Dying Breath

by Kory M. Shrum

  I whirl with a scream bubbling from my lips.

  “Sorry! Sorry,” he holds his hand out. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

  I put one hand over my heart. Not a man. A boy. My age, give or take, and balanced on the seat of a bicycle. He’s wearing a Sun Devils cap on his head and a yellow jersey that shows off his considerable biceps.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. “Do you need help?”

  “Oh hi,” I manage to choke out. “You scared me.”

  “Were you in an accident?” he asks, his eyes big.

  I look down at my bloody clothes and gimpy leg.

  “Yeah. But we’re okay. My mom went inside to use the phone.”

  “Can I get you something?” he asks. He’s already off the bike and moving closer. I take a step back, and he stops. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls,” I say. What a weird, dumb thing to say.

  He frowns and lifts his cap. He scratches his head before yanking the cap back down. It gives me a chance to see his big ears. They stick out on either side of his head, but surprisingly, it’s not goofy. It adds to his charm. “We don’t have a hospital here. It’s about fifteen miles up I-10. If you’ve got car trouble…”

  “No, no.” I force a smile when I realize how weird that came out. He’s looking back at the truck. I don’t want him to look at the truck, think about the truck, or go near the truck. Not with a dead body baking in the cab. “We’re fine. The truck’s fine. I’m waiting for my mom. That’s all.”

  “Are you sure? We’ve got Stanley. He was a medic in the army.” He leans over the shiny silver handlebars and grins up. “And I could at least get some ice for your ankle.”

  Okay, athletes aren’t usually my type. I prefer pasty goth boys who like to talk about relationships in terms of centuries, but here I am, grinning at this big-eared boy.

  Maybe those big ears and goofy grin got half the girls in Cochise pregnant.

  One never can tell.

  “I’m okay.” I’m grinning because if one random boy from Cochise can make me feel all aflutter, chances are I’ll get over Gideon in no time, which is awesome because I don’t want to spend the rest of my short life pining over a playboy.

  “What’s your name?”

  He looks pleased by the question. He pushes the bill of his cap up enough to look at me with both eyes. “Sam.”

  “Like Sam Winchester?” A hunka hunk of burning love on my favorite television series. “Great name.”

  “No, I’m Sam Mercy. Never heard of Winchester. He play ball?”

  Okay, the cutie isn’t a geek. -10 points. Maybe he has many other redeemable qualities. “No. He’s a character on a TV show.”

  “Oh,” he says. “You going to be in town for long?”

  “Nope. Passing through. We’re heading to—” to my immediate demise. Can’t say that. I blurt the first city that comes to mind. “Uh, San Francisco. To visit family.”

  “Cool.”

  “What about you? You live here?”

  “Oh yeah. All my life. But I ain’t going to die here. Next year I’ll start up at ASU. I’m gonna be a Sun Devil. I can’t wait.” He pulls on the handlebars of his bike, yanking it up into a wheelie. On his feet, I realize how tall he is.

  “What do you want to study?” Honestly, I don’t care. I’m hot. I’m sweaty, but I can’t go back to the truck. Sam might come over and try to talk to me. That’d be horrible, given Dad’s dead body. But I can’t walk away either. What if he gets curious about a truck with a door missing? I shift my weight and wipe at my soaked neck, already considering what I might ask him after he runs out of things to say about college.

  “They’ve got a great sports med program.”

  “So you want to be a sports doctor?”

  “I want to play ball if I can, but you’ve got to have something to fall back on.”

  “So practical,” I say. “Still, it’s got to be hard packing up and leaving your home like that.”

  I think about Chicago and the beautiful lake stretching as far as the eye can see. My chest aches.

  He shrugs, grin bright. “Got to see the world while you’re young. That’s what my daddy says. I can’t wait. It’s gonna be the best four years of my life.”

  “Your dad sounds like a smart guy.”

  He lifts his cap and scratches his head again. “He is. I got real lucky there. You could meet him if you want. He’s right inside.” He points toward the saloon-like hotel. “My dad owns the place.”

