The Undertakers (10 page)

Dave actually shuddered.

“How'd you end up here?” I asked.

“Got lucky for a change. I was on Market Street on Wednesday when I spotted a bunch of these kids on majorly cool bikes hiding behind a bus. All of a sudden, they peeled away—right through a crowd of people crossing the street—snatched up a couple of other kids and then took off down Tenth. The thing is, there were three Corpses there, and these guys shot them in the face with squirt guns! One of them even had a sword. I think maybe it was Sharyn, although I didn't know it at the time.”

I smiled but said nothing.

Dave continued, “So I figured anybody who could do that to those walking fly bags was who I wanted to hang with. So I started asking everybody who was there—all the ‘bystanders'—and I finally ran into this kid named Jonathan who turned out to be with the guys on the bikes. Some kind of spotter. Once I told him I could See the Corpses, he offered to bring me here. Got to admit though,” he concluded, looking around, “I expected better.”

For a moment I considered telling him about the field trip this afternoon. Then I changed my mind. Tom and Sharyn thought this dude might be a mole, and if he was, it probably wouldn't be smart to make him think I knew more about the Undertakers than I'd let on.

Except…he doesn't
seem
like a mole.

I said, “You wanna grab some lunch, Burgermeister?”

“Sure.”

I looked at him. He looked back at me.

“Um…you kind of have to move,” I added.

He blinked. “Oh! Sorry.” Then he stepped aside, and to my surprise, he made a funny
after you
gesture with a swing of one of his huge arms.

I smiled.

And realized with some surprise that I kind of liked Dave “the Burgermeister” Burger.

Field Trip

That afternoon the six First Stop recruits were once again herded into the main room—fresh from a hearty lunch of nuked hot dogs, nuked macaroni and cheese, and apple juice. Instead of taking chairs, however, we were lined up near the dry cleaner's rear door and each handed a black sack.

“Today,” Sharyn announced, “we're all gonna go out for a few hours. Now, y'all want to pull those bags over your heads. Then I'll lead you, one at a time, through the door and into the back of a van. The van's got bench seats on both sides with ropes for seat belts. Once you're in there and tied down, we'll split.”

“Where are we going?” Amy asked.

“That's a surprise. But don't worry. Y'all will be back here by dinnertime. Cool?”

Harleen and Maria nodded. The Burgermeister frowned. Amy and Ethan looked nervous.

“Good,” Sharyn said. “Not…you don't take off those bags until I tell you it's okay. Got it? I'll be sitting in the back with y'all, and if one of you tries breakin' that rule—well, let's just say you'll be getting a personal training session first thing we get back. Everybody down with that?”

Dave, who knew all about personal training sessions with Sharyn, was the first to don his black sack, pulling it over his big head so quickly that I had to suppress a smile. The rest followed suit. Finally, with a grin and nod from Sharyn, I did the same.

It was stuffy inside—and dark. I couldn't see a thing, which I supposed was the point.

Ten minutes later, we were all in the back of a creaky metal van, perched on hard benches. “Just sit tight,” Sharyn told us as the doors shut loudly. “This'll take about half an hour.”

And maybe it did, but it was a long half an hour.

First of all, I was uncomfortable, although it was easy enough to breathe in the sack. Second, whoever was driving this thing wasn't particularly good at it. Tires seemed to squeal with every turn, tossing us to and fro on the benches and knocking us into one another time and time again. And there were a lot of turns. Whatever complicated route Tom had worked out for taking us from First Stop to Haven, it involved a lot of twists and doubling back. I didn't think the best spy in the world could have tracked us.

By the time the van rolled to an abrupt halt, I'd lost all sense of direction. We could have been anywhere from the art museum to the Philly airport.

“Jeez,” Ethan muttered from beside me. “I feel sick.”

Frankly so did I—probably had something to do with riding around in a bouncy van with a bag over my head.

“Chill out, y'all,” Sharyn said, sounding as cheerful as ever. “We're here!”

The doors opened, and out we came. Sharyn helped each of us out in turn, lining us up and then marching us—still bagged—down a short hall and into an open area that, by the echo, could only be Haven's cavernous Big Room.

No ramp. No brick wall. Apparently there was more than one way into the Undertakers' secret headquarters.

A door shut, and Sharyn pronounced, “Okay, dudes. Lose the bags!”

Gratefully we obeyed.

I did my best to mimic the amazement the other recruits clearly felt at witnessing the beehive of activity around us. It wasn't hard. Seeing it now without some of the shock and fear that I'd been drowning in the first time, the operation
was
impressive. The high ceiling; the corral of muscle bikes; the rows of sectioned-off rooms and offices that lined the walls—they made the whole Undertakers concept seem somehow more reliable.

