Queen of the Dead (17 page)

I tried to catch Helene's eye. If she did this, the body would be useless to
us
too! She
had
to know that!

But she wouldn't even look at me.

The Queen hissed, “You're playing with fire, young lady!”

Helene shrugged. “Whatever.”

Then she raised her arm high, the long needle gleaming in the dull green emergency light. “Rest in peace,” she said to the dead girl on the table.

With an inhuman cry, the Queen of the Dead leapt at her, her bloated purple hands—mangled from the concrete—reaching out like talons. She meant to tear Helene's throat out with those hands, to rip her head from her shoulders. I could see it in her milky, hateful eyes.

A lot of things happened fast after that.

One, Helene smiled triumphantly and raised her other hand, the one she'd kept hidden behind the body. In it was one of her water pistols, which she leveled at the Queen, who was in midair and irrevocably committed to her leap.

Two, yours truly went into full panic mode. I fired repeatedly at Cavanaugh but missed every time. Then, in desperation, I threw myself in her path—anything to keep her away from Helene.

Three, I heard Helene yell, “Will! Don't!” But like the Queen, I was irrevocably committed. I slammed into Cavanaugh just as she reached the metal table. All my weight was behind my shoulder, and I caught her midway up her torso, knocking her out of the air.

Four, the two of us crashed together, toppling a couple of wheeled carts and shoving the table hard enough to throw the body atop it into Helene. I hit the floor a second later. So did Helene—but with the poor girl's cadaver atop her. However, the Queen, as agile as ever, somehow managed to balance herself on the table edge, vault over it, and land once again atop the shelving.

“Enough of this,” I heard her say, and I struggled to my feet. On the other side of the table, Helene cursed wildly, trying to get out from under the deal girl's limp form.

Frantically, aware of how badly I'd just screwed up, I spun around in a circle, trying to track Cavanaugh. She was moving around the room with insane grace, leaping from surface to surface so quickly I could barely keep up.

How
can
something
that
dead
move
that
fast?

Then, to my horror, she landed behind Dave. The Burgermeister, who'd stood helpless in the face of this disaster, was wise to the Queen's presence at his shoulder just a moment too late. Cavanaugh seized him by the throat, lifting the huge kid off the floor with such force that the empty bucket flew from his hand.

“Look at your friend, Will!” the Queen roared. She slammed Dave against the doorframe. The Burgermeister's big hands clawed at the dead fingers digging into his neck, but her grip was clearly too strong.

No…please. Not again.

Somewhere along the line, I'd lost my pistol. I still had the Taser, but I was much too far away to use it. And this time, Cavanaugh wasn't standing in the puddle of saltwater.
I
was.

“Look at him!” she screamed, her dead visage twisted with fury. “I want you to watch his face as I snap his neck! Look at him!”

Helene was trying to get to her feet, but I could already tell she'd be too late.

I
did
this. I went off mission again…only now Dave's going to pay for it!

But then Dave, red-faced and all, somehow managed to grin.

“That ain't…no way…to snap…a neck,” the Burgermeister gasped. Then, raising both his arms, he grabbed Cavanaugh's head in his huge hands and gave it a single hard twist.

I actually heard her spine snap.

The Queen of the Dead dropped into a heap at Dave's feet.

“
That's
how you snap a neck, Your Royal Wormbagness,” he pronounced.

I'd only known of three occasions when Dave had gone against the dead. And each time, he'd lost—bad. As big and as strong as he was,
they
were stronger, with their Queen being the strongest of all. And he just wasn't that good at fighting them.

At least, I'd
thought
he wasn't.

I looked back at Helene, who'd finally found her feet. She'd recovered at least one of her water pistols, but of course, there wasn't anybody to shoot at anymore. The two of us swapped looks. Her expression was as incredulous as mine, but behind her disbelief was visible anger—anger at
me
.

And I honestly couldn't blame her.

Dave wiped his hands together with a “job well done” kind of pride. Then, grinning, he trudged across the wet floor toward us, “Hey, Will, how'd you dream up that bucket trick? That was pretty sick!”

“Huh?” I asked stupidly. Then, looking from my friend to the “broken” Queen on the floor and back again, I said distractedly, “Steve told me about it. Well, he
suggested
it
might
work, but I don't think anyone ever tested it.”

Helene remarked, “Duh? Who besides you's got a Taser?”

“Just me and Tom,” I admitted. “Sorry, Helene. I really blew that.”

“Yep. You really did.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Whatever.” It was the same thing she'd said to the Queen while she'd been baiting her trap. Same tone too. Then, gazing down at the girl's cadaver, which lay in the puddle at her feet, she added, “Well, at least she can't transfer. The body's too wet with saltwater.”

