Talking to Myself
Forget the “Holy Crap Factor.”
What hit me now knocked “holy crap” right out of my vocabulary.
Seriously, I’ll never mention it again.
For a second, I thought I might faint. Yeah, I know that sounds lame. I mean, you guys know me. I don’t faint. I’ve seen some stuff that would stop most dudes’ hearts cold, and I’ve always stayed on my feet.
But … this!
The world seemed to tilt sharply as my knees buckled. Emily immediately stepped up to steady me. I felt her touch, but didn’t register it. My eyes, my attention, the whole of my being, was focused on the man standing six feet away from me, wearing jeans and an old black T-shirt, his hands clasped behind his back.
“I’m okay,” I muttered.
“You might want to sit down,” she said.
“I’m okay,” I insisted, taking a deep breath.
“It’s fine, Em,” the man said in a firm but gentle voice. Very commanding, I thought. And why not? After all, he’s the Chief of the Undertakers. “Let him be.”
But Emily stayed beside me anyhow, one hand on my elbow and one on my upper back, as if that would stop me from hitting the floor if all my circuits misfired. “You should have let me warn him,” she said to—I had no idea what to call him!—the chief.
“What could you have possibly said?” he asked patiently. “Whatever you told him would have had this effect, and then he’d only have had to suffer through the same thing again now, face to face. Best to wait and get past it all in one go.”
Emily looked unconvinced, though I kind of saw his point. I’ve always found dread to be worse than shock. And if she, or Amy, or Steve had told me in advance that I was about to meet myself as a forty-something adult, I think my brain would have obsessed about it until it shut down like an overworked engine.
This guy was dead right about my reaction.
Well, of course he is.
He’s … me.
“I’m okay,” I told my sister and was a little surprised to find that this third time I meant it. Taking another slow, deliberate breath, I straightened up, stepped away from her, and looked unflinchingly at the man with the red beard.
For several long seconds, no one said a word.
Finally, the chief smiled and asked, “Em, would you give us a little privacy?”
“Do you really think I should?” she replied. “I mean—”
“I’m okay,” I said for like the fourth time, giving her as confident and reassuring a grin as I could manage.
She looked at our matching smiles and nodded unhappily. “Two of a kind,” I heard her mutter.
Then she stepped back into the elevator and pressed a button. With a loud clatter, the ancient machine carried her down and out of sight.
Around us, I noticed that the men and women manning the computers were all staring. None of them spoke, but they were obviously fascinated.
Must be quite a spectacle.
Like a twisted take on a Disney movie.
Mustering what few brain cells were still firing, I faced Chief William Karl Ritter. But, before I could even begin to find my tongue, he abruptly turned and walked off, heading around the elevator shaft and away from the workstations and their witnesses. For a long moment, I stood rooted where I was, unable to move, barely able to think.
Does he expect me to follow him?
Well, he did mention something about privacy, didn’t he?
So, with some effort, I got my legs working again and I set off after him.
After me.
About halfway around, he stopped beside a long table, on which a map of the world had been laid out. Colored pushpins had been stuck into it at various locations. I counted nine of them. One, I noticed, was jabbed into Philadelphia.
Finally, the bearded man faced me.
And waited.
Long seconds passed.
I tried desperately, even frantically, to think of what to say.
Finally, I pointed to the top of my head and asked, “When?”
“In my thirties,” he replied with a laugh, rubbing his bald scalp. “Helene made me shave it. Said I was starting to look like Larry from The Three Stooges.”
“Sounds like something she’d say,” I remarked. Then the implications hit me and I asked, “Helene and you …” I lost my voice, swallowed, and found it again. “Helene and me … are still together in our forties?”
He held up his left hand. There was a thin gold band around the third finger. “She never left my side. Not through high school. Not through college. Never.”
His use of the past tense shook me to my core. I stared at the ring and then up at man who wore it. “What … happened … to her?”
“We’ll get to that” he replied after a long, unhappy pause. “For now, you just need to accept that she’s gone. Like our mother and Hugo. Like Dave. Like Tom. Like Chuck and Ian and Tara.”
I asked, “So you … replaced Tom as chief after he died?”
He shook his head. “All I did was come after him. No one could replace him.”
I kind of liked that.
Then he went on. “Of course, for almost thirty years, there was no chief. The Undertakers’ job had ended. For a while, there was a lot of media attention, once the truth about the Corpses finally got out. After all, it was a pretty sweet story: a bunch of kids single-handedly saving the world from an invasion that only they knew was happening. Children make the best heroes; everybody thought so.
“But, eventually things quieted down. The Undertakers disbanded and everyone went their separate ways. Oh, some of us stayed in touch. Helene and I saw Tom and Jillian quite a bit. Sharyn less often. The rest … well, we pretty much lost track of them all. I never did find out what happened to Nick or Katie, for example.”
