“I would,” said Grayson. “But his body was discovered in Brooklyn. He’s dead dead.”
That’s the part that didn’t make any sense to me. There’s no way the undead can survive off Manhattan and away from the Manhattan schist, so why was he in Brooklyn? That’s when it hit me. “Maybe that’s what killed him.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, putting it together with me. “Maybe he was on the subway and couldn’t get off before it left Manhattan.”
Alex, Grayson, and I all said it at the same time: “Because somebody handcuffed him to his seat.”
After a few weeks on the sidelines, we’d possibly made a major Dead City discovery. Needless to say, we were a little excited. There may have been high fives and fist bumps.
“That’s really something,” Alex said as he opened another piece of candy and popped it in his mouth.
Grayson nodded and asked, “But why would someone steal his arm?”
“Stop it,” Natalie said, interrupting. “I’ve seen you guys like this. You’ve got undead on the brain and you want to figure out what really happened.”
“Of course we do,” Grayson said.
“When you think about it,” added Alex, “it’s the perfect way to kill a zombie.”
“No, when you think about it, it’s the perfect way to ruin our review hearing,” she countered. “We have been told to avoid any and all Omega activity, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“What about Molly? She killed Marek Blackwell on the bridge. And she killed his brother Cornelius in the locker room after her fencing tournament,” protested Alex. “That’s all Omega activity.”
“No,” Natalie corrected. “She defended herself and saved her life. It was an extraordinary circumstance.”
“Don’t you think this is one too?” Grayson asked. “One of the original zombies getting murdered on a subway train sounds pretty extraordinary.”
Natalie was having trouble controlling her frustration, so I came to her rescue. “She’s right,” I said, interrupting. “I’m just as curious as you guys, but we can’t jeopardize our hearing.”
“But . . . ,” Alex said, starting to argue. Both he and Grayson wanted to disagree with us, but in their hearts they knew we were right.
“What about next week?” Grayson asked. “After the review hearing?”
Natalie smiled. “If we get reinstated, we’re all over it. But until then, we’ve got to act like we’ve never even heard the word ‘undead.’ We have to prove that we can follow orders.”
We slumped back into our seats and tried to get our minds off the situation. We flipped channels for a while and even went back to watching the zombie marathon. But after a glimpse of an actual undead story, a phony one only seemed that much less realistic. This time it didn’t even make me flinch. Finally, Natalie had a suggestion.
“Why don’t we go watch the Procession of the Ghouls?”
“Really?” Grayson said, a trace of excitement in his voice. “I thought you had to stay here to give out candy.”
“We haven’t had any trick-or-treaters for a while, so I think we’re done for the night,” answered Natalie.
“The Procession of the Ghouls would be fun,” Alex said in his best Dracula voice. “But all the costumes might scare Molly.” He added a silly vampire laugh.
“I think I can handle it,” I assured them. “Let’s go.”
The Procession of the Ghouls is an annual tradition on the Upper West Side, not far from Natalie’s apartment building. It features some of the most elaborate costumes you’ve ever seen and takes place in the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, where the huge pipe organ plays scary music.
As we walked down Amsterdam Avenue toward the cathedral, I couldn’t help but think that on Halloween, at least, New York looked like an aboveground version of Dead City. There were scary-looking characters everywhere. Add to this the light mist in the air and the occasional howl of the wind rushing between the buildings, and it began to feel a little eerie. Still, after the flinching incident, there was no way I was going to let on that any of this spooked me.
Luckily, Grayson and Alex got too distracted to pay much attention to me. They were in the middle of a debate about a science-fiction costume that Grayson said was inaccurate.
“The vest is from the original movie,” he pointed out. “But the helmet is from the sequel. Wearing them both at the same time doesn’t make any sense. It’s like a caveman wearing a business suit.”
“Now, that would be funny,” Natalie said, egging them on.
“What movie the vest is from isn’t important; it’s obviously still the same character,” Alex said. “Why do you have to be such a snob?”
“I’m not a snob,” Grayson responded. “I’m just a costume . . . connoisseur.”
“Okay.” Alex laughed. “The fact that you call yourself a ‘costume connoisseur’ proves that you’re a snob.”
As they continued to bicker back and forth, they missed the moment when I really did flinch. Unlike during the movie, which was just a shocked reaction, this one took my breath away. I kept noticing someone in the corner of my eye and began to worry that we were being followed. Then I saw her reflection in a store window and realized that, mixed in with all of the ghosts and goblins, there was an actual zombie about thirty feet behind us.
It was my mother.
The Big Bang
My name is Milton Blackwell, and I am 137 years old.
During the Civil War, my father fought in the Battle of Gettysburg, and when I was a young boy, I attended the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. I have witnessed New York City’s rise from cobblestone streets to concrete canyons. I was here the day that Wall Street crashed in 1929 and the day Times Square flooded with people celebrating the end of World War II. I’ve seen parades honoring Charles Lindbergh when he flew across the Atlantic and the Apollo astronauts after they returned from the moon. I’ve been an observer to so much living history, yet always that—an observer. That’s because I’m not truly alive.
