The Undertakers: End of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

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