Death 07 - For the Love of Death (13 page)

Pax

I tear through the front door, whipping my head first left then right.

The bot receptionist is back. It takes one look at me holding Gram and opens its mouth for a psycho banshee wail.

I scramble, picking up a model of the human body used as cool décor for the med clinic.

I fling it at the bot’s head, and the top of its skull shears off. It hangs like a scalping by one of Dad’s Skopamish.

The screaming begins.

Damn, should have gone for the mouth.

I sprint past, the piercing artificial shriek all I can hear.

Gram moves in my arms, and I feel her death in my mind. My energy seeks hers, reaching for her life.

It's what my power does.

I reel it in as I blast through the hall.

Please, Jezebel, be working.

I see her name on the door before I hit it open,
Organic, Level 5, Trident, Jezebel.

It swings closed and Jezebel looks up, startled eyes pegging my face.

“What?” She flicks her gaze to Gram, and her mouth goes slack. “Oh no, what is this?”

Her energy meets mine.

“Save her,” I say.

I pivot, gently placing Gram on the table, and her eyes roll toward me, dry in their sockets but vibrantly blue.

“Gram,” I say softly, and she shakes her head.

“
Don't make me one...” Her words are so low I hardly catch them.

But I do.

I swallow hard. “No.”

“
Paxton, step aside.”

I do. Jezebel goes to Gram, palms flat on her torso. “She's advanced.”

She does a scan.

Before my eyes Gram's skin lightens from gray to a listless white.

It blooms with color, her eyes getting brighter.

Her breath hitches.

“I don't know... I am stabilizing.”

Jezebel holds her lip between her teeth, her face tight with anxiety.

Something beeps behind her.

Without turning, Jezebel instructs, “Get rid of that, Paxton.”

I turn and look at her pulse-screen. It floats, disembodied and old-fashioned. I can’t find the thing that turns off the noise.

I bash it into the wall instead.

Jezebel scowls, never taking her eyes from Gram. “That is not what I meant.”

“Right, but I couldn’t figure it out.”

“Why did you wait so long? Her organs are failing.”

I lean forward. “Still?”

“No. I have her stabilized, but she’s not out of the woods.”

I turn the phrase over in my mind.
She's still in danger.

“
What do ya need?”

“
Another level five.”

Five-point,
I instantly translate.

“
I'm a three.” I don't say anything about level. I'm not going to make the distinction right now. Gram is struggling. She still might not live.

She sighs, her hands rest on Gram like permanent markers. “’Kay, get your butt over here.”

I move closer, and Gram’s eyes follow me. “What’s happening, Pax?”

I take Gram’s hand and instantly taste Jezebel’s healing energy. I find Jezebel’s gaze. Deep brown regards me from a darker face. “Boy, give me what ya got.”

I do, training my energy through Gram right to her.

Her eyes widen, then she flashes brilliant white teeth at me. “You’re no level three.”

As long as Gram lives, I can be a level twenty and I wouldn’t give a shit.

I think
, live.

Her body is a catacomb of disease. I picture it in my mind, running through the trails of cells that have turned her body against itself.

I don't have the map. Sweat beads on my upper lip. “I don't know how to repair this.”

Jezebel breathes evenly. “I do. Follow my lead. We’ve been treating metastasized cancer
for a decade.”

I can’t think about how significant that is right now.

Jezebel pops into my mind. It’s not the older woman with a short cap of dark, fuzzy hair graying at the temples. It’s a young Jezebel with a saucy lift to her full lips and hair so big it touches the outside of her shoulders.

She motions for me to follow her inside my mind.

She has a mop and bucket.

A second appears. “Take these, sugar.”

I startle as a mop’s wooden handle moves into my head.

She looks at the vault of Ali Hart’s insides and says, “Clean.”

I look around and see the mess as her palm sweeps it.
Oh… shit, that’s what that looks like.

Sludge, somewhere between black and green, moves like brackish water through healthy blue blood.

“It’s not invisible anymore. Once an Organic found the map.”

