Lightbringer

by K. D. McEntire

  Concentrating on these musings passed the time; the miles melted away beneath his wheels. Piotr had passed into San Bruno when he smelled the smoke. Frowning, he slowed the bike and, on discovering the kickstand had rusted away, abandoned it at the edge of the highway. Sniffing the air, he followed his nose all the way down the embankment until he reached the edge of a twisted and warped tarmac. Piotr hesitated at the large, rusted sign declaring the buckled concrete to be the Mills Field Municipal Airport. There was a lot of activity on the living side—the heat here was sporadic but immense—but this place was clearly the source of the strange, sweetly smoky smell.

  Still deciding whether he wanted to proceed, Piotr spotted a flash of white.

  Walker.

  It was crazy to sneak up on a Walker like this, especially since the previous few fights had been so close and the Walkers had evidently decided to start pairing up for their hunts, but Piotr was unwilling to pass up a chance to spy on a Walker when it didn't know he was near. With any luck, he might even learn something about Dunn.

  Crouching down, Piotr dashed under the sagging hulk of a downed Bell P-39, hiding in the shadow of one wing. He briefly considered ducking into the aircraft itself and watching from the canopy but the plane was belly-down in the dirt, the landing gear long gone. A Walker would be able to spot him at eye-level for sure.

  The flash of white came again and Piotr froze in the shadows, stunned into stillness. There were Walkers, yes, over a half dozen of them, but it was the woman clad all in white who caught his attention.

  The White Lady.

  It had to be her; Piotr couldn't think of another soul in the Never stupid or crazy enough to rub elbows with Walkers voluntarily. They certainly weren't attacking her. In fact, as Piotr watched, the White Lady paused at the edge of the tarmac and gestured. Pushing aside the others, one particularly decayed Walker knelt down at her feet, knees on the tarmac and toes in the dirt, tilting its face up, allowing the White Lady to push back the edge of its hood, exposing the last tattered remnants of its cheeks and forehead to the light. Then, as Piotr watched, dumbfounded, she leaned down, hood sagging, and kissed the Walker full upon the ruins of its mouth.

  A billowing cloud of white burst from the Walker's chest, accompanied by the sharp increase of the smoky sweet scent that had first caught Piotr's attention as far away as the highway. As he watched, the Walker stiffened, its limbs jerking spasmodically under the White Lady's onslaught, feet drumming up puffs of grit from the dirt. Piotr gagged, turning away, but not before he spotted the point of the painful kiss.

  The rumors were right; the Walkers, at least these particular Walkers, were working for the White Lady now. She paid well. The longer the two of them remained lip-locked, the more of the kneeling Walker's ruined flesh grew back. By the time the White Lady released the Walker, most of the side of his face had returned. The flesh was pale white and fragile-looking, lined with thin blue veins, but certainly more substantial than the rotted horror it'd been before.

  Stepping away from the Walker, the White Lady sagged. One of the Walkers at her side stretched out a hand, which she slapped away.

  “Don't touch me,” she snapped, the wind carrying her voice to Piotr a beat behind her movements. She gestured north. “Go.” The other Walkers dispersed, leaving her with the newly healed one. She helped him to his feet.

  “You're now mine.” She smoothed the front of the Walker's robes. “Say it.”

  It bowed. “My lady. Always yours.”

  “You've been chosen, Daniel. I've got a special task for you.” The White Lady took the Walker by the bony wrist. “This way.”

  They were too close and moving in his direction at a fast clip. Piotr closed his eyes, waited for the cry of discovery, but none came. When he opened them again the White Lady was all the way at the far edge of the field and topping the rise, the Walker in tow. Intent on her goal, she'd passed him right by; they hadn't seen him crouched in the shadows.

  Should he go back, tell Elle and the others about what he'd learned? Piotr knew they needed this new information, but he still had to investigate Dunn's disappearance. Lily would never forgive him if he failed her.

  Lily could wait.

  Piotr began to move after them when a large cadre of Walkers melted through the shadows and went the way the White Lady had disappeared. There was no way Piotr would be able to follow them for such a distance across the open space without being discovered.

