by Eros, Marata
He was the death inception.
A boy not yet born, but of such critical importance that he would change history.
Jeffrey worked toward his goal.
Without fail, without wavering.
*
2015
Kyle cupped his large hands around Ali's shoulders, his warm brown eyes searching her stormy blue-gray gaze. “You worry too much, Ali, he'll be perfectly fine.”
Ali's eyes filled with tears, she had never warmed up to the prime booster for the Cocktail. She hated the idea of medications that breached of all the natural defenses of the body. The Cocktail would enter into the last defense of the body, undiluted. Her five-year old boy would be little more than a guinea pig.
She shook her head.
“Think rationally, Ali.” His eyes searched hers. “Would I let anything happen to our son? The only child we've chosen to bring into this world.”
Alicia thought about it. No, certainly not. But she was a mother and there was just something that was—instinctive about not liking the inoculation.
Being a mom was more than statistics, it was a special intuition that they all possessed.
And hers was ringing alarm bells so loudly her teeth thrummed with it. Ali knew it wasn't steeped in logic. She'd read the release pulse on the whole deal. The boosters seemed reasonable—an advancement for mankind.
“Yʼknow—Pop doesn't like it either,” Ali stated as a last resort.
Kyle sighed. He loved Ali's dad but, Mac was a black and white thinker. Very. Anything that was modern, or heaven forbid, government-initiated or driven, it made Mac's hackles rise. He regarded it all with express suspicion. Of course, Mac had been a special ops military man. Maybe there was a grain of truth in there somewhere.
Perhaps Mac knew more than they realized.
“Honey, listen.” Kyle stared into her softening eyes and knew he'd won the battle but maybe not the war. “Your dad is slightly paranoid. You know this. Especially about government programs.”
“What's this about my paranoia, Kyle?” Mac asked, breezing into the living room.
“Hi, Peanut,” Mac said, nodding at his daughter, taking instant note of her concerned expression.
“Hi, Pop.”
Kyle saw the question on Mac's face and headed it off at the pass. “I was just reassuring Ali that the Cocktail will not be a problem, Mac.”
Mac narrowed his eyes at his naïve son-in-law, whom he loved, but was a tad too trusting. Kyle believed society was altruistic.
Mac knew they'd kill their own grandmothers for the right price.
He shoved a dry cig in his mouth. He'd light up the second he walked outside. Mac cracked the corner of his mouth to reply when Caleb came rushing in with his hands cupped around something.
“Whatcha got there, sport?” Mac asked.
Caleb gave Gramps wide eyes. He was a Big Man and always had a Cancer Stick in his mouth. But he was neat and showed Caleb cool stuff. That's what Gramps called it: Cool Stuff. Learning Stuff.
“I have a bug, Gramps!”
“Ooh, ick,” Ali said with an indulgent smile, looking vaguely ill.
“Oh yeah? What kind do ya got there?”
Caleb opened his hand and a small salamander lay there gasping in his palm.
“Oh no, pal, that won't do. Let's get him out where he can breathe a mite better.”
“Pop,” Ali began, “you just want to go outside to smoke.”
Mac looked at his Environmentally Responsible daughter and shook his head. How'd she ever turned out so uptight was one of the mysteries of his life. Of course, payback was always swimmingly fun as Caleb was turning out to be a bundle of chaos. Discharging his brand of wildness throughout her neat and orderly existence.
“Yup,” Mac replied and winked.
Ali sighed. “Okay, not too long today, Pop. Caleb needs a nap.”
Caleb heard the N word and stomped. “I'm no baby! I will not SLEEP!” his shouted promise echoed in the house even after he ran out the door.
Mac turned his face away so Ali wouldn't see the smirk that was hiding there.
He was full of piss and vinegar that boy. It occurred to Mac that they might have had their hands full with more children.
Maybe just with the one , Mac thought with a grunt.
“Caleb!” Ali began and Mac turned. “Let him be, Peanut. Nap-smap! He's too old for that now.”
“But I think he needs the rest with the prime booster later today.”
