The Undertakers (13 page)

The Pocketknife

Here he comes,” Tom said.

I opened my eyes. I was lying on my cot in the First Stop boys' dorm. Dave stood close by, wringing his big hands. Helene and Sharyn were over by the door, apparently arguing about something. Tom sat in a chair beside the cot. His shirt was back on. There was no sign of either Kyle or Ethan.

I tried to turn my head. It throbbed something awful. I moaned.

“Sorry about the headache,” Tom said, smiling with relief.

I closed my eyes against the pain. “What did you do to me?”

“Gave you a chin tap. Your head snapped back hard enough to knock you cold.”

“A chin tap,” I echoed. “Did you mean to do that?”

Tom shrugged. “You made it plain that you wouldn't let up, so I figured I'd better keep things from getting out of hand. If done right, a chin tap clicks off consciousness like a switch.”

“Is that a street karate move?”

He nodded.

“Where'd you guys learn to fight like that?” I asked.

Tom thought for a moment. “That's a long story for another day.”

“Okay,” I said. “Guess this means you won, huh?”

“Depends. You still blame me for everything that's gone down?”

I frowned, searching my feelings. “I guess not.”

“Then yeah, I won.”

“It's funny,” I said, opening my eyes again, more carefully this time. “I remember being really pissed. But now it's—I dunno.” I looked at him. “You said something to me right before I went out, didn't you?”

“Wasn't sure you'd remember that,” Tom replied a little sheepishly. “That was…selfish. I shouldn't have said it. Sorry.”

I gave him a thin smile. “Maybe you were pissed too.”

“Maybe.”

Seeing I was awake, the rest of them closed around me. Helene's eyes were red as if she'd been crying. Sharyn, of course, was grinning. And Dave was making a sour face, like he was looking at something really gross.

“What are you staring at?” I demanded.

“You got a black eye—and this bruise on your chin that looks like a cantaloupe.”

I gingerly explored my jaw, which earned me a fresh wave of pain. I winced.

Tom said gently, “Just let it be. You'll be cool in a day or so.” He turned to his sister. “That fresh ice?”

“Yeah,” Sharyn replied, handing a couple of small ice packs to her brother. “Helene thinks he might need a doctor. I say, she's nuts.”

“No, she's ain't nuts,” Tom replied. “But she ain't right either. Will's going to be fine. Trust me on this, Helene. I know how hard I hit him.”

“What about his eye?” she asked. This was, of course, the injury
she'd
given me.

“What about it?”

“Looks swollen.”

Sharyn grinned. “I like it. Gives him character.”

Tom said, “That ain't bad either, Helene. No facial bones broken. It may not be pretty, but it won't do him no harm. I promise.”

Helene nodded, but she didn't look pleased about it.

Tom positioned one of the ice packs over the lower half of my face and the other carefully over my left eye. It felt funny. I reached up to adjust it. “Uh-uh,” Tom told me. “The swelling'll go down quicker if you let it alone.”

“Okay.”

He smiled. Then he turned to the others. “Could y'all give us this room?”

Helene looked about to protest. But then Sharyn wrapped an arm around the smaller girl's shoulders and led her out. The Burgermeister gave me one more unhappy scowl before following after them, shutting the door as he went.

Tom said, “There's loyalty in that dude. Turns out that while we were in the kitchen before the match, he snuck by us and got into the training room. Very sneaky. But the minute he thought you were really hurt, he came charging out of the shadows. He looked more pissed than you and me put together. For a minute there, I was afraid I'd have to tap
him
too.”

“Where's Ethan?” I asked.

“Ethan? In the kitchen. Sharyn chased him out when I carried you in here.” Wearing an odd smile, he asked, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why ask about Ethan?”

I shrugged. It hurt. “This is the boys' dorm. If he's not here, I just wanted to know where he was.”

“Is that right?”

I looked at him. “What's the smile for?”

