The week between Christmas and New Year’s was surprisingly quiet. Once I got the pictures of Elias Blackwell at St. Patrick’s, there wasn’t really anything else for us to do Baker’s Dozen–wise. And as for Blue Moon and New Year’s Eve, we were still waiting for instructions to come from the Prime-O.
Christmas Day started in Queens with Beth and Dad; moved on to Brooklyn, where Grandma and Grandpa Collins called me Little Molly Bear about a thousand times; and ended in northern New Jersey, where we had dinner and opened presents with Grandma and Grandpa Bigelow and slept in the same house where my dad grew up. That night, it snowed, and we spent the next morning sledding down a hill on cookie sheets. It was a total blast.
A couple days later, I was finally able to meet up with Natalie and talk about my mom. Her parents were having some sort of ritzy dinner party so she snuck out and met me at a pizza place close to her house.
“I’m guessing your big secret is that your mother is undead,” she said.
I nodded, unsure what her mood was like, but I was relieved when she smiled.
“That certainly explains a lot. When did you find out?”
“On the bridge with Marek,” I said. “She saved my life.”
“Wow,” Natalie said, taking it all in. “Just wow.”
I could tell she was running through the time line of events in her head. “Was she the one who picked us for Baker’s Dozen?”
“Yep.”
“I can understand why you didn’t tell us.”
I was ready for there to be a “but,” some kind of angry admonition, but there wasn’t. She just said, “Well, you don’t have to worry about me telling anyone. Your secret’s certainly safe with me.”
Then the most unexpected thing happened. Natalie started to cry. She really didn’t want to, but the more she tried to stop it, the worse it got.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
At first she said it was nothing. But I pushed and after she thought about it for a long while she said, “I’m going to tell you a story that I’ve never told anyone.”
“I think we’re beyond the point of keeping secrets from each other.”
She smiled and nodded her agreement as she still tried to keep her emotions under control.
“A few years ago, we were at the country club, and I was horseback riding while my parents played golf. It’s something we’d done a million times. Just a normal Saturday. Except this time, I got thrown from my horse and was knocked unconscious.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“It was terrifying. Everything turned out okay, but for about an hour it was bad. I’ve never been so scared in my life. And the thing that helped me through it, the thing that gave me strength, was the look of concern on my father’s face as he checked to make sure I wasn’t having any side effects from the concussion. I’ll never forget that look. I remember thinking it must be the same look he gives his patients before he operates. It just made me feel safe and cared for.”
“That’s . . . really nice,” I said.
“I’m not finished,” she said, trying to keep from crying more. “Later, as we rode back into the city, I found the scorecard from their game . . . and when I looked at it . . . I realized that they finished playing their round before they came to check on me.”
I couldn’t believe this was possibly true. I stared in stunned amazement for a moment. “You don’t know that,” I said, hoping I was right. “They might have already been done by the time they found out you’d gotten hurt.”
“No,” she said, the tears falling again. “I asked them, and they admitted it. They weren’t even embarrassed by it. They said that they knew I was in good hands and explained that Dad was having one of the best rounds of his life. So they played the last two holes, and then they came to check on me.”
She looked right into my eyes, and her expression broke my heart. I didn’t know what to say.
“Your mother literally came back from the dead to help you, and my parents couldn’t even be bothered to interrupt a golf game.”
We sat quietly for a while until the server brought our pizza. We hung out for a few hours, and by the time I left her, she was actually laughing and having a good time. But it still broke my heart, and I would never have guessed that the girl with the luxury life on Central Park West would envy anything about my cramped Queens existence?
Our New Year’s Eve assignment came on December 30. We were told that there was an all-Omega alert due to a credible threat from the undead against the living.
Even though we knew it was coming, there was something about reading it that took my breath away. There was no telling how big this could get. Our team was assigned to the Rockefeller Center subway station and told to separate and follow any Level 2s heading for Times Square.
That’s how I wound up tailing the hipster couple I told you about at the beginning of the story. Now it’s about an hour and a half before midnight, and I’m still barricaded in right behind them. I’ve thought back through everything that’s happened since Halloween, but it still seems like there’s a missing piece that I’m just not seeing.
I’m not exactly sure where the other members of my team are, but we have been texting back and forth, trying to lighten the mood with some humor.
According to Liberty, Marek’s Verify won’t officially begin until the stroke of midnight. Once he doesn’t show, however, there’s no telling what will happen. The real fear is that when everyone starts counting down the final sixty seconds of the year and the crystal ball goes down the flagpole, it might also be signaling the beginning of an all-out war with the undead. At that point, one of the other Unlucky 13—my money’s still on Ulysses—could step forward and claim control of Dead City. Then, in his first act as mayor, he could order Operation Blue Moon into full effect.
My phone buzzes, and I check to see which teammate is sending me a text. I laugh out loud when I read that it’s not from any of them. Believe it or not, it’s from Zeus. Grayson had instructed his computer to alert me when it finished its search of the CIA database, and it’s doing just that.
“Hi, Molly. Here is the report. Zeus.”
Okay, there aren’t any abbreviations or emoticons, so it doesn’t feel like an text from an actual person, but it’s still pretty impressive. The band that’s currently onstage isn’t particularly good, so I decide to go ahead and read the file.
According to the CIA, the mission’s original plan was to see how many New Yorkers would have to be converted to communism in order to change public opinion of the Soviet Union. Our worry is that the undead are using the same strategy, except rather than converting people to communism, they’re planning on changing them into zombies. Now Zeus has sent me the CIA’s conclusions, which had been ripped out of the file.
I start to read them, and they aren’t at all what I expected. Apparently, the experts concluded that it would be completely impractical to convert so many people to anything. This makes me smile. Hopefully, the undead reached the same conclusion, and we’re all just out here with nothing to worry about.
But as I continue to read, I come across a passage that’s alarming. The experts also concluded that it would be much easier to reach the same goal by simply converting a few powerful people who could help shape public opinion.
If the Unlucky 13 wanted to do something like that, they would have to infect community leaders and turn them into zombies. I mull this over for a while. I think back to the first Verify, when we saw Ulysses Blackwell riding in the Thanksgiving Day parade. He spent hours standing next to the chief of police. Then I consider the most recent Verify at St. Patrick’s. Elias Blackwell spent the entire mass sitting with the archbishop. Suddenly, it starts to make sense.
I pull a folded sheet of paper out of my pocket and look at the schedule of events for the night. At midnight, the ball is going to drop when the mayor of New York pushes a plunger on the stage.
I finally see the puzzle pieces that I’ve been missing.
The chief of police. The archbishop. The mayor.
The undead aren’t infecting a million New Yorkers; they’re getting revenge against the three wise men. The actual men are different, but their positions are still just as powerful today as they were in 1896. If those three men become undead, the Unlucky 13 will be able to start building the power it has always craved. I start to hyperventilate.
At midnight, one of the Unlucky 13 will appear on the stage with the mayor of New York. When he’s there, he’ll become the new leader of Dead City and will infect one of the most powerful people in the country.
Unless I can stop him first.