“Good,” I said.

“Hey, dudes!” the Burgermeister said brightly. “No harm done! In fact, looks to me like we
won
!”

Helene and I scanned around. We'd secured the cadaver we'd been sent to get. Better still, four Corpses lay sprawled out on the floor all around us. Every single one would need a new host before they got up again.

And one of them was the Queen.

It was a good score. An
Angels
score.

Helene said to Dave, “How'd you learn that…neck break…thing?”

The Burgermeister's expression turned sheepish, and for a second, I thought he wouldn't answer. Then he did. “Sharyn taught it to me.”

“She did?” Helene and I asked at once.

“Yeah. She's been giving me private lessons.”

“Since when?” I asked.

“About a month,” he replied with a shrug.

I blinked. “But—”

“Forget it for now,” Helene interrupted. “Cavanaugh was right. Others are coming. Let's get the body and split before they show up.”

“I hear that!” Dave exclaimed, clearly happy with the change in subject. Then he unceremoniously stepped past us and scooped up the dead girl's cadaver like a rag doll, tossing her limp form over one shoulder.

“Let's go!” he declared.

On the way out, I noticed a fancy cell phone lying on the floor near the Queen's broken form. I pocketed it, thinking the Hackers might be able to wring out some decent intel.

Then I promptly forgot about it when one of the morgue drawers kicked open.

I honestly don't think there's a scarier sight in the world.

The three of us spun around as hands—the stiff, gray hands of a Type One—groped out of the darkness and clutched the edges of the opening. Once it found purchase, it pulled, and the drawer on which the Deader lay screeched as it rolled along its tracks.

He lay on his back under a sheet, no more than a day or two dead, an old man no doubt earmarked for a coming funeral. This wasn't the sort of cadaver the Corpses favored—too frail. But this dude evidently intended to make the most of it because he sat stiffly atop his drawer and faced us, his seemly sightless eyes alight with menace.

“I'm Gerald Pierce,” he declared in English, a little overdramatically to be honest. Probably brown-nosing for the Queen, who helpless as she was, could hear him. “And I will kill you all in my mistress's name!”

Then he swung his legs over and dropped to the floor.

Right into the puddle of saltwater.

His newly stolen body stiffened and then started twitching. With a look of genuine horror on his dead face, he toppled over onto his back, which only got him wetter.

The three of us watched him until his twitching stopped, which meant that saltwater had done its bit and that Gerald Pierce—whoever
he
was—would need yet another host.

“What a tool,” Helene muttered.

Then we got out of there.

We walked the three blocks back to Haven's northern entrance without any problems—or much conversation. After his mind-blowing defeat of Lilith Cavanaugh, Dave looked happier than I'd seen him in weeks. And Helene…well, Helene wasn't talking to me.

At one point, we had to briefly duck into a darkened storefront to watch several Corpses hurry past going the other way back toward Chang's. The Queen's help had arrived. Soon, every single Deader we'd felled in that basement would be back on his—or her—feet, safely encased in a new stolen body.

If only I'd had a Ritter. Just one.

And
this
time, I think I might be able to use it.

By morning, Chang's Funeral Parlor would be cleaned up, almost as if our big fight had never happened. The floor would be mopped, the broken equipment removed or replaced. And of course, all the dead bodies would be gone.

Including several that
should
have been there.

I glanced over at Dave's lifeless burden, and I didn't think I'd ever felt so lousy about succeeding.

On our way out, I'd suggested to the Burgermeister that he might want to cradle the girl in his arms like a sleeping child rather than over his shoulder like a sack of mulch. Helene agreed, and Dave did so, which turned out to be a good thing. We didn't pass too many people while en route to Haven, but those we
did
pass didn't give us a second glance.

Four teenagers headed home after a late night, with one of them too drunk to walk. Not a pretty picture.

But certainly better than the truth!

Behind the graffiti-covered frontage of an abandoned printing house on Spring Garden Street stood an old fence, one section of which had been broken or cut. After a quick check to make sure no one was looking, we went through, doing our best to hold the chain links wide enough for Dave and his bundle of joy.

From there, we located a particular cellar window, with nails that had rusted away or been pulled out. Helene swung it open, and I climbed through, turning back so the dead girl could be handed to me.

There'd been a time when a building like this would have creeped me out. Now all I felt in this rat-infested cellar was measured relief.

“That went okay,” Dave remarked.

“I guess,” I replied.

Helene didn't say anything.

A concealed staircase in the cellar led to a subcellar, which led to a sewer, which led to an unused maintenance door.

And simple as that, we were home.

The sentry, who happened to be a sour-faced Burt Moscova, looked us over. “How'd it go?” he asked.