He shook his head, as though trying to clear it. “It’s so strange. I’ve been anticipating this moment … meeting you … for more than a year. But, now that it’s happening, I have no real idea where to start. There’s so much I have to tell you.”
“Did you have any kids?” I asked.
“What?”
“Helene and you,” I said carefully. “Helene and me. Any kids?”
He smiled behind his red beard, a sad smile. “Two boys. Karl and Dave.”
I liked that, too. But then I found myself wondering where they were and suddenly I didn’t like it. “They’re … dead?”
He nodded.
“I hate this place,” I said.
He nodded again.
“The future sucks,” I said.
He nodded a third time. Then he pointed to the map. “See these pins?”
“Yeah.”
“Each one represents a pocket of humanity. The Corpses have hunted mankind to the brink of extinction. Those few who are left have holed up in places like this one, fortresses to stave off the living dead, who are forever attacking. Los Angeles. Dallas. Paris. Munich. Athens. Beijing. Capetown. Sydney. That’s what the people working up here in Control do all day, communicate with the other groups.”
“Are they Undertakers?” I asked. “The folks here and … everywhere?” I motioned to the board.
“Not really. The term ‘Undertaker’ is usually reserved for those of us who fought in the first war. The rest are just … people. And people are rare enough not to need labels. It’s been six months since we made a connection with any new groups. It seems pretty clear at this point that these eight places … plus Philly … are all that’s left of our kind.”
I stared dismally at the map. “How many … humans … are there?”
“All together?” he asked.
“Yeah. All together.”
“Roughly a thousand.”
“Jeez …” I muttered.
“Jeez, indeed.”
“Do the Corpses know you’re here? In City Hall Tower?”
“Yes,” he replied grimly. “But this building isn’t like the more modern skyscrapers, the ones that fell in the first weeks after the war started. Those were glass and steel, too easily invaded by determined deaders. As you’ve probably seen, most of the city burned. There isn’t much left except ruins now. But you’re standing in the largest masonry structure in the world. This place is flameproof, solid, and defensible … especially since we bricked off all entrances into the Tower. Now, the only way in is through the river system far below us and, as near as we can tell, the Corpses don’t know it’s there.”
“So they don’t attack?” I asked.
“They attack all the time, climbing the walls like ants, pouring over the low roofs and into the central courtyard to reach us. But we’ve put certain defenses into place. Each time they’ve tried, we’ve pushed them back … so far.”
“What about the other survivors around the world?” I asked. “Are they also holed up in ‘impregnable’ places?”
“They must be,” he said. “Or they wouldn’t still be alive.” Then he turned his attention once again to the map, a thoughtful, resigned expression on his face.
Me, I thought.
Me as a grown-up.
I had to keep reminding myself of that fact. Here was a man who remembered what I remembered, plus thirty years of living on top of that. How strange it was to look at him. And how strange it must be for him to look at me!
“Do you remember this?” I asked suddenly.
He looked up. “Remember what?”
“This conversation. Do you remember being me and having this conversation with you?”
“I never had this conversation,” he replied. “Not as you, I mean.”
I blinked. “What? But I thought—”
“Will,” he said. “There’s a lot you need to know. You’re not here on a whim. It’s all part of a very carefully conceived plan. I absolutely intend to explain everything to you. But, I know you haven’t slept, not since before you met the Zombie Prince. So I want you to get some rest.”
“I’ll rest later,” I told him angrily. “I want some answers now.”
“No,” he replied. “Though I knew you’d say that. Sleep now. Answers later. I promise you, you’ll be glad for the break.”
Then he took a radio from his belt and spoke into it. “Send somebody up to collect Will and get him settled.”
Someone replied—Emily maybe, or Amy—her voice a harsh crackle. “Coming, Chief.”
I considered arguing some more, but he was right. I’d been up for almost a full day now, and it had been a crazy, insane day. I was exhausted. In fact, I’d reached that hazy place that comes after exhausted. And now that I considered the possibility of sleep, I found myself craving it.
Behind me, the elevator clanked to life again. My escort was coming.
“One more question,” I said. “Just one … for now.”
He looked almost as weary as I felt. But he nodded.
“What should I call you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Most people call me ‘Chief’ or ‘Will.’”
“I don’t think I can call you ‘Will’,” I said. “And, no offense, but to me, ‘Chief’ will always mean Tom.”
A final smile. “I get that. How about ‘William’ then?”
I considered it. It was the name Future Amy had always called me, back when I’d still thought she was some sort of magical being. In fact, though she’d never said, I’d come to believe it was a private little joke on her part. Her younger self, the sweet quiet girl she’d once been, had taken to calling me William, after “William the Conqueror.”
“Okay,” I said. Then, carefully, “William?”
“Yes, Will?”
“We’re going to lose this second war, aren’t we?”
He met my eyes, his gaze—my gaze—like stone. “Going to? Will, we’ve lost it already. I’d have thought that much was obvious.”