  Torn, but knowing that he had to follow through on his original mission, Piotr regretfully backed out of the shadows and hurried toward the highway, glancing once over his shoulder to make sure the Walkers hadn't spotted him. He would push himself to the limit getting to Mountain View and then speed back up to the city. The others had to know about what he'd seen, and Lily needed to know about Dunn.

  He wouldn't fail them.

  Though Eddie had claimed everything was fine, he wasn't at lunch, nor was he at his locker afterward. Brooding about what that might mean, Wendy worried her way through the rest of the day until gym, last period.

  They had a sub. Instead of waiting to get picked last for basketball, Wendy found herself led to the back track. Most of the class knew that this meant an opportunity to lackadaisically lap the track and gossip, and Wendy originally intended to take it easy along with the rest, but as they lined up to begin she spotted a tell-tale flicker at the edge of the field. Wendy groaned. What now?

  The sub stood at the start/finish line with a clipboard and a stopwatch. When the whistle blew, Wendy was the only one who took off running. Ignoring the giggles behind her, she sped around the track the required three times, barely noticing the surprised, “Great time!” the sub yelled as she crossed the finish line.

  Assignment met, Wendy staggered over to the sub and, panting, asked, “Since I'm done, do you mind if I take the rest of class off?”

  The sub's elated grin faded. “The rest of the hour? I can't let you do that. Are you nuts?”

  “I'm not leaving campus,” Wendy lied, keeping the spot where she'd seen the flickering light at the edge of her peripheral vision. “I just thought I saw a couple samples I can use for my biology project over there.” She pointed toward the edge of the field with a promising thatch of thorny bushes splashed with red and purple flowers. “It's just a little flower-picking. I'll be fast, I swear. You can hear that whistle anywhere near here.”

  The bulk of the class was coming, nearing the end of the first lap. The sub glanced at them, eyed the bushes, and sighed. “Fine. But stay dressed out. I've got my eye on you. Don't you think I'll forget, either. No funny stuff.”

  Skipping backwards toward the field, Wendy grinned and dropped a quick salute. “You got it, Coach!” Then she was off.

  Under the patchy shade of the eucalyptus at the edge of school property, Wendy took a deep breath and glanced around. The flicker had faded while she was talking to the sub.

  “Damn it, damn it, damn it,” Wendy muttered under her breath, angling her head to make sure the sub was paying more attention to the last group of gossiping girls finishing their first lap than to her. The instant the sub's head dipped down to mark off the last stragglers, Wendy grabbed the edge of the fence and went up and over.

  The dim flicker was gone. Wendy squinted and crouched down, pushing through the thick, thorny bushes until the sounds from the school grew muted. The canopy overhead was thicker here, the shadows denser. Her mother had been great in the woods; it was as if she were a ghost herself, flitting through the trees easily. She always knew where to step, how to navigate. She never got lost. Wendy wasn't quite that good.

  Resting against a nearby tree, Wendy hesitated; pushing on would take her out of the range of the sub's whistle. There was a chance the sub might not notice Wendy missing at the end of the day, but she'd seemed like one of those teachers who actually cared. It might be better to just not risk getting in troub—

  There!

  Catching the flicker out of the corner of her eye,
Wendy pushed through the underbrush, scouring her shins and calves against thorny wild blackberry bushes. Longingly she thought of her thick jeans, neatly tucked away in her cubby back in the girl's locker room. Shoving through the dense patch, Wendy grimaced as her sneaker splooshed into a slurry of black rot and dank mud beside a rotted out trunk.

  “So-so-so gross,” Wendy groaned, making sure to look up and eye the green-brown canopy overhead. Her mother had taught her well—she could see a tangle of dead and dying branches hanging above, remnants from the storms of the previous week. Every one of them was at least seven or eight inches across, minimum. Widow-maker branches. Wendy eased back, making sure she wasn't beneath the heavy load. If the wind blew just right the whole mess would come crashing down, crushing anything unlucky enough to be directly beneath.

  “Crap,” Wendy muttered. She thought now she might have an idea where the flicker was coming from. Skirting the edge of the clearing, keeping to the thorny sides, she shoved deeper and deeper in until, just as she'd suspected, she found a dim shape hovering around a heavy fall of deadwood.