It flickers.

“Concentrate,” she says. Her young Jezebel face frowns.

“
Yes, ma’am,” I answer.

“Don’t get smart.” She dips her mop in the bucket and swipes a path of whatever’s in the bucket against the slow-moving cancer.

It shimmers over the top, a
pop-crackle
sounds off, and the blackish-green wasteland of soup rises, disappearing inside the body.

She reveals blue waters. Not like the sky but like the deepest hour of midnight kissed by the ocean. It moves, sparkling like an unveiled river.

I lift my face to hers, my mop dripping and a grin I can’t keep off my face.

“Dunk that each time, Pax.”

She smiles back. “Feels good, don’t it?”

I can only nod.

Gram might make it. And for once, I feel so much more than I usually do. Raising the dead is nothing compared to healing the living.

*

Jezebel put her hands on her hips. “There's no need to lie about your skills, Paxton Hart.”

I look at Gram, her face turned, sleeping peacefully. All the color is back. She looks like my Gram.

I swipe my hand against my eyes.

“I didn't lie. I didn't know. I'm a standard three in my world.”

She harrumphs at me and I face her, cocking my head to the side.

“Really,” I say.

“Well, you’re more than that. One, you’re alive. Two, you bring a second-degree relation who has classic breast cancer—the easiest to fix—so late we almost can’t. Then you tell that ugly fib about being a three…”

“I am. I don’t know why my talents are all messed up here.”

“Talents?”

“Yeah, my paranormal mojo.”

Jezebel’s confusion mars her brow. “Only Organics are allowed here. There are no other talents.”

I stand there with a supreme case of the dumbs. “What?”

Jezebel shakes her head, shrugging. “My world—and I haven't even asked you how you manage to be a Dimensional—eradicated all paranormals other than Organics.”

I whistle. “You got lucky, then.” My mind touches on how disturbing that is. “You mean”—I look at her—“how do they make sure there are only Organics.”

“Oh, Paxton.” She pats my hand. “They’re killed at birth.”

I back away. Noise from the front of the building crowding the silence of our space. “Are you shitting me?”

Her eyebrows really corkscrew.

Not kidding.

They kill babies on this earth. It’s like that weird shit a hundred years ago, when China killed all the female babies. Fucked shit up big time. Natural order and all that.

Morons.

“No... what is it—what is it like where you live?”

I shake my head.

The wall vibrates as something crashes into it. I’ve completely forgotten about the rest of the group.

“Not like this. God—the bots, the weird ass murdering everyone. No. Bad place. I mean”—I meet her eyes—“that’s cool that you’ve got the cure for cancer, but damn.” I shiver. “Anyone who’s paranormal gets the ax”—I swipe my finger across my throat—“but they’ll save someone who’s got cancer. Yeah, makes perfect sense.”

“Not to me, either. But you have to remember, this is how it’s been for many years. And you coming from a better Earth doesn’t give you the right to judge mine.”

Weird.

“Thank you for helping my grandma,” I say.

She pulls her irritation under control, and our hands reach out for each other’s as the door bangs open.

It doesn’t just hit the wall; the doorknob impales itself and pins the door against it.

Mitch looks at me. “Where is Deegan?”

He doesn’t give two shits and an eff about Gram. Or anyone.

It’s the typical, single-minded focus of the dead.

I shrug. “I don’t have the Dee watch, corpse-boy. She’ll turn up. There’s, like, a posse of defenders. Chill.”

Mitch is depressingly serious.

He's at my throat in one second, lifting me up by my shirt.

Jezebel screams as the rest of the troupe barrels through the door, crowding inside.

“She is”—he shakes me and I feel my teeth rattle—“missing, you selfish jerk.”

He shakes me again and drops me on my ass. My teeth slam together, and I bite my tongue.

Prick.

I jump up, socking him in the jaw as I do. Skin comes off against my knuckles.

His eyes meet mine.

I do the math, and he watches me as I do.

For him to degrade, Dee’s been MIA for an hour.

