Dead City

  “What about cleanup?” I asked.

  Grayson shook his head. “We don’t clean up in Dead City. Down here the undead take care of their own.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, moving toward the exit. “Let’s get out of here . . . Zeke.”

  At first I didn’t catch it. Then I realized what he had called me.

  I was no longer a trainee. I was a full-fledged Omega. And just like my mother before me, I had become a “zombie killer.”

  I was a Zeke!

  I Get Called to the Principal’s Office . . . and It’s a Good Thing

  Learning about the Omegas, going through weeks of intensive training, and traveling underground to defeat a Level 3 zombie in hand-to-hand mortal combat was pretty life-changing stuff. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I went back to school the following Monday, everything was totally . . . the same.

  It turns out the one drawback of having a supercool secret identity is that you have to keep it a secret. Becoming a Zeke can’t make you popular if none of your classmates even know what a Zeke is.

  But I didn’t mind the lack of popularity so much. After all these years, I was kind of used to it. Even the fact that nobody knew I’d been to Dead City and fought a zombie didn’t bother me. The thing that was driving me crazy was the fact that I knew I had been to Dead City and fought a zombie and couldn’t seem to get back there again.

  Once the initial shock had worn off, I was ready for more. Except Omegas can’t just go looking for trouble. Until we receive word there’s a problem that needs to be solved, all we can do is wait.

  Every morning before school I met up with Natalie, Alex, and Grayson to find out if we had an assignment. And every morning for the next few days the answer was no.

  It was beyond frustrating.

  Then one day I was in the middle of an English class discussion about The Outsiders (a great book once you get over the characters having names like Pony Boy and Soda Pop) when I got called down to the principal’s office.

  Dr. Gootman’s office is . . . different. It’s a converted cottage on the edge of campus. A hundred years ago, when this was all a hospital, the cottage was where the chief doctor lived. Today it still feels like a home, only now one that belongs to a mad scientist.

  It’s surrounded by gardens where he grows bizarre-looking flowers and vegetables as part of his crossbreeding experiments. Inside, the kitchen has been converted into a chemistry lab, and what once was the living room now holds his desk and a conference table.

  “Ah, the fair Miss Bigelow,” he said with a smile as I came through the door. “Until this morning, I wasn’t aware you were part of this study group.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about until I saw Natalie, Alex, and Grayson seated at the table. Apparently, our Omega Team was calling itself a “study group.”

  “I just joined,” I told him, unsure what, if anything, he might know about what we really were.

  “An excellent choice,” he said to Natalie as he motioned for me to sit with the others. “Natalie tells me that you are working on an experiment as part of a research project,” he continued.

  “That’s right,” said Natalie. “And while we would normally never ask to leave the campus during school hours, it’s very time sensitive. There’s been a change in the weather, and I’m afraid if we wait until later to collect the data, the experiment will be compromised.”

  He mulled this over for a moment. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” he said. “Are you certain it has to be now?”

  Natalie didn’t blink. “Yes, sir.”

  That was all the certainty he needed. “Then I’ll inform the dean and your teachers that you’ll be back by fifth period.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We should be able to do that.”

  “It wasn’t a question,” he corrected.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “We’ll be back by fifth period.”

  He handed Natalie four passes and gave us all a final stern look before heading out the door. “Makeup work will be done immediately.”

  We all agreed.

  He kept up the tough guy act, but when he turned away from us, I could see his reflection in the mirror, and he had a sly smile. He’d said what he needed to say, but he also had our backs.

  The final thing he said as he walked out the door was “Be careful.”

  I waited for the door to close before I turned to Natalie and queried, “Study group?”

  “What was I supposed to call it?” she asked. “Zombie-hunting team?”

  I laughed. “Does he know about the Omegas?”

  “We’ve often wondered,” Natalie said.

  “He’s been principal at MIST for as long as anyone can remember,” Grayson added. “I think he must know something. But he doesn’t ask.”

  “Yeah,” Alex added with a laugh. “He didn’t even make Nat describe her experiment.”

  “What would you have said?” Grayson asked.

  “Something about weather and soil samples,” she said with a flip of her hand.

  Alex shook his head. “That would have been convincing.”

  “So, what’s the real reason?” I asked. “Why are we leaving campus during school hours?”

  All eyes turned to Natalie.

  “It’s our first assignment as a team,” she said.

  The Prime-O—or Prime Omega—is the only person who knows the identities of all active Omega Teams. He’s the one who gives us our assignments.

  “A hunt job?” Alex asked, referring to an assignment in which we’d track a zombie who was causing problems.

  “Nope,” she said. “Strictly research at this point. Three dead bodies were discovered in a park right here on Roosevelt Island.”

  Grayson had a confused look. “Aren’t dead bodies more of a police thing than an us thing?”

  “These bodies aren’t your normal variety,” she said cryptically. “According to the coroner on the scene, they had no blood and appear to have been dead for quite some time . . . like, years.”

  “Okay, that is a little weird,” Alex said. “But it still doesn’t sound like our line of work.”