“Forget it,” Tom said. “Listen up. What I want to say—”

I cut him off again. “Why Helene?”

“What?”

“Why, of all people—did you have to pick Helene to fight me? She's the closest thing I've got to a friend around here.”

He frowned. “
I'm
your friend, Will. So's my sister.”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“Yeah. I know.” Tom sighed. “Fact is, we picked Helene tonight because you two
are
friends. We knew you'd be nervous and figured a familiar face might make things easier. Sharyn and me didn't know there was so much trouble between you two. Helene clued us in on that later, after I'd…” His voice trailed off for second. “Anyhow, that ain't the reason I wanted to be alone with you.”

I managed another weak smile. “You planning on beating me up some more?”

But the Chief apparently wasn't in any mood for jokes. “I owe you another apology.”

“For what? Knocking me out?”

Tom shook his head. “Nope. Ain't even a little sorry I did that. No, this one's because when you first hit our crib last week, I shoved some stuff at you that you weren't ready for.”

“I don't get it.”

“In more than two years, Will, nobody's ever come to the Undertakers the way you did. Nobody's ever skipped First Stop and rolled straight into Haven. And nobody's ever been shown the shrine on their first day. Know why you were?”

“Because of my dad?”

“Right. And that wasn't fair to you.”

I considered this. “I still don't get it. Why wasn't it fair?”

“You'd just had one nasty shock—worse than pretty much every other Undertaker. On top of the usual—getting yanked out of your home, your school, and your life without no warning and dumped into this new hard reality—you also wised up to the fact that your old man had this whole other…well, family. And that he had to keep us secret from you, your mom, and your sister.”

I swallowed. A half-dozen emotions spun through my head.

“Yeah,” I whispered.

“Well, all that was my fault,” Tom continued. “It was me who told Helene to bring you straight in. It was me who tipped you off to Karl's gig with the Undertakers. And it was me who showed you the shrine up front instead of waiting until you were better prepped. All of it my fault.” His dark eyes lowered. “I did it because—well, I've been expecting you, bro. Karl's only son. I always figured you'd get the Sight, join up with us, and someday become a great Undertaker. I see now how unfair that was. You were dead right in wanting to kick the crap out of me tonight. I had it coming. And I'm sorry.”

He met my eyes again, and it was clear that he meant what he'd said. “It's okay,” I told him and was a little surprised to find that I meant it too.

“Yeah?”

I nodded. This time it didn't hurt so much; most of my face had gone numb from the ice packs.

Tom blew out a sigh. “Thanks. In that case, I got a present for you.” He pulled something out of his back pocket and held it out to me. After a moment I took it.

It was a pocketknife.

Except that, close up, it didn't resemble any pocketknife that I'd ever seen. About six inches long, it was made of silvery steel polished to an almost mirror shine. There weren't any markings on it—neither from the Boy Scouts nor the Swiss Army. Instead there was a series of six small buttons set along its length, each one labeled with a number.

“Wow,” I muttered.

Tom said gravely, “Your dad made it two years back, about a month before he died. For my birthday. Sharyn got her
wakizashi
sword that day.”

“My dad made this?”

He nodded. “And it ain't left my body since…until now.”

“It's big,” I marveled. “How many blades does it have?”

The older boy shook his head. “This ain't no normal pocketknife. See these buttons?”

“Yeah?”

“Watch.” Tom reached for the closed knife, his thumb tapping the button marked
1
.

What popped out the end of the tool looked less like a blade than it did a thin, twin-pronged tuning fork.

“What is it?” I asked, frowning.

“A lock pick. It'll pick most any lock in under thirty seconds. Takes some practice though. I'll make sure you get time to work with it over the next week.”

“Wow,” I said again.

Another press of the
1
button and the lock pick withdrew. Tom's thumb tapped button number
2
. Two more prongs, much larger than the first, emerged from the knife's other end.

“Another lock pick?” I asked.

