Death 07 - For the Love of Death (2 page)

Pax

My Toyota skates along paved roads that haven’t kissed rubber in fifteen years. It’s not exactly a hover car like some of the lame-ass twentieth century science fiction movies portrayed but a strong repellent to a magnetized undercarriage.

Pulse tech again. This time, in the guise of invisible rails that repel what the car can’t land on. It’s pretty cool. It had pissed off the fuel tycoons, though.

I smile at the thought of authority getting the shaft. I’m a major fanboy over whatever works them up.

I
think
music and the car’s Paxton Hart pulsewave syncs with my command, filling the car with oldies.
Real old.

Gramps gave me a bootlegged copy of Loverboy from the twentieth century.
Love those synthesizers.

Volume thirty-five.

Eff me.

I always forget the anti-deafness clause in all volume controls.

I
think
what the highest volume allowed is.

The pulse sensor sets it.

I lean back. Night has fallen, and my second eyelid membrane folds over my eye. A thin, opaque covering absorbs starlight, moonlight, firefly, and light pollution in a fifty-mile radius.

I see like a cat in the dark.

The scientists haven’t been able to explain that one. I was a Random. A should’ve-not-been. Yet here I am, born of a supposed mule with a five-point AFTD marker and a lick of precog. Yep, I’m an unknown.

High school had sucked.

They’d parked a Null on my ass at every class. One guards my house even now. Mandatory for all five-point Randoms under age eighteen.

Hell on a love life.

Paxton Hart is a pariah to girls. Who wants to date a Random with second eyelids, who can raise a cemetery? “Unsexy” doesn’t cover it. There’s no game on for that skill set.

Gramps.

<
Mac O'Brien
>

I close my eyes, and the car sings about being on autopilot, with a bunch of additional garbage about the best route and Gramps’ vitals, age, history.

Blah, blah, blah.

Pax?

My eyes pop open. The black ribbon of road appears gray under my translucent lid. I can see every displaced pebble on its surface.

Another car passes me, going in the opposite direction. Our side mirrors almost touch.

Yeah?

Where are you? I don’t feel you.

Going to Gramps’.

Mom and Dad are freaking out.

Yeah.

They’re not the enemy, ya know.

Girls.

I heard that.

I roll my eyes. I know she can’t hear that. However, she’s a new class of Random: Emotive. They feel in shards of sensation.

Stop rolling your eyes, Pax.

Stop getting up my ass about the parents, Deegan.

Silence.

I shouldn’t say that. Sometimes, all we’ve had is each other.

I mean… God, ya know what I mean.

I know you’re pissed about Gram.

Aren’t you?
I think at her.

Yes. But mainly, I’m so sad I can’t get past that part.

Gramps’ perimeter barricade appears like reverse stakes pointing at the sky.

You there already?

Yeah.

Don't come home late.
Think
something at Mom so she knows you're okay.

A few seconds swell between us.

Yeah, okay.

I love you even though you're cantankerous.

Dee's on a new vocab kick. Just another teen phase to live through. It makes me smile, though.

I love you too, Tinkerbell.

I grin at the nickname. She puts up with it. She has to, it suits her.

There's more space when she leaves my head, and the pulse scan begins. For an old dude, Gramps really gets on board the tech stuff. He has embraced the regeneration experiments for life expectancy.

His reversal worked well.

Too bad that doesn’t work on cancer patients.

I shove my grief aside. The anger is easier to embrace.

The gate slides open, and my bullet-shaped car automatically glides into a backward position between two trees. Gramps has cleverly used what would be a perfect hammock space as a hanger for my wheels. Not that I have those.

I feel the jolt as the magnetized rails align with the receptors.

One heartbeat goes by and the air pressure shifts in the car, popping my ears.

The door opens and swings to the top. When I step out, the solid aluminum chassis bounces. Without my weight, the car lifts a half-meter, suspended by invisible pulleys.

The pulleys aren’t invisible to all.

