Last Siege of Haven Read online

  “Stop them!” the Corpse rasped from behind us, a sound that I knew all too well would be heard as normal speech by the Un-Seeing faculty members. Sure enough, a stout gym teacher reached for me. He was a big guy, probably a college football player, clearly used to getting physical with kids when the situation called for it.

  “Now just hold up, son,” he said in a voice as deep as the ocean.

  “I’m not your son,” I replied.

  Then I Tased him.

  Oh, didn’t I mention my Taser?

  It’s actually a pocketknife—a weird, tricked-out pocketknife with a bunch of buttons and all sorts of gadgets that really have no business being in a pocketknife. How did I get it? I found it under my pillow, left there by a mysterious woman who I used to think was an angel. What do I think she is, if not an angel? That’s a long story, and we’ll get there.

  Anyway, Gym Teacher Dude went as stiff as a board when my Taser hit the meat of his big bicep. Then he toppled over with a crash that drew cries of alarm and shocked gasps from the gathering crowd.

  “Head for the exit!” I told the girls, pointing at the fire door at the end of the corridor.

  For a second, the three of them just stood there, rooted in place, their eyes moving from me, to the zapped gym teacher, and then to the thing that was still shuffling toward us.

  “Julie!” I snapped. “Helene’s waiting! Go!”

  She went, grabbing the blond and redhead by their hands and pulling them along behind her. I kept up the rear, brandishing the Taser. The teachers all stared at me. One of them, a pretty woman in her twenties whose name I didn’t know, came toward me, her hands outstretched.

  “Listen to me,” she begged. “Whatever’s going on, let me help you!”

  I shook my head.

  “I promise you,” she pressed. “It’s not as terrible as you think it is.”

  “I only wish that was true,” I replied.

  I turned and followed the girls at a full run.

  Julie pushed the heavy door open, letting in a bright splash of sunlight. I caught up just as the door swung closed and slammed the panic bar with one hand, leaving the school behind me—sort of.

  We were in a blind alley that ran between the auditorium and the gymnasium, a three-story windowless canyon of orange brick. In one direction, a green commercial dumpster stood against a blank wall. In the other direction, the alley opened onto the school’s rear grounds. I could see the soccer field standing empty beyond the parking lot.

  “Help me!” I yelled to the girls, who stood blinking in the sunshine. The blond and brunette didn’t move. Julie did. She followed me to the dumpster, which wasn’t particularly big or—thankfully—particularly heavy. Between the two of us, we managed to drag it up against the fire door. And just in time, too. Moments later, the door shook, though whether it was the Type Five deader or some well-meaning but totally useless teacher hammering on it, I didn’t know.

  I didn’t care, either.

  “Who are you?” Julie asked me. She still looked pale. She still looked scared. But she’d kept her wits, unlike the other two, who clutched at each other and cried.

  “Will Ritter. I’m an Undertaker.”

  She nodded. “Like my sister.”

  “Just like her.”

  “Where is she?” the girl asked.

  Good question. The easy answer was Haven. But if Dave “the Burgermeister” Burger had followed the Rules and Regs, then he’d called in the situation and Helene, who was monitoring our mission, might have already split for Allentown. Frankly, I hoped not. It would take her a long time to get here, and we couldn’t exactly wait.

  No point trying to explain all that, though. So I just said, “I’m taking you to her.”

  Julie nodded, unhappy but momentarily satisfied.

  “Follow me,” I said. “All of you!”

  We headed down the alley toward the rear parking lot.

  That’s when a figure stepped in front of us, blocking our exit.

  A Corpse. But not just any Corpse.

  The principal.

  Robert Dillin.

  “Mr. Kessler,” he said. He was a Type One. Very fresh and very strong, his stolen body probably dead less than a week. I didn’t see too many Type Ones. The Corpses found them hard to come by. The fact that Dillin wore one suggested that he ranked high among the Malum.

  Leader caste.

  I held up my Taser and readied myself for his attack.

  It didn’t come.

