Queen of the Dead (16 page)

Until tonight, I'd only ever been in one funeral home. That had been in Manayunk, near my house. It was called Huntington Memorial—a big white mansion just off Main Street. I didn't remember too much about it. At the time, I'd been pretty messed up.

My dad had just died.

Who knew Philly had so many other such places? Hundreds of them, all over the city.

This particular one was called Chang's, and the Chatters had picked it simply because it was close to one of Haven's three secret entrances—and it supposedly had a “good” cadaver inside, awaiting a funeral that was scheduled for the morning. A woman, apparently—which was why Tom wanted Katie's team to come back with a female Corpse.

Deaders, when they transferred, always stuck to the same gender.

Doing this felt wrong. Really wrong. If we were successful, it meant that tomorrow, a bunch of innocent people would assemble to grieve for a loved one whose body would have gone missing.

No. Not “gone missing.”
Stolen
.

By us.

“This isn't right,” I muttered as the three of us walked down the street toward Chang's.

“I know,” Helene said. “It makes me feel heartless. Like a…I dunno…”

“Like a Corpse?” the Burgermeister finished.

We both looked at him. “Yeah,” replied Helene. “Like a Corpse.”

“Tom wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't necessary,” I pointed out.

“I know,” she replied. “But just 'cause something's necessary doesn't automatically make it right.”

There was no arguing with that.

Chang's Funeral Parlor looked about as much like the one in Manayunk as a dachshund looks like a St. Bernard. I mean, they're both dogs, but that's about as far as you can take it.

Chang's sat on the west side of Ninth Street between Cherry and Arch—a three-story, brick-fronted row house set amid shops and parking garages. The three of us walked past it twice before we finally spotted the sign, which was oddly small and almost impossible to see in the dark.

“Don't look like much, does it?” the Burgermeister observed.

Helene eyed the place over. “Think you can pick the lock, Will?”

I glanced up and down the street. It was almost twelve on a cold, drizzly Friday night in February. Even so, there were people around. A couple of women were huddled together under the awning of a twenty-four-hour dry cleaner, chatting away. At the other end of the block, moving toward us, an unhappy-looking man was walking a “mop” dog.

Not
many
people. But too many.

“Yeah,” I answered. “But we're too easy to spot. Let's go around back.”

The alley that ran between Chang's and the deli next door was really narrow—so narrow that a couple of times, the Burgermeister pulled a Winnie-the-Pooh. Each time, he managed to wriggle free but only after a lot of squirming and muttered curses. Worse, the second time he got stuck, Helene nearly burst out laughing.

“Shut up!” he growled, straining like a hatching bird. “It ain't funny!”

“Both of you, shut up!” I whispered.

Helene pressed her lips together but still shivered with suppressed chuckles.

Dave finally wormed free and stumbled after us into the funeral home's tiny backyard.

“I don't care what happens in there, dudes,” he muttered. “
I'm
goin' out the front!”

“Come on,” I said, leading the way up a few short cement steps to the building's back door. Not surprisingly, it was locked.

Also not surprisingly, I had my pocketknife.

I knelt in front of the knob and pressed the
1
button. Then I inserted the twin prongs that popped out into the keyhole. After that, it was just a matter of holding the button down and letting the automatic picks do their work.

Within thirty seconds, the latch clicked.

“We're in,” I whispered. “Only one of us should go first…check the place out.”

“I'll go,” Helene said. “I'm supposed to be in charge.”

“That's why you should stay out here,” I argued. “In case something happens that you need to take charge of.”

I looked over my shoulder at her to see if she'd bought it.

She hadn't.

Her hands were on her hips, never a good sign. “That's stupid. I'll go in and make sure it's clear. Then I'll radio the two of you when I find the body.”

“I'm better at this than you are,” I argued.

“How do you figure that?”

Behind her, the Burgermeister said, “Dudes…”

Ignoring him, I muttered. “I'm just saying…”

“Saying what?” Helene demanded.