I see them with my night vision eyelid. It’s creepy. Mainly because I’ve told the scientists who regulate my abilities only what I think is safe for them to know.

They’d shit a Granny Smith if they knew I could see the veil between the worlds.

And how many there are.

*

Gramps stands out on the stoop, a small red ember blazing like a third eye inside his cupped hands.

A puff of smoke drifts into the air, and I grin.

Gramps is not responsible about the environment.

He’s
so
responsible about his family. The important crap.

“
Pax.” Gramps peeks over his bent fingers.

He doesn’t say more but moves into the garage. Like I didn’t just put the telekinetic whammy on the good doctor earlier today. I blink, my night-seeing eyelid retracting.

My vision dims, becoming soft and inefficient like a normal person’s in the dark. Gramps will have the old florescent bulbs juiced up in the garage in no time.

Light swamps the drive pad, and my second eyelid retreats further.

I’m not dumb enough to use it in artificial or natural light.

That went bye-bye along with successful potty training. The night vision lids retreat automatically now.

The Camaro that used to be Dad’s sits up on blocks, the spoiler primered and ready for a junkyard replacement. Kinda unlikely. But there’s always Kent Refuse. Gramps has some luck there.

I run a hand down the crunched spoiler. I’d heard the story a million times, but sometimes repetition is comforting.

“That goddamned bear,” Gramps mutters, the cig’s ash five  centimeters and burning.

It’d make a damned mess on Gramps’ perfectly epoxied floor.

He flicks the ash into a Folger’s tin coffee can set on his tool slide-out. It’s so rusty the
G
is missing from the logo.

I know from experience fine beach rock from the lake sits halfway deep in the thing.

My gaze travels to the water.

It won’t be long before they take the water for the dam. Right now, it’s a dark mass, a monster that never rises.

Faceless and nameless.

“So?” Gramps moves around to toe the creeper out from under the blocks. “Let’s change the oil on the old girl.”

Fossil fuel. Weird.

Gramps is grandfathered. Whenever someone of authority tries to tag his ass with another tree-hugger law, he flips them the card.

Or
the bird
, as he calls it and cackles.

He has an actual card with a large, stamped holographic world-logo of exemptions. Gramps gets cigarettes, fossil fuel, an acre of lawn, toilets that flush five gallons of water per use, and all the guns he likes. As with other pre-1970s, the government has made allowances. There’s a high rate of non-compliance in that age sector.

Gramps has taught me to change out an engine on a car no one drives. Sure, he can drive it on the auto-only roads. But they're such a small loop anymore, it's not worth it.

Gramps jerks his jaw at the creeper and I lie back, shoving off with my heels and get underneath the oil pan.

The car is simple. My life is complicated.

Tension releases, bleeding out with the dirty oil. I drain it.

Gramps talks while I work.

“
Let's talk about Gram.”

God, no.

“I’m mad, Gramps. I’m mad about her… going.”

“Me too.”

Surprised, I hook my heels against the concrete and inch myself out. Finally, his face comes into focus. Hard, not handsome, he peers at me from behind a shroud of smoke. He’s still regenerating. A face that should be craggy and lined is looking around sixty. It’s the newest technology, but it doesn’t work on everyone. Whoever finds out why will make a trillion bucks.

“You are?”

Gramps nods, taking a deep inhale. He’s already had one lung transplant.

The surgery is killer, but med scientists grow replacement parts for us all. Life expectancy is now one hundred twenty-five without regeneration.

There’s not enough precedence since regeneration began to estimate life expectancy for those who go through the process.

“I’m so mad at Caleb I could spit.”

I sit straight up and blink.

Those hard eyes meet mine, and they’re shiny.

I stare at my great-grandpa, who I know has never cried in his long life, and wonder what is so bad he would break form now.

Apparently, his only child’s oncoming death.

“I want my peanut, son. It's not natural for a child to die before its parents.”

I hadn't thought about that.

He had.

A lot.

“Your dad can keep her. He can do it.”

I nod.

“I can do it.”

