The Undertakers: End of the World (31 page)

The boy in the Rift nodded gravely.

Sharyn said, “But Professor Steve-o told me we’d have a four-minute escape window.”

Steve shook his head. “That was with the javelin. I have no idea how much time you’ll get with the Binelli Gun. Maybe the same. Maybe less. Maybe none at all.”

We all looked at one another. Nobody spoke, but I could tell that all of us were thinking the same thing.

This could be a one-way trip.

I wished I could talk Helene into staying behind. Heck,
all
of them. I’d seen enough friends die to last me forever.

But they were Undertakers, and I knew they’d never let me do this alone.

“Good luck,” Steve said. He looked suddenly miserable. “I’ll keep the crystal going on this end for as long as I can.”

“We know it,” Sharyn told him. Then she stepped close and did something I’d never seen her do before: she kissed the boy’s cheek. It was a tender gesture, totally unlike her, but given the circumstances, it seemed pretty okay. “See ya soon … genius!”

Blushing a little, and with a final nod, Steve withdrew back through the portal.

Suddenly, the four of us were alone on a glowing rectangle hanging between dimensions.

“Okay,” Helene said. “Um … how do we start this thing?”

Tom stepped up to the front edge of the light block, raised one muscled arm, and pointed down the tunnel.

“Take us there!” he commanded.

And the block began to move. The motion was slow and smooth, like a cloud lazily crossing the sky. No jerk, no sudden acceleration that might throw us off. Just an easy, gradual glide.

“How’d you know that would work?” I asked him.

He shrugged and replied, “Didn’t. But I figured this thing’s really just a fancy subway train. And, since there ain’t no tickets or conductor, I thought I’d … you know … ask.”

And asking had worked.

So how does a lighted rectangle floating through the stuff between worlds understand English? Or did it somehow read the intention behind the English?

And do I even give a crap?

In nervous silence, we rode the Energy Ferry, the tunnel walls, with their strange valleys and ridges, floating silently past.

The chief studied his watch.

“One minute gone,” he reported.

We all nodded.

The tunnel stretched on.

“Two minutes,” he said.

Then three. Then four. Around us, the air stayed breathable, the gravity normal. That was the good news. The bad news, however, was becoming pretty obvious.

This is taking too long.

I stepped to the front of the ferry and said, “Go faster!”

We didn’t.

I said, “Move more quickly!”

We didn’t.

“Might be we got a problem,” Sharyn muttered.

“Look,” Helene whispered, pointing.

The ceiling rose suddenly upward. The walls, I saw, did the same, as if our tunnel had opened into a massive cavern that had been carved out of the Ether. Curiously, the floor stayed level, still about twenty feet below us and keeping steady. I wondered vaguely if that had something to do with Steve’s alignment of the Anchor Shard.

As the Energy Ferry continued forward, gliding as smoothly and levelly through the cavern as it had through the tunnel, a bright light appeared in the distance, faint at first but getting gradually brighter. As more seconds passed, the source of the light began to take shape, gain detail.

The Eternity Stone.

It was big—
really
big—a gigantic crystal, as tall and massive as a six-story building. It occupied a place in this huge Void that was some distance away from the spot where we were headed. Directly in front of us, taking shape the closer we got, was a landing of sorts, almost like a dock on a river, wide and straight and sheer. Below it, the rippled floor ended at a smooth vertical rise, as high as the ferry. The whole thing reminded me of a sea wall.

“I think we’re here,” I said. “The
Malum
homeworld.”

“There’s no Rift on this end,” Helene pointed out.

“There wouldn’t be,” replied Tom. “They
live
in the Ether.”

Beyond the landing, the cavernous Void kept going, extending away to the limits of our vision—huge and seemingly endless.

With the Eternity Stone “guarding” its entrance.

Like the Anchor Shard, which had been cut from it, the big stone looked jagged on both ends. The top of it reached halfway to the ceiling of this high Void. And, just as Professor Moscova had told me, the bottom of it hovered a few feet above the floor, which was surprisingly smooth in the
Malum
homeworld—or home
void
, or whatever. No peaks and valleys, like in the tunnel and cavern. Just flat, hard Ether as far as the eye could see.