“That…I've got some experience sneaking through dark houses at night.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again, frowning. We both knew what I was talking about—a solo mission to Kenny Booth's house to rescue her.

“You've done it
once
,” she said finally.

“That's once more than you,” I countered.

“Enough!”

The voice wasn't loud, but it was deep and angry. We both looked at Dave, who stood behind Helene, shadowing her like a mountain. His hands, like hers, were on his hips. But his were bunched up into fists.

He said, growled really, “You both go in! I'll stay out here and keep watch. We all got radios. I'll call you if I see something I shouldn't, and you call me when you need me to come in. Just turn the lights on if you can, will ya? Unlike you two, I ain't so good at sneaking around in the dark.” Then, after a long pause, he added, “And stop acting like doofuses. You're both better than that.”

Helene and I swapped guilty looks. Then, with a shared shrug, the two of us slipped through the door, leaving Dave alone on the back porch.

Inside was a kind of foyer, with yellow rain slickers hanging on pegs against one wall. The floor was carpeted, so we didn't need to worry too much about someone hearing our footsteps. Of course, it also meant we wouldn't hear
their
footsteps either.

I stopped and listened hard. The place was deathly quiet. Sorry about the pun.

“I don't think there's anybody here,” Helene remarked.

“Good,” I said.

Beyond the foyer was a carpeted hallway that fed three rooms of varying sizes. In each, folding chairs had been lined up to face the far wall. In one of the rooms, a big wooden casket sat atop a long curtained table.

“Think there's somebody in there?” Helene asked nervously.

“It's just for show,” I replied.

“Show?”

“When someone dies, the family visits the funeral home, and they kind of show off what they can do. Like a stage set.”

“How do you know that?” she asked. Then, when I gave her a hard look, she added, “Sorry.”

“Besides, dead bodies need to be kept cold until right before the service.”

“Right,” she said. “I knew that. I guess this place has me a little spooked. Sounds weird to say that. I mean…I fight the living dead all the time. You wouldn't think that the dead Dead could freak me out like this, but they do.”

I nodded.

“There's probably a morgue…or whatever they call it…downstairs,” I said.

“Let's do it.”

Cellar stairs in a Philly row house are easy to find. They're almost always right under other stairs, and Chang's was no exception. The door was unusual though—thick, heavy steel, cold to the touch but painted to look like wood. It was also locked, which seemed odd at first, until Helene pointed out that you couldn't have some dude at a funeral wandering downstairs and finding tomorrow's dead bodies.

She had a point.

I picked the lock with my pocketknife. Helene opened it a crack.

“There's light,” she said. “I think somebody's down there.”

“Figures,” I muttered.

She went first, and I followed, each of us making as little noise as possible. The cement stairwell was well lit, with a sharp right turn about halfway down to the basement floor.

At the midpoint landing, we paused. Voices floated up from the around the corner. I couldn't help but wonder what sort of people would be working at midnight in the cellar of a funeral parlor.

But then I noticed that the voices I heard weren't—strictly speaking—voices at all.

And these weren't people.

Yellow
rain
slickers.

I'm an idiot.

“Crap…” Helene muttered. “We should just split.”

“We need that body!” I whispered back.

“I know…but we're not set up for a fight.”

Not entirely true. I had my pocketknife with its Taser. And all three of us had left Haven with full water pistols under our belts. That was probably enough if we were lucky and if there weren't more than a couple of Deaders on-site.

I motioned for Helene to follow me back up the steps.

Once we'd returned safely to the main floor and had shut the heavy door behind us, I headed straight to the kitchen.

“Will!” Helene whispered sharply.

“Hang on…”

I found what I was looking for right away. The whole thing took maybe two minutes to prepare.

“What are you doing?” she demanded at first. Then, as she watched and it started to dawn on her, she asked instead, “Will it work?”

“Sure,” I replied. “Why wouldn't it?” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. “But it's gonna be heavy. Give Dave a call.”

She whispered into her wrist. The Burgermeister responded. I didn't catch what he said, but then Helene rolled her eyes and felt for the light switch.