“Went fine,” Helene replied. “How's Sharyn?”

“The same. Tom says you're supposed to take the body straight to his office. It's all set up. Um…you got a
girl
body, right?”

I nodded.

“Sure did!” Dave grinned. Then he pushed past Burt and marched through the door. For a moment, I thought he might start whistling.

“What's with him?” Burt asked. “He's not usually this…happy, is he?”

“At least somebody is,” Helene muttered. Then she and I followed the Burgermeister into Haven proper.

Things were happening outside Tom's office.

Alex Bobson and two of his Monkeys were just pushing through the curtain, carrying tools. After a moment, Steve came out too, followed by Tom. And all the while, I could hear Agent Ramirez, still hoarse from shouting but shouting anyway. “Answer me! Who's that old woman? What are you doing with her?
Jefferson!
”

Tom sighed and said to Alex, “How tough is that door?”

“Tough enough,” the Monkey Boss replied. “Ain't a Corpse alive…you know what I mean…gonna get through without a week's worth of pounding.”

“I don't need a week,” Tom remarked. “Just ten minutes. But they're gonna be ten hard minutes.”

“It'll hold,” Alex said. “I guarantee it.” Then he noticed Dave, Helene, and me coming up the corridor, and his smile vanished. Without a word, he and his guys shuffled away with their tools in hand, heading in the opposite direction.

“There you go,” Dave grunted with obvious satisfaction. “Dude
can
be taught!”

Tom and Steve approached us. “You got a female cadaver?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Any problems?”

“Nope,” said the Burgermeister.

“We ran into some Corpses,” I replied. “But we took care of it.”

Tom's brow knitted. “You were supposed to back off if you hit trouble.”

“I know,” I said, meeting his eyes. “But Steve gave me an idea, and it seemed like a good time to try it out. I held up my pocketknife, displaying its Taser.

Tom glanced at the Brain Boss, whose eyes widened. “A group zap?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Fantastic! How many?”

“Three at once,” I said. Then, after some hesitation, I added, “Plus the Queen.”

Tom's stiffened. “You ran into Cavanaugh?”

Helene said, “She was after the same body we were. Needs a new host apparently.”

“You dudes
should
have backed off! How'd it go down?”

Helene told him, though she left out the part where she came up with a solid plan to goad the Queen into dropping her guard only to have the whole thing completely fouled up by me. But in leaving that part out, I saw her jaw tighten.

She's really mad at me.

Tom regarded Dave. “My sister's been trainin' you on the side?”

The Burgermeister's smile faded. “Yeah.” Then he quickly added, “But Will's the mastermind.”

“Is he?” the Chief asked.

“Heck, yeah! If not for him, we'd probably have turned tail and run when we found out about the Deaders being there.”

Please, Dave
, I thought miserably.
Don't help me.

“Well, we'll talk 'bout that later,” said Tom. “For now…why don't the three of you follow me? The night's just getting started.”

With that, Tom headed back through the curtain into his office, with Helene, Steve, Dave, Dave's dead burden, and me in tow. Inside, I saw that most of the furniture had either been removed or shoved up against the wall. A wooden door had been fitted into the archway to Tom's bedroom. It looked solid and thick, just as ordered, with an eighteen-inch window built into its upper half. Two iron deadbolts, each almost a foot long, held it closed, and instead of a knob, it had a big steel pull ring.

Cuffed to this ring by both hands stood Agent Ramirez, looking sweaty and red-faced with anger. Trussed up as he was, he couldn't reach either of the bolts, but he had a nice clear view through the window.

Right now, though, he was looking at
us
—and at the Burgermeister in particular.

“Jeez, you're a big one!” he said, his voice gravelly. “What are you, son…sixteen?”

“He's fourteen,” said Helene.

“Fifteen,” I corrected.

“He is?” Helene asked. It was the first time she'd spoken to me since Chang's. She scowled, as if I'd somehow tricked her into breaking her silence.

Dave didn't reply at all.

The FBI guy's eyes flicked from Dave's girth to the small, limp figure in his arms. His face, if possible, went even paler. “What
is
this?” he demanded.

“A demonstration,” Tom replied. He sounded exhausted.

“Is that girl all right?”

“She's dead,” Tom said flatly. “But before you start off again, we had nothing to do with her death. All we did was take her body from the funeral parlor.”

“All you did…” Ramirez echoed. “Are you even listening to yourself, Jefferson? First you kidnap and imprison an innocent old woman, and then you have these children break into a funeral home and steal a body? And that's ‘all you did?'”

Tom sighed. “Agent, I know how all this must look to you. And for what it's worth, what we have to do to this poor girl's body sickens me. She's a human being, one of us, and she deserves respect. This kind of thing is the Corpses' game, not ours.

