The Undertakers: End of the World (33 page)

Tom, Sharyn and Helene made as if to shield me with their bodies, but I waved them off.

The monster only stopped when she was inches from my face, as close to “nose-to-nose” as something without a nose can get.
“Who are you?”
she hissed.

“You know perfectly well who I am,” I replied, amazed that the words came out with so much bravado, especially considering that my insides had turned to jelly. “I’m Will Ritter. I’m the boogeyman. I’m the one who wasted your mom and cancelled the invasion. I’m your worst nightmare. And I
challenge
you.”

She raised one leg, its razor sharp pincer snapping closed and open, closed and open, right in front of my throat.
“I could kill you right now,”
she snarled.

I fought the impulse to swallow again and, instead, actually leaned in a little. Not much. But enough—I hoped. “You could,” I said. “But what would that look like? You’ve just been challenged in front of all these minions. Your honor’s at stake.”

“My honor,”
she scoffed, though I could tell that the notion made her hesitate.

“Your honor,” I repeated. “I’ve just publicly challenged you. If you waste me here and now, unarmed, you’ll never be queen.”

That
hit home.

She withdrew a few steps, her red eye never leaving me.

“You’ll die in the arena,”
she said.
“You all will.”

I actually managed a smile. It might have been a confident smile, but it felt more like a nauseous one.

Future Queen spun around and addressed the horde.
“I have been challenged by these invading Earthlings to
bavarak
!”

The multitude of
Malum
didn’t reply. In fact, they didn’t respond at all. I had the feeling that they were waiting for something. And a second later, they got it.

Future Queen rose up on her back four legs, the way a caterpillar or centipede might, getting as close to upright as such a creature could manage. Then she announced,
“And I accept!”

The
Malum
uttered a single, shrill sound that I supposed was a cheer.

It hurt my ears.

Then they all surged forward at once.

Sharyn readied her sword, but Tom put a hand on his sister’s arm. “It’s cool,” he told her. “Bro’s got this.”

Except, of course, nothing was “cool” and assuming I “got this” was just about the most wildly optimistic thing I’d ever heard anyone say.

But Sharyn listened, sheathing Vader just as Tom pocketed his knife.

The four of us were grabbed, roughly but not painfully, by a pair of pincers each and lifted right off our feet. Then, with Future Queen in the lead—I was starting to learn how to pick her ten-legged body out in a crowd of other ten-legged bodies—the
Malum
carried us away from the Eternity Stone, away from the landing, and away from the Energy Ferry that brought us here.

Away from home.

They bore us deeper into whatever world they’d made for themselves in this vast Void.

None of us spoke. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. Besides, some instinct told me that we shouldn’t be overheard. So, as I was carried along in this crazy, alien procession, I just did my best to follow my Angels training: When you’re captured, look at everything, remember everything, especially the route you’re being taken along. It might end up saving your life later.

Sharyn’s words. Good words. But I didn’t think she’d said them with anything like
this
in mind.

They hauled us across the bleak, empty landscape, past countless holes in the Ether into and out of which
Malum
constantly disappeared and reappeared. Were these the tunnels and warrens that they’d originally dug, back in the days before their ancestors found the Eternity Stone?

The surface remained completely barren. There wasn’t a single structure in sight—no outward sign to suggest the presence of an ancient, intelligent race of utterly evil “world unmakers,” which was how the
Malum
sometimes described themselves. This strange Void seemed as desolate as the surface of the moon.

And
big
!

So big that, as we were carried deeper and deeper into it, I found I couldn’t see the walls anymore. There was just an Ethereal floor topped with a high Ethereal ceiling, going on forever in all directions, until the two seemed to come together in the far distance.

Freaky.

I lost track of time. Maybe an hour went by. Maybe two. But finally, at some unspoken command, the
Malum
horde halted and we were dropped, pretty rudely, onto the Ether.