I drop my hands.

“Do you see?” he seethes.

I nod.
I fucking do see.
I search for my dad.

“Do you feel your sister, Pax?”

I cast my mind’s reel out for Dee. It comes back blank.

My stomach seizes, fear running over my flesh in a wave of pebbles.

Mitch grips my shoulders. “Where is she?”

I say the dreaded words.

“I don't know.”

Deegan

My scalp is on fire as Brad drags me out of the water, shaking me by my hair.

I don't cry out. Maybe he'll figure I'm too out of it.

No luck.

He plunges me back in and I suck breath before I break the surface.

I know it's a torture technique. Waterboarding.

“Tell me where you’re from!” he shouts as if I’m deaf.

He jerks me out of the water, my wrists zip tied again. I keep the panic at bay through sheer willpower.

Paxton!
my mind wails.

Plunge.

I try to hold my breath. In the end, I can’t and water rushes in where air should be.

That's right
, I think with the last of my consciousness,
he's a Null.

Pax can't get me. No one can.

I sink.

Drowning.

*

Pax

“Gramps!” I shout.

He straightens. I use Jezebel's phrasing. “Gram's out of the woods, and we got another problem.”

I know he receives the good news about his daughter’s life only by his eyes softening. “Yup.”

The zombies crowd against his back. Dad is standing with Mom beside him.

“I got something from Dee, but it’s weak.”

“Me too,” Mitch says. “But it’s like an echo.”

Dad puts his head in his hands.

“We’ve got a pile of those cyborg assholes up our butts,” Tiff says, and John grins.

“Where?” I ask.

Sophie says, “I didn’t wear the right shoes for this shebang.”

We look at her feet. Animal print flats.

“Those are hot, but maybe not that practical, baby girl,” Jonesy says.

“You never were great with wardrobe choices,” Tiff comments.

“Okay!” I put up my palms. “Let's get out of here.”

“I can't leave Ali here,” Grandpa Kyle says in a flat voice.

“Wouldn't expect anything different from ya,” Gramps says. “We'll swing back and pick you two up after the ground search for Deedie.”

Grandpa Kyle bows his head, crying where he stands. Witnessing his sadness makes it harder to breathe with the threat of my own tears.

Jezebel approaches. “You the husband?”

He nods, and she grasps his hand. “It’s okay, sir—it’s not every day you get your wife back.”

He brushes the wetness off his cheeks. “No,” he says simply.

“Buck up, Kyle. We got our Ali.” Gramps claps Grandpa on the back.

“Yes.”

“We have garnered the wrong kind of attention here,” Clyde says.

We can hear the bots coming down the hall like a swarm of artificial locusts.

I look at Jezebel, a standing question in my eyes.

When you’ve been close with someone, it doesn’t take much to communicate your thoughts. Together, we brought Gram back from the brink of death. It does something to a relationship.

“Yes, I’ll be okay—and so will they. Go!” she says in a hushed shout.

We do.

The bots are waiting.

Mitch and I look at each other. We both understand we need to divert and escape.

And rescue.

We start plowing through the ALB like two tornadoes on the Midwestern plains.

*

Caleb

I don’t normally have trouble admitting I can’t do something.

But I'm not accustomed to the handicap of not having my AFTD in this weird world.

I haven’t said anything to Pax.

The instant he throws me the death energy pass, I’ll fumble it. It’s like being numb. Blind.

Deaf and dumb.

I have only the skills any other mundane would have.

I thought it’d be a relief. But with Deegan out there somewhere unprotected, I’d kill to have an army of the dead with me.

Hell, there’s always plenty of dead. I can’t imagine any parallel Earth where there wouldn’t be any.

Jade touches me, her eyes wide as we make our way out of the horrible clinic, where I have to leave the parents behind with only an Organic’s word that they’ll be okay.

As I am now, they have nothing. It’s rotten to be a mundane.

“Hey, Hart—wake up, bud.”

It's Jonesy, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Having some trouble with the old juice.”