“But I need…absolutely
need
…to make you understand. I gotta break through that wall of disbelief that you and everybody like you has built up around themselves. That disbelief is the best weapon the Corpses got. You not only don't believe in 'em…you
can't
believe in 'em because doing so would turn your whole worldview upside down.”

The FBI guy shook his head. “You're completely insane.”

“Well, if you still believe that in five minutes,” Tom replied, “then I'll let you go.” He turned to Dave. “I'm gonna open this door. There's a Corpse in there, a Type Three female pretending to be an old lady. She's tied up on the bed with a bag over her head. I want you to carry that girl's body in and lay it on the blanket that's set up on the far side of the room. Got it?”

“Got it,” Dave said.

Tom shouldered Ramirez aside and slid back the two deadbolts. Then, after he grabbed the steel ring, he pulled the heavy door open, forcing the agent to shuffle uncomfortably along with it.

All the while, Ramirez kept talking—pleading—
begging
Tom to think about whatever it was he planned to do. These were people, not monsters—just people. And this delusion of his, into which he'd somehow hooked the rest of us, had to stop before something truly awful happened.

Then he looked at me and added, “Unless it already has.”

Tom ignored all of it in patient silence, standing aside as Dave began to move past him and into the bedroom. At the last minute, though, Tom stopped him. “Hold up,” he said. “Dave, I know you been carrying that poor girl for a while now, but you think you can lower her so the agent here can have a look?”

The Burgermeister nodded and bent his knees until the dead girl's face was close to Ramirez's shackled hands.

“What are you doing?” the agent demanded.

“Check her pulse,” Tom said.

“I can see she's dead,” Ramirez replied with disgust. “I've seen my share of bodies.”

“Take it anyway. In the next few minutes, you might have second thoughts…and I want you to be
really
sure.”

The FBI looked down at the bloated purple face, grimaced, and then twisted one hand until two of his fingers touched the lifeless flesh of the girl's throat. He took his time about it, frowning in concentration. Then, with a sigh, he nodded.

“She's dead. No doubt about it. And God help you, Jefferson.”

“I'll take all the help I can get,” Tom agreed. “Go on, Dave. Take her in…but be respectful.”

“I will,” the Burgermeister said. Then he stepped past Tom and entered the bedroom. Half a minute later, the big dude came back out, this time without the dead body in his arms.

“Thanks, man,” Tom told him, slapping him on the back. “A solid piece of work.”

Dave actually blushed a little.

I suddenly realized that Tom, as a rule, didn't pay much attention to the Burgermeister. I'd always kind of taken my close friendship with the Chief for granted; it hadn't really occurred to me before how many Undertakers went through their days without seeing, much less talking to Tom Jefferson.

“Steve,” the Chief said. “Got the pistol?”

Steve handed him a green plastic water gun. It was tiny, far smaller than the one I carried. Just what was he planning to do with
that
puny thing?

I started to ask, but the Chief looked pointedly at me, and I kept quiet.

He showed Ramirez the water pistol. The FBI guy studied it suspiciously but, for once, didn't say anything. Then Tom fired a squirt into his open mouth and made a sour face. “Saltwater. Tastes lousy, but it can't hurt nobody.”

“If you say so,” Ramirez muttered.

Tom shot him on the cheek. The agent flinched and cursed but then settled down. After a moment, his tongue flicked out and tasted a bit of the water nearest his lips.

“Saltwater,” Tom said again.

“Saltwater,” Ramirez agreed.

The Chief nodded. “Now here's how this is going to work. I'm going to go into that room alone. After that, Will's gonna bolt the door shut. I'll take the bag off the old woman's head and uncuff her. Then I'm going to squirt her in the face the same way I just squirted you.”

“Why?”

Tom nodded to Steve, who explained, “Salt interferes with the control the Corpses have over the cadavers they inhabit. The Corpse will go into spasms and fall to the floor. The effect lasts about two minutes.”

“And they usually recover in a mean mood,” Helene added. “Tom, are you sure…”

He gave her a sharp look, and
she
went quiet.

“It's a trick,” Ramirez said. “You've set something up.”

Ignoring him, Tom addressed the rest of us. “I'm gonna put Will in charge of this room while I'm in there. I know the rest o' you probably want to stay, and I appreciate that, but I'm gonna ask that you don't. The window's small, and Will and Agent Ramirez are the only people who need to see what's happening. It'll be simpler if they're the only ones tryin' to.”

Then he said to me, “Bro…you don't open this door unless I tell you to. Got it?”

I nodded.

He nodded.

Then, tiny water pistol in hand, the Chief of the Undertakers stepped into what used to be his bedroom—to face the dead.