“At least we’re still breathing,” Sharyn remarked.

True enough. For whatever reason, Earth’s atmosphere had reached this far. If it hadn’t, we’d already have been flopping around on our backs on the Ferry, gasping for air like landed fish.

Then Helene said, her voice a hoarse whisper, “Um, guys? Check out the welcoming party.”

She pointed to the edge of the landing, toward which our ferry was headed. Beyond it, the flat, black, featureless landscape was dotted with holes. Hundreds and hundreds of them, each big enough to swallow an entire person.

But no buildings. No trees. No roads or any other signs of life.

How can anyone live here?

Then, creatures began emerging from those holes in the Ethereal floor. Lots of creatures.

Ten legged creatures.

More and more of them gathered at the edge of the landing, crowding it with their tightly packed bodies.

“Welcoming committee,” Sharyn supposed.

“Well,” the chief said with a sigh. “We expected this.”

I’d always figured this trip was a risky idea. Now it seemed like a really stupid one.

“What do we do?” Helene asked.

By way of an answer, Tom stepped to the rear of the ferry. Pointing his finger homeward, he commanded, “Take us back that way!”

Nothing changed. We were still steadily floating toward the landing, the huge Void, the Eternity Stone, and the mob of
Malum.

The chief sighed, but he didn’t seem surprised. “Maybe they’re controlling it,” he guessed. “Or maybe it
is
like some kinda automatic subway train … just goes one way at a time.” He came up to the front again. “Listen up,” he said, looking into each of our faces. “If there’s talkin’ to do, I’ll do it. The rest o’ you keep back. Will takes the Binelli gun. Helene, you got the extra canisters to keep it armed. That Eternity Stone’s a good ways from the landing, which means we gotta figure out how to get close enough to freeze it. So that’s our play. But if things go south and we get separated, don’t wait for a signal from me. If it looks like you’re in range, go ahead a take the shot.”

“Got it,” I said.

Sharyn pulled Vader from the sheath slung across her back. “Say the word, bro,” she told Tom.

“We don’t fight ‘less we gotta. You know more’n most what these things are about. I’m all into goin’ down in a blaze of glory … but not ‘til we do what we came to do. Otherwise, it means nothin’.”

She nodded grimly and reluctantly sheathed the sword.

Helene looked at me. I looked back at her.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I said.

“Liar,” she said. Her smile wasn’t a happy one.

But it was a
brave
one.

The rest of the trip took less than a minute. I didn’t bother counting the seconds. It was all I could do to steady my raging heartbeat. The closer we came to the end of our ride, the bigger the Void looked. And, off to one side, the Eternity Stone seemed to lord over all of it, big and glowing and
wrong
.

But, so far, it remained well out of the Binelli Gun’s range.

Still more of the ten-legged monsters emerged from still more holes. Dozens became hundreds, until their weird bodies covered the edge of the Void. All of their strange heads were pointed at us, their red eyes showing.

“Everyone be cool,” the chief told us in a soft voice. “No sudden moves.” Then he looked right at me. “And whatever happens in the next few minutes, remember why we came. That Binelli is for the stone … period. Do
not
use it for nothin’ else. Got it?”

I felt myself reflexively grip Steve’s latest invention more tightly. I glanced at Helene and Sharyn, but Tom had spoken too softly for either girl to have heard him. That command, maybe the chief’s last command, had been meant just for me.

I was the one with the gun.

And he
knew
me too well.

The ferry came to a smooth stop with its front end nearly touching the lip of the
Malum
homeworld.

For several painfully long seconds, nobody did anything. Kids and monsters just looked at each other. Finally, with careful steps, Tom walked to the end of the lighted rectangle and stepped over the narrow gap and onto the nearest slab. Several
Malum
surrounded him at once. As they did, Sharyn reflexively started forward, her hand back on Vader’s grip. But Helene touched the girl’s shoulder and, to my surprise, kept her from charging to her brother’s defense.

One of the creatures asked,
“Who speaks for you?”

I blinked, astonished. I’d heard Corpses talk in their native tongue, which we’d always called Deadspeak. That language was weirdly halting, as if every word was a separate sentence. And I’d heard Corpse Eaters—half-human and half-
Malum—
talk, but that had been like concepts drilled forcefully into my brain, more like transmitted ideas than words.