  “No need for that, young man,” the deader remarked. Then he said something that I would never in a million years have imagined coming out of a Corpse’s mouth.

  “I’m here to help you.”

  Chapter 3

  PARKING LOT WARS

  “This way, quickly!” Dillin said, waggling a dead finger at us and hurrying along the rear of the school, skirting its outer wall. Then, after several steps, he stopped and looked back, seeming genuinely surprised that we hadn’t moved.

  Does he honestly expect us to follow him?

  “Mr. Kessler,” he said. “I know this has been a confusing and terrifying day for you and your friends. And I know what I look like, though I hope I don’t look as bad as Marcy or some of the others you’ve seen. There’s a reason for all of it. If you’ll only come with me—”

  Without taking my eyes off the dead principal, I said to Julie, “You and the girls head for the soccer field. On the way, you should run into a big guy in janitor’s overalls. He’s a friend of mine. Trust him.”

  “But … what about you?” she asked. Inwardly, I smiled. Helene’s sister—no doubt about it.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” I promised.

  The girl nodded. Then she pulled Blond and Redhead across the parking lot and toward the open field.

  Alarm flashed in Dillin’s dead eyes. “It’s not safe that way! Mr. Kessler, I know you’re frightened. But you have to trust me!”

  I held up my Taser. “My name’s not Kessler. It’s Will Ritter. I’m not a kid who just got his Eyes. I’m an Undertaker. And … no, I don’t have to trust you, deader.”

  Then, while his gaze was locked on my pocketknife, I whipped out my water pistol and shot him.

  Except, I didn’t.

  It was a good move on my part: divert his attention with the Taser and then blindside him with saltwater.

  Except my shot hit nothing but empty air.

  With incredible agility, Dillin had leapt to one side, latching his feet and hands onto the school’s brick wall. Then, as I stared, he skittered upward, as quickly as a spider, somehow driving the fingertips and toes of his stolen body into the mortar between the bricks.

  That’s when I noticed his shoes—brown tasseled loafers—sitting in the grass.

  He’d jumped right out of them.

  I’d only ever seen one other Corpse move like that. Just one. Her name was Lilith Cavanaugh, the Queen of the Dead. She wasn’t just leader caste; she was royal caste, and that stature within the Malum class structure somehow made her faster, stronger, and way more agile than your average deader.

  Whoever this thing was posing as the principal of Merriweather Middle School in Allentown, Pennsylvania, he had to be Corpse royalty.

  A Zombie Prince!

  I know: Don’t call ‘em zombies. What can I say? At that time and in that moment, this was the label that struck me. Robert Dillin: Zombie Prince.

  Halfway to the roof, tucked between a standpipe and a big banner proclaiming the Merriweather Panthers, he looked balefully down at me. I expected to see anger in his expression. Heck, I expected to feel it radiate off of him like waves of heat.

  But instead he just looked—well—sad.

  In a loud, clear voice he called down to me, “We’re not all monsters, Mr. Ritter!”

  Then he leapt higher and disappeared over the lip of the roof.

  I stood there for maybe a half-minute, trying to ma
ke sense of it.

  I’d met a lot of Corpses. I mean a lot of them. I’d met the smart mean kind and the dumb mean kind. I’d met the polite mean kind and the downright rude mean kind. See where I’m going with this?

  But the Zombie Prince was something—new.

  At that moment, a loud crash caught my attention. I turned back down the alley toward the fire door, which had just smashed open, the dumpster in front of it knocked aside.

  Three deaders came out. One was the Type Five we’d seen earlier, the Night of the Living Dead reject. The others were fresher. A pair of Threes. All of them took just a moment to scan the alley before their lifeless eyes settled on me.

  Time to go.

  I ran after Julie and the girls, who had reached the far edge of the parking lot—and stopped. After a moment, I saw why.

  Two more Corpses blocked the gate that led onto the soccer field. One wore janitor’s overalls. The other was the school nurse. Both smirked at the girls, two of whom—guess which ones—were screaming.