I’m undead. And I’m not alone.
I’m making this video so a record exists that explains how it came to be that Manhattan has both a living and an undead population. But, before I do that, let me state without hesitation that I alone am to blame for everything that went wrong.
Like the universe, it all began with a big bang. On this date, October 31, 1896, I was one of thirteen members of a crew trying to dig New York’s first subway tunnel. The crew was composed entirely of my brothers and cousins. We all worked for Blackwell & Sons, a construction company owned by our grandfather. Our foreman was my eldest brother Marek.
If it is possible to both idolize and be terrified of the same person, then that is how I felt about Marek. He was brilliant and brave but also capable of sudden violence and rage.
I learned this when I was nine years old.
At the time, New York was still a city of dirt roads and horse-drawn carriages. One day, a neighborhood boy playing a prank accidentally spooked a horse, causing it to run wild. I had just started crossing the street and could not get out of its way. I was trampled by the horse and dragged by the overturned carriage.
I was unconscious and barely breathing, my bent limbs lying in every direction in the muddy street. Anyone should have assumed that I had no chance to survive. But Marek was not just anyone. And, luckily, he was the first to reach me.
He scooped up my broken body into his arms and ran for over a mile until we reached a house that also served as a small hospital. He chose it not because of its location—others were closer—but because of its history. The infirmary, as it was known, specialized in caring for women and children. More important, it had been founded by the first female doctor in American history.
Her name was Elizabeth Blackwell.
She ran the infirmary with her sister Emily, and, while our relation to them was distant at best, Marek trusted that, unlike other doctors who might see mine as a hopeless cause, family bo
nds, no matter how slight, would compel them to fight for my survival. To Marek, nothing was stronger than family, and he counted on them feeling the same way.
“He’s a Blackwell,” I heard him say as I drifted in and out of consciousness. “And he needs you.”
Due to my head injuries and the side effects of nineteenth-century medication, I only have a few brief memories from the two and a half months I spent at the infirmary. I can remember waking up on several occasions with Marek at my bedside, squeezing my hand and repeating the mantra, “Blackwells are strong. Blackwells survive.” I also remember overhearing one of the doctors tell my parents that Marek’s actions had saved my life. But my most vivid memory from the hospital is of the apology I received from the boy who had accidentally riled the horse.
Like me, he had come to the infirmary as a patient. His arm and leg were badly broken, and his left eye was swollen shut. He limped into my room using a small wooden crutch and took a seat next to my bed.
“I am so sorry, Milton,” he said earnestly. “I want to make sure you know that it was an accident.”
“Of course it was,” I answered. “I don’t blame you at all.”
“Really?” he said as he let out a sigh of relief. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m doing better,” I replied. “How about you?”
“I’m also doing better.”
We sat there for a moment, and all the while, a question nagged at me. Something just didn’t make sense. Finally, I asked him, “How did you get hurt?”
“The same way you did,” he replied with a weak smile. “I was trampled by the horse.”
Even though my mind was in a fog, this didn’t seem possible. My memory of everything up until the moment of the accident was clear, and I was certain that the horse had run away from him and toward me. I tried to figure out how the horse might have doubled back after I was unconscious, but then I realized what had actually happened.
“Marek?” I whispered, sad that I would even think such a thing about my own brother. “Marek did this to you, didn’t he?”
The boy’s one good eye opened wide with fear, and I knew that I was right. My brother had appointed himself judge and jury and punished him for what happened to me.
“No,” he said with a shaky voice that only convinced me that much more that I was right. “It was the horse.” Rather than continue our conversation, he scrambled back onto his crutch and hobbled out the door as he said, “I’ll let you rest for now and come back some other time.”
He never came back, and I rarely saw him around the neighborhood afterward. He faded from memory until years later when we were trying to dig that first subway tunnel. That’s when I saw the same fear in the eyes of my brothers and cousins on the crew. All of them were afraid of being the one who might upset or disappoint Marek.
And all of them were counting on me to make sure that didn’t happen.
I wasn’t supposed to be part of the crew. Many of the injuries I received in the accident were permanent, and I simply wasn’t strong enough for such backbreaking work. Rather than muscle, my value to the family business was to be brainpower. In 1896, when the others started working on the tunnel, I began my third year as a chemistry student at Columbia University.
I wasn’t brought on to the project until late September, when the digging had come to a standstill. They had reached an incredibly dense rock formation that geologists called Manhattan schist. To the crew, however, the dark bedrock was better known as black devil.
After failing to break through it with traditional tools and equipment, Marek approached me with an idea. He knew that I’d studied the chemistry of explosives and wondered if I could make one strong enough to “bring the devil to his knees.”
It was my proudest moment.
I was the baby of the family, always the youngest and the weakest. And now, in their greatest moment of need, my brothers and cousins had turned to me. This filled me with confidence like I had never known. Confidence that blinded me to some dangers.
