The Second War
We found Amy.
Steve, Emily and I had been making our way along 34th Street, moving from shadow to shadow, trying to reach the edge of the river. That, Emily explained, was the pre-arranged rendezvous point, if things at CHOP ever went south and their team got separated.
Well, tonight, things had gone very south.
And the dead were everywhere.
Dozens of them prowled the streets, moving in and out amidst the ruins of University City, searching every alley and abandoned building. Emily and Steve, I noted to my great relief, proved better at evading them than fighting them. They both knew when to move and when not to move, when to melt into the current well of shadows and when to advance to the next.
They didn’t say anything and I didn’t ask any questions, but simply followed along, ready to shout an alarm if we were spotted.
We weren’t.
At least not until Steve noticed Amy. The blond woman was gesturing cautiously to us from the top of a deserted on-ramp to the Schuylkill Expressway, which ran alongside the river. She’d picked her moment perfectly, waiting until any nearby Corpses had moved off.
As the three of us hurried over, Emily gave the other woman a hasty hug. “We thought maybe we’d lost you!”
“You almost did,” Amy replied. She looked frightened, but she was grinning. “But here I am, and I’ve got the boat ready.”
“Good,” Steve said. “Let’s go.”
The boat turned out to be an old fiberglass canoe, about twelve feet long and with bench seats for six. As we pushed off from the riverbank, Amy paddled at the front while Emily took the rear. Steve and I sat in the middle. Above us, Corpse flashlights cut the night all along the broken South Street Bridge and surrounding neighborhood.
It may seem strange to imagine legions of the dead conducting a careful, deliberate search using flashlights. But it’s important to understand that these weren’t “zombies,” the slow, stupid creations of George Romero fame. These were Corpses, alien invaders occupying stolen cadavers. And they were fast, smart, and organized.
We stayed quiet as the women paddled, taking us upstream. Fortunately the canoe had been painted black and, with the moon having disappeared behind a thick bank of clouds, we were all but invisible in this strange and lightless city.
As we made our way north along the Schuylkill River, my mind reeled.
A few hours ago—thirty years ago—my best friend had ended the deader invasion. He’d pulled the plug on one of the only two Malum Anchor Shards on our planet. This one had been used by Lilith Cavanaugh, the Queen of the Dead, to bring her people across the Void between the Malum homeworld and Earth. When Dave “the Burgermeister” Burger had yanked the alien crystal from the car batteries powering it, he’d closed the Rift and caused the death of every single Corpse on the planet, including Cavanaugh.
And, in the process, he’d sacrificed his life.
Except now it turned out that all he’d really done was buy us—what?
Twenty-eight years?
I desperately wanted to say something, to protest, to scream against the injustice of it. But any screaming would have to wait until I, and my new/old friends, were someplace safe.
Or, at least safer.
When we reached 30th and Market, Amy and Emily immediately guided our canoe off the river proper and into a man-made tunnel of some kind. As they did, Steve produced a small, battery-powered lantern and switched it on. It didn’t give off much illumination—just enough to let Amy and Emily navigate the narrow, flooded passage before turning us into a much wider one. All around, dark water lapped at the sides of the canoe.
“What is this?” I asked in a whisper, mindful of the way my voice echoed off the high ceiling.
Steve replied, “It was part of a failed defensive initiative. Early in the second war, a number of cities, Philly among them, partially flooded key subway lines with saltwater in the hopes of slowing the invasion. People would then be able to evacuate to train platforms during an attack.”
“But the river’s fresh water, isn’t it?” I asked.
He nodded. “The water was artificially salinated at the tunnel entrance we just passed through. The system worked for a time, but then the Corpses managed to destroy the machines that put the salt in the water and, by then, there were no resources to repair them. Now we use the flooded tunnels to move about the city unseen. I don’t think the Corpses even remember the waterways are down here anymore.”
I took all this in, then asked, “When exactly did the invasion happen?”
“Halloween,” he replied. “Two years ago. Took us completely by surprise.”
“It hasn’t been at all like the first time,” Amy said as she paddled, her movements steady and rhythmic from long practice. “They haven’t tried to ‘infiltrate’ or ‘destroy from within.’ This invasion isn’t about making that world-ending ‘art’ of theirs.”
“Then what is it about?” I asked.
“Revenge,” Steve replied.
From behind me, my sister added, “They’re pissed. Humanity beat them and no race had ever done that before. We even killed their sovereign. They no longer care about subtlety or patience. They just want to wipe us out.”
“And they’ve all but managed it,” Steve said. “We never really stood a chance. On the ‘Last Halloween,’ as it’s called, the dead rose. All of them. Everywhere. Bodies fairly exploded out of their graves, out of morgue drawers, funeral parlors … millions of them.”
“Maybe billions,” corrected Amy.
Steve continued, “They attacked everyone and anyone, killing them and then leaving their bodies to be suddenly possessed by more Malum. Rifts started opening all over the planet. The whole thing spread like wildfire. This time, no one had any illusions about what was happening. There were no Masks. No fake names. These were simply the dead, coming to life and attacking the living.”
Emily remarked dryly, “A genuine zombie apocalypse.”
Steve nodded. “Except, of course, these creatures were intelligent and had a plan. It was a brutally simple plan, but there’s no denying that they executed it well. Innocent men, women, and children died by the millions. Inside of three months, the U.S. government fell. By the six-month mark, there were only pockets of resistance, scattered and uncoordinated. And before the next October 31st rolled around, the deaders had completely conquered the Earth. Then they set about the process of hunting down and wiping out the few remaining survivors.”
