The Undertakers: End of the World (35 page)

“Listen up,” the chief said as the walls began to disassemble from the top down, like sandcastles in the rain. “First off, I want to apologize to y’all. I brought us here, and now it seems pretty clear that we ain’t goin’ home.”

“We all knew that was possible,” I told him, and the girls both nodded.

Tom replied, “Straight up. But it still needs sayin’. I’m sorry.” He took a long breath. “And second, when the time comes, I’m gonna stand as champion.”

For several moments, none of us spoke.

I tried to think of some argument to make, some
solid
reason to suggest myself instead of him. But the hard truth was that the chief had twice my skills in combat. Heck, to be honest,
everyone
here was a better fighter than me. I could do the “street karate” thing well enough, but Tom and Sharyn had perfected it, if not invented it. And Helene was Sharyn’s best pupil.

It was Helene who replied first. “Okay, Chief.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Then we looked at Sharyn.

“We need Fore,” she said.

“Yeah, we do, sis,” her brother replied. “But we ain’t got it. So I’ll go in with Vader and do what I can. I won’t make no promises. But, for all our sakes, I’ll give it everything I got.”

“We know it,” I said to him.

But Sharyn still wore that funny look. I’d expected her to scream bloody murder at the thought of Tom’s sacrifice. But there was nothing. No disagreement. No anger. Not even desperation, which
I
was feeling by the truckload. Instead, the girl’s brow furrowed, her jaw set, and her eyes focused on nothing. Her expression remained—thoughtful—like before.

Then the walls were down and our conversation was over.

From outside, warrior caste
Malum
encircled us. Instinctively, we huddled closer together.

“Guys,” Helene suddenly exclaimed. “Check
that
out!”

We all looked where she was pointing. Some distance away, rising almost like a mountain, stood an enormous round structure, wide as a football field and high as a skyscraper. I knew for a fact that it hadn’t been there before we’d been tossed into our bizarre, living prison.

“What’s that?” Sharyn asked.

A voice answered,
“The arena.”

Future Queen appeared before us, stepping through the ranks of her not-yet-minions.

“I hope you like it,”
she said, her yellow eye flashing.
“We made it just for you.”

And I knew what that meant.

A stadium … built entirely out of tiny
Malum
. How freaky was that?

“Bring them,”
Future Queen commanded.

So they brought us, scooping us up and carrying us as they had before. Though it was hard to tell, it seemed to me as if the number of
Malum
in the vicinity had grown, maybe even as much as doubled. Word of our appearance and capture had spread, just as Little Bob had predicted, and more and more of the ten-legged monsters were arriving to watch the show.

As we neared the arena, I could see the lines of the
Malum
, thousands of them, stretching away from the stadium in all directions. Everyone was pouring in to witness the spectacle, the defeat and destruction of the Undertakers, and the cementing of “Most Despised Daughter’s” claim to the throne.

We were hauled through a special, guarded entrance and into a long corridor, the walls and ceiling of which were made entirely of Builders. I fleetingly wondered if Little Bob was here, or maybe other members of the Fifth Column. Would they help us?
Could
they? It didn’t seem likely.

Our friend, if that was what he was, had made that clear.

We would live or die on our own.

Probably die.

Inside the arena, the walls sloped upward. There were no seats, no aisles, no ten-legged hotdog and popcorn sellers. Instead, the
Malum
all skittered up the slopes and jostled one another for the best possible view—kind of a perfect “first come, first serve” situation. Occasionally, little fights broke out among them, and I saw more than one of the monsters get torn apart by others in an argument over a choice spot.

They reminded me of termites on a hill, except termites worked together better than these things seemed to.

We were deposited in a small, penned area just beside the arena. The arena was nothing more than a huge open expanse of black Ether, surrounded on all sides by a twenty-foot-high wall of Builders and—above that—the spectators.

This isn’t a stadium. It’s a coliseum. Except we’re not gladiators. We’re the Christians about to get thrown to the lions.