He inclines his head. “I know. But none of us would put that weight on your head, son.
Ali
doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want to be like Clyde.”

“Nah. It’s not that she doesn’t want to be like Clyde. She doesn’t want to be a zombie slave.”

Gramps winces, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You’d think they’d give an exception…”

“Ya know they won’t. Any zombies made after 2035 are automatically sanctioned. Her card gets pulled and she—she…”

I can’t finish.

“
It’s so unnatural, what the Helix Complex did. Now we don’t have enough people to pick up the trash.”

“
Flip burgers,” I add.

“
Just enough,” Gramps says thoughtfully.

“That’s really why Dad won’t.” I look up at his solemn face. “He’d blow off Gram in a second if he thought it’d give her more time. But he knows all it will give her is a potential to be used.”

Gramps knots his gnarled hands together, hands slightly less arthritic than they were last month. “If I could just get her underground….”

I stand.

We look at each other.

Gramps holds his arms out, and I allow myself to be hugged for the second time that day.

Neither of us says anything when his shoulder grows wet.

Deegan

A ghost floats by, and I keep walking. My reluctant nod to exercise. All my girlfriends do Zumba Twenty. I hate it. It’s my parents’ fault; they’re old-fashioned and have always walked.

Whenever I trot by the old Scenic Cemetery, ghosts sense me and float over. They’re an annoyance. Some people have seasonal allergies or constant ticks in a body part.

I have ghosts that tag-team me. It could be worse. I could have it as bad as Pax.

The worst I have to survive is the spirits moving through my body to get my attention. It feels wet and warm, as though a giant has licked the inside of my body like an ice cream cone. It's part of the much-faceted AFTD fun, I guess.

I shudder, moving on, and the troublesome spirit drifts away. I walk when I’m stressed out.

I’ve been walking a lot lately.

Gram is dying. She of the cookies, breads, pizzas, handmade everything, and overall Comfort Goddess.

I suck in a shaky breath, and it rattles like a bag of marbles let loose inside me. They make noise as they ceaselessly move. I can’t stop them. A metaphor for my sadness.

It keeps digging a trench in the endless cavity of my soul.

My spirit sags under the weight of Gram’s inevitability. I don’t reach out to Pax. He’s as burdened as I am.

Besides, he’s at Gramps, and they’ll male bond or whatever. I love Gramps, but he’s all thumbs with me. Pax gets him.

Gram got both of us.

She fed Paxton and was the constant rock. Always home, always baking and cooking.

Always
there
. Just her sheer availability made the burden of being what we were easier to bear.

Randoms.

Now she’s going, and we don’t know what to do. We’ve been set adrift and off course. Directionless.

Walking soothes me.

Scenic Hill Cemetery is near Kent Refuse, and I pause in front of the gate. It’s been a billion years since I was inside.

I know I shouldn’t, but I’m dying for a distraction.

The pulse lock is gone, replaced by a pulse link pad.

If I had the code to enter, I’d just
think
it at the pad. The new tech should be cool, but it’s a multi-faceted tool for identification, security, and tally. So in the world of Deegan paranoia, it’s a way to track me.

If I open the lock legitimately, in theory, they’d know who opened it and why.

But since I have dominion over all locks, nothing stops my progress.

My mind sweeps the lock, and it begins to smoke.

I’ve disabled and ruined the pulse link in one brainwave. That’s the sucky thing about being almost seventeen. I simply hadn’t gotten the hang of doing the small things. Gram always says experience is the best teacher.

Gram
. I suck in a sob, imprisoning it so it can’t escape.

It doesn’t trip me up. We Randoms have to do the strange and unusual to survive. In a school of only one hundred kids, there simply aren’t enough of us.

That's a hundred kids in the entire school, kindergarten through seniors.

There’s only one school in Kent now. Actually, it’s one school in the state’s four quadrants.

Roughly four hundred children in the state.

Of course, more children are finally being born.

Just now.

It’s been a fifteen-year drought.

Play yards as ghost towns are the norm. Laughter for no reason is scarce. Colors have muted to shades of gray.