I’d listened to this with mounting horror, struggling to wrap my head around it. I asked, “How many people are left?”
Once again, the three of them shared an uncertain look. “Better let the chief explain that,” my sister suggested.
Maybe it was my state of mind—which we should probably label as “half-nuts”—but my eyes lit up at the mention of the Chief of the Undertakers.
“Tom!” I exclaimed. “Yeah, take me to Tom!”
The three of them swapped looks. “We could,” Steve said.
Amy asked, “What about the Corpses?”
My sister answered, “They’re still looking for us on the other side of the river. It should be safe enough, safer than usual, in fact. Besides, he’s got a right to know. It might make things easier … later.”
“Know what?” I asked. “What’re you guys talking about?”
But no one replied.
The women kept paddling, taking us further along this subterranean river. In the surrounding darkness, barely illuminated by Steve’s lantern, I recognized the walls of what, in my day, had been the Market-Frankfort subway line. In the “tomorrow” world, it was an underground channel of filthy black water, with rusted iron walkways bolted into the walls, just high enough to stay dry. These had probably been installed to allow access for refugees, back when all of this had been meant to do somebody some good.
The only ones strolling along those catwalks now were rats. Big rats.
Finally, we reached 15th Street. The old subway platform was still there, though the entrances and exits had gotten bricked up long ago. From the look of things, the Undertakers had converted it into a kind of dock. By the light of additional hanging lanterns, I saw a half-dozen canoes like this one, all tethered to cleats mounted along the platform’s edge.
Amy and Emily bumped us up against an open spot and tied us off before climbing out of the canoe. Steve and I followed, the narrow, round-bottom boat wobbling below us. How terrible would it be if I fell in? Was the water cold? Given all this ruin and destruction, was it even water anymore, strictly speaking?
It smelled like death.
Emily took one of the lanterns from the post and led us along the platform to a maintenance door. Through the door was a narrow concrete hallway, dark and old. “Stay close,” my sister said. “The floor’s uneven in spots.”
So I stayed close while, all around us, rats squealed and scurried away from the light.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Then I heard a bizarre howl, utterly alien. The others took it in stride. And so did I, but only because I recognized it.
A cat.
“City Hall,” I said, answering my own question.
Emily nodded grimly, her face pale in the lantern light. “Yeah, they’re still here.”
I shrugged. “At least some things haven’t changed.”
Philly’s City Hall had been infested with feral cats for more than a century—closer to a century and a half now, I supposed. During the Corpse’s final attack on Haven, Tom had even made weapons of the little monsters, capturing dozens and then dumping them all on top of invading deaders. The cats were scavengers, and they loved dead flesh.
From the piping and smell, I guessed all this had to be part of the city’s old sewer system. And, when we stopped, I realized that I’d guessed right; Emily shone her lamplight on an ancient iron ladder leading up to what looked like a good old fashioned man-hole cover.
“I’ll go first,” she announced. “Once I’m sure it’s clear, I’ll signal for the rest of you to follow.”
“Sounds good,” Steve said.
“Watch yourself,” Amy said.
“What’s up there?” I asked, but no one replied.
Giving Amy her lantern, Emily climbed the ladder. The rungs creaked, but held.
At the top, she hunkered down and, for a second, I thought she meant to try to shoulder off the manhole cover with brute strength. But that was crazy! I knew from personal experience how heavy those things were.
Instead, she pulled two little gadgets off of her belt, palm-sized black boxes with no markings on them.
Holding one in each hand, my sister placed them against the underside of the cover and, pressing a button on each, lifted the circle of heavy iron as if it weighed next to nothing.
“Whoa,” I muttered.
“Magnetism,” Future Steve explained. “The devices, when used together, create a repulsive magnetic field that can lift any iron-based object up to five hundred pounds.”
“Nice,” I said. “You’re still a pretty amazing inventor, Mr. Moscova.”
“It’s Professor Moscova these days,” he replied. “And those particular devices aren’t mine. They’re Emily’s.”
I gaped at him and then up the ladder at my big little sister, who had moved the manhole cover aside and was peering out at the nighttime city beyond it. Then, ducking her head back in, she announced in a whisper, “It’s clear.”
Amy gave a nod to Steve. “You,” she said. “Then Will. Then me.”
“Okay,” the professor replied.
It took me a few seconds to figure out where I was when I finally emerged into open air. That might sound weird, since I’d been in this very spot about a hundred times. But the years had changed it—a lot.
The four of us stood in City Hall’s courtyard. The space was a hundred or so feet wide, with entrances at every compass point. Except now those entrances were all sealed, bricked up so tight that I couldn’t even glimpse the streets beyond them.
And, occupying the exact center of the courtyard, was a statue.
I stared at it, uncomprehending. Then I looked to Emily for help, but she only turned away, tears in her eyes.
I stepped closer and peered up into the face of the person whose bronze image stood atop a marble pillar. The statue was life-size, more than six feet tall. It portrayed a broad-shouldered man in a suit and tie. His eyes gazed eastward, a heartbreakingly familiar look of calm determination on his face.
Mounted into the stone pillar was a plaque. It read:
THOMAS JEFFERSON
U.S. SENATOR AND STATESMAN
Oh my God, I thought.
No.