The Undertakers: End of the World (32 page)

“Nice history lesson,” Tom remarked. “But you wanna know what all that sounds like to me? It sounds like a whole crapload of reasons for us to come over here, kick your asses, and waste the damned thing.”

This time, the
Malum
didn’t chant. In fact, they didn’t respond at all. Every last one of them—and there had to be five hundred by now—went absolutely, completely, horrifyingly still.

Now I understood why the Corpses always did that.

The speaker’s head rolled forward again. And this time, if anything, its red eye glowed even brighter.

Tom, I noticed, didn’t seem nearly as worried as I thought he should be.

If it was possible for something like
that
to grin, the speaker did so now.
“I think not
…
Undertaker.”
Then, addressing the rest of them, it declared,
“Kill him.”

As the
Malum
leapt at him from all directions, Tom raised his pocketknife.

He might as well have been throwing rocks at a freight train.

And I thought:
I’m sorry, Chief.

The Real Enemy

As I pointed the business end of my gun at the
Malum
nearest to the chief, Tom’s words echoed in my head:
“That Binelli is for the stone
…
period. Do
not
use it for nothin’ else. Got it?”

And I
did
get it.

I just ignored it.

A stream of blue-white liquid jetted out of the gun’s nozzle and caught one of the
Malum
in its flank. The creature let out a sound halfway between a scream and a wheeze. Then it froze. I don’t mean it stood weirdly still; they do that all the time.

I mean it
froze.

Not like in the movies, either—not with icicles dripping from its legs or anything. It just kind of stopped moving, one whole side of its body turning a dull black.

A moment later, one of its buds jostled it while going for the chief, and it shattered.

Seriously. It
shattered.

“Cool!” Sharyn exclaimed.

“Wow!” Helene added.

I fired again.

This time I hit two of them, the liquid nitrogen bouncing off the back of one and right into the red eye of another. One froze black, just like the first had. The other howled and jumped around in obvious agony—still alive but, for the moment at least, no longer a threat.

Meanwhile, Sharyn and Vader went to work.

Malum,
in their natural form, are fast—crazy fast. I’d seen that first hand. They were faster than Corpses, and way faster than humans.

Most humans, anyway.

It was frankly hard to say for sure who was the best fighter I’d ever seen, but there were only two contestants. One was Tom Jefferson.

The other was Sharyn.

Leaping across the gap between the Energy Ferry and the Ethereal slab, she dove into the fray, her sword a shining blur. She hit the frozen
Malum
first, not so much slicing through its thick body as splintering it, sending icy bits flying in all directions. Then, without missing a single heartbeat, she spun and thrust the sword upward, managing to skewer another of the ten-legged monsters as it made to pounce on her.

At the same time her brother, armed only with his silver pocketknife, rammed its small blade deep into the red eye of the nearest
Malum
. The creature shuddered and made a noise halfway between a groan and a hiss.

Solid combat, but I knew with a sinking feeling that it wouldn’t last. These creatures were too quick and there were way too many of them. As good as Tom and Sharyn were, the
Malum
would overwhelm them in seconds.

As if to prove my point, two more of the ten-legged monsters took the place left behind when the one Tom had stabbed retreated. Together, they lunged at him, their impossible mouths wide open, their front legs slashing the air, deadly pincers ready to slice the chief into pieces.

I fired the Binelli again, catching each of them right in their maws.

They gagged and then stiffened, allowing Tom to slam his fist into the first one’s head, shattering it like glass, before pivoting and kicking the other hard enough to snap its frozen body in two.

“Thought you weren’t gonna use that gun for this!” the chief called to me without turning.

“I’ve seen the world without Tom Jefferson,” I called back. At the same instant, I froze two more of the monsters as they flanked Sharyn. “And I didn’t like it!”

“I second the motion!” Helene called.

“Wicked!” Sharyn cried, sounding almost gleeful as she splintered two more of the iced-up
Malum
.

