The Undertakers: End of the World by Ty Drago Read Free Book Online

Emily nodded and took up the thread. “There was so much death back in those days. It was everywhere, all the time. Anyway, Tom radioed a few of us … the phones were all fried by then … and asked us to meet him at City Hall. But when we arrived, he wasn’t here. Instead, we found a sealed letter from him at the deserted guard’s station on the ninth floor, right at the base of the tower. But, try as we might, he couldn’t find him .
    “Then … about a week later, we did. It turns out he’d died, along with hundreds of others, during a battle that had broken out on Market Street. There were maybe a dozen deaders around him. Tom had a shotgun. It looked like he’d been shooting Corpses in the head … you know, to destroy the brain and trap them in their hosts. But when he was overwhelmed, he … shot himself.”
    It felt like a hand was squeezing my heart.
    Future Steve added dismally, “He didn’t want the Corpses to … use … his body. So he made sure they couldn’t.”
    Practical to the end. That was Tom.
    But I’d just seen him, only a couple of hours ago, in Haven. My Haven.
    Thirty years.
    How had it all come to this ?
    I touched Emily’s shoulder—my sister’s shoulder, though I was only beginning to accept the fact that this woman and the little girl I’d left behind in Haven were one and the same. Steve and Amy were proving a little easier, probably because I hadn’t grown up with them—hadn’t helped change their diapers!
    “Em?” I asked hesitantly.
    “Yes, Will?”
    “What about … Helene?”
    Her heart-shaped face, already rendered pale by the uneven lamplight, turned almost ghostly white. With a long, measured sigh, she said, “The chief’ll want to tell you about that personally.”
    “Is Helene the new chief?” I pressed.
    She didn’t answer.
    “What about Sharyn? At least tell me if she’s still alive.”
    Emily nodded, but there was something behind that nod. Something I didn’t like.
    “And our mom?”
    At that, my sister stopped between steps and took my hand in hers. “Mom and Hugo died together, about a year ago. The Corpses killed them. It was right after we’d all moved into the new Haven. I’m … sorry.”
    So was I, though a part of me weirdly dismissed the idea.
    In fact, I found myself dismissing a lot of what I’d seen and learned since following Amy through the Rift. This future was just too— dark , too utterly different from anything I’d ever imagined. So empty. So bleak. Tom couldn’t be dead. My mother couldn’t be dead. The world couldn’t be dead!
    It couldn’t .
    Finally, we reached a landing at the top of the staircase.
    “That’s a tough climb,” I remarked, breathing hard. The rest of them, I noticed with some annoyance, barely seen winded.
    “We’re used to it,” Amy said.
    Then she went up to a single heavy steel door that looked newer than the surrounding brickwork, and knocked. Instantly, a panel slid aside and a camera lens, like a large dark eye, peered out at her. No one said anything. No passwords were asked for or given. Instead, after a few seconds, the camera lens withdrew and the door clicked.
    Amy pushed it open.
    “Welcome to Haven, Will,” she said without even a trace of joy or pride.
    Beyond the door was a bare room, roughly octagonal and about forty feet wide. The floor looked to be made mostly of concrete and cracked tile—a lot of cracked tile in the future—surrounded by walls of crumbling plaster intermixed with tall, recessed windows, all of which had long ago been bricked up. A narrow elevator shaft occupied the center of the room.
    Bare bulbs that hung on wires from the high ceiling offered the only light.
    By that light, I saw that there were people here. Dozens of them. Men, women and children in rags, all huddled in small circles. Many were sleeping on old cots or thread-worn blankets. Others ate from cold cans of beans or vegetables, some with bent spoons but most with their fingers. Their eyes were