  And you could meet mine. He’s dead. Over there in that truck.

  “Maybe later. If I leave this spot, Mom will freak out.” Another half lie. Mom’s freaking out all on her own.

  “Do I know you?” he asks, his brows coming together. “You sure do look familiar.”

  “I have one of those faces.” I force a laugh. I hope it doesn’t sound as tight and crazy to him as it does to me. If he does recognize me, it’s because my face was plastered all over the news for the last couple of days. I’m the victim of a supposed kidnapping…total B.S., or at least it was total B.S. when the bulletin went out. I am kidnapped now.

  Sam tilts his face up to the sky. “I wish you’d let me get some ice for your ankle. And maybe a coke. You look thirsty.”

  Is that another way of saying I look like a red-faced pig?

  I frown. “I don’t have any money on me.”

  His enthusiasm doesn’t falter. “I’ve got ya. I’ll be right back.”

  He pops another wheelie and angles his bike in the direction of a store two doors down from the hotel. My chest relaxes as he peddles away. He doesn’t even glance at the truck as he heads toward the storefront with cases of Pepsi filling the glass windows.

  I try to picture Sam at Arizona State, in his Sun Devil jersey, carrying all his books from class to class. Going out with friends on the weekend.

  I sigh. The kid doesn’t know how good he’s got it. Not because he’s got an awesome dad, but with the long, bright future ahead of him.

  Ice stabs me in the chest, melts and pours into my guts. A sucking sensation tugs at my insides, and I reach out and grab the side of the truck to steady myself. I barely register the scorching metal as I’m pulled underwater by a strong hand.

  Someone’s dying.

  Someone’s life is draining away, and they are taking me with them. Then as quickly as the feeling came, it shuts off. Kaput.

  I look around, but I don’t see anything. No bodies in the street. No running or shouting or screaming. No cause for alarm.

  But I know death when I feel it.

  Mom bursts out of the office and into the sun.

  I know something’s wrong as soon as I see her.

  She hurries down the stairs, practically running toward the truck. Her face is tense, all the muscles screwed up with emotion.

  “What—” I begin, but I don’t get the whole sentence out of my mouth.

  “Get in the truck.”

  I look at the storefront where Sam disappeared through clear bright doors. No sign of him.

  “Get in the truck!” My mother screams. “Now!”

  I hop up into the cab, and the truck is thrown into reverse before I manage to buckle myself in. Seatbelts are always important, but more so when you don’t even have a door.

  The truck lurches forward.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “There’s no gas station in this town. Can you believe it? What a shithole!”

  I want to defend Sam’s town. How bad can it be if it’s got someone like him?

  “We need to ditch this anyway. We’ll trade it.” She’s not even looking at the road as she drives. She’s looking at a small piece of plastic and then up at the street signs.

  “What are you doing?” I shove Dad off me for the hundredth time. I’m reaching my limit of corpse contact for the day. I don’t complain because all Mom will say is he wouldn’t be a corpse if you’d wake him up.

  “T
here!” She points at the sign and whips the truck onto Main Street. She slams on her brakes in front of a house at the corner of Main and Smith. She looks at the plastic square in her hand again, and I realize it’s a driver’s license.

  My stomach drops. “Whose license is that?”

  “This is the house. Help me get your dad inside.”

  “Mom, whose house is this?” I ask again, but she’s already thrown her door open and is dragging Dad out the driver’s side, her arms laced under his.

  I hop out and go around to the other side of the truck. Dad sags in her arms. His neck is stretched to the left, and I can see the gristle of his esophagus. I swallow vomit.

  “Pick up his feet. We need to get inside.”

  I lift Dad’s dusty shoes up by taking a heel in each hand. My lower back cramps like I’m a hundred instead of sixteen years old.

  We carry him through a white gate and across more sand and clumps of dead grass. Mom makes me take most of his weight while she fishes some keys out of her pocket.

  “Seriously, whose place is this? Why do you have their keys?”