  “I was wondering if anyone'd find me,” muttered the ghost of the homeless man, clutching his tattered parka close. “Figures it'd be some kid playing hookey.”

  He leaned in, waving a hand right in front of Wendy's face and shouted, “Hey! You! Kiddo! You turn right around and you march up to your principal and you tell him what you found here! Do you understand me? You don't just leave me here!”

  “I can't do that,” Wendy said and hid a smile when the ghost jumped back.

  “You can hear me? Really?” He grabbed Wendy by the shoulders and yelped, yanking back. “Shit! You're burning up, kid!”

  “Yep,” Wendy said. “Side effect. Sorry.”

  Waving his burnt palm in the air, the ghost eyed Wendy speculatively. “You ain't gonna tell no one about me? Really?”

  “I can't draw attention to myself,” Wendy explained, sighing. She knelt down and examined the pile of dead brush and the crushed form beneath, grimacing. “You were asleep when it fell?”

  “Yep. Didn't feel a thing,” the ghost said. “I guess I ought to be thankful, huh? Went to sleep cold and hungry and woke up…well, still cold and hungry but at least the weather don't bother me no more, huh?” He sighed. “So is this hell or something, kid?”

  “Just the afterlife,” Wendy said, swiping her foot across the dirt to obscure the place where she'd knelt down. “I can help you with that if you want.” She stood back and eyed her handiwork. Her mom would've been proud. When the cops found the body, no one would know she'd been there. In theory, at least.

  “Help me with what? You can't bring me back to life, can ya?” Despite his ragged state, he couldn't help the pitiful hope that crept into his voice.

  “No.” Wendy refrained from patting him on the arm, lest she burn him further. “But I can send you on. You're…where you are right now, the Never, it's like a halfway point. Limbo, sort of. I can give you a push to go to the next place. If you want.” Eying the tree next to her, Wendy reached up and broke off a small, thin branch clustered with living leaves.

  He cleared his throat. “You mean heaven?” His voice dropped. “Or, y'know, the other? Because if it's the other, I'll stay where I am, thank you very much.”

  Wendy shrugged and started back toward the school, making sure to swipe the fresh branch across her path and staying to the places she'd walked before. The homeless man kept pace with her easily, passing through the dense brush without dispersing. “Not my jurisdiction. I have no clue. But you won't be stuck in the Never until your soul rots. There's that.”

  “I'll rot? If I stay here?”

  “Most souls do, yeah.” Wendy glanced at her watch. “Look, I don't mean to be a bitch, but class is almost over and my coach is going to wonder where I got to. I had to lie to her just to get out here and try and find you. I didn't have to do that, I could've just ignored you.” I should've just ignored you, Wendy thought bitterly. It'd been stupid to assume some random flicker might be her mother. Stupid and, seeing those tree branches, dangerous.

  “So you're some sort of angel or something? Helping souls move on?”

  “Something like that.” Wendy stopped and tapped her wrist. They were almost at the first clearing and it seemed a safe place to drop her branch. “So what'll it be? Stay or go?”

  The ghost squared his shoulders and, cringing like a child about to get a shot, said, “Do it.”

  Closing her eyes, Wendy opened the gates within and let the light pulse through her. It was over in a moment; the man cried out only once.

  As the heat ebbed from Wendy's fingertips she heard the distant whistle. Trudging back to the track, Wendy kept her eye out for the sub but, despite all her admonitions, she'd already left. Wendy was halfway across the field before she remembered the flowers at the fence. She debated turning around to retrieve a handful—what were the chances of the sub checking up on her alibi, after all?—but decided it was better to cover her bases. Forcing her tired legs into a lope, Wendy hurried back to the fence and gathered up two handfuls of the blossoms, nicking her fingers on thorns in the process.

  Bright yellow buses trundled down the road toward the pickup point and Wendy could hear the distant shouts of other students slamming lockers and pouring out the side entrances toward the parking lot. The sub really had forgotten about her.

  It had, thus far, been a truly shitty day. Glancing down at her handful of blooms, Wendy realized that she was dirty and scabbed, sweaty and clutching the flowers like a tired little girl. When the memory hit it was like a punch to the gut.