More
real
.

And I started to see the point of this field trip.

“Welcome to Haven,” Tom said, stepping through the same door that we'd all just used. “Hope y'all enjoyed the ride. You're the first recruits to ever get this chance before graduating First Stop, so make the most of it.”

I looked at him, my stomach only now settling down, and thought,
Was he the driver?

Did any of the Undertakers have a license? And where had the van even come from?

Questions for another day, I decided. For now I needed to play the newbie and go along with everybody else.

“Listen up,” Sharyn said. “We're gonna spend some time taking y'all around this room to show you how the Undertakers are set up and how we roll. Maybe some of you'll get a feel for what you might want to do after First Stop. After that comes a little break, and then a bit about the Deaders that we like to call
Corpses 101
.”

Grinning, she marched across the expansive floor, waggling a finger for us to follow.

The Undertakers, it turned out, were arranged into crews, with each crewer reporting to a boss who either answered to Tom or to Sharyn as Deputy Chief. Most crews maintained a station in the Big Room from where they did their job. And that afternoon the First Stop recruits spent anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour at every single one of them.

First came the Chatters, who occupied a square of tables set up at what their boss—a short, dark-haired boy named Sammy Li—defined as “the exact geographic center of Haven.” Apparently that made the building-wide Wi-Fi work better. The kids on this crew were the communicators. They remained in constant contact with the Schoolers—Sharyn's Undercover Undertakers. They also monitored Corpse activity in the newspapers and on local television.

During our visit, Sammy let a few of us take turns flipping through the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, looking for photos of cadavers mugging for some journalist's camera. Ethan actually found one and seemed really jazzed about it.

The Hackers manned three banks of computers set up against Haven's rear wall. They spent their days worming into all kinds of systems, securing false identities for Schoolers, researching known Corpses, and keeping track of the Undertakers' finances. Their boss was a sixteen-year-old girl named Elisha Beardsley. “Work for me,” she announced with the enthusiasm of a candidate for class president, “and we'll show you how to break into every system on the East Coast! It doesn't get better than that.”

I thought that maybe it did, but some of the others looked excited—especially Maria.

After that came the Monkeys, Haven's mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, and electricians. They were bossed by Tara Monroe, the short, slightly heavy girl who'd been nice to me during my first confusing minutes in Haven. “My crew keeps the bikes running,” she explained as we gathered together near the Stingray corral. “We also take care of the building itself, making regular improvements. So if you got a way with tools, we could definitely use you.”

“Cool,” I heard the Burgermeister mutter from beside me.

Toward the end of her talk, Tara's eyes briefly found mine. She offered me a small smile of recognition. I managed to smile back. It was nice to have a friend.

I wonder where Helene is.

“Schoolers and Angels are different kinds of crews,” Tom told us a few minutes later. We'd left the corral and were now standing near the cafeteria. “For starters, Schoolers don't have a station in Haven because—well, most of the time, they're not here. They're out in the world, hiding in the local middle schools, playing normal. They have a tough job: to keep an eye out for Seers and, when they find one, get to them before the Corpses do. Schoolers are trained to fight, to fend for themselves, and to keep cool no matter how hairy things get. It's a high-power, high-risk gig—which is why they're the only crew I boss personally.

“Angels, on the other hand, are our search and rescue team. Most of the time, they're the ones goin' toe to toe with the Corpses. When a Schooler needs backup, Angels ride in. When some Deader is up to something, it's the Angels who tail 'em and get the 411. Sharyn bosses that crew, and getting on it ain't easy. You get trained in combat, weapons, and how to handle yourself on a bike and a skateboard, and you keep funny hours. It ain't easy, and it ain't for the timid.

“So—if any y'all think you might be Schooler or Angel material, let Sharyn or Kyle know, and we'll see what's what.”

There didn't seem to be any immediate takers, and Tom didn't seem to expect there would be. So he nodded to Sharyn, who stepped up, rubbed her hands together, and announced, “Okay, break time! There's candy and popcorn, and I think Nick's even whipped us up some pie. Go seat yourselves down in the caf, and I'll check the back.”

This we did, with the Burgermeister dropping heavily into the chair beside me. He tried one of the homemade candies. “These ain't bad,” he said after a half-dozen disappeared into his huge maw. “But I was hopin' for some real food.”

“We had lunch before we left First Stop,” I told him.

“Yeah, I know. But I'm hungry!” Another handful of colored candies met their maker.