  “The hotel’s out of order,” Mom says. “But the owner was nice enough to give me the keys to his house and his license for his address.”

  I frown harder. I wouldn’t give some stranger my house keys. And didn’t Sam say his dad was the owner of the saloon? Is Sam’s dad really that nice? Is that where Sam gets his kindness from?

  “He said we can make ourselves at home. By the time he gets off work, your dad will be awake, and we’ll be long gone.”

  The door to the one-story ranch house pops open, and we fall inside, pulled by the gravity of Dad’s body. Mom helps me drag him into the kitchen before marching out again.

  “Where are you going?” I call after her.

  “I want to hide the car in the garage,” Mom says. “So no one will see it on the street.”

  Then she’s gone, leaving me alone in a stranger’s house with a corpse at my feet.

  I’m a fool if I think it can’t get any worse.

  Chapter 6

  Jesse

  The police scanner is surprisingly helpful. Who knew cops worked so hard to fully inform each other when they conversed via radio?

  As I try to put as much distance between Donnie’s garage and moi, I learn a few miles away, two people working in a hotel were killed.

  No signs of trauma. Just dead.

  Georgia’s calling card.

  Her black death ribbons render a person lifeless. No visible signs of violence like split skin or bruises. Rachel’s telekinesis could do that too. Georgia has both powers now.

  I remember Cochise, the tiny desert town we passed on our drive to the military base. I’m certain I can find it again.

  The only problem is by the time I get there the town will be swarming with cops. It’s likely someone will recognize Donnie’s truck if he’s the only mechanic around here, and they’ll wonder what the hell I’m doing driving it. Or maybe my face will give me away.

  I am a wanted fugitive after all. Anyone who watches the news is going to recognize me on sight.

  It’s only fifteen minutes before Cochise appears on the horizon.

  I don’t see any other way to drive into the town except head on. It’s not like there’s a forest to hide in or a big mountain to creep around. Barren desert stretches in all directions.

  If Georgia and Maisie are there—that’s where I’m heading.

  How will I know if they’re there? They could have hit and run. That would have been the smart thing to do.

  “Find her,” Gabriel says.

  I frown. “I didn’t put a tracker in her butt.”

  Black tufts of his hair fall across his cheeks and cover his bright eyes briefly before it’s sucked back toward the open window. “You can find her.”

  “Again, no way I can call her up and ask for directions,” I say, and I point at the scanner. “And cops are the only people I can find with that thing. So…nope.”

  “Monroe reestablished a connection between you. Sense her location using this connection.”

  I remember the bizarre chicken blood ritual Monroe did to reestablish said connection between Maisie and me. It was a connection that was always supposed to exist between the partis, but apparently, it was severed the moment Caldwell murdered Chaplain, a psychopath with a penchant for snuff films.

  God, it seems like a million years ago since I sat on Monroe’s floor and let him smear blood on my face. But it was days. Days.

  “I can feel her?” I ask.

  Gabriel surveys the horizon with a thoughtful expression. He looks like he should spout some poetry right now. “Her angel does not oppose me. She will not be hidden.”

  “You have a friend?” I can’t hide my surprise. “I thought I was your only friend.”

  I pout and he only grins.

  “You’ve been cheating on me?” I finally comprehend what he said. “Wait, Maisie has an angel?”

  “Yes,” he says. He turns away now, gazing at the horizon. “She is not like the others. She is more—” He searches for the words.

  “Maisie has a lady angel? You’re cheating on me with a lady angel?”

  Gabriel’s face blanks, becoming unreadable.

  He stiffens as if he isn’t entirely comfortable with my assessment.

  “Gabe, how could you?” I quiver my lower lip for show.

  His eyes go all squinty. “I believe the word designated for this affiliation is ‘ally.’ One whose objective is the same as your own.”

  “If two people want sex, then they have the same objective,” I say, grinning. “But I wouldn’t call them allies.”

  “She is my ally. She will not resist your connection.”