  The unexpectedly icy highway had taken many drivers the night of her birthday; now, a week later, the afternoon roads to the cemetery were thick with headlights. Her father stayed home with the twins while her mother escorted Wendy to Mr. Barry's funeral. When the wrapped coffin slid into the muddy hole at her feet Wendy dropped her armful of roses, turned, and buried her face in her mother's shoulder, inhaling the deep scent of vanilla and wood-smoke to center herself, to calm her tears. Easing her away from the mound of bruised petals, her mother hummed a little tune, so softly Wendy felt the vibration more than heard the song, and a blessed cool descended over her, easing the hot knot in the pit of her stomach.

  “Soon, soon,” her mother whispered for her ears alone. “Be strong, Wendy-girl. It's almost over.” Her hand cupping Wendy's elbow was warm, her breath mint-sweet. Wendy, calmer, took the time while the mourners were tossing spades of dirt onto the coffin to pray that Eddie would be okay. He refused to sit shiva with the rest of his family and wouldn't leave his room, even for the funeral. Eddie was, simply put, a wreck.

  Wendy and her mother drove home after—to collect more flowers and food for the seudat havrach reception—and Wendy blew hot breath onto the window as the cold rain fell, drawing sad faces in the fog. Her mother ran into the house, returning with platters overflowing with deli meats and eggs, a small wicker basket of cookies, and a crockpot filled with hot lentil soup.

  When they arrived Mrs. Barry hugged Wendy's mother close in the foyer. She was a large woman and the black of mourning did little to slim her figure. Wendy's mother was swallowed in Mrs. Barry's voluminous embrace, the tattered ribbon pinned to Mrs. Barry's chest poking her on the cheek. “Mary, I'm so glad to see you.”

  “I'm so sorry for your loss, Moira,” Wendy's mother replied gently. Wendy hesitated in the foyer, startled by the warmth her mother displayed for Mrs. Barry. Her mother wasn't a harsh woman by any stretch of the imagination—she volunteered at homeless shelters up in the city and made a point of tithing regularly—but she rarely allowed anyone outside their family to touch her. She was protective of her personal space.

  “Winifred,” Mrs. Barry sniffled, drawing out a humongous linen handkerchief and honking loudly into it, “be a dear and go fetch Edward. He's being…” she hesitated, and Wendy felt the urge to turn away from the too-real grief etched across her face as she struggled not to cry in
front of her guests. “He's been difficult this week,” she finished. “If anyone can get him to come down, I know it's you.”

  Wendy glanced at her mother. “Go on, dear,” Mary said, gathering the basket. “He needs you right now.”

  The staircase wall was lined with pictures: Eddie and his father posing with a Ringling Brothers clown, Eddie and his father posing with Goofy at Disneyland, Eddie and his father fishing, Eddie and his father at Dodger Stadium. The last picture was a formal family portrait of Eddie and both his parents posing in the park. Eddie was perhaps five at the time and his mother was thinner in the picture and happier, her mouth not so pinched and drawn. Only Eddie's father appeared ageless in the photo; the photographer had perfectly captured the perpetually happy grin he had worn all the years Wendy had known him.

  “Eddie?” Wendy tapped on his door with one knuckle, eyeing the shrouded hallway mirror shivering in the upstairs draft. “Your mom told me to come get you, but I'll go if you want.” She gently pushed the door open. The room was dark. “Eds?”

  “I'm not going down,” Eddie said from somewhere in the black. Wendy squinted and could just make out an Eddie-shape huddled in the corner under his bunk beds. The lower bunk had been pushed out from under the top and was against the wall; a trundle bed sat beside. Clearly, Mrs. Barry had guests sleeping in Eddie's room. It even smelled like old person in here, like Nana's perfume and mothballs.

  Wendy eased into the room and shut the door behind her, leaving them both in the pitch darkness. With the door closed the clink and quiet conversation from downstairs was pleasantly muffled, the room warm. Wendy edged around the detritus of the visiting relatives until she found the bunks and slid to the floor beside her friend.

  “Any room under there for me?”

  Eddie lifted the comforter without comment and Wendy wriggled until she was flush against him, shoulder to hip. She laid her head on his shoulder and they sat in the muffled silence for a long, long time.