His frozen moment held panic, whiplash, and the realization he’d never see his kids again.
More: The latte tasted bitter. I took too many credits this semester. The dog peed on the rug. Damn, the weather’s nice today. Will I get this project done? I don’t want to get fired. Where will I find another job?
I’m wheezing. Tony’s pulling up the ladder. He says something about them noticing us. About how, he thinks, I’m not being subtle anymore.
My body feels like burning rubber now. My eyes, my tongue, my fingers. I suspect I smell like it too, or maybe that’s the zombies. They don’t smell human. Not anymore.
Tony and Amanda crouch at the front of the shipping container. They’ve left the door open enough we can breathe. Tony’s holding the semi-automatic Jackson left him. Amanda’s praying in soft beats. Her voice echoes in the container, filling the dark voids in the back. I lay on a stolen yoga mat and all I can do is watch.
Another zombie: His girlfriend felt smooth, soft, like a fine cotton shirt. She smelled like a woman and he couldn’t get enough of her. She’d pushed him away, smiling, but the sun shone through her top and he could see her nipples. She needed to wash the dishes, she said, but damn he was horny and she had a fine curve to her backside.
For a split second, he thought he caused the terror in her eyes. Then he understood.
The cargo containers amplify the noises outside. There’s rustling and knocking. The world sounds hollow.
Tony’s breathing hard.
One more: Mom, I don’t want to read her a story. Why do I have to do it tonight? Mom!
I think I’ve lit us up so bright the entire city of zombies is in the rail yard. I’m that damned talking flea and now the beast’s focused on me, trying to figure out if it’s dreaming.
Amanda’s going to die here, with me. Tony, too. He’s just a college kid. He should have a life ahead of him. She would have kept the enclave alive. I should have made them leave.
I can’t feel the burning rubber anymore. The zombies make a lot of noise but it’s soothing. They sound like bees and it mixes with Amanda’s prayers. The sun will come up tomorrow. I won’t see it, but the world will. And I can imagine what it will look like: Warm and stretched along the horizon, framed in blues, purples, and reds. Maybe, somewhere, the ocean will reflect the sun’s brilliant glow back to it and both the world and the sky will become happy together, like Amanda and Tony.
I remember my old life, now. I remember tasting apples and thinking they really don’t have a flavor, just a texture and the sounds of crispness. My boyfriend laughed his big, hardy guffaw and smiled with his perfect white teeth. “Oh, my beloved,” he’d said. “It’s there. You only need to close your eyes and feel it on your tongue.”
So I close my eyes.
Another ghost, adjacent to the last: I taste toothpaste, because I’m a good girl and Mommy said I’d get a story tonight, so I wash my face and brush my teeth and wipe up the sink. I hold my favorite book, the one Grandma gave me, and I run to my bed. My big brother’s a meanie but I love this book and I won’t think about him and Mommy fighting over who has to read it to me. I hold it tight and I make it bounce across my lap because that’s what the cat in the story does and there’s a cuddly bear but he’s nice and it’s a safe place, where they live in the book. No one yells, but they’re funny and they act weird and I love all of them.
Where I am now, lying on a yoga mat stinking of death and hearing the very end approach, I recognize the story. It’s a classic, one told many times. I know the place this little zombie imagines quite well.
And it is much better than the world as it is.
I think, maybe, now’s when my brain is making its last blast of endorphins, and the itching stops. The zombie’s story, her one last final frozen moment, resonates with my memories of apples and sunshine. I wonder if somewhere, in that children’s tale of a trees and streams, if there’s an ocean with cresting waves of blue and green. And I wonder if it’s real and unknown and if it will ever be seen again by the fresh eyes of a young person.
I don’t know how efficient a kid’s mind is. I don’t remember being a child. But I do remember awe and wanting, more than anything, to take it all in—and continue to take it in, because even once I understood what it was, it never stopped changing.
And even though in the children’s world every one wore the same clothes every day, and they didn’t change, they grew. And they lived.
I wonder, as my last thought, if Amanda’s pregnant. Tony’s splayed his fingers over her belly. Then he fires his gun.
At my end, I feel the last screaming pulse of my implants as I take the child’s last moment and meld it to my mutated, cancerous buffer program. It lashes out into the invisible tech’s collection systems, sending out tentacles that break off but don’t die.
I know, somewhere out there, the other implanted are watching, maybe praying that I do this right. Maybe a couple of them are using me as a distraction, and are moving their enclaves. Either way, I’ve done good with my last breath, and my endorphin high is justified.
My final frozen moment takes shape: Change, but safe. I want Amanda and Tony’s baby to taste the ocean’s salt on her lips and know that every time she visits, it will taste just a little different, like it should be. I want her to grow up understanding that sometimes a lot of plants means different shades of green, and that’s just fine.
It means the world’s alive.