“Okay,” her brother relented. “But, if you gotta use it, don’t waste it. Make us a path to the crystal!”

Now
that
, I decided, was a great idea.

So, with Helene right behind me toting a backpack filled with liquid nitrogen canisters, I jumped off the ferry and onto the Ether, firing bursts of silver liquid at everything that moved. Well, everything that moved and had more than two legs.

I must have frozen about twenty of them before the
Malum
, as a group, wised up. Suddenly, the attacks stopped, the monsters becoming wary and retreating several yards. Good thing, too—because, I could feel the nitrogen canister getting light.

“Reload,” I whispered.

“On it,” Helene replied. She grabbed the empty canister attached to the back of the Binelli. As Steve had shown us, she twisted it off and dropped it, then pulled a fresh one from her backpack and snapped it into place. “You’re good.”

The whole process took less than fifteen seconds. Even so, I was half afraid that the surrounding
Malum
would see their chance and move in for the kill, despite the fact that Tom and Sharyn were now flanking us and waving their respective weapons.

But nothing happened.

In fact, the army of creatures didn’t so much as twitch.

Sidling up beside me, Tom pointed toward the crystal.

Wordlessly, I nodded.

The four of us pushed in that direction. As we approached the line of
Malum
, a few got brave and jumped forward. I hosed them and Sharyn shattered them. A few more came from the right. They got the same treatment.

“Where’s this gun
been
all my life?” Helene whispered.

Seriously. We could have
used
something like this back when the dead stalked Philly! Way better than a Super Soaker or even the crossbow dubbed Aunt Sally, with its Ritterbolts filled with saltwater.

Oh well.

I could no longer see the Royal that had been talking to us earlier. Apparently, it had melted back into the crowd when the fighting started, and I simply wasn’t familiar enough with these ten-legged things to be able to recognize one from another. But I made a mental note: The moment I heard that weird voice again, I’d freeze it solid.

In combat,
always
hit the leadership first.

Ten yards later we still didn’t seem any closer to the Eternity Stone. By now, the
Malum
had stopped attacking. Instead, they simply harassed us, blocking our path, slowing us down, leaping back when I fired a jet of nitrogen at them, and then closing the gap behind us, preventing any escape.

I didn’t like it. The creatures had adapted to the danger and were now trying to goad me into draining my ammo. Worse, it was working. Before I knew it, the second canister was empty. As Helene replaced it, the
Malum
got even bolder, rushing at us, forcing Tom and Sharyn to slash at them with sword and pocketknife.

There was a single close call. One monster got near enough to slash at Tom with one of its pincers. The chief jerked his head out of reach, but still ended up with a nasty cut across his chin. A little lower or a little slower, and the creature might have decapitated him.

As it was, I spun on the attacker and froze it stiff. Then Tom, wiping away at the blood on his neck with one hand, shattered it with the blade of his pocketknife.

We advanced another ten yards. Now, finally, the Eternity Stone seemed close, or at least
closer
. It towered over our heads, a gigantic glowing quartz.

Helene screwed in the fourth and final canister, just as we surged ahead a final time. All the while, the
Malum
kept their distance, threatening us with little charges—two or three of them in each instance—but still not attacking in any numbers.

Yet there were hundreds, maybe thousands of them now, and they could overwhelm us anytime they wanted to.

Apparently, they didn’t want to.

That worried me—a lot.

They know where we’re going and what’ll happen when we get there.

So why aren’t they trying to stop us?

As I thought this, we broke through the last of the
Malum
line and into a broad open clearing of sorts. The floor, as everywhere on this side of the tunnel, was made of flat polished Ether.

Except here, at last, the Eternity Stone hovered directly overhead.

We’d made it, and not a bit too soon. I was already halfway through my final cartridge.

“Do it, bro,” Tom commanded.

I aimed the Binelli’s nozzle at the Eternity Stone. The lowest edge of the huge crystal was right in front of me, ten feet away and only four feet off the ground.