Sharyn reappeared a moment later, tugging along a tall, skinny blond kid of about sixteen. “Dudes, this here's Nick Rooney. He's our Mom Boss.”

Harleen and Maria giggled as Dave whispered into my ear, “He don't like no Mom
I
ever saw.” Then he noticed that the blond kid was carrying a steaming apple pie in his oven mitt–covered hands. “Hey, dude!” he suddenly exclaimed to Nick. “Get me some of that!”

The Moms, it turned out, kind of sat at the bottom of the Undertakers' unofficial crew totem pole, and it was with them that most new recruits started out. These kids did the thankless drudgery jobs: shopping, emptying trash, doing laundry, and generally picking up after everyone else. Nobody liked being a Mom, and most kids rotated off the crew as soon as newer recruits came in to take their places.

Nick Rooney seemed to be the only exception; he'd been a Mom since joining up almost two and a half years ago, and he apparently showed no interest in doing anything else. Nick was also the baker wannabe who personally made, in addition to pies, the candies that everyone around me—especially Dave—was currently inhaling.

But I didn't have too much of an appetite. Instead I found a quick moment during the break to lure Sharyn aside.

“Where's Helene?” I asked her.

“Helene?” the Deputy Chief replied. “The girls' dorm, I think. Said she was tired.”

“Oh.” I tried to hide my disappointment. “I was afraid she might be back out on a new Schooler assignment.”

Sharyn shook her head. “Nope. Not yet anyhow.”

“Okay. Well—tell her I said hi.”

She treated me to a thin, knowing smile. “Tell her yourself, Red—the next time you see her.” Then she turned and addressed the rest of the recruits. “One more stop, dudes! We're off to the Brain Factory, where y'all will be hearing from Steve Moscova, who runs that crew with an iron pocket protector! So line up! This one's going to be a blast!”

Corpses 101

Ahem,” Steve said loudly. “My name's Steven Moscova, and I'm the Brain Boss for the Undertakers. I've dedicated myself to understanding these invaders because only through understanding them can we hope to defeat them.”

We were gathered outside the Brain Factory, occupying chairs that had been set up just out of reach of the half-circle of long tables that marked the boundary of Steve's domain. His crew was nowhere to be seen, although a big cracked blackboard had been set up beside the nearest table. On this blackboard, Steve had taped up an assortment of photographs—each one showing a different Corpse in a different stage of rot.

I felt my stomach roll over. It was the bumpy van ride all over again.

Beside me, Dave groaned, “I shouldn't have eaten so much candy!”

Steve said, “It's okay to ask questions—just please raise your hand. Let's get started.” He tapped the first picture on the blackboard. It looked like Old Man Pratt—at least, the way he'd been the morning I'd left home. Dried up. Almost a husk. Beetle food. “This is a long shot of a Corpse inhabiting a Type Five cadaver. Because of its advanced state of decomposition, it is nearing the end of its usefulness. This particular body has probably been dead for more than two months. All the fluids are gone, leaving behind brittle bones and skin like old parchment. These cadavers are pretty worthless in combat. They break too easily. Soon the Corpse inside this body will be looking for something fresher. We call this
Transferring
, and it brings me to the first point I need to make today.

“Corpses are
not
the souls of the bodies they inhabit. The bodies are simply, normally dead. The entities that we call
Corpses
come in afterward. We don't know where they're from, but the best guess is another plane of existence—what you might call another dimension.”

I asked, “Why can't they come from—I dunno—outer space?”

Steve said, “That's a good question. But—Will, is it?”

I felt my face redden. Of course Steve should recognize me! But then I remembered the role I was supposed to be playing. “Yeah. Will.”

“Next time raise your hand if you've got a question.”

My face stayed red. “Sure.”

Steve said, “Anyway, the answer is: maybe they
could,
but they
don't
. We're pretty sure that they enter our world as beings of pure energy. That's why they need to inhabit cadavers in the first place.”

He rapped his knuckles on each of the remaining four photos, moving from left to right. “We categorize each level of continuing decomposition.” He stopped at the last. The animated cadaver in this one looked fresher than the rest—slimier.

“When possible, the Corpses try to pick what we call Type One bodies,” Steve said. “Type Ones are less than a week dead. Such bodies are stronger, more resistant to damage, and of course last longer. The Corpses take good care of these bodies, even going so far as embalming themselves if that hasn't already been done.”

Amy raised her hand. “What's
embalming
?”

Steve said, “It's when the blood is drained and replaced with a formaldehyde mixture.”

