Queen of the Dead (21 page)

The Monkey Barrel was as noisy as ever.

At first, no one noticed me. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed as if
everyone
did. The sawing and hammering stopped at once.

I pasted on what I hoped was a friendly smile. “Is Alex around?”

“What do you want?” More a snarl than a question.

Alex Bobson emerged from the shadows. He wore a heavy canvas apron, rubber gloves, and a pair of thick plastic goggles. I had no clue what he'd been doing, but from the smell, I guessed it hadn't been the highlight of his day.

“Hi,” I said.

“You got no friends here, in case you ain't figured that out. So if this is a social call—”

“Sharyn's dying,” I said. “And I think you're the only person in Haven who can save her.”

That stopped him. He stared at me. They all stared at me. I felt myself squirm. It was like being on stage during a school play and discovering you'd worn the wrong costume.

“What are you talking about?” Alex asked, still nasty but wary too.

“Sharyn's brain is swelling from the hit she took,” I explained. “It's gonna kill her unless we can do this procedure to relieve the pressure.”

“What procedure?”

I shrugged. “Ian said the name, but I didn't catch it. Started with a ‘V.' The point is that we need to drill a hole through her skull without hitting the brain and insert a tube to drain out all the extra stuff. You know, to get the swelling down.”

Alex absorbed this. “So…what do you want
me
for?”

“Sharyn once told me that you're a jerk—” I replied.

“Look, Ritter—”

“—but that you get the job done. That crossbow you made her…Aunt Sally…is some serious equipment. Bottom line, you're great with tools, the best we got. Now Ian's a solid medic, but even he doesn't believe he's steady enough to drill that hole without killing Sharyn. I think maybe
you
are.”

Now it was Alex's turn to squirm. Every eye in the Monkey Barrel moved from me to him. “You want me to…drill a hole in Sharyn's head?”

“Yeah.”

“That's nuts.”

I shrugged. “Ian's getting her ready in the infirmary right now. You need to bring a small power drill, the smallest you got. Plus a clean bit.”

“What kind of bit?” he asked.

“Kind?”

He growled again, “Wood bit? Metal? Masonry? Ceramic? Jeez, Ritter!”

“I don't know,” I replied. “Something that'll make a clean hole through bone, I guess.”

“What size? Do you at least know that?”

“Nope.”

“You're useless,” he told me.

“Whatever.”

“Okay,” he said, thinking aloud. “I'll bring a half dozen standard and half dozen metric…all ceramic and all different sizes. One of 'em's bound to work. Gimme a minute.”

“Does this mean you'll do it?”

He glared at me. “What? Did you figure I'd say
no
?”

Then off he went, cursing me under this breath.

Someone asked, “Is Sharyn really dying?”

I replied, “I hope not.”

I heard Alex in a corner of the room, searching through drawers, the contents of which rattled noisily.

Another Monkey asked, “And drilling a hole in her head's gonna save her?”

I replied, “That's what Ian says.”

A third voice added, “But Ian ain't a doctor.”

I replied, “He's more doctor than anybody else around here.”

Nobody had any comment to make about that.

Alex returned a minute later with a beat-up canvas backpack over one shoulder. “Let's go. The rest of you stay on schedule!”

“Good luck, Boss!” somebody called.

“Save her!” another kid added.

Alex didn't reply. Instead, he headed out of the Monkey Barrel at a fast trot, with me chasing after him, keeping pace.

“Thanks,” I said.

“What for?”

“For doing this.”

“I'm not doing it for you.”

“You're doing it for all of us,” I said. “That includes me.”

He looked about to say something but thought better of it and increased his pace. We were nearly running now, maneuvering through Haven's shadow-laden corridors with the ease of long practice. The crowd outside the infirmary had grown heavier, maybe sixty kids deep. Alex called, “Make a hole!” And they did, their expressions ranging from curious to terrified.

Inside the infirmary, things had been happening in my absence. An old wooden podium had been set up beside Sharyn's gurney. A ridiculously thick book lay open atop it.

Ian was hurriedly scanning its pages.

Sharyn's body continued to convulse against her restraints. I noticed that her head had been turned to the left and another cloth fastened across her temples to keep her still.

The girl's eyes rolled in their sockets, unseeing.

Ramirez was shaving Sharyn's bare skull. Her dreadlocks had already been cut off and lay like coiled black snakes on the floor. He worked with a cheap disposable razor, carefully removing the stubble left behind by what must have been the girl's first haircut in years.

Tom stood right where I'd left him beside the gurney. Beside him was Amy, her small hand resting gently on the Chief's forearm.

Helene looked surprised as we entered. Nearby, Chuck frowned, as though perplexed.

Dave scowled.

“Alex?” Helene asked. “What are you—”

The Monkey Boss marched right up to Tom and spoke, cutting Helene off in mid-sentence. “I've got a drill and every bit I even thought might work.”