This was—English.

Except the
Malum
who’d asked the question hadn’t so much as opened its mouth. Their mouths, after all, were more for killing and eating than conversation. And, while they
had
tongues, I’d seen what they looked like and figured they wouldn’t be much good for anything as nonviolent as a “chat.”

No, this question
had
been projected, not spoken—normal English transmitted telepathically.

At least, that was my best guess.

Tom, as usual, seemed unfazed by this latest surprise. Crossing his arms and addressing the speaker evenly, he replied. “I do. I’m Tom Jefferson, Chief of the Undertakers.”

“Undertakers!”
the others said, chanted really, in near perfect unison. Then they began to murmur. It’s hard to imagine ten-legged monsters murmuring. Trust me: I was there and still couldn’t quite imagine it.

“Jefferson,”
the speaker said, its red eye glowing like a round little flame in the center of its bulbous head. “
And where is Ritter?”

At the sound—if you could call it “sound”—of my name, I stepped hesitantly forward. Helene tried to grab my hand, but I slipped clear of her grasp and walked to the edge of the ferry. “I’m Will Ritter,” I said.

Instantly, the
Malum
launched into a chorus of
“Ritter! Ritter! Ritter!”

I swallowed.

I knew that, amongst these creatures, I was kind of like the “bogeyman.”

So tell me: Do bogeymen poop their pants?

Because if the situation got any scarier,
this
one might.

“Why have you come?”
the speaker demanded. At the same instant, its mouth opened wide, revealing more teeth than could reasonably fit in there, as well as a long forked tongue with tiny sharp pincers at the end of both its tips.

If this was some kind of show of menace, like a lion’s roar, it had zero effect on the chief.

“We’re here to end the war,” he said matter-of-factly. “Once and for all.”

The monsters opened and shut their mouths, making hard
snapping
sounds, kind of like bear traps clamping closed over and over again. It was an eerie, alien noise, and it set my teeth on edge.

Then I remembered that, here,
we
were the aliens.

“Silence!”
the speaker declared and, instantly, the rest of them all went quiet.

Royal,
I thought
. Gotta be.

“End the war?”
the speaker mused, two of its pincered legs tapping thoughtfully atop the black slab, like someone drumming their fingers.
“How?”

Tom didn’t reply.

“By offering peace? Perhaps humanity’s ‘hand in friendship’?”

Again, Tom didn’t reply.

“Or another way, perhaps,”
said the speaker, going suddenly still.
“You’re clearly warriors, not diplomats. You’ve come with your cowardly weapons, ready to do battle. But how could just four human children—”

Then, without warning, the speaker’s head rolled along its body in that bizarre manner they had, coming to rest near where its butt should be. With its blue eye, its gazed up at the huge crystal, hovering maybe fifty yards away. It was so massive that it seemed to tower over everything around it: the flat, endless Ether; the countless man-sized holes; the ever-increasing mob of
Malum
.

And us.

“You’ve come to destroy the Eternity Stone,”
the speaker said, more statement than accusation.

Once again, Tom didn’t reply.

“My foremothers found it countless millennia ago,”
the speaker said, sounding wistful. And believe me, it’s totally bizarre when a ten-legged monster with four eyes and a rolling head sounds wistful.
“They fed it and used it to make the world you see around you.
And here the crystal has been ever since, held aloft by its own energy, which we continue to maintain through the sacrifice of thousands of our lowest classes, those who are bred merely to die, so that their Selves can strengthen the Eternity Stone.”

“How nice,” Helene muttered.

“But it’s a small price to pay, considering what the crystal gives back to us.
It showed us, for the first time, that ours is not the only world. That other places exist beyond our Ethereal home, beyond the impenetrable Ether. Other races. And, gradually, our new purpose became clear.
My people united for the first time in our history, driven by a common goal.”

“Which was?” Sharyn asked.

“To rid the cosmos of all who are not us! And the Eternity Stone made that possible. Not only did it show us these other worlds, but we learned that, by breaking off small pieces of it
…
again at the cost of many
Malum
lives
…
we could pierce the Ether and pursue our newly discovered calling.”