“Nah,” Mac dismissed with a hand, edging closer to the door. “I think we'll just push through that whole thing Pumpkin, then take him out for ice cream after.”
“Dad!” Ali wailed.
“Gotta go, Peanut!”
Mac escaped like a coward, leaving Kyle with Ali. He could figure her out. After all, Mac would rather face five of the enemy than the wrath of his daughter's words.
God love her, but she talked too damn much.
Caleb was stuffed in the front seat of Mac's stock, bright orange 1970 Bronco. The white top gleamed in the sun that slanted off it in the glare of early autumn.
Mac slowed his stride to light his smoke, blowing out a relaxing puff into the crisp air of almost fall.
Nope, he wasn't keen on this damn Molotov Cocktail they were giving all the kiddies. But if Kyle said it was okay, then it was. His son-in-law was naïve, not stupid. In Mac's experience that could sometimes mean the same thing. But in Kyle's case it didn't.
Caleb raised a chubby hand and waved, the salamander floating belly up in the cement bird bath. Dead.
Caleb had done what he was told, but not soon enough. The thing was floating around in his daughter's inner sanctuary, her prized atrium had a dead lizard bobbing around.
Marvelous.
He slipped into the driver's side, carefully putting out his cig in the old ashtray.
“Gramps!” Caleb said, swinging his legs back and forth.
“Yes, partner?”
“The salamander didn't swim when I put him in the pool in mommy's garden.”
Mac gave solemn eyes to Caleb. “He needed the water to live, Caleb.”
Caleb nodded, just as solemn. “He's dead now,” Caleb said with finality.
“Uh-huh, that he is.”
Caleb stared at his Gramps. He was Very Old but Mommy said he was also Very Brave.
“Are you ascared of dead stuff, Gramps?” Caleb asked, his eyes wide.
Mac watched his small legs pump back and forth on the seat then finally answered truthfully. Because it was easy, and it was Caleb. The young were guileless.
“Nope.”
Caleb met Grampsʼ eyes. “Me neither.”
“Yeah?” Gramps said with a chuckle. Kids were a kick in the pants.
“Nope,” Caleb said, copying his Gramps exactly, “the dead are okay.”
Gramps eyes narrowed. “You don't say?”
“Uh-huh,” Caleb replied instantly.
His legs swung and Gramps said, “Buckle-up, pal.”
“ʼKay.”
Mac watched as he fiddled with the seat belt and gave his head a pat. “That's a good boy that you're not scared of death.”
“I know. All things die, right?”
“Yup.”
“I'll die someday,” Caleb said as a statement, not a question.
Mac paused. “Yes, all things die, Caleb.”
Caleb sighed. “Yeah, I wish we could fix it.”
“What son?” Mac asked, his eyes on the road.
“Death,” his five-year old grandson said.
Gramps gave him an uneasy glance. What a strange thing to say, he thought.
Mac would often think of that years later.
The comment hadn't been so strange after all.
CHAPTER SIX
1929
Clyde was so in tune with Maggie that he swore he could hear her screaming through the fog of his consciousness.
He swung his head from side to side, clearing it as he slumped ove
r the stool, the hard seat biting into his backside, his throbbing fists dangling between his knees.
Blood and sweat mingled to drip in a small river from his left eyebrow. It'd need stitches later.
He was taking the beating of his life. His jaw felt unhinged and one eye was swollen shut. Dempsey had gone where no other opponent had before. He'd gotten more licks on Clyde than all his other fights combined.
Dempsey's strikes were like blurred lightning.
Somebody shoved water at Clyde. He took a swig, swishing it around in his craw, spitting it out in the dented tin bucket that was swung below his mouth. The cut on his lip stung as he spit the mucous-filled blood.
If he'd not been a farmer, accustomed to the grueling endurance of plowing and other tedious, plodding and inexhaustible tasks he would never have lasted this many rounds.
It was small satisfaction that Dempsey had marks littered everywhere there was flesh exposed. Put there by Clyde's fists.
The bell rung, and Clyde bounced to his feet.