  “Maybe you should look at the picture the Prime-O sent,” Natalie added as she handed her phone to Alex. “The bodies were arranged in a very particular fashion.”

  Alex was surprised by what he saw. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Grayson looked at the picture and also nodded. “I guess it is an us thing.”

  Finally, the phone got to me. When I saw the picture, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  The three bodies were arranged in the shape of a giant omega.

  How to Set a Trap

  Try to relax,” Alex said as we followed the brick pathway that wraps around Roosevelt Island.

  I was just about to lie and tell him I was relaxed when I realized he wasn’t talking to me. I was so caught up in my excitement, I hadn’t noticed that Natalie’s hands were clenched into nervous fists or that she was taking long, fast strides like an Olympic speed walker.

  “I am relaxed,” she snapped in a voice so tense that Grayson actually laughed.

  That’s when it dawned on me that in addition to this being my first assignment as an Omega, it was also Natalie’s first one as a team leader. Even though Alex is older, both he and Grayson had insisted that she take the position when the team’s previous leader graduated last year.

  “I’m serious,” Alex said as he put a friendly hand on her shoulder. “We picked you for a reason. You’re going to do great, but you need to relax.”

  She started to disagree again but caught herself and took a deep breath instead. She stayed quiet for a moment before she managed to smile and say, “Thanks.”

  I had never seen Natalie flustered before. You could tell her mind was racing in a million different directions.

  “We’re just supposed to do research at the crime scene, right?” Grayson said. “That should be easy enou
gh.”

  “It should be,” she said, thinking something over. “But I’m worried it might be a trap.”

  Both boys stopped for a moment to consider this.

  “What makes you think that?” I asked.

  “Whoever positioned those bodies into a giant Omega knows we have to come check it out,” she explained. “Maybe the whole point is just to get us out there so that they can see who we are and figure out our identities.”

  “So while we think we’re spying on them . . .” Alex started.

  “They’re actually spying on us,” finished Natalie.

  “Hadn’t thought of that,” Grayson said, impressed.

  Alex smiled at her. “See what I mean? That’s why we picked you. You’re brilliant.”

  We stopped talking for a moment as we walked past a couple of old men who were casting their fishing lines into the East River. Then we rounded the corner, and the crime scene came into view.

  We were right on the edge of a park that overlooked the water. On the other side of the park was an old wooden farmhouse that was now some sort of history museum. (I’d walked past it a million times and never paid any attention.) In the grass right in front of the house’s porch, yellow police tape marked the area where the bodies had been found.

  Needless to say, the discovery of three dead bodies in a public park had attracted a crowd. In addition to the police, there was a television news crew and some pockets of people who’d been passing by and stopped to find out what was going on.

  “The crowd’s good,” Natalie said. “It should help us blend in.”

  “But what if it is a trap?” asked Grayson. “What should we do about that?”

  Natalie thought for a moment, and then something caught her attention: the fishermen. She looked at them and nodded.

  “We set a trap of our own right back at them,” she answered, getting some of the swagger back in her voice. “Molly and I will approach the scene and find out as much as we can. Maybe we’ll even get lucky and there will be someone we know from the morgue. If there are any zombies in the crowd, they’ll know we’re there.”

  “Sounds like exactly what they want,” Alex said. “What will Grayson and I be doing?”

  “You’ll be circling the crowd, looking for whoever’s watching Molls and me. They’ll see us, but they won’t see you. You’ll be able to see where they go.”

  I looked over at the fishermen and realized what had inspired her. “So we’re bait?”

  Natalie smiled. “Yeah.”

  “I like it.”

  “Sounds good,” Alex said. “I’ll start left, Grayson, you go right.”

  Alex and Grayson began circling the park and checking out the different groups of people. Natalie and I waited a moment, and then we walked right toward the middle of it all.

  “Trap or not, someone is sending us a message,” she said. “Look for any clues that might tell us what it is.”

  I nodded.

  We eavesdropped on the TV reporter as he broadcast, but didn’t learn anything except how to be overly dramatic. “Action News reporter Brock Hampton reporting from Roosevelt Island, where three men met an unlucky fate . . .” (Personally, I thought “unlucky” was a bit of an understatement.) We also heard two detectives talking about shoe print evidence they had found.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” one of them said. “There were three sets of shoe prints, and each one matches a pair of shoes on one of the dead bodies.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” asked the other.

  “What about the guy who arranged the bodies?” the first one asked. “Where are his shoe prints?”

  Natalie and I shared a look when we heard that. We both shook our heads as we tried to figure it out. He had a point.

  There was no one left from the coroner’s office. Apparently, they had already loaded up the bodies and were taking them back to the freezer at the morgue.

  We were standing off to the side talking when Natalie got a text from Alex. She handed her phone to me so that I could read it too. It said YANKEES CAP. YELLOW JACKET. SOUTHSIDE COFFEE SHOP.

  Our trap had worked. Alex discovered someone watching us.