The overhead lamp lit, momentarily blinding us both but giving Dave a clear path from the door. He showed up half a minute later.

“Find a dead body?” he asked.

“More than one,” Helene replied. “Unfortunately, looks like some of them are…occupied.”

The Burgermeister's eyes lit up. “Awesome! Let's kick some Corpse butt!” Then he noticed what I was doing, wrinkled his forehead, and added, “Hey, Will…what's with the bucket?”

We didn't report our situation to Haven.

If we had, Tom would have ordered us home immediately. I was breaking rules and regs again, and I knew it. Last night's business with the wallet had gotten Helene and me split onto separate teams by the Chief, a constraint that Tom had evidently forgotten with everything that had been going on.

But another breach tonight might even see me doing a stint with the Moms!

I had two choices: I could give up this crazy idea or I could pull it off. If I came back with both my friends unharmed
and
with a female dead body in tow, Tom wouldn't ask questions. Probably.

Sometimes I wondered why I kept doing things like this.

Chang's basement was split into at least two rooms. The first one stood empty. It appeared to be a kind of filing room, with an unoccupied desk surrounded by big cabinets that were stuffed with folders. Apparently the computer age hadn't yet reached Chang's Funeral Parlor. The light came from overhead florescent bulbs.

A door stood in the center of the far wall. The Deadspeak—they were chattering up a storm in there—was coming from just beyond it. The top half of the door was frosted glass, through which I could make out vague moving shapes but couldn't tell exactly how many shapes there were.

But at least now we could make out some of what was being said.

“How. Old?”

“Three. Days.”

“How. Die?”

“Drown. Kill. Self.”

“Foolish. Human.”

“You. Want?”

“Acceptable. Call. Van.”

The three of us exchanged looks. “Flank the door,” I said.

Helene took the left. I took the right. The door's hinges weren't visible, which meant that it would open away from us. The knob was on Helene's side. She tested it gingerly before she gave me a “thumbs up.” It wasn't locked.

Okay…the point of no return. Am I doing this or not?

Who was I kidding?

I nodded to Dave, who came up and stood right in front of the door. In his hands was the big five-gallon green plastic pail. I'd filled it almost to the brim, which had made it way too heavy for either me or Helene to lift. However, the Burgermeister handled it with ease.

I raised one hand, displaying three fingers. Then two fingers. Then one. Then a tight fist.

Now.

Helene turned the knob and shoved the door all the way open. It swung wide before it banged against the inside wall.

The inner room was much larger than the outer one. Morgue-like metal doors were built into the left-hand wall, with cluttered shelving on the opposite side. The finished ceiling was brightly lit and seemed high for a basement, maybe twelve feet. The floor was sunken, with a ramp leading down to a cement floor. All the surfaces were painted a high-gloss gray.

In the center stood a metal table surrounded by an assortment of gadgets, with tubes and dials and wires that probably had something to do with handling dead bodies.

And speaking of dead bodies—

Four of them, two Type Threes, a Type Two, and a Type One, were all huddled around the fifth cadaver, who lay atop a shiny steel table setup in the middle of the room. This last dead body was that of a young Asian woman—genuinely deceased. In life, she'd probably been pretty. But her skin had turned gray and hung loose.

The Corpse had been right—about three days dead. Funny the things you get to be an expert on when you're an Undertaker.

Then, when I heard Helene mutter, “Oh…crap,” I looked over at the Deaders.

And they looked right back at me. The Two wore a fancy suit, complete with power tie. The Threes were also in suits, but theirs looked more formal and less businesslike. I'd seen suits like that before—just once.

They were undertakers. Well, you know what I mean.

The
Corpses
run
Chang's Funeral Parlor!

Up until now, we'd assumed the Deaders got their host bodies from the city morgue or, in rare cases, from killing living people. The idea of them taking over local mortuaries and running them as regular businesses—well, I didn't think that had occurred to anyone in Haven. A useful bit of intel.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that the Type One in the room was Lilith Cavanaugh.

“Well, now,” she said in English. “What have we here?”

