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

dull with exhaustion and fear. Most of them barely registered us as we stepped in among them.
    “Who are they all?” I asked.
    “Refugees,” Emily replied. “People we’ve rescued from around the city. There aren’t many survivors in Philly. But those we find we bring back here, give them food and a safe place to sleep. It’s all we can really do at this point.”
    “This place,” I said, looking back at the elevator. “It’s … familiar.” Then it dawned on me. “This is the Tower Museum!”
    She nodded.
    “I’m going up to the lab,” Steve said. “I want to initiate Maankh production.”
    Amy added, “And I want to check on my patients in the Infirmary. I’m worried we might have another round of typhoid to deal with.”
    “Okay,” Emily said. “We’ll ride with you. I’m supposed to take Will straight up the chief.”
    I’d ridden the tower elevator before, both as a kid and as an Undertaker. I’d always found the ride slow but interesting, as the old elevator clattered its way up through the empty interior of the huge, cast-iron pinnacle of the tower, past the backside of the four antique clocks that faced each compass point, counting off the minutes and tolling the hour. I wondered vaguely if they still did that.
    Probably not.
    To my surprise, the interior wasn’t empty anymore. Where once the tiny elevator had been an express from the ninth floor museum to the Observation Deck at the top, this one now made several stops along the way.
    “The tower has thirteen floors,” Emily explained as the old elevator car clattered upward. “Back when we were kids, these floors were all empty. Some were even open to the elements. Now, we’ve sealed everything up, partly for warmth and partly for security.”
    “Where are you getting the power?” I asked. “I mean, the whole city’s dark. So where’s the electricity for the lights, and for running this elevator, come from?”
    It was Steve who answered. “Gas-powered generators. We have ten of them set up, and we’ve scavenged enough gasoline to keep them running, non-stop, for up to two weeks, if necessary. They’re all on the eighteenth floor.”
    Emily added, “Each floor in Haven is dedicated to a specific purpose. The lowest floors, the ninth and tenth, are for the caring of refugees.
    “And the eleventh,” Amy added, “is the Infirmary. My stop.”
    “See you later,” I told her as the elevator clunked to a halt and Amy slid its latticed iron doors aside.
    She looked back at me, blond and pretty as always. I expected her to give me that “angelic” smile of hers, the one she’d offered up so many times before when I’d been injured or desperate. But she didn’t. She simply nodded, stepped off the elevator, and disappeared from view.
    “My lab’s on the thirteenth floor,” Professor Moscova said. “So I’m next.” Then he turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder. The gesture was very grown-up. I wasn’t sure I liked it. “I know none of this is what you expected, Will. But, for whatever it’s worth, there is a plan.”
    “What plan?” I asked Emily, once Steve exited the elevator and it was just the two of us, brother and sister, heading up to meet the new chief. “What plan could possibly fix this ?” After all, the world lay in ruins, Corpses stalked the streets, and mankind had become an endangered species.
    She replied after a pause, “The chief will explain.”
    We passed eight more floors, each one—as Emily had said—serving a different role: kitchen, armory, sleeping dormitories, storage rooms, mechanics, and so on.
    The whole arrangement was very Haven.
    We stopped at the second to last floor, number twenty-one, just below the tower’s Observation Deck. Being so close to the top, it was the smallest space yet, just a tapering octagonal area with workstations and computers set up around the central elevator. A number of grown-ups occupied them, manning what looked like old ham radios.
    “We call this