We were all overcome by a general sense of
ewww
.

“What for?” Amy asked.

It was Dave who answered her. “Keeps the body from rotting too fast.”

Steve cleared his throat. “Simply put, yes. It fixes the cellular proteins, making it harder for bacteria to feed on them. Without that feeding process, decomposition is curtailed.”

Amy looked blankly at him.

Dave muttered, “I liked my answer better.”

Steve cleared his throat again.

I thought about the cadavers I'd Seen. Kenny Booth had clearly been a Type One. Mr. Titlebaum, the assistant principal—he'd been maybe a Two or Three. And Ms. Yu? A Four at best. She'd been awfully flaky. The woman in the Laundromat? A Type Two.

I shuddered at the memory of how strong she'd been.

“However,” Steve continued, “while Corpses prefer Type Ones, in a pinch they'll take whatever's nearby. Most of their bodies are either stolen from freshly dug graves or from the city morgue, which they now control. We don't really understand the Transfer process, but there do seem to be some rules to it. For one thing, the range is limited—maybe even to line of sight. Corpses can't Transfer into living bodies, and if no new
dead
body's available, then the Corpse is trapped, regardless of the condition of its host cadaver. Something to remember.”

“How does the illusion work?” I asked. Then when Steve looked pointedly at me, I raised my hand and asked again.

“Well, that's the big question, isn't it?” he asked. “If we knew that, we'd obviously be able to fight them better. Unfortunately the best I can give you are a few ideas.

“Each Corpse projects a false image. We call it a
Mask
. It might be technology or telepathy—we just don't know. But it's important to understand that the illusion has nothing to do with the bodies they inhabit. Corpses don't try to impersonate deceased people. Instead they use the bodies as shells to move around in—and then project the image they want the world to see on top of it. Let's do an experiment…”

He nodded to Sharyn, who rolled her eyes and began passing out manila folders. Inside mine I found two more Corpse photos. One showed a Type Five and the other a Type Two. Different dead bodies, but both male, and both wearing Philly police uniforms. From the moans and retching sounds around me, it seemed clear the others were looking at the same images.

Sharyn chuckled, but Steve seemed completely unmoved by our distress. “Now, I want everyone to look at these photos—really look.”

Beside me, Ethan had turned totally green. On the other side, Dave glared at the faces as if they might attack him.

“Good,” Steve said. “Now, relax—”

Somewhere behind me, Maria gagged a little.

“—and let your eyes lose focus.”

Of course I knew what he was doing. But would it really work with a picture? So I stared at the Type Five for a moment and then crossed my eyes.

And there it was: the image of a man in his forties with thinning hair and a smooth face floating atop the Corpse's papery visage. Keeping my eyes like that, I turned my attention to the second photo. And there was the same face—the same Mask—superimposed over the image of a different, fresher dead body.

Two different bodies but one Corpse.

“I see it!” I heard Amy say.

“Good,” Steve said again. “Anybody else? Raise your hand.”

Everyone did—except the Burgermeister, who looked suddenly red-faced and frustrated. “What am I supposed to see?”

Steve continued, rolling right over him. “A Corpse's Mask is maintained, unchanging, regardless of the cadaver a particular Corpse is wearing. What's more, this disguise even carries over to any traces of themselves: shadows, fingerprints—and obviously photographs and videos. That's why no Corpse has ever been revealed on camera.”

“Like Kenny Booth!” Ethan exclaimed. “He's been a Philly anchorman for almost three years!”

“Right,” said Steve. “But Ethan, next time please raise your hand.”

“But that wasn't a question,” Ethan protested. “You said to raise our hands if we had a
question
.”

Steve blinked. Sharyn laughed. After a moment the Brain Boss pronounced, “New rule. Nobody talks unless they raise their hand first.”

We all nodded in agreement.

Steve went on. “But Masks have their limits—”

Ethan interrupted, fighting a smile, “You didn't raise your hand.”

Steve blinked. “Except me. Nobody talks except me.”

A few recruits chuckled.

“Anyway,” Steve said with a sigh, “Corpses can't fake clothing. They have to buy it, just like everybody else. They also seem to be stuck with a gender—male or female.”

Amy raised her hand. “So why doesn't this illusion work on us?”

“There are a number of theories,” Steve replied. “Maybe we all have a gene that somehow blocks the transmission—a gene that gets activated at some point during puberty. That could be why none of us got the Sight until we were at least eleven or twelve.”

Harleen Patel raised her hand. She was a skinny twelve-year-old with a round face, short dark hair, and braces. “What about the crazy way they talk—without moving their lips or anything?”