The Chief didn't reply. His face was drawn, his skin ashen. Sharyn lay on her deathbed, and he looked like he might check out right along with her.

Ian said, “Good. Thanks, Alex. I've got some water boiling in a pot on the hotplate. You'll want to drop the bits into it for a few minutes.”

Wordlessly, Alex went to the counter with the hotplate and did as instructed. Then he returned and held up the power drill he'd brought. It was small, not much bigger than the water pistols we used—for detail work, I suppose.

“Might be okay,” the medic pronounced.

Ramirez looked at Alex. “You know what we're planning to do here?”

The Monkey Boss nodded.

“And you're okay with it?”

He nodded again.

“That drill,” the FBI guy said. “Are you any good with it?”

“Yeah,” Alex replied. No bragging. Just a statement of fact.

“You need a very steady hand,” Ramirez pressed. “Steadier than
I've
got. Otherwise, you'll kill her.”

Alex raised his right hand, palm down. He had long fingers, calloused from the work.

It was also absolutely motionless.

Ramirez nodded slowly. “Looks good. But this isn't a two-by-four you're drilling into. It's a person's skull. There's going to be blood. Can you handle that?”

Alex glared at him. The infirmary was cemetery quiet.

“I watched both my parents get killed in front of me,” he said, his tone stone-cold. “My mother was bitten to death. My father was ripped limb from limb. Then the Corpses blew up my house to cover their tracks, faking a gas leak. But before that, one of them came at me, and I took my dad's chainsaw to him. We were in the garage when it happened, and I painted the walls with that Deader's guts. When I ran out of my house that night…just seconds before it went up in flames…my family was dead, and I was soaked in the blood of at least one of their killers.

“So,” he added into the awkward silence that followed. “I'm pretty sure I can handle whatever stuff comes out of Sharyn's head.”

Ramirez blanched—seeming, if possible, even more shaken than he'd been after the demo.

“We got a saying around here,” Tom muttered without looking up from Sharyn's face. “There are children in the Undertakers but not a lot of childhood.”

Chuck added, his stitched-up tongue garbling the words but not much, “What the Chief means is that this isn't the yearbook committee, and we don't need a ‘faculty advisor.' For two years now, we've been fighting this war and looking after ourselves. We're good at it.”

“Yeah,” Dave Burger piled on. “So back off, man.”

Ramirez looked utterly defeated.

“Why don't you go sit down?” Ian suggested. “We can handle this.”

“Yeah,” Ramirez—the only adult in the room; the only adult in Haven—replied quietly. “I suppose you can.”

Then he went and sat down, dropping into one of the folding chairs lined up against a nearby wall.

Ian said, “You too, Tom.”

“I'm staying here,” the Chief replied.

Ian looked at me for help.

I went to Tom's side. “Come on,” I told him. Then I put my arm around his shoulder—a gesture he'd done to me about a hundred times. For a second or two, he resisted, but then he let go of Sharyn and let me lead him away from the gurney. Amy went with us, holding the Chief's big hand in her small one.

Helene, Dave, and Chuck followed us.

Agent Ramirez sat hunched over, his eyes focused on Sharyn's gurney. He looked miserable but resigned.

I motioned Tom into a chair beside him. Helene took the next seat over. “She's gonna be okay,” she told him, pasting on a smile.

“Sure she is,” said Dave.

Well-meaning
words.
But
empty.

Then Amy whispered, “She'd want you to stay strong.”

Tom looked at the little girl. There were tears in his eyes. “Yeah…she would.”

“Amy,” Ian called. “Why don't you stay with him? Will, I could use another set of hands, if that's okay.”

I nodded and turned away.

Tom caught my wrist. “She's all I got, bro,” he whispered. The expression on his face was like an open wound.

Four months ago, such a display of raw emotion—especially coming from another guy—would have thrown me for a loop. Back in Towers Middle School, you didn't open yourself up like this, no matter what was happening. You just didn't.

But Towers Middle School was a million miles away.

“No, she's not,” I told him. “But I hear you.”

Tom nodded, let go of my wrist, and buried his face in his hands. Helene and I swapped a look that had about a hundred things behind it. Then I went to stand at Ian's left shoulder. Alex, I saw, had positioned himself on the medic's right.

“Okay,” Ian said. He sounded scared, but his voice was steady. “Let's do this.”

Susan Ritter's first thought as she stepped into Lilith Cavanaugh's office at two o'clock on Saturday afternoon was that it didn't look all
that
“hopeful.”

There were a half-dozen people waiting for her and all of them, except for Ms. Cavanaugh herself, were uniformed police officers. They studied her, stone faced, as Lilith made the introductions. One of them, Susan was astonished to discover, was none other than Martin D'Angelo, Philly's chief of police. She'd never met the man, but she knew what the media said about him—that he was a hard cop, difficult to work for, but competent.

If
anyone
can
find
Will, he can.

Except that there was something about D'Angelo's expression, the way he regarded her.