Dempsey's dark eyes fell on him with the glittering intensity of desperation.
Clyde felt a small shiver, goose walking over his grave, he thought errantly.
They met in the middle and knocked gloves.
The ring leader moved away and they fought.
Clyde heard everything, but most of all he heard Maggie.
He fought harder, like a bull with its horns caught.
*
Stay down, stay down , Clyde intoned, hopping from one nimble foot to the other. His exhaustion was a dragging nightmare of fatigue.
The money had almost not been worth the fight. Going all four rounds with this man had wreaked havoc on Clyde's body.
Lasting only minutes, it felt like he'd lived another lifetime in the ring. But Clyde had persevered, his constitution having won out in the end.
Simply put, he'd outlasted Dempsey. Clyde was not the better fighter, he was the better laster. He knew it, for self-delusion had never come naturally to Clyde.
The ring leader counted down. “One! Two! Three!” Then he swished plank-flat arms across each other in the age old, you're out , raising Clyde's arm as victor.
That's when Clyde felt it, a precognitive flash like a silvered coin flipped midair.
If he hadn't ducked he would have been dead.
The blow was glancing, delivered like a coward from behind. After the bell.
Delivered with precision.
Clyde tried to lean in avoidance but most of the punch landed where it had been intended.
For the first time in his life, Clyde was knocked out.
He came awake in a hospital, richer, but with swelling on the brain and orders to rest.
The doctors said it was a miracle he didn't have a broken jaw.
At least he'd had that.
When Clyde opened his eyes and saw his Maggie-girl gazing down at him, her hand covering her stomach protectively, he thought he had more than that.
Much more.
*
2015
Ali kissed the top of Caleb's head and he pushed her hand away from brushing the hair back off his forehead.
“I'm okay, Mommy!” he huffed for the third time. “It don't hurt!”
He glared at her in the cutest way as Ali answered, “It doesn't hurt?”
“Uh-huh,” Caleb answered. He was a Big Boy. They could stick him with needles all day long and it wasn't gonna matter. It didn't even hurt that much. It felt like that one time when Mommy had him cut the dead flowers off the stems of her plants and that bee bit him.
It hadn't hurt either.
“Well, I'm glad,” she ruffled his hair.
Caleb sighed. Mommies always had to Show Affection. Caleb's mind wandered to the view through the window. He was gonna play with the Js today. Mommy called it a “playdate.”
The doorbell rang and his two bestest friends ran in.
Caleb didn't like John's mom very much. She had a pointy nose and a scrunched up face like a prune.
She looked like a witch. Caleb knew he wasn't supposed to laugh at the way Adults looked but his mouth did a funny thing when he tried not to laugh.
Somehow, it always made it worse.
John's mom narrowed her eyes at Caleb and he began to giggle.
Mommy gave him The Look. It meant that he needed to Calm Down. Which made it harder to stop laughing.
“Humph!” John's mom grunted over the top of his giggling. “He's a precocious boy, Alicia. You need to take him in hand, like my John here.”
John gave Caleb a face that told him John didn't like being taken in hand .
“In my day, when a child laughed at an adult like that, they were given the rod.”
“Doesn't that sound like a CPS call waiting to happen,” Jonesy's Mom, Miss Helen, said in a voice that sounded bored. Caleb quieted up in a hurry.
Miss Helen was funny. She didn't talk like other adults.
“And you're the pillar of knowledge on the subject of child rearing, Helen?”
We all looked at Jonesy. He was digginʼ for gold in his nose. That's what Gramps called it.
“Nasty!” Helen said as Mommy handed a tissue to Jonesy, who held his prize like an obscene flag from the tip of his finger.
Joan recoiled in horror from the sight of Jonesy with a big booger on the tip of his finger and a self-satisfied grin on his face.
Caleb knew that if he'd been pickinʼ his nose Mommy would have ended the playdate.
Not so with Helen. “Don't be picking your schnoz now!” Helen said with a smile. “Go wash those skanky hands in the restroom, Jonesy.”