“We call that
Deadspeak
,” Steve answered. “And it isn't speech as we understand it. For example, the sounds can't be recorded, which proves they aren't made of air vibrations, like real sound. They might be another form of telepathy—maybe even the way Corpses ordinarily communicate in their natural environment, wherever that is.”

I raised my hand. “Why does it sound so, um…disjointed when they talk? Almost like they're saying one-word sentences.”

Steve nodded. “Because it must be a
limited
form of telepathy. For example, it doesn't work over long distances. But it
does
use mental images—pictures, not words—to transmit ideas. Apparently we Seers somehow tap into these images, which our brains automatically translate into something understandable—English words.”

I kept my hand up. “And what happens to a Corpse when something gets chopped off? How do they manage to keep up their Mask when, like, some body part is rolling around on the floor? I mean, they can't move around without their heads, can they?”

Steve pointed at me, as if he'd liked my question. “Corpses animate dead bodies, but they're still stuck with the limits of those bodies. You're right, Will. If a Corpse loses its head, it's immobilized. It can't go anywhere, and it can't Transfer—not without having another suitable cadaver nearby. To a lesser degree, the same is true if they lose an arm or a leg. They might still be able to move, but they generally don't—probably because they can't maintain their illusion if they wander too far from the severed limb.

“In such cases, Corpses support each other. If one of them is incapacitated, other Corpses instinctively know this. Maybe it's yet another form of telepathy. However they do it, the other Corpses find their fallen comrade, collect it and whatever pieces of it are lying around, and then take them someplace safe to Transfer. In the meantime, the downed Corpse keeps up its illusion, making any human witnesses think it's only fainted or something. We've observed this happening a few times.

“By making such observations, we're better able to understand the way these beings behave—their language, their culture, and their methods of attack.”

“And what are their
methods of attack?
” Ethan asked.

“Ethan…”

Groaning, he raised his hand.

Steve said, “As most of you know, a lot of Corpses are policemen. But the fact is that they don't use guns. In fact, Corpses don't generally use any weapons at all. They prefer to strike their victims, choke them, or sometimes bite them…”

I felt a now-familiar chill race down my spine.

He continued, “Most of the kids whose bodies we've found died from blunt trauma.”

“What's that?” Amy asked in a small voice.

Again it was Dave who answered. “They got beaten to death.”

“Yes,” said Steve, looking uncomfortable.

Maria began to cry.

“And that's not the worst of it,” Steve said. “I'm sorry, but you need to know it all. The Corpses often take bites out of their victims. They…” His voice trailed off.

“What?” Amy asked.

“Eat them,” Steve said.

We all went quiet.

Steve cleared his throat yet again. “Of course, nutritionally it's meaningless. Their stolen bodies can't digest anything. But we've nevertheless witnessed Corpses eating regular food in public—hot dogs, popcorn, et cetera—and apparently enjoying it. There may be some cultural significance. We don't even know for sure what they can taste.”

“
Madre de Dios!
” Maria whimpered. She crossed herself.

I didn't blame her.

“How can they be so strong?” I asked, remembering to raise my hand. “If they're just normal people—normal dead people…” I let my words trail off.

Steve replied, “The human body is stronger than you think. Haven't you ever heard of a panicked mother lifting a car off a baby? That kind of emergency strength comes from a chemical in the body called adrenalin. Well, it seems that a Corpse can generate the same level of strength in its host body whenever it wants to. It's not adrenalin—the body's dead and so can't generate hormones of any kind—but it's something like it.

“However, the Corpses pay for all that speed and strength. The harder they work, the quicker their stolen bodies decay around them.”

Ethan chimed in. “I know some of the Corpses are cops. What I don't get is how they become cops. I mean, don't they have to prove they're…people? With birth certificates or driver's licenses or something?”

Steve visibly relaxed. This was evidently safer ground than Amy's question. He didn't even seem to mind that his hand-raising rule had once again been forgotten.

“The Corpses are master forgers,” he explained. “Each one has set up a perfect paper trail, including birth records, educational background, and tax history. We don't know how they do it, but every Corpse appears in our world with full credentials. Then it's simply a matter of stepping into this life. The thing to remember is that this false identity has nothing to do with the bodies a particular Corpse may inhabit over time. As I've said, Corpses aren't impersonating anyone who has ever really been alive. The cadavers are just temporary shells. Their ready-made lives, like their Masks, stay the same from host body to host body—and are jealously guarded. In our experience, a given Corpse is far more worried about public exposure of its fake human self than about injury to its current host.”