The Undertakers: End of the World by Ty Drago

he abruptly turned and walked off, heading around the elevator shaft and away from the workstations and their witnesses. For a long moment, I stood rooted where I was, unable to move, barely able to think.
    Does he expect me to follow him?
    Well, he did mention something about privacy, didn’t he?
    So, with some effort, I got my legs working again and I set off after him.
    After me .
    About halfway around, he stopped beside a long table, on which a map of the world had been laid out. Colored pushpins had been stuck into it at various locations. I counted nine of them. One, I noticed, was jabbed into Philadelphia.
    Finally, the bearded man faced me.
    And waited.
    Long seconds passed.
    I tried desperately, even frantically, to think of what to say.
    Finally, I pointed to the top of my head and asked, “When?”
    “In my thirties,” he replied with a laugh, rubbing his bald scalp. “Helene made me shave it. Said I was starting to look like Larry from The Three Stooges.”
    “Sounds like something she’d say,” I remarked. Then the implications hit me and I asked, “Helene and you …” I lost my voice, swallowed, and found it again. “Helene and me … are still together in our forties?”
    He held up his left hand. There was a thin gold band around the third finger. “She never left my side. Not through high school. Not through college. Never.”
    His use of the past tense shook me to my core. I stared at the ring and then up at man who wore it. “What … happened … to her?”
    “We’ll get to that” he replied after a long, unhappy pause. “For now, you just need to accept that she’s gone. Like our mother and Hugo. Like Dave. Like Tom. Like Chuck and Ian and Tara.”
    I asked, “So you … replaced Tom as chief after he died?”
    He shook his head. “All I did was come after him. No one could replace him.”
    I kind of liked that.
    Then he went on. “Of course, for almost thirty years, there was no chief. The Undertakers’ job had ended. For a while, there was a lot of media attention, once the truth about the Corpses finally got out. After all, it was a pretty sweet story: a bunch of kids single-handedly saving the world from an invasion that only they knew was happening. Children make the best heroes; everybody thought so.
    “But, eventually things quieted down. The Undertakers disbanded and everyone went their separate ways. Oh, some of us stayed in touch. Helene and I saw Tom and Jillian quite a bit. Sharyn less often. The rest … well, we pretty much lost track of them all. I never did find out what happened to Nick or Katie, for example.”
    He shook his head, as though trying to clear it. “It’s so strange. I’ve been anticipating this moment … meeting you … for more than a year. But, now that it’s happening, I have no real idea where to start. There’s so much I have to tell you.”
    “Did you have any kids?” I asked.
    “What?”
    “Helene and you,” I said carefully. “Helene and me . Any kids?”
    He smiled behind his red beard, a sad smile. “Two boys. Karl and Dave.”
    I liked that, too. But then I found myself wondering where they were and suddenly I didn’t like it. “They’re … dead?”
    He nodded.
    “I hate this place,” I said.
    He nodded again.
    “The future sucks,” I said.
    He nodded a third time. Then he pointed to the map. “See these pins?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Each one represents a pocket of humanity. The Corpses have hunted mankind to the brink of extinction. Those few who are left have holed up in places like this one, fortresses to stave off the living dead, who are forever attacking. Los Angeles. Dallas. Paris. Munich. Athens. Beijing. Capetown. Sydney. That’s what the people working up here in Control do all day, communicate with the other groups.”
    “Are they Undertakers?” I asked. “The folks here and … everywhere?” I motioned to the board.
    “Not really. The term ‘Undertaker’ is usually reserved for those of us who fought in