When a child dies, people cry on the street for days. I guess the adults never thought much about the effect of an entire generation unable to procreate.

There are no squeals and shrieks of small people running around, filled with nothing but joy over being alive.

The silence is complete but not absolute. Even the children who remain are somber, as though nature grieves the anomaly.

Adults are so quiet. Their tangible sadness at the void of humanity has spilt over us.

My morbid thoughts follow me to the giant pink fridge where a secret entrance lies. This mid-twentieth-century model will be a hundred years old next year. It ran on Freon. Made the atmosphere like Swiss cheese. Nasty crap, invisible and deadly.

I rest my hand on the chrome handle shaped like an oblong dart. Then I open it and walk inside.

*

When I wake up, the darkness is so complete I momentarily panic. Then I remember I’m inside the hideaway, lying on a cot  too dirty for a nap. But I’m alone, and that’s what I need.

Someone’s been here recently. Wine glasses in rapid decomposition are lying around. The newest variety. They begin to decompose within twenty-four hours of consumption. Garbage has a new role.

It
becomes
. Grandpa Kyle says it morphs into its environment. It molds to become like whatever surface it’s placed on.

I love Grandpa. He’s the smartest man I know.

I sit up, rubbing my eyes with the heel of my hands.

I think my question.
Time.

Five forty-three p.m. Pacific Time.

Crap, the parents are going to skin me alive. We always have supper at six sharp.

I take one last, loving look at the hideaway my parents began with their friends so long ago and sigh. Nowhere else on the planet is as peaceful as the strange place with ceilings of crushed twentieth-century autos, carved and shaped by Dad’s zombies.

A nap in the right place didn’t erase my troubles; it just put them off.

I make my way through the narrow tunnel and out the fridge door, smelling things no longer in use but when combined trigger a scent of comfort. Oil, rust, molding non-synthetics, and metal all come together like a great cup of hot chocolate or plate of mac and cheese.

I shut the fridge behind me and stop at the sight in front of me.

Some teens are sitting in decaying lawn chairs, the rotting plastic hanging down underneath their butts.

My heart does a flip-flop.

“Hi Dee-gan,” Brad Thompson says with a smirk. He deliberately butchers my name, and his voice brings unbidden, uninvited panic. This guy’s a turd bird.

I slap a false smile on my face to hide my anxiety, keeping my nervous eye flicks to a bare minimum.

Unlike Pax, my second eyelids magnify peripheral vision, bringing it closer as straight-on vision would appear.

His friends heave themselves out of their respective thrones and I resist running by a thread. At our age, I’ve reached my full physical potential. They have not.

Unfortunately, I'm built like Mom.
Small.

They're built like guys. Bigger.

“What do you want, Brad?”

“Who, me?” he asks innocently, flipping his longish hair. It falls back over one eye. Those eyes puncture holes of twin gold, such an amazing color, through me. Arresting. It’s so sad he aims them at me with hate. It’s an emotion I buffer with some frequency. Randoms are generally hated.

“What I always want: a Random on a stick.”

I fold my arms at his old argument. “You’re a Null, Brad.”

He’s cutting the distinction pretty close.

His torture twins edge closer, moving in for a flank. My heart ticks faster. My arms fall to my sides in a studied casualness I don’t feel.

I’m trying not to bring in Pax like an baby. I’m almost seventeen, and I can’t always rely on him. Not only that, he’s not stable right now. He just about wiped out that doctor. It’s another strike against him.

Three Random incidents and it could lead to incarceration. Pax had two during his juvenile period. He doesn’t need one on his adult record.

I swallow hard, and my throat clicks painfully.

This is pure posturing here.
I can do this.
“Call off your dogs.”

Brad cocks his head to the side and taps his long finger on an angular chin. “Ah…
no
. I think not.”

My shoulders sag.

My power begins to build, and Brad wags his finger.

“Don’t even think it, Deegan.” He tips up his chin. “It’s a first-class felony for you to use your powers against a mundane.”