No way could I miss.

I pulled the trigger.

But, at the very instant that the stream of silver liquid blasted forth, the Eternity Stone
moved
.

As the four of us stared in helpless horror, the crystal levitated further up, away from the floor and toward the ceiling. And it did it fast, really fast, so that as I lifted the gun to follow it, my nitrogen stream fell short and dropped back down, slashing the black Ether a few yards ahead of me, freezing it solid.

“No!” Helene cried.

I tried to squeeze the trigger harder, as if that would make any difference. Of course, it didn’t. The Binelli was giving me all it had, and it just wasn’t enough.

A few seconds later, the last cartridge ran dry.

I heard Sharyn utter a moan of what I can only call despair.

Tom put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s over, bro.”

And it was.

A voice spoke.
“Well fought, Undertakers. But hopeless.”

Slowly, we all turned toward the ranks of
Malum
that surrounded the clearing. There, standing in front of its horde of buds, stood the speaker.

“You planned that,” I said.

“I did.”
the creature replied.
“There are those among us who can command the crystal to move in small ways. I am one of these. Your little invasion has ended, Will Ritter, in the only way it could have.”

It struck me that I’d heard that phrase—or something close to it—before.

And suddenly I knew who we were facing.

“You’re her daughter,” I said.

The speaker paused.
“What?”

“You’re the daughter of Lilith Cavanaugh, the Queen of the Dead.”

Another, longer pause.
“One of them,”
she replied carefully.

Then I remembered what Corpse Helene had said about her rise to power. It had taken time for her to overcome her rivals for the throne. She’d had to be careful, clever. But all that was still in
this
creature’s future. For her, it hadn’t happened yet. She was still just another Royal—powerful, but not supreme.

“What happens now?” Tom asked, readying his pocketknife. Beside him, Sharyn raised Vader.

Helene and I swapped a look that had a lot inside of it. Resignation. Regret. I spared a moment to think about Emily and my mom. I’d never see them again.

But maybe Jillian, Burt, and the rest would learn from our failure. Maybe another attempt would be made, a better attempt, a more successful attempt.

Maybe someone else could save the future.

“Now, you all die,”
the future Queen replied.

As if by some silent command, the ranks of
Malum
, thousands of them, advanced on us. They took their time about it, marching in slow, easy steps, savoring our terror.

I dropped the Binelli and stepped forward before any of the others could stop me.

“I demand
bavarak!
” I called at the top of my voice.

Strangers in a Strange Land

Everything stopped.

It was crazy. Almost as if a switch had been flipped, every single
Malum
within sight—and there were so many!—went totally still.

For several seconds, the four of us stood there, the Eternity Stone hovering and pulsing high above our heads, and the only weapon we had that was even remotely capable of destroying it lying empty and useless at my feet. We all exchanged worried looks as the seconds ticked by.

Finally, cautiously, Future Queen asked,
“How do you know that term?”

I didn’t reply.

She took several steps forward, every inch of her muscular, ten-legged body dripping menace.
“How do you know that term?”
she demanded.

I swallowed and screwed up my courage. I’m not sure why swallowing helps, but it does. “I heard it from
you
.”

If anything, the shock-induced total lack of movement around us became even less—movey. Okay, not a word, but you know what I mean. Even Future Queen stopped again, her red eye blazing like a laser beam.

“We’ve never met,”
she said.
“If we had, you would be dead. I wouldn’t have failed as my mother did.”

Again, I didn’t reply.

“You don’t even know what that word means,”
the creature suddenly declared. Then, as if for emphasis, or maybe to regain some control over the situation, she turned in a circle and repeated it for the surrounding horde.
“He doesn’t even know what it means!”

“
Bavarak
means that one of us goes through trial by combat,” I said. “And whoever survives wins.”

Future Queen seemed positively staggered. That bizarre movable head of hers turned in a circle, showing each of her four eyes. Red. Green. Yellow. Blue. Red again. Then she came at me—fast.