THE END
Kris Austen Radcliffe’s Page at Amazon.com
Subscribe to Kris’s Newsletter
More by Kris Austen Radcliffe
Available Now
Short fiction by Kris Austen Radcliffe:
TALON ONE Science Fiction Presents
Honey to Soothe the Itch
The Taste of Marbles
From Six Talon Sign Urban Fantasy Romance:
The Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon Series:
New Adult Urban Fantasy Romance
The Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon series takes Rysa and Ladon—and Ladon’s companion beast, Dragon—through a landscape punctuated by unfamiliar creatures:
Fates with the ability to see past, present, and future.
Ghouls called Burners who devour with fire and acid.
Shifters who shape much more than their bodies.
And two dragons who speak with color and pattern.
#0 Prolusio: Three Prelude Stories of Fates Fire Shifters and Dragons.
#1 Games of Fate: It’s not a good love story until something explodes.
#1.5 Conpulsio: A Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon novella of binding and compulsion.
#2 Flux of Skin: All Shifters understand fury. Now they learn rupture.
#3 Fifth of Blood: Coming this February from Six Talon Sign Fantasy & Futuristic Romance.
#3.5 Silence: Coming this Spring.
Trilogy One: Activation
Prolusio #0
Three Prelude Stories of Fates Fire Shifters and Dragons.
GAMES OF FATE #1
It’s not a good love story until something explodes.
Rysa Torres’s attention problems randomize her life but she does the best she can—until monsters activate a part of her she didn’t know she had. As visions of the future whip inside her head, Rysa realizes the truth:
She’s a Fate.
And she will set fire to the world.
When Ladon and his companion beast, Dragon, find Rysa, they see only the potential hell a young Fate might unleash into their lives. But Ladon quickly realizes Rysa is much more than the daughter of an old enemy—she is his key to forgiveness.
With the threat of a burning future distorting Rysa’s Fate abilities, she sees only two options: End her own life, or watch Ladon, the only man to see beyond her attention issues and love her for who she is, die. Will they accept the only future they see, or will they find the strength to break the bonds of fate?
Conpulsio #1.5
A Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ D
ragon novella of binding and compulsion.
FLUX OF SKIN #2
All Shifters understand fury. Now they learn rupture.
Flux of Skin is the sequel to Games of Fate.
Ladon thought he left his past—and his violence—behind. But century after century, the call to battle malicious Fates, Shifters, and Burners always won. The world needed him. So he fought.
But now, his scars show.
And he can’t stop fighting.
He found a new way: a modern life with his beloved Rysa. He won’t give her up. Not because of family strife. Not because of the issues twisting their lives into a raging cyclone. And definitely not because of war.
When a new group of Shifters rain death onto everyone he loves, Rysa gets caught in the crossfire. Will Ladon find the strength to keep the fight from rupturing his soul?
COMING SOON:
February 2014
FIFTH OF BLOOD #3
Spring 2014
Silence #3.5
Watch for Trilogy Two: Redemption, beginning in late 2014.
For more information about all Fate ~ Fire ~ Shifter ~ Dragon titles, visit the publisher web site at www.sixtalonsign.com.
From Six Love Erotic Romance:
Thomas’s Muse
Four years ago, for a brief moment, Sammie Singleton became the muse of an artist she didn't know. The moment vanished, and now Sammie spends her nights with a different man.
Her life is black and white. But she needs food for her soul to feel alive.
She needs color. She needs art.
Everything changes the moment she meets Thomas Quidell. Brilliant and talented, Sammie quickly realizes Tom is her artist--and the man she's been fantasizing about all these years.
Tom offers her more than a lifeline. He opens her eyes to a new life. Vibrant, loving, fulfilling. But is she strong enough to take a chance?
Games of Fate Preview
Chapter One
Rysa’s meds weren’t in her backpack. She fished through the lint under her laptop, catching only a pen and the corner of her wallet. Wads of paper and a few stray coins filled the bag’s recesses, but her pills were nowhere to be found.
At lunch, she’d emptied all the pockets and stacked her stuff on one of the ugly lounge chairs in the student center. No pill bottle then, either.
Not that she trusted herself to be thorough. No meds equaled a super-sized portion of “flighty” and a bottomless cup of “hyperactive.” She dug her hand into her stupid pack again.
Gavin sat across from her with his palms flush against the coffee shop table. She slapped down a notebook and the table wobbled, a loud clunk popping from its uneven feet. His hands jerked up and he leaned back, frowning.
Do you want help with your chemistry or not? he signed, his hands moving through the American Sign Language with quick precision.
“Yes.” She looked directly at him so he could see her lips clearly, knowing full well she’d also narrowed her eyes, even though she didn’t mean to. Tonight, patience wasn’t one of his virtues and his behavior wasn’t helping her make sense of her attention deficit world.
She needed his help, too. This close to finals, if she didn’t figure out her assignments, she’d fail another class. The University would kick her out. She knew it.
Gavin’s shoulders slumped and he crossed his arms—his way of giving her the silent treatment. He’d frowned about twenty minutes into the first problem when it became clear that helping her would take all night. He didn’t have to remind her by shifting around in his chair and tapping his finger on his elbow when her mind strayed. How was she supposed to focus on homework without her attention meds? Rysa pulled a crumpled five dollar bill out of her bag and dropped it next to her notebooks.