  “Be cool,” Natalie whispered as we both casually looked toward the south side of the park. There we saw a woman in a baseball cap and yellow jacket standing by a coffee shop. The colors made her look a little like a bumblebee. Like many of the other lookers-on, she was taking a picture with her phone. But unlike the others, she wasn’t taking a picture of the crime scene.

  She was taking a picture of us.

  She noticed us looking right at her and got spooked. She slipped the phone back into her jacket pocket and quickly began to walk away.

  “Do we follow her?” I asked urgently.

  “No,” Natalie said. “That might be part of the trap. She spotted us but not Alex. He’ll tail her and see where she goes.”

  Even though Natalie had predicted it, I was a little spooked by the fact that someone had been watching us. Suddenly, I felt paranoid about all the people gathered around the park and wondered if any others were spying on us. I turned to scan the people’s faces, and that’s when an idea hit me.

  “What if it’s a standpoint?” I asked.

  “What?” answered Natalie.

  “When we want to find a past Omega, we have to find a standpoint and look for an indicator,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said drily. “I’m pretty sure I’m the one who taught you that.”

  “A standpoint is an Omega symbol,” I continued. “Maybe that’s what the bodies were supposed to be. A standpoint we were certain to find.”

  Her eyes opened wide as she considered this. “That’s . . . interesting,” she said, warming to the idea. “The problem is, there’s no way you’re going to be able to actually stand on the point with all those policemen around. See how close you can get and start looking.”

  “Me?”

  “Remember the bakery?” she said with a laugh. “You’re better at it than any of us.”

  I smiled at the compliment.

  Over the next ten minutes, I positioned myself in a couple of spots as close as I could get to where the bodies had been found, and looked for any sort of coded message or indicator.

  “Any luck?” Natalie asked when we regrouped.

  “No,” I answered, discouraged. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was a good idea. It still is. Maybe after all of this clears up, we can come back and look again.”

  Grayson and Alex were headed our way, and we walked over to meet them.

  “Did you follow her?” Natalie asked.

  “Did I follow her?” Alex replied, a little offended. “Of course I did. She was definitely undead. She was also pretty clever . . . and paranoid. I don’t think she knew I was there, but she still used hard-core evasive techniques. She went down into Dead City by way of that old pumping station near the ruins.”

  “Well done,” Natalie said. “We’ll have to go back and check that out.”

  “I wasn’t nearly as successful,” Grayson said, shaking his head. “I didn’t find any undead and I didn’t learn anything when I poked around the Blackwell House.”

  It took a moment for the name to register.

  “What’s the Blackwell House?” I asked.

  He gave me an “are you kidding me?” look.

  “Haven’t you ever noticed the two-story wooden farmhouse before?” he said, pointing at it. “You walk by it every day on the way to school.”

  “I’ve noticed it,” I said. “But I didn’t know what it was called.”

  Of course, Grayson being Grayson, he not only knew what it was called, but also its entire history. “It’s one of the oldest houses in New York. The Blackwells built it right after the Revolutionary War, when this island was their farmland.”

  Natalie and I shared a look. Grayson had no idea that he’d discovered the key bit of evidence.

  “What?” asked Alex.

  “Yeah
,” added Grayson. “Why does the name of the farmhouse matter?”

  We both said it at the same time: “Cornelius Blackwell!”

  “Who’s Cornelius Blackwell?” Grayson asked.

  “A body that’s missing from the Old Marble Cemetery,” I said.

  “And now three bodies turn up at the Blackwell House,” Natalie continued. “That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Technically, it can,” Alex said. “And even if it’s not, how could you ever know for sure that Cornelius Blackwell is one of the bodies?”

  “All we have to do is find out if any of them is missing his left ring finger,” Natalie offered.

  “Cool,” I said, realizing she was right. I even gave her a fist bump. “We can pay a visit to the freezer and count some fingers.”

  “Absolutely,” she answered.

  We were happy, but the guys were completely confused. As we headed back to school, Natalie began to fill them in on what had happened when we went to the Old Marble Cemetery with Dr. Hidalgo. If the finger we’d found at the cemetery was from one of the bodies found here, we’d know for sure.

  But then something caught my eye and stopped me in my tracks.

  I held my hand up for Natalie to stop talking and asked, “How many numbers do they draw for the lottery?”

  “Oh, don’t ever play the lottery,” Grayson said, shaking his head. “The odds of winning are less than the odds of—”

  “I know that,” I said, cutting him off. “I don’t want to play it. I just want to know how many numbers they draw.”

  “Six,” he answered.

  “And how high do they go?”

  “Sixty,” Alex said.

  “That’s what I thought,” I replied.

  “Then what’s the problem?” asked Alex.

  “That.”

  I pointed to the window of the coffee shop. Earlier, when I’d been looking for an indicator, I couldn’t see it because a tree was blocking my view. Now it was clear as day. And it was perfectly in line with where the bodies had been arranged.

  It was a sign with the winning lottery numbers written on it. Only they couldn’t have been the actual numbers because there were only four of them, and two of those were higher than sixty.