The Queen of the Dead. We'd been calling her that since she first popped up on the news, this well-dressed Corpse wearing the Mask of a pretty blond lady. She'd taken Philly by storm, smiling into every camera lens and showing up at all the big parties and political events. In just two months, she'd become the face of what the papers were calling “The
new
Philadelphia”—elegant, gracious, beautiful.

Except,
we
knew what hid beneath that beauty. Since her arrival, girls had gone missing all over the city. They were from different neighborhoods, different ethnic background, different walks of life. But they'd all had one thing in common. It was the same thing the poor dead woman on the metal table had.

In life, they'd all been good-looking.

“To Her Majesty,” Sharyn had once joked, “‘well dressed' means more'n a pretty cocktail shift!”

So, yeah, we knew Lilith Cavanaugh. Except that, up until now, we'd only known her from afar. This was the first time an Undertaker had met her face-to-face.

On either side of the Queen, her cronies tensed up, ready to charge. They outnumbered us, and they knew it.

“Dave!” I shouted. “Now!”

The Burgermeister stepped forward. No hesitation. No argument. He just pushed himself in between Helene and me and swung the big bucket he carried in his big arms.

Five gallons of water splashed across the floor, covering every inch of it, spilling over the Deaders' shoes.

For a long moment, nobody moved—not us, not them. Then Cavanaugh looked down at her expensive red pumps and smiled thinly. As she did, the corners of her mouth cracked loudly enough to hear. A bloated fly squeezed through the newly made gash and buzzed lazily around her head.

I felt my stomach flip-flop.

“Saltwater?” she asked in English. “How rude. I paid quite a bit for these shoes, and now you've ruined them.” Her smile widened. More flies emerged. It was hideous. “A clever trick, Undertakers…but it can't harm us through our footwear! Your childish chemistry is useless!”

Screwing up my courage, I pushed in front of Dave until I stood inches from the edge of the wide puddle. In my hand, I held my pocketknife.

“Not chemistry, Your Deadness” I replied, offering up a smile of my own. “Physics.”

Then I bent down and tapped the wet floor with my Taser.

Saltwater is great for incapacitating Deaders. But that's not all it's good for.

It's also a wicked conductor.

For half a minute, everything was light and noise. Electricity flooded the air, making every hair on my body stand at attention—a really weird feeling. Sparks flew, snapping at the metal table and the stainless steel contraptions that surrounded it. The Corpses stiffened and dropped hard, splashing and flopping about in the charged water like landed fish.

I kept tasing for most of a minute. There was a sound in the air like cloth ripping—so loud I couldn't hear much of anything else. Then I smelled something sharp and sickly, burning rubber, I suppose, or maybe burning flesh.

The lights went out.

Something in contact with the wet floor must have been plugged into one of the wall outlets because a fuse had clearly popped. Fortunately, a second later, one of those boxy-looking emergency lights mounted up near the ceiling flickered on, bathing everything in a greenish glow.

I straightened up and blinked, letting my eyes adjust.

The poor dead girl still lay on the metal table, her body covered with a sheet and her skin looking oddly healthy in the greenish light.

Bodies were sprawled across the floor all around her, eyes sightless and limbs askew in the wide puddle of water. These soaked, zapped Corpses weren't dead, of course. But they'd be trapped in their immobile hosts until rescued.

Either way, it had
worked
!

Then I heard Helene and Dave both gasp. I looked at them and then followed their shared gaze up to the ceiling.

Ever hear the term “my blood ran cold”? You hear it in old horror movies, the ones starring Vincent Price. But I'd never really gotten the concept behind it.

Until now.

The Queen of the Dead wasn't on the floor amid her fallen cronies.

She was on the ceiling.

I'd seen Corpses jump plenty of times. They were good at it, some of them better than Michael Jordan. But this had to be twelve feet straight up! And that wasn't the half of it because the ceiling in this room was, like the walls and floor, concrete. Cavanaugh had somehow jabbed her fingertips deep into the hard surface—her toes too, having leaped right out of her fancy red pumps. Clearly she had tremendous strength, much more than any Deader I'd ever seen.