Something almost, well, predatory.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Ritter,” Chief D'Angelo said, smiling with his mouth but not his eyes. “I never had the…pleasure…of knowing Detective Ritter personally, but I knew him by reputation.”

“Thank you,” Susan replied, shaking the big man's hand. Except she wasn't sure exactly what she was thanking him for. What he'd said about Karl hadn't been a compliment—not quite.

“Have a seat, Susan,” Lilith purred. Susan sat and watched with growing apprehension as Lilith settled into her own desk chair and the men, D'Angelo included, positioned themselves behind her. It was odd. The way they stood made them seem somehow subordinate, as if Cavanaugh were their boss.

But Lilith was the city's community affairs director, and Susan felt pretty sure the chief of police didn't report to the Community Affairs Office!

Then she noticed that one of the uniformed policemen had stayed behind and now stood with his back to the closed office door, his expression stony.

Her apprehension deepened.

“What's going on?” Susan asked.

Lilith smiled. “Where's Emily?”

Susan licked her lips. “What?”

“Your daughter. Where is she right now?”

“With my sister,” Susan replied. “Why?”

“Your sister Angela?” Lilith said. Then she glanced down at the piece of paper on the desk and recited Angela's address. “Is that correct?”

Susan blinked. “Yes. Ms. Cavanaugh…I don't…”

“Lilith,” the other woman corrected. “I asked you to call me Lilith.”

“Lilith,” Susan whispered. Her mouth felt suddenly dry.

“A pity you didn't bring her with you.” Cavanaugh wore her smile, but the warmth had bled out of it. What was left reminded her of D'Angelo.

Predatory.

Lilith continued, “I've shared your husband's DVD with these gentlemen. They found it as interesting as I did…though most of what poor dead Karl had to say was already familiar to us.”

“Poor dead…” Susan began, feeling her anger rise. What kind of way was
that
to talk?

“You see, Susan, three years ago, about a year before his death, Detective Ritter founded an organization called the Undertakers. You've heard of it, of course…though you made the mistake of calling it a street gang. Actually, it's more of a children's army, a small legion of runaways who have banded together to fight a common foe.”

“Common foe?” Susan echoed. She felt sick to her stomach.

“An invasion from another world,” Lilith said. “Another universe actually. These invaders can't travel physically but instead arrive here as pure energy. As such, they must possess human hosts in order to interact in this society. Unfortunately, these hosts can't already be…occupied. Rather, the host body must be quite dead.”

Susan's mind reeled. This was insanity! A madman's fantasy! And her confusion was made all the worse by the calm, matter-of-fact way in which Lilith spoke, as if she were teaching arithmetic to a first-grader.

“Now strolling around wrapped in rotting flesh isn't much use to an invading force. So these beings have developed the ability to project an illusion, an image of normalcy for the world to see. That way, no matter how many of their hosts rot out…and they rot so terribly quickly…the world at large still sees them the same way. Clever, wouldn't you say?”

Susan opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out.

Lilith's smile widened. “It's not a perfect system. But it works.” She examined her perfectly manicured hands resting atop lightly on her desktop. For a moment, her smile faltered. But then, it was back, her eyes once locking on Susan's. “Except for the Undertakers.”

“The Undertakers…” Susan breathed.

“You see, that little army didn't fall apart when your husband died, as one would expect. Instead, they grew larger, stronger…and smarter. They went deeper underground, learned how to hide, how to fight back, how to become first an annoyance to these invaders and then a genuine threat.”

Susan's apprehension was morphing into alarm. She felt as if she were walking through a shifting dream.

Nothing
about
this
makes
sense!

Lilith said, “The Undertakers, for reasons no one understands, are able to penetrate these beings' illusion, to see them for the ‘borrowed' cadavers they truly are. Karl had the same peculiar talent. So does your son. I'm afraid Will has fallen in with these wayward children. He appears to have dedicated himself to their cause.”

“What…cause?” Susan asked.

“Why, defeating the invasion, of course!” Lilith replied with a totally inappropriate laugh. “By thwarting the plans of the beings they call ‘Corpses' and…I suppose…sending them back where they came from.”

Then all the men started laughing too, except there was no humor in their collective laughter. It sounded more like anger.

Susan felt her blood go cold. “My God…”

“And these beings are quite determined
not
to be thwarted,” Lilith continued after a moment. “Which brings me back to my original point. It's a pity you didn't bring Emily with you to this meeting today. You see, Susan…we need her. And I'm afraid now we're going to have to go and get her, even if that means killing your poor sister Angela to do it.”

“What are you talking about?” Susan exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “Are you crazy?”

Lilith rose too, slowly, as if she had all the time in the world. “No, Mrs. Ritter. I'm not crazy. In fact, let me show exactly what it is I am.”

Susan watched in mute horror as Lilith's perfectly made-up face and elegantly styled hair shimmered and melted away. An instant after that, the same thing happened to the men behind her.

And when she saw what was left behind, Susan began screaming.

And didn't stop.