For a few seconds, I just let myself lie there, my body aching from the rough travel. Then, as our captors stepped back in unison, giving us room, I saw my friends. They were in pretty much the same shape as me. The four of us shared a scared but determined look—very Undertaker, as we climbed unsteadily to our feet.

Around us, the horde parted and I spotted Future Queen. She stood amidst the others, gesturing with her many limbs. Giving orders maybe, in the
Malum’s
telepathic language. Except this time, I couldn’t “hear” what she was saying. For whatever reason, my Sight gene wasn’t translating it as it had before.

Not that it mattered much. We were completely in her power, and whatever the daughter of Lilith Cavanaugh intended to do, she’d do, and there wasn’t much we could say on the subject.

Acting on one of her silent commands, more
Malum
appeared, marching out of the distance.
Tons
of them, tens of thousands at least, adding their number to the already ridiculous odds stacked against us.

“These guys look … different,” Helene pointed out.

And they did. For one, the newcomers were little creatures when compared to the usual
Malum
, maybe the size of small dogs, and more stockily built. Their legs were shorter, thicker, and their bodies rode low to the ground. They didn’t mingle with the rest, but instead stopped in front of Future Queen, who waved her front two legs at them the way she had to the others.

Issuing more orders that we couldn’t “hear.”

Instantly, the newcomers sprang into action, the bulk of them heading off in a direction pointed out by Future Queen. The rest—a much smaller group, came our way, scurrying past us on their short, stubby legs to an open area about twenty yards from where we stood.

Once there, they all started to pile onto each other.

“What the heck are they doing?” Sharyn asked.

Tom shook his head, as perplexed as the rest of us.

The tiny creatures climbed one atop the next until they formed a wall of
Malum
, maybe eight feet high and twenty feet wide. Then, more of them lent their small bodies to the task, turning a corner and building themselves up into another wall, adjacent to the first. After that, they made a third wall. Then a fourth. Within minutes, they’d turned themselves into a four-sided structure.

That’s when the rest of them went to work on the roof, climbing up the standing “walls” and reaching out across the open space between them, hooking their legs together and stiffening their torsos until they’d completely capped the “building”—

—a building made entirely out of living bodies.

“What’s that supposed to be?” Helene wondered.

Moments later, we got our answer.

The bigger
Malum
nearest to us scooped us up again and carried us toward one wall of the structure. At some silent command, a few dozen of the little creatures fell away, revealing an opening roughly the size of a normal doorway.

Through this, each of us got tossed.

I landed heavily, bruising my chin. Instinctively, I leaped to my feet and tried to dash back out of this bizarre place, but the little
Malum
had already sealed themselves across the opening, leaving us in almost perfect darkness.

From outside the “building,” Future Queen spoke.
“It will take a short while for your arena to be constructed.”
She sounded pretty darned cheerful about the whole thing.
“Then you’ll have your
bavarak
, and die. Until then, I suggest you make whatever arrangements you like with whatever deity appeals to you.”

Then we were left alone.

In the dark, I felt for Helene’s hand, found it, and gave a squeeze.

“That’s me, little bro,” Sharyn said.

“Oh! Sorry!”

“No, it’s okay,” she told me, sounding like she meant it. Then she squeezed back.

“I’m here,” Helene said close to my ear. Then she took my other hand.

Tom, meanwhile, pulled out his pocketknife and switched on its flashlight. Its illumination wasn’t much, but it helped. My own knife had the same gadget, but it was in my pocket, and I had a different girl holding each hand just now, so fishing it out would have to wait.

“How’d you know it was her?” the chief asked me. “That Royal out there, I mean.”

“Something she said reminded me of Corpse Helene. So I took a shot.”

He nodded. “Well, at least they didn’t ice us right off. The
bavarak
thing bought us some time.”

“Tell me again how it works,” said Sharyn. “This trial by combat.”

“They’ll stick us in an arena with some of their toughest warriors. Apparently, they do it to a lot to captured aliens, like us. They kind of … enjoy … the spectacle.”

“What happens if we win?” Helene asked.