My eyebrows pop, but before I have time to admit my own mundane transformation, the zombies are getting overwhelmed by the ABTs.

Dammit.

I put Jade behind me.

Pax and Deegan's undead said these cyborg things have near-zombie strength.

And they're mowing through our front line.

“Stay behind me, Jade.”

Her hands are on me. “You think we're in trouble.”

I glance behind me. Our eyes meet. “How do you know?”

“I know everything here.”

Oh, shit.

I’m Mr. Undead dipshit, and my wife is Empath Central.

Nice.
G
ripping her narrow shoulders, I kiss her forehead. Instead of asking time-suck questions, I yell over the din of the mechanical crunch coming toward us, “Find Deegan!”

Jade races outside, moving to the greenbelt’s temporary safety.

There's something great about having been a paranormal as long as I have. I just know how to find it within me.

I guess I'm not as much of a fool as I thought. I picture a deck of cards in my mind.

I ignore the smell of alien flesh and violence.

I sift through each unique one, chucking the AFTD card into the “
can’t use
” pile.

I keep rifling through others.

One shines out from the pack, and I pluck it from the “deck.”

Pyrokinetic.

The irony of that ability doesn't escape me. Carson Hamilton is probably spinning in his grave.

Hopefully.

The thought makes me grin.

I throw a fireball at the nearest bot and miss.

Mitch turns to me, hissing.

I just set his feet on fire.

I guess I don't have very good skills.

“What the fuck is going on!” Jonesy screams.

Mitch's feet aren’t all that I just torched.

I set the building on fire.

With my parents inside of it.

“Caleb!” Jade screams from the greenbelt. “I've found her!”

The bots turn to her. Their mouths open as one.

I slap my hands over my ears when the sound begins. They drop a moment later when I hear the word
exterminate.

I know that one.

*

Mac

Though I never thought I'd be around this long, I do enjoy the fray.

Until my grandson starts setting everything on fire.

Just as I get a head of steam on this pack of robots, the kid has to come in and screw it six ways to Sunday. He had that trouble with the injuns too.

Kids.

“Jones!” I holler.

His dark face springs up in the center of the commotion, of course.

“Give these robots some circuit screwing, champ!”

“
Can't, Mac—I don't have that here.”

Swell.

One bot moves to me and I assess its eyeballs looks almost like a human set. I grunt, taking a deep inhale from the cig, and peg the thing right in the eye with the burning ember.

It staggers around, arms out in front of it like a zombie-bot. Its eye goop singes, making the three meter radius reek.

Frying like an egg. Perfect.

Two of its buddies troupe over.

“Bring it, bot-nuts!” I scream as I pick up a piece of rebar hanging around from a hundred years ago.

Handy piece of steel.

I meet Clyde’s gaze, and he winks. We sure see things eye-to-eye. I chuckle at my inside joke, cranking the thin, twisted steel over my head as if I just scored a hole-in-one. I strike the first bozo in the neck.

It torques the whole head to the left, one eyeball popping like a boil.

“Four!” I shout with a grunt.

“Come on, bottie-boys, bring it!”

“Mac!” a female voice screams, “Look out.”

I was a Marine back in the day. When a man went hard, it was balls to the wall. None of this sissy bullshit where you don’t
feel
it and get a pussy punch card. Now it’s hand-to-bionic. Pound for pound, my strength is five times that of a human male.

Thank you very much, tech freaks. This clown is playing in the circus.

I ram the rebar behind me in a strike, as they taught us for ground warfare.

With bayonets.

I turn with the strike, twisting as I do and punching the one-meter rod deeper.

I chortle as I skewer the thing in its mechanical guts, breaking into a little hum.

“Robot-kabob!” I shout.

This age regeneration is choice.

I lift the rebar, robot and all, and toss it into a pile where the other five I gutted lay in a twisting, chirping, discombobulated mess.

I have a moment of basic pride.

Like I do when I clean out the garage. Feels good.

Then Jade shrieks, and Caleb sets everything on fire.

Kids.