He scowled this time, his gaze following her hand as it dipped into the bag again. She could tell by the way his neck tensed that he wanted to sigh, but sighing made guys look pathetic and Gavin wasn’t one to diminish his manliness.
Her lips bunched up. He had no right to act like a jerk because she’d lost her meds and wasn’t tracking her homework. It’s not like he always understood his class work. She’d helped him with Human and Environmental Policies last semester. He’d been a chore, no matter how much she tried. For a guy who was pre-med, he sure had issues understanding the bigger picture.
Did I mess up your evening? she signed, her hands working as fast as his through the ASL. A flick of the bag’s straps and it plopped onto the floor next to her feet. “Were you sexting with that sophomore again?” This time she didn’t look at him. His hearing aids worked just fine.
He stared, his expression flat. Gavin usually had the laidback calm of someone who’d just finished a good workout. Women found it charming. The boy had more contacts in his phone than the University had numbers in its database.
She slapped the table when he groaned and her calculator slipped off a book, jarring her chai. A splash plopped onto her Chemistry Principles syllabus. Steam rose off the course description as if she’d dropped acid on it, not hot tea.
Gavin’s pointer finger twitched. Isn’t it a little late to be popping stim meds?
A yellow stain spread across the syllabus and her attention snapped to the paper. The liquid ate away the words and they bled onto the tabletop, destroyed by her impulsiveness. She blotted at them, blinking.
“Rysa?” Annoyance worked across his features in little tics.
He signed something. She didn’t catch it.
He sniffed and the titanium in his ears flickered with the light from the television behind her head. She’d sat with her back to the little café’s screen for a reason. News crawls and no meds didn’t mix well.
This morning, when she came down to the kitchen, her mom had been watching the news. A suburban Chicago mall exploded last night. On the drive to campus, the radio announcers had been on about big fires in several of the towns along Interstate 94, between Chicago and Minneapolis. All day, pundits had infested the news channels blaring in the student unions, bobbing their heads and pushing up their glasses, ranting about terrorists or gas leaks or 911 calls that may or may not have indicated a suicide bomb—
“I’m sure you left your meds at home.” Gavin leaned back as he spoke. Why don’t you calm down so you can drive home? he signed.
Calm down? Her syllabus disintegrated on the table, ruined by a splash of hot and random, much like her academic career. She stared at it even though she didn’t want to. Her mind hyper-focused on the one perfect representation of her time at the U and it wasn’t going to let it go.
“You should talk to Disability Services.” His chair groaned as he shifted around again.
A new rainbow of reflections danced across his hearing aids and her attention snapped to the brilliance in his ears. His gaze jerked up to the screen behind her.
The images must have changed. She’d seen the stories at lunch: Before sunrise, a theme park in The Dells had exploded with a fireball visible from the interstate. Black River Falls had ignited in the middle of the afternoon. She’d come out of Chemistry to find the entire campus stopped, everyone staring at their phones and—
Rysa breathed, refusing to turn around and be caught by the news. She’d spent her last class staring out the window toward the east, her anxiety creeping up. Whatever stalked Wisconsin felt like it was about to burst from the horizon and scorch all of campus—and her in particular. The effort it took not to freak out made her head ache and was as big a contributor to her inattention as anything else.
Today was not a good day to forget her meds.
Gavin said something again. Her face scrunched up as she tried to parse it.
“Rysa, did you hear me?”
He’d said something about Disability Services.
What are they going to do? she signed back. Follow me around and nag me all day?
They’d turned her down for a translator position when she applied last year even though she’d aced the exam and had no hearing difficulties o
f her own. Her damned ADHD reared its head during the interview.
His jaw tightened. Pulling ninety-ninth percentile on all three parts of the GRE will only get you so far with grad school admissions.
Why was he being such a dick? School, the fires—and to make things worse, her mom’s obvious pain this morning before she left the house—all combined to make the perfect Storm Rysa. At breakfast, her mother had held out a glass of orange juice, her hand shaking and her joints swollen and red. Rysa downed the juice in three gulps, more to keep her mom from worrying than because she wanted it.
The juice had distracted her, which was why she’d forgotten her meds. They were probably on the kitchen counter between the empty glass and her mom’s prescription pain killers.
“I’m going home.” She needed to get away from all the campus television screens. The blinking made her squint.
Gavin wrapped his hand around her wrist. “I just want to make sure you’re alright before you go off to graduate school. I can’t help you with your courses if I’m in Boston and you’re somewhere in the Rockies.”
She stared at his fingers until he let go. All her spazziness made her head throb in short, intense pulses and his exasperated fussing wasn’t making it better. She reached for her damned bag again. Maybe she had some acetaminophen. At least it would take the edge off for the drive home.
Get some sleep. That helps, he signed.
She pressed her temple. What did he know about what helped? Her head felt as if every muscle on her scalp was about to fight-club her sinuses.
Honey to Soothe the Itch Page 3