  Julie had placed herself protectively between Blonde and Redhead and the Corpses, her small face set in a look of admirable, but completely useless, courage. As I got close, the crying girls noticed me and latched on like shipwrecked passengers to a life buoy.

  Around us, the deaders closed in, taking their time about it.

  Three at my back and two at my front. I’d faced longer odds, but not with fresh Seers in tow. I held the momentary hope that they wouldn’t risk a direct attack, not within sight of the school. But then I remembered where we were, behind the auditorium and the gym. No windows. No witnesses.

  I had my water pistol, with maybe two squirts left. I had my pocketknife. What I didn’t have were any illusions.

  But nobody ever beat any odds by giving up.

  So, pushing the screaming girls behind me, I turned toward the three from the alley. They grinned savagely, unmoved when I pointed my water pistol at them.

  “Undertaker,” one of them, a dude in a ridiculous tweed suit, growled.

  “Badly Dressed Dead Guy,” I replied.

  Then his head came off.

  It’s amazing how often I see that happen.

  The two beside him looked over in surprise as Dave “The Burgermeister” Burger stepped from behind a nearby SUV. In his hands was a spaded shovel, one with a long wooden handle. Corpse juice dripped from its blade.

  He grinned, and said in a truly awful Brooklyn accent, “You all lookin’ for a pahty?”

  The other two launched at him. I shot one in the ear before whirling around and firing at the nurse, who was at that moment leaping at Julie. The saltwater caught her in the eye. She moaned, spun, and dropped, her purple hands opening and closing like crab claws.

  Meanwhile, the Corpse janitor flanked Helene’s little sister, whose attention had been fixed on Dead Nurse. But, as the big dude’s purple fingers neared her throat, Julie did a surprising thing.

  She yelped in fear, jumped up, and kicked him in the face.

  Dead Janitor’s head snapped back so hard that I actually heard his neck bones crunch. Then he staggered and fell against the chain link fence that surrounded the soccer field.

  Disoriented, but not done.

  So I lunged forward, past Dead Nurse’s twitching form, and pressed my Taser against the fence’s metal links.

  Electricity raced along the chain links, causing Dead Janitor to convulse so hard, he fell over the fence and landed in a heap on the other side, his body doing a crazy horizontal dance.

  I spun around, ready to help Dave.

  But he didn’t need it.

  Three deader heads now lay separated from three deader bodies in the shadow of the SUV. In the fight, the Burgermeister had gotten hurt. He had fingernail gouges on his neck and what looked like an ugly swelling below one eye that would probably be an uglier bruise by morning.

  Yet, despite it all, he was grinning.

  “Where’d you get the shovel?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Told yah: Yahdwork.”

  “What’s with the Brooklyn accent?” I asked.

  His grin vanished. “Brooklyn! That’s Boston, dude! We watched The Departed last night. I sound just like Jack Nicholson.”

  “Right,” I said. “Sure. I can hear it now.”

  Off to the side, I saw Redhead faint.

  A moment later, Blond threw up on her.

  A moment after that, alarms sounded from inside the school.

  “Fire?” Dave asked.

  I shook my head. “Lockdown.”

  I’d Tased a teacher, which qualified by law as an act of domestic terrorism. That meant the school would go into immediate lockdown. By now, the cops had been called. Every kid would be literally locked, with their teachers, inside every classroom, with the shades pulled down at every door and every window. They’d stay there, huddled up against an interior wall, until the “proper authorities” arrived to scour the building and grounds before giving the “all clear” signal.

  The upshot was that nobody else would be coming after us. At least, not until the cops arrived.

  Julie went immediately to the blond girl, holding back her hair while she retched. On the ground at the girl’s feet, Redhead lay in a heap on the curb, vomit on her jeans, her eyes closed, and her face twisted with terror.

  I suddenly felt pretty crappy.

  I’d been laughing at these girls—that is, when I wasn’t irritated with them. Julie’s courage and self-possession had impressed me from the moment she’d laid her eyes on Ms. McKinney’s true face. In contrast, I’d labeled Blond and Redhead weak-willed and spineless.