I’ll never forget my sense of triumph as I walked into the tunnel for the first time. There was little trace of the limp that had dogged me since my accident. I kept the serious face of a scholar as I inspected the rock formation and made detailed notes and schematics. I was determined to be impressive.
“Can you do it?” asked Marek as I reviewed my notes.
“I think so,” I told him.
He stared deep into my eyes. “Think is not enough, brother. Can you do it?”
For the first time in my life, I did not back down from him. “I’m certain of it.”
It was a turning point in our relationship. Although Marek was still the foreman, in many ways I took charge of the project. I was testing different combinations of black powders and South American nitrates, and he simply could not tell me how to do something he knew nothing about.
At first, I was very cautious. I experimented with small controlled blasts and then slowly added to their strength. I was happy with the results, but I was not moving fast enough for Marek. He was under great pressure from our grandfather. If our tunnel did not reach a certain length by the end of November, our contract would be given to a different company.
I told Marek that he needed to trust me. “We’re close to breaking through,” I assured him.
Over the course of a few weeks, however, the looks of pride I got from the rest of the crew started to disappear. So too did their confidence.
On the morning of October 31, 1896, Marek told me I was through. “It’s time for you to go back to school, where you belong,” he said with no emotion. “Your books and equations have no use to us out here in the real world.”
I was devastated.
I couldn’t bear the thought of his rejection. I couldn’t face the image of walking out of that tunnel, past my family members, as a failure.
“Give me one more chance,” I pleaded. “These tests have all been leading to one grand explosion. One breakthrough.”
“And are we at that point?” he asked.
“We are very close.”
He studied my face before saying, “You have until the end of this shift to get us there.”
I was telling the truth when I said the tests had been leading to a single grand explosion, but I thought we needed at least another week to get the mixture right. His declaration meant I had ten hours to complete a week’s worth of work.
At my direction, everybody started to drill small holes into the face of the rock in a specific pattern I had designed. I carefully filled the holes with all the explosive powder I had. I worked as fast as I possibly could, knowing Marek would not give me any extra time.
With fifteen minutes to go, the fuse was ready.
“Just one more set of calculations,” I said as I reviewed my notes and checked them against the arrangement of explosives. We had hurried so much in those last hours, and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything.
“No more calculations,” he said. “Is it ready or not?”
Marek only believed in definitive answers. I could not think, I had to know.
“Yes. It’s ready.”
We all moved into position, and Marek lit the fuse. It was then, after the fuse had been lit, but before the flame reached the explosives, that I realized my mistake. I was so focused on making the explosion strong enough to break through the rock that I hadn’t fully considered that the force of a blast that big would need a place to go. Undoubtedly, it would follow the path of the tunnel right back to us.
“Oh no!” I gasped. “What have I done?”
Marek heard me, and our eyes locked. He knew what was coming, and in his face I saw anger and fury like I had never seen.
He went to say something but never got the chance.
The explosion ripped right through the bedrock and shattered it into countless tiny pieces. I had been correct. The mixture was finally strong enough to break through the schist. But the force of that explosion rocketed back towar
d us. It flung our bodies into the air and slammed them against the hard rock walls. Within seconds, the thirteen of us were littered across the tunnel floor, buried under rock and dirt.
I was dead.
My brothers and cousins were dead.
But, as I learned that day, death, especially sudden death, is not always permanent. My body had no feeling, and there was no oxygen in my lungs, but something still fired in the neurons of my brain. A single thought repeated over and over, like an old phonograph when its needle reached the end of a record.
In my mind, I was a boy back in the infirmary. I could hear my brother repeating the same phrase again and again.
“Blackwells are strong. Blackwells survive. Blackwells are strong. Blackwells survive.”
And then the most unexpected thing happened. My fingers began to move.
Strangers on a Train
I scanned the faces in the subway station, looking to see if my mother had followed me underground. I’d spotted her two more times on our way to the Procession of the Ghouls, and even though each was just for a moment, I had the strangest sense that she was letting me see her. It was like she was trying to send me a message that I didn’t understand. Still, I knew she’d be harder to pick out down here, where crowds of people pushed in every direction and the subway lighting played tricks on my eyes.
It also didn’t help that the station was filled with the oddest assortment of people I’d ever seen. Halloween on the subway is already pretty weird, but, when the Procession of the Ghouls ends and all of those ghouls have to catch a train for home, Halloween at the Cathedral Parkway station becomes the Super Bowl of Strange.
As Grayson and I waited for the 1 train to arrive, we stood surrounded by people wearing the most elaborately grotesque costumes imaginable. Each devil or demon was spookier than the last. But none was quite as spooky as the man standing on the platform directly across from me.
At first, I thought he was dressed as an undertaker. But, when I noticed that he was doing some sort of card trick, I realized he was supposed to be a magician. (I’m guessing a good stage name for him would be Creep-O the Amazing.) He looked like he hadn’t showered in months, and the rare patches of skin that weren’t covered in dirt and grime were so pale you could practically see through them.