn’t care. In combat, you take whatever good fortune fate decides to throw your way. I learned that lesson pretty early on.

The extinguisher was big and heavy. That was good; it meant it was still at least partly full. It also was a B/C model, not an A. That was even better, because an A extinguisher is for wood and cloth, while a B/C is designed to put out oil or electrical fires.

I pulled the pin, pointed the big conical nozzle at the nearest deaders, and fired.

White foam spewed forth, catching them full in the face. It didn’t gag them as it might a human, since the dead don’t breathe. But it did momentarily blind them. Better yet, it caused the first few to stop in their tracks, which forced the rest to slam into them from behind.

Then, as the whole of the horde struggled to regroup, I lowered the nozzle and soaked the broken tiles at their feet.

Another difference between A and B/C extinguishers: B/C foam is really slippery.

They went down—hard.

It would have been funny if I hadn’t been so scared.

Still blinded, they landed atop one another, hissing and moaning with rage and frustration. If they’d been Type Twos or even Threes instead of Fours, they’d have recovered almost immediately. But, decomposed as they were, their bones had turned brittle.

I actually heard some of those bones snap.

As the first of the deaders struggled to rise on legs that bent at impossible angles, I stepped up and slammed the butt of the steel extinguisher into its skull, which crumpled like an eggshell. The Corpse immediately went limp and dropped. As the next rose up, Emily nailed it with a saltwater squirt in the eye that sent it into violent, crippling convulsions. A second smack with the extinguisher caved its head in.

We put down four that way, my sister and I—not that we actually killed any of them. Killing a deader wasn’t so easy as that. By destroying their brains, all we’d done was make it impossible for the alien monsters hiding inside to control their stolen bodies, effectively trapping them in prisons of rotting flesh.

But, for now, that was enough.

Five down. Six. Seven. Emily was running out of saltwater and my arms had begun to feel like lead and as I brought the extinguisher up and down, up and down, like a piston in an engine. It was awful, gruesome work, but I’d long ago gotten used to it.

A terrible thing to say, but true.

The remaining Corpses, seeing what we were up to, frantically scrambled back. A few of them managed to find their feet, and were still undamaged enough to do me some serious hurt. When Emily’s pistol finally ran empty, I hastily flattened two more of their buddies’ heads. Then the rest of them—five in all—regrouped and came for me, moving even more slowly than before, having to cautiously navigate the minefield of fallen bodies.

Undertaker, one of them growled. The word was in English, not the weird telepathic Deadspeak they sometimes use, so it came out as little more than a raspy wheeze. This dude’s vocal chords were rotted mostly to dust at this point.