  But none of that had been fair.

  Had I really forgotten what it felt like to start Seeing Corpses? The Zombie Prince had nailed it: confusing and terrifying at the same time. Everyone reacted differently. And most first-time Seers didn’t survive their reaction, not without a Schooler on hand to jump to their rescue, as Julie’s older sister had jumped to my rescue the day I’d got my Eyes.

  If Helene hadn’t been there, I’d have screamed just as loud and long as these two poor girls.

  And I’d have died screaming.

  I pointed to Dead School Nurse, who was starting to recover from the saltwater eye wash I’d given her. Dave went to “take care of it,” his shovel firmly in hand. Then I knelt beside Redhead and felt her pulse. It was slow but steady. At least she’d had the good sense to faint on grass instead of cement.

  Meanwhile, Blond had finished retching and had let Julie sit her down on the curb. There, she quietly cried. I looked at them both. Julie looked back at me. There was so much behind her brown eyes.

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  Instead of answering, I pulled out my sat phone and dialed Haven.

  Dan McDevitt, one of the Chatters, the crew that monitored communications, answered on the second ring. “Main Street Auto Parts. This is Derek. Can I help you?”

  “This is Allentown One. We’ve got three Seers. We’re coming in.”

  “Got you, Allentown One. Are things hot?”

  I looked up in time to see the Burgermeister’s shovel come down, blade first, across Dead School Nurse’s neck. Her head rolled past the crying blond girl, who saw it and buried her face in Julie’s shoulder.

  Dave then turned his attention to Dead Janitor, who still twitched beyond the soccer field gate.

  I heard police sirens in the distance.

  “They’re about to be,” I said into the phone. “We could use an exit strategy.”

  “Hold on,” Dan said. In the background, I could hear him tapping buttons on a keyboard. “There’s a bus into Philly. Allentown Bus Terminal.”

  “They’ll be watching that,” I said.

  “Not if you get there quick enough. I’ll make sure tickets are waiting. How many? You, Dave, and three Seers. So, five?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Then after a moment’s thought: “No. Make it
four.”

  Nearby, I heard the Burgermeister say, “Will, what’re you doing?”

  “Four?” Dan asked. “I thought—”

  “I’m not done here yet,” I said. “Make it four. Thanks, Dan.” Then I closed the phone and turned to Dave, who stood just beyond the soccer field fence, having made short work of the last Corpse.

  Well … not quite the last, huh?

  To call Dave Burger a big kid is to say the Empire State Building is a tall building. He towers over pretty much everyone, and his upper arms are about as big around as my whole body. He’s a fantastic fighter and my best friend.

  But that doesn’t mean he always agrees with me.

  “You’re an idiot,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Why aren’t you coming with us?”

  Redhead was waking up and Blond had stopped puking, at least for now. Julie tended to them both, all the while looking at Dave and me as if we were Superman and Batman having a tiff.

  And the police sirens were louder now. Closer.

  “Go,” I told him. “There’s something I need to do.”

  “Not happening, dude.”

  “We need to get these girls out of here!” I snapped. “Look at them! You really think they can handle another Corpse encounter?”

  “Is that what you call them?” Julie asked. “Corpses?”

  It was the Burgermeister who answered. “That’s what we call ‘em. You’re Helene’s kid sister?”

  Julie nodded.

  “Then maybe you can talk some sense into my idiot roommate. Tell him he’s coming with us if I gotta pick him up and carry him.”

  Julie looked from him to me, and back again.

  “He’s staying,” she said.

  Dave was stunned.

  “And so am I,” she said.

  Now we were both stunned.

  “No way!” I snapped.

  “You want to talk to the principal again,” she said. “The Corpse who was … nice. Don’t you?”

  I looked at her. “Yeah.”

  “A nice Corpse?” the Burgermeister asked, staring at us as if we were both nuts. “Are you both nuts?” Called it.