“Nope. Watch.” Tom held the button down. An arc of blue electricity sprang to life between the tips of the two prongs. I gasped in surprise.

“It's a Taser,” Tom explained. “One hundred and fifty thousand volts—enough to drop a grown man—or a Corpse—and keep them down for a while. But handle with care. Don't mess with it until you learn how.”

“Jeez!”

Tom released the
2
button, and the Taser retracted with a
snap
. His thumb pressed number
3
. This time a genuine blade emerged. “Five and a half inches of high-carbon steel,” he told me. “Ain't much it won't cut. It's also balanced.”

“Balanced?”

Tom spun around and whipped his arm out. The knife flew across the room, whirling end over end until it hit the opposite wall and stuck there.

I felt my eyes widen. “Whoa!”

Grinning, Tom retrieved the knife.

Buttons
4
and
5
released power screwdrivers—one bladed and the other Phillips-style. Number
6
activated a flashlight, small but very bright. “The battery's rechargeable,” Tom explained, handing the knife back to me. “It lasts about a week. I'll give you the charger too.”

“My dad made this?” I asked again.

“Sure did.”

“And Sharyn's sword? Did he make
that
too?”

He nodded.

I frowned and said, “I don't think so.”

“What?”

“Tom, I loved my dad—but he couldn't change a light switch without shocking himself. I mean, one day when the bread got stuck in the toaster, he tried to pry it out with a butter knife and got half-electrocuted. Mom almost called an ambulance.”

He looked confused. “Straight up?”

“Straight up.”

“Well, that makes no sense. Your father told me he made them—the pocketknife and the wakizashi both. He even made a joke about it.
Dream children
, he called them.”

“Maybe he had them
made
someplace,” I suggested.

Tom considered this. “The sword maybe. But the knife? Uh-uh. Sharyn and me know this city, and I'm telling you there ain't no such shop in Philly. Sure, there's a couple of custom knife makers, but there's nobody who could put a thing like this together. I always figured your old man had some kind of workshop at his house, maybe in the basement, with some high-tech tools. I swear I half-expected you to already have something like this.”

I shook my head. “No way.”

Tom laughed a little nervously. “Well, guess we just have to just chalk it up to one of life's little mysteries.”

“I guess,” I replied, although I wasn't happy about it. My dad making Japanese swords and super pocketknives? Not likely!

I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I can't accept this.”

“Yeah, you can.”

“But my dad gave it to you for your birthday!”

“That makes it mine to give to his son,” Tom replied matter-of-factly.

“But why?”

The Chief leaned close. “Partly because I
am
sorry for all the stuff I dumped on you when you first blew in—and partly because I
do
expect major things from you, Will. You got guts. More than I seen in any recruit in a long time—if ever.”

“Guts? Yeah, right, Tom. I'm scared to death!”

“We're all scared to death,” the older boy said with a shrug.

“So far the only brave thing I've done was challenge you to a fight.”

“And how many first-week Undertakers do you figure do that?”

“Dave challenged Sharyn on his second day!” I replied.

Tom chuckled. “That was more stupid than brave. Besides, all Dave did was act tough and try to scare a girl. Well, he wised up quick to how far that crap flies with my sister.”

“She's a good fighter,” I said. Then correcting myself, I added, “A good soldier.”

“You got no idea.”

“You're a good soldier too,” I added.

“Thanks, bro.”

“You might even be better than she is.”

Tom laughed again. “Just do me a favor and don't tell Sharyn you think that. I don't need the bruises.”

I smiled. “Okay.” Then I hefted the knife again. “Are you sure about this, Tom?”

“Way sure.”

“If you ever want it back—”

“I won't. But thanks for the offer.”

“Thanks for the gift.”

“So…we're cool?”

“We're cool,” I said.

“Good.” Tom stood. “Rest up. You got the morning off, but after lunch, it's back to business. You've still got six nights on that cot before you and the rest of the recruits grad to Haven. And Will?”

“Yeah?”