I clench my fists. “You. Are. A. Null,” I seethe.

His dark eyes hold mine. “However, our wonderful government has seen fit to include me with my contemporaries.”

I grunt in disgust. The ass bone.

“Eric, Carlos, come.” Brad cups his hand.

I smirk. “See, dogs.”

I’m not always smart, though my IQ is the highest recorded in Washington State, courtesy of my grandpa.

It doesn't mean I always use it.

The dogs, Carlos and Eric, snarl. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. They say words, but I just hear sounds.

Woof, woof, woof. Barking I ignore. Happily.

I flex my paranormal muscle, and they blow off their feet, landing on their asses. Their shoes separate from their body as diseased plastic thrones kick back, taken with them in their impromptu flight.

Brad smiles at my display, and dread covers me in a shroud.

A numbing wash engulfs me.

It’s horrible. It’s wonderful.

There’s something great about a tide that comes to your shore when it brings peace. Like Uncle John.

Pax and I both agree it’s so peaceful to be around John. All the abilities take a break.

Not with this POS. What Uncle John does with tenderness and finesse, Brad Thompson does with a hammer.

And I’m the nail.

I stagger, dropping to my knees.

Too bad the authorities don't understand how he steals power as well as he squelches it. That's certainly not part of the Null repertoire.

Brad throws his head back, basking in the energy suck.

My energy.

A stealthy sound breaks through my fugue. Brad doesn’t hear, but I feel him like a balm to my soul.

Clyde.

“What in the seven hells is happening here?” The rich timbre of his voice slices through the fog, and I kick up my chin. My senses sharpen as they always do around the dead, though I can’t raise them. Well, not all.

I’m still so weak I don’t move my head. Can’t.

“Clyde,” I whisper. My mind throws one of the old-fashioned white donut rings into the water. I envision Clyde pulling me in from the sea.

S.O.S.

I shouldn’t have ditched my guard. It was beyond dumb.

“No, let the corpse into our little soiree. Welcome.” Brad sweeps his arm back to include Clyde.

Clyde looks every bit the thirty-year-old he was when he died saving a busload of kids in 1929.

He carries himself differently from anyone I've ever known. His ethics and history hang off him like a finely tailored suit. Clyde moves with grace and purpose, living in the moment, owning it.

I struggle to my feet, and Clyde’s hard hazel eyes sweep me head to toe. Then he turns his attention to Brad.

“I am not privy to what is happening here, swine. However, I am not beyond teaching a lesson where one is warranted.”

“I see,” Brad says thoughtfully. He wrenches me up by my elbow, and I suck in air, biting my lip to keep from screaming.

Clyde hisses, his body tensing.

You can take the man out of the zombie but not the zombie out of the man.

“Unhand her, vile excuse for a man.”

“I shall not, for I choose not to.”

Did I mention how much better teaching we receive with the great teacher-to-student ratio? There has been a return to more formal speech. I liked slang.

Brad buries his fingertips in my black hair, jerking me painfully the rest of the way. My scalp catches fire.

He shakes me and Clyde steps forward, unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling them to the elbow.

“Your moral compass spins, ne’er-do-well. I shall right it.”

“No ya won’t!” Brad sings, spinning me into Clyde. He grasps my shoulders to stop the momentum, and I flinch from his strength.

“Are you unharmed?” His eyes hold mine for a second of profound tenderness.

I think of all my psyche’s small wounds but shake my head. “I’m fine.”

“You”—Brad points at Clyde—“should think better of dancing with someone like me. You’re one of the horde that has a pass. But if you transgress against the living, you will be put to work. And I know just the person to select your station.”

Stations are occupations for the dead, and some are better than others. AFTDs run them. A two-point or higher within a few meters arrests the zombies’ decomposition.

“A nice mile-deep mineshaft would be a good fit for you.” Brad rocks back on his heels, arms folded as though considering it.

Clyde’s body tension ratchets higher. No AFTD is down there. The zombies would rot then be renewed when they were no better than sludge.