  It’s funny watching him insist it’s only platonic between him and this so-called lady angel. I want to tease him more, explore this opportunity to learn more about Gabriel and his people and their purpose, but I’m distracted by the city manifesting on the horizon.

  Heat shimmers along the desert floor, glimmering in the air like gasoline. Through the haze, I can see buildings. They’re bleached by the sun, amplifying the sunlight assailing them. Some shadow flits over the hood of the car, and for a minute I’m sure it’s Gabriel. When I turn and look out the driver’s side window, it’s a bird of prey. The sleek outline of its body and fan of its tail unmistakable. But from this distance, I can’t tell if it’s a hawk or owl or something else.

  “Contact her,” Gabriel says again.

  “Using this connection?”

  “Call to her.”

  “That’s super vague. If I opened an owner’s manual that only said use me, it would be the shittiest manual ever.”

  “Here,” Gabriel says and taps the side of his head with an index finger.

  Like I do with you, I say, mouth closed, mind open.

  Yes.

  I don’t close my eyes. Hello, I’m driving. But I do think about Maisie. I conjure a picture of the kid in my head. She rolls Winston over onto his back and exposes his little pug belly. She scratches him ruthlessly as his feet kick the air. A large pink tongue hangs out the side of his mouth.

  Maisie? I pretend I’m talking to her. To the kid scratching the pug belly in my mind. Maisie, can you hear me?

  Nothing.

  I try again, concentrating. Maisie!

  This time, I get a reaction. No words. No mental picture comes zinging back across the desert. But something like a ping goes off inside me. The deep, resonant echo of a homing beacon. My mental signal bounced off something and has come sailing back

  “They’re still there,” I say, smiling at Gabriel.

  He doesn’t look surprised.

  “You knew!” I accuse, gripping the steering wheel.

  He says nothing.

  “Well, do you also know how I’m going to sneak into town without running into the police? I bet they already see me coming, dust clouds and all.” I turn in my seat and look out the back window. Dust bill
ows up behind me into the sky. “So much for subtlety.”

  “There.” Gabriel points toward a road right of town. It’s far right of the central cluster. And probably about the closest thing to a back road I can hope for. “Take it.”

  I don’t argue. Either he’s a supernatural being who can see the situation better than I can, or he’s a figment of my imagination. If the latter, then wouldn’t his choice be my choice anyway? Brings a whole new meaning to his guess is as good as mine, right?

  The tires gain traction as the sand turns into a paved road. After so long blasting across the wild desert it’s weird to drive on something solid.

  I slow my speed but not enough to look like a creeper. Off-white buildings line the roads, but they are spaced kind of far apart. The houses huddle closer together once I turn down a side street, and I pass an elementary school and a laundromat.

  There’s the saloon with the words Cochise Hotel painted in drippy black paint over the door. Out front, I count them, one, two, three, four cop cars are parked, lights and sirens off. Near the entrance stands a cluster of cops in brown uniforms, buzzing like flies around a corpse.

  Speaking of a corpse, two men in white uniforms wheel out a gurney with a lump of a body on it. I assume it’s a body. I can’t see what lies beneath the sheet, but it seems like a lot of pomp and circumstance for a couple of pillows.

  I pull the car to a stop two full blocks away, parking Donnie’s ride behind a big ice truck.

  “So Georgia went whacko and knocked off a couple of people?” I whisper to Gabriel. I don’t know why I’m whispering. I mean, I know why. I’m worried the cops will hear me. But I’m not sure they can hear me from way over there.

  I’m not going to take my chances and find out.

  “She was recognized,” Gabriel says. “As you will be. Do not linger here.”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault you didn’t give me invisibility. Invisibility would be super useful right now.” I’m arguing, but he’s right. I’m already backing the truck out from behind the ice truck, on the lookout for a nice quiet side street to hide in.

  I’m going to stash this truck—get rid of it before Donnie reports it—and use the ping call and response to find Maisie. She’s got to be around here. Of course, she’s probably also with Georgia, and I’m sure that will go over well when I demand she gives Maisie up without a fight.