A single
Malum
skittered out to the very center of the arena. It was Future Queen, of course. There she stood, turning in a slow circle, gesticulating. More words we couldn’t hear. I suddenly wondered if whatever ability allowed us to understand their speech only worked if the speaker
wanted
it to.

As good a theory as any, I supposed.

Sharyn asked, “You figure she’s givin’ us an intro?”

Tom nodded.

The crowd of monsters made a shrill, collective sound that reminded me painfully of fingernails on a chalkboard. I winced. It went on and on, this alien cheer, until it felt as if my brain was going to explode.

Then Future Queen made a final gesture, and everything went suddenly, impossibly quiet.

A spot on the far wall opened and three creatures emerged.

Ten legs, just like the rest. One movable head, just like the rest. Four eyes, just like the rest. Definitely
Malum.

But these were
huge
! They had to be twice the size of Future Queen, twice the size of any of her kind that I’d seen before. Their legs were each as thick as tree trunks and their bodies looked nearly as big as SUVs—every inch of them hard, leathery muscle.

Their red eyes glowed like stars.

“
Kotha
,” guessed Tom.

“Oh my God,” Helene whispered.

Standing beside her, I said nothing. I mean, what was there
to
say?

Future Queen made a show of inspecting the three giants. Then, apparently pleased with what she saw, she came over to us, her ten legs clattering noisily across the black Ether.

“Undertakers,” she hissed. “You must choose a champion.”

Tom stepped forward.

But then a hand landed on his shoulder and Sharyn said, “Me.”

The chief looked at her, shock and horror registering on his face. “What? No!”

“It’s okay, bro,” she told him, a gentle, almost serene smile on her face. “It’s me. It needs to be me.”

Tom whirled on her, putting his big hands on her shoulders. “No, Sharyn. Please. I’m doing this.”

“Not this time, Chief,” she replied gently. “This time, it’s my turn to step up. You and the others sit it out. I got this. I’m the one who trained for it, after all.”

Tom stared at her, his face ashen. For one of the few times since I’d met him, he seemed visibly shaken. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.

His sister reached up and cupped his face in her strong hands. “Look at me.”

There were tears in Tom’s eyes.

“Look at me, bro,” Sharyn said again.

He looked at her, his expression a mask of desperation and loss.

She smiled. It was a smile of more than confidence. It was a smile of profound certainty. “Trust me.”

He nodded miserably.

Sharyn wrapped her arms around her brother, holding him tight for a few seconds. Then she stepped back and turned to Future Queen. “It’s me,” she said.

“Such tearful drama,”
the creature tutted.
“Take comfort in the knowledge that it doesn’t matter who stands for your group. The end will be the same.”

“You talk too much,” Sharyn said dismissively. She turned and hugged Helene. Then she did the same to me. It was a typical Sharyn hug. She yanked me into her arms, squeezed almost hard enough to make my eyes bulge, and then released almost before I’d realized what had happened.

“Choose your weapon,”
Future Queen said.

“Vader,” Helene suggested.

But Sharyn said, “Nope.” Then she unbuckled the sword and its scabbard and handed both to the younger girl. “Keep this safe for me.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You’re going out there unarmed?”

Sharyn grinned at me and tapped her temple with her finger. “I ain’t never unarmed, little bro.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? With Vader she barely had a hope. Without it she was as good as dead!

“Tom! You can’t let her—”

“It’s cool,” he replied, cutting me off. Now it was
his
turn to wear a strange, thoughtful expression. I suddenly got the distinct feeling that something was going down and I’d somehow been kept out of the loop.

Sharyn looked at her brother and grinned wider.

Then she winked and followed Future Queen out into the arena.

As the two of them headed off, I grabbed Tom’s arm and demanded, “What’re you two doing?”

“
I
ain’t doin’ anything, bro,” Tom replied. “This one’s all her.”

“But you
know
, don’t you? You know what she’s got in mind!”

“I think so.”

Helene and I glared—yeah, glared—at him. Then we asked in crazy unison, “Well?”

“She lifted my pocketknife,” he said, an odd little smile playing on his lips.