But
that
was crazy!

Her host body, after all, was human. How could human bones drive into cement?

As if reading my mind—a terrifying thought—the Queen grinned her hideous grin. “Don't look so surprised, children. You're all stronger than you look. Consider the karate master who breaks a cinder block with the blade of his hand. This is no different.”

I leveled my pistol at her. Helene leveled both of hers. The Burgermeister, who held nothing now but an empty bucket, just glowered. “Your dudes are down for the count,” he said. “Those bodies they're in just got good and fried. Will's seen to that. No way are they getting up again until they can transfer. That means you're alone.”

Cavanaugh laughed. “Others will come. In fact, they're coming already.” Then she tilted her head and looked directly at
me
. Any cold, running blood I had in my face drained away.

“Will?” she echoed thoughtfully. “Will…Ritter?” Her grin widened. “I got your message. The one you left with my minion at the prison.”

“Great,” I replied. “Thing is, though…we need the body on that table.”

The Queen studied me. “That makes two of us. But what do
you
need it for? Since when do the Undertakers have any interest in the truly dead?” Then, when I didn't reply, she laughed again. “Well, that leaves us with something of a dilemma, doesn't it? We can't both have the pretty human cadaver. A standoff.”

“Except there's three of us!” Helene said sharply, her pistols rock steady. “And we got
these
!”

Cavanaugh sighed. She sounded relaxed, even casual—as if dangling like a spider upside down from the ceiling was as natural as chilling on a sofa. “I'm not afraid of your saltwater.”

“Why don't you come down and say that?” Helene pressed.

I took a step forward. As near as I could estimate, Cavanaugh was in range—barely.

“In a moment, little ones. I need to decide which of you to kill first, though I suppose it hardly matters, provided I leave young Will here for last.” Her eyes bore into me again. “You see, I want to tell you a few things…reveal a few surprise associations I've made of late…before I kill you. Who knows, maybe I'll wear your girlfriend there as my next host. I've never occupied a body so young.”

Beside me, despite her nearly bottomless bravery, I heard Helene utter a small involuntary cry of horror.

Suddenly, the blood came rushing back to my face. Only it wasn't cold anymore.

“No way!” I screamed, the word bubbling out of me like a war cry. Then I fired.

I'd been right. Cavanaugh
had
been in range—except she wasn't there by the time my saltwater hit the ceiling. She'd vaulted sideways with the speed and agility of a big cat onto the top of a steel cabinet at least six feet away.

I turned and fired a second time. But she simply jumped again—this time from the cabinet, off the back wall, and then onto the countertop on the far side of the room. For a moment, I managed to see through my fury long enough to wonder why she didn't just drop to the floor. But of course, she couldn't. Although no longer electrified, the floor was still layered in saltwater—and the Queen's feet were bare.

I aimed and fired a third time, but it was no good. She was too fast for me. With a final leap, she cleared all our heads and landed atop some shelving by the door. Whirling around, I took aim again, silently wondering why Helene wasn't doing the same thing. But then I noticed Helene wasn't even beside me anymore.

The Queen smiled. “This is all very amusing. But I
want
the body on that table. I need a new host.”

A voice said, “You can't have her!”

I looked over my shoulder to find Helene standing beside the metal table. Her pistols were nowhere in sight. Instead, she'd snatched a nasty-looking syringe. It was almost the size of a knitting needle and
must
have been used for embalming or something like that because I couldn't image any doctor sticking anything that big into a living person.

Helene had turned the dead girl's head to the side and was pressing the needle's point against her lifeless temple.

“What game are you playing, child?” the Queen asked. All the amusement was gone from her dead eyes.

“This isn't a game,” Helene replied flatly. “And this girl isn't a prize. She's a person…or she was, and she deserves better than to be used up and discarded by the likes of you. I stick this needle through her temple and into her brain, and she becomes useless. Am I right?”

Cavanaugh actually snarled—a guttural, terrifying sound that made my hairs stand up as if I were still tasing the water.