“She said that nobody ever does,” I replied. “Except
we
did. Future Me and I. We fought seven Corpses with just Vader and a pocketknife and won. She’d promised to let us go.”

“And did she keep her word?” Tom asked.

I shook my head.

“Didn’t think so.”

I explained, “She was all set to kill me anyway, but then Future Helene showed up.” I glanced at the girl beside me.

“Saving your ass again,” she said with a grin. “As always.”

They had thirty years between them, Helene Boettcher and Helene Ritter. But they still shared the same courage. The same fire.

I was suddenly very proud of my girlfriend.

“So, they’ll let us have weapons,” Sharyn said thoughtfully. “That’s solid.”

“Straight up,” said Tom.

“They’re not afraid of our weapons,” I told them. “In fact, they find our need for them almost funny.”

“Come to think of it, we got ‘em right now!” Sharyn exclaimed, jumping to her feet and pulling her sword from its scabbard across her back. “I say we chop our way through these … critters … and make a break for the ferry.”

“We’d never get there,” Tom said.

“It’s better than sitting here!” she shot back.

“Is it?” the chief asked her. “Sis, we’re all beat and sore. They carried us a long way across ground that’s got no landmarks. I couldn’t even tell you for sure which direction we need to go to find our way back.”

“So … what? We just stay here until they finish building this arena, and let ‘em
off
us?”

“We rest up,” her brother said. “And then we get ready to fight.”

“But you heard Will!” Sharyn exclaimed. “Queen Ten-Legs out there ain’t gonna keep her word. Even if we somehow do manage to win this
baclava
thing, she’ll just waste us anyhow!”

“Maybe not,” Tom said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Cause she
ain’t
Queen Ten-Legs … not yet. You said so yourself, Will. She’s got somethin’ to prove. And, better yet, she’s got to follow the rules, or at least make it look like she is. It takes absolute power to ignore your own laws, and she ain’t got that yet. So if the rules of this
bavarak
really say she has to free us if we win, then I’m bettin’ she’ll be forced to go along.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Maybe,” Helene agreed.

Sharyn said nothing.

But the wall behind us remarked,
“He’s right.”

All things
Malum

You know, I used to be a
normal
kid.

Back in the day, I never found myself sitting in a dark room made entirely out of thousands of little alien bodies all hooked into one another like some kind of screwball Lego set, only to have one of the Legos start talking.

Yep.

I
used
to be normal.

Tom jumped to his feet. Okay, to be fair, we all jumped to our feet, except Sharyn, who was on her feet already. We whirled toward the back wall of our little prison, Tom and I both shining our pocketknives on the spot.

All of the small
Malum
were still and quiet, except one.

That one had its head raised and pointed in our direction. Its green eye faced us.

“You can talk!” I exclaimed.

“Obviously,”
it said.

“Can the others talk?” Helene asked.

“No,”
it said.
“I’m rather unique, which is why I was sent in to become part of this building project.”

“The Queen sent you in?” Sharyn asked.

“She’s not the Queen,”
it replied.
“And, if we have anything to say about it, she never will be.”

“So who’s ‘we’?” Tom asked.

“You would call us
…
the Fifth Column.”

“Bob Dillin’s people!” I exclaimed, remembering the “good guy” Corpse who’d saved me, and who’d died my friend.

“That was his cover, yes,”
the creature agreed. I decided to call him—assuming it
was
a “him” —Little Bob, if only in my head. It bugged me that the
Malum
didn’t use names.

“Ain’t you worried ‘bout the rest of these dudes?” Sharyn asked, gesturing at the countless tiny bodies that made up the walls and ceiling. “Won’t they … rat you out for talking to us?”

“No,”
Little Bob said.

“You sure?” Helene asked.

“Completely. We are of the builder caste. We exist to do as we’re told
…
to become what we’re ordered to become. We volunteer nothing. Most of us are barely even conscious, at least not by your understanding of the concept.”

“What about you?” Tom asked.

“As I told you: I’m unique.”

I said, “You have an entire class of people whose only job is to come together and become buildings?”