“What?”

“When she hugged me just now, she swiped it.”

I took my hand off his arm and felt my pockets.

“Mine’s gone, too!” I exclaimed.

Helene looked from one to the other of us, then out at Sharyn, who was still walking toward the middle of the arena. “You mean she traded her sword for a couple of little pocketknives?”

“Seems so,” Tom said.

“That’s crazy!”

He didn’t reply. Instead, he turned away from us and looked after his sister.

Feeling confused and helpless and horror-stricken, Helene and I did the same.

In front of us, around us, our
Malum
guards stood watchful. No way were we getting past them. No way were we going to be able to help the lone girl who stood against those three ten-legged dump trucks.

No way.

Bavarak

Sharyn reached the center of the arena and stopped when Future Queen stopped. She hadn’t looked back at us, not even once, during her march out there. But she did so now, and despite the distance—maybe twenty yards—I could read the soft smile playing on her lips.

Future Queen started gesturing with two of her limbs, pointing at Sharyn and apparently saying something to the surrounding crowd—once again using a form of communication that, for whatever reason, we couldn’t hear. After about a half-minute of this, the crowd responded with another of their high-pitched, ear-splitting yells.

I was really starting to hate that sound.

But Sharyn Jefferson actually grinned at them, looking less like a lamb led to the slaughter and more like a rock star taking her stage. As their shrill cries cut the air, she raised one hand high and waved at them, which only made their jeers louder.

“Tom,” Helene said. “Please tell me she knows what she’s doing.”

“Oh, she knows” he replied. His body had gone nearly as still as a
Malum’s
and his hands were balled into nervous fists.

Maybe Sharyn
does
have a plan, but that’s not keeping her brother from being terrified for her.

As the alien cheers gradually died away, Future Queen said something to Sharyn. The girl actually burst out laughing, which seemed to take the monster by surprise. Nonplussed, Most Despised Daughter skittered away, leaving Sharyn alone in the center of the arena.

Across from her, perhaps fifty yards from where she stood, the
kotha
shuddered and twitched in agitation, the
Malum
version of bulls huffing and pawing at the ground.

Future Queen found a place in the stands, not surprisingly a place of honor with an excellent view. The
Malum
nearby, I saw, made room for her. But, even from this distance, I could tell from their body language that they didn’t appreciate doing it. As Little Bob had suggested, this offspring of Lilith Cavanaugh wasn’t well liked.

She’s got almost as much riding on this
bavarak
as we do.

A silence, heavy and expectant, fell over the arena, a stillness beyond anything you’d ever find at any football game, even right before kickoff.

Then Future Queen called something out, something that we clearly heard. It wasn’t a word, at least not an English word. Instead, it sounded like a bark, hard and sharp and quick. It reminded me of the crack of a starter’s pistol.

And instantly, the
kotha
charged.

All three of them surged forward at once, their trunk-sized legs moving in blurs and their pincered feet, each as large as a watermelon, clattering noisily across the hard Ether.

Sharyn faced them, reached into her pockets, and came up with two small objects—one in each hand.

Our pocketknives.

I watched, trying to make sense of what she was doing.

Her thumbs found the row of buttons that ran along each knife’s facing side, eight on mine, six on Tom’s. She found the same button on both gadgets and pressed it, instantly activating the same feature.

The Tasers. Despite the distance, I could see the blue crackle of the electrical charge running between matching sets of prongs.

Two little Tasers against these giants? I wasn’t even sure a
normal-sized
Malum
would be affected by an electric shock.

But then I noticed Tom.

He was smiling.

“Good for you, sis,” I heard him mutter.

As the
kotha
bore down on her, Sharyn Jefferson slammed both pocketknives, their tips still sizzling with electricity, into on another—

—where they somehow locked together, and
merged
.

Comprehension hit me like a punch to the stomach.

The Taser button on both pocketknives was the one marked
2
.

Two plus two equals Fore.

Except that hadn’t been what Professor Moscova had said with his last breath, not exactly.