Helen turned back to Joan. “What did you say about columns?”
“Pillars,” Joan repeated quietly, having lost the scope of the conversation before the Digit Diving.
Helen waved her hand around. “Oh well, we're all just winging it! It's not like we have the parenting manual.” She shrugged and Caleb watched Mommy get the Funny Mouth too.
Joan sniffed and glanced at her watch. “I will return in three hours.” Her eyes flicked to Ali's. “Do you plan on a snack or lunch while John is here?”
“Yes, I thought they could have cookies and milk later.”
Joan sniffed again. “Very well, thank you for your hospitality.”
She pushed John forward and he came a few timid steps toward their group.
Caleb slung an arm around John, who was really skinny. He needed the most of Mommy's cookies. Caleb told him that.
John nodded, turning toward the door where his mommy had just departed. “Yes, thank you. I'd like to have a lot of Mrs. Hart's cookies.”
“Ali, John,” Mommy corrected John. Caleb didn't know why he had to use Mommy's second name all the time. He looked at the door that John's mom had just passed through. He had a feelinʼ it had something to do with her.
Caleb narrowed his eyes after her departing back.
Jonesy exited the bathroom and Helen grabbed his arm. “Let me smell your hands.” Jonesy stiffened as Helen ran a nose over the tops of his hands. “You get your rear back in there!” She said loudly, smacking his butt. “Don't be running water over the tops! Use soap.” She waggled her eyebrows at Mommy and she burst out laughing.
“Boys!” Helen said.
Mommy nodded.
“My mommy would have been really mad about the nose picking,” John said with utter conviction.
Helen nodded her head. “Uh-huh, that's why you have to do it in secret.”
John looked at Jonesy's mom solemnly, finally nodding his head. “Yes, ma'am.”
Ali and Helen laughed. “Where's the coffee, Ali? I could use a cup,” her eyes flew to Mommy's, mirth held in check by a thread, “or ten—after that fiasco.”
“He's consistent, Helen.”
Jonesy walked out of the bathroom as his Mommy looked at him with affection.
“Yes, that he is.”
*
2025
Parker felt the focus of his power come on
line and directed it at the feet of the corpse with a precision that flowed from the tip of its tagged toe to the hair on its head.
Jeffrey knew the drill, it was easy. Raising a corpse like this was as automatic as breathing.
One as newly dead as this—was nothing.
The corpse rose as if pulled by invisible strings, the morgue sheet falling away in a silken rustle.
“He looks dead, Parker,” McKenzie said, his skin littered with goosebumps. He swore he'd stop doing this damn zombie detail with Parker, but he'd been with him for over a decade now. Hard to give it up. But a zombie raising was always the same.
Creepy.
“Maître,” the prime minister of France whispered, a flap of gray skin hanging down over one eye.
McKenzie backed up, a small teardrop-shaped flame dancing at the tip of his pulse-thrower. The artificial air being pumped through the morgue's central heating system causing bluish-orange flag of hot light to waver.
Roiling chicken flesh built higher on McKenzie's skin and he held his feet in their locked position with difficulty.
His colleagues weren't so stoic. They were as far back as they could be without leaving the room. They'd seen what Parker could do, and it was always bigtime flesh crawl.
Every. Time.
“What's it sayinʼ?”
Jeffrey turned to McKenzie—one of the many Jeffrey would use when the time came, a destroyer of his life—and answered, “Master.”
Jeffrey pumped more life into the zombie and watched as if an oil painting had come painstakingly to life before them. Jeffrey watched his power infuse cheeks gone sallow with death. They began to fill in with the rich color of life, an approximation so real no one would have known he was the walking dead.
“Not too much,” Smoker said. “Don't make him look too good, Parker. Rumor had it he liked his cigs and cognac.” He chuckled.
Parker's emotional reaction tipped over into the zombie.
Its gaze slid to Smoker, filling with contemplation, knowledge and lastly—intelligence.
Smoker stayed where he was.
Jeffrey smiled. The zombie knew Smoker now, knew him as intimately as Jeffrey did.
