Dying Breath

by Kory M. Shrum

  Please don’t recognize me. Please don’t recognize me. Azrael?

  “He’s breathing! Let’s go!” The other paramedic is in the back of the ambulance, working on Sam’s dad. The sheet has been ripped off, sliding off the back of the ambulance into the dirt. He’s cutting his shirt. I don’t know why. I’m not a medical professional. But if I have to guess, I’m sure it’s to prep him for the trip to the hospital.

  It’s not necessary, but I’ll let them do their thing and save myself the explanations.

  Roy turns back on me, torn between two opposing civic duties.

  “Get inside.” He lets go of my wrist. “It’s not safe out here.”

  I nod. He’s already jogging back to the ambulance. He climbs into the cab at the same moment the other paramedic jumps up to close the back doors.

  “Are you coming? Now or never!” the paramedic in the back shouts. He’s yelling at Sam.

  Sam looks at me, and then back at the ambulance. He chews on his bottom lip.

  I wave him on. I mouth, go on stupid. Go with your dad!

  If it were my mom, I’d go to the hospital in a heartbeat.

  What in the world is he waiting for?

  My heart fumbles when he leans into the ambulance and says something to the paramedic. Then he shuts the door and the ambulance speeds off. The tires leave a dust trail in the smoky air.

  I assume they’re headed for the hospital fifteen minutes away, the one Sam mentioned when he thought I’d been in a car accident.

  Sam stops in front of me.

  “What the hell?” I ask him. “Don’t you want to—”

  I don’t finish.

  Sam wraps his arms around me, lifting me off my feet into the air.

  He kisses me. His mouth is sticky and hot. I smell his sweat and cologne. It’s like the magazines in waiting rooms, with the perfume inserts you can rub all over your wrist or neck, or maybe your boobs, if you’re not easily embarrassed.

  I melt in his arms, each cell turns into a grain of sand and tumbles to the earth.

  When he lets go, I suck in a sharp breath.

  “Sorry! Sorry!” He puts me back on my feet as gently as if I’m one of those creepy porcelain dolls.

  “Why didn’t you go with him?” I say again, waving at the dust trail the ambulance left in its wake. The ambulance itself is long gone.

  “He’s alive,” he says as if this answers my question. “He’s alive.”

  I smile, feeling a little squirmy under his intense stare. “It’s the least I could do to compensate for a dead guy in your bed.” I mean it as a joke, anything to lighten the intensity of this moment…and that kiss. I’ve never been kissed so…hard before. Hard isn’t the right word. Excitedly? Exuberantly?

  Am I blushing?

  Sam doesn’t seem to notice. “You’re amazing. You’re…”

  “Hey,” I say, stopping him. I put my hand out in front of me only to discover a super firm pectoral muscle under my palm.

  I pull my hand back. Yes, okay, I’m blushing.

  I feel super weird now. I can’t tell if it’s because this boy kissed me or because he’s heaping on the praise. “My mom killed him. I was doing damage control. I don’t deserve a medal or anything. I owed you.”

  Because if I’d let Jesse kill Mom back at the base, when she had the chance, Sam’s dad would have never lost his life in the first place. Or if I’d never suggested the hotel to Mom at all, for that matter.

  He scoops me up again and holds me. I can see the sweat gleaming on his tanned neck.

  “You’re going to squeeze the life out of me,” I tell him, trying to get away. But I’m not trying that hard.

  “I’m sorry. Sorry.” He releases me again, but he looks like he’s going to bolt, arms spread, and screaming. He’s practically bursting. “But you saved my dad. I don’t understand how you did it, but you did! He was alive! I saw him breathin’ myself.”

  His happiness is infectious. I can’t help but smile, shielding my face from the sun with my hand. “He’ll be okay. The hospital is far enough away that he should have plenty of time to recover.”

  Assuming my parents don’t destroy the world and kill us all, I think. I decide not to say this. No one likes a pessimist.

  Sam’s brow crinkles together. “That’s why I stayed.”

  His response confuses me.

  “Because he’s going to recover?”

  “You’re in trouble.” His brow is still scrunched. “I want to help you.”

  He takes my hand and presses it against his chest again. My heart flutters. “You should’ve gone with your dad. It’s not safe here.”

  Sam doesn’t have any powers. Okay, I’m not Wonder Woman or anything, but at least I have NRD. If something happens and I die, I can resurrect if I hold onto my head.

  “You don’t get it. I owe you,” he says. “My dad’s everythin’ to me. I can’t thank you enough, Maisie.”

  Maisie.

  Hearing him say my name makes goosebumps rise on my arm. I feel strange again. Like I’m floating above my body. What’s wrong with me?

  “You’re welcome. But you shouldn’t come back to the house with me. I’m not kidding about it being unsafe. My mom—”

  “I know what she did. I get that she’s like you.” His face hardens. He looks way older when he scowls like this. “But you need help and you deserve help. Let me help you.”

  She’s like you.

  My stomach turns. Am I? Am I like my mom?

  I think of Dad lying in Sam’s bed. The healing neck. The lack of time.

  He’s wrong. I’m weaker than both. Half the time I don’t know what I’m doing or what I want. Mom and Dad are battering rams in comparison.

  Mom would kill her own father if she had to. Jesse can do it too. I’m the weakest one out of all of them.

  I search Sam’s face, looking for the deceit. It wouldn’t be the first time someone takes my feelings and uses them against me. Jesse’s right not to trust people. It’s better that way.

  But I don’t see anything dark in Sam’s face. I see big earnest eyes and a determined jaw.

  And if I’m honest with myself, I want him to stay.

  It isn’t the kiss or him rubbing my hand all over his beefy chest—god help me. It’s the fact he doesn’t want to leave me. I can’t remember the last time I had a friend. Someone my age. Someone who didn’t treat me like a freak, or like I was a kid the way my sister and her friends do.

  If anything happens to Sam, I’ll never forgive myself. He has to know that.

  “I don’t think you understand how dangerous this is. The—”

  Sam doesn’t let me finish. He places his hands on his hips and grins. “I’ve got skills too, you know.”

  His grin is ruthless. Oh man. Am I falling for this guy?

  “Do you?” I ask, unable to hide my grin.

  “I do, but if I fall short, I’ve got you,” he says and offers me his hand. “You can bring me back like you brought back my dad. I’m not scared of dying. Not if I’m going to wake up to you.”

  My face is on fire. It’s got to be. Maybe all this sunshine is making me slow and stupid.

  My chest vibrates. The ground under my feet shifts.

  “What the hell?” I turn and look back down the alleyway. “What’s that?”

  “Gunfire,” Sam says. “And…bombs?”

  Jesse. As soon as I think about her, her emotions flare to life inside me. Focus. Sadness. And whole lot of…regret? Without thinking, I start running in her direction. Toward the fighting.

  “Hey! Wait!” Sam says. “Wait up!”

  I can’t wait. She’s fighting Mom. My mother’s fear is like ice in my veins.

  Please. Please don’t hurt her.

  A minute ago, I could acknowledge that Mom was evil. She hurts good people like Sam’s dad. Now I’m begging for her life again. Why can’t my head and heart ever agree?

  My legs grow heavy, but I can’t quit. I run as fast as I can in the
direction of the explosions. I hit a gate and Sam’s there, picking me up and putting me on the other side, proving his helpfulness right away. Or at least, proving that he’s got some freaking long legs.

  The firebombing stops. A horrifying silence fills the air.

  I’m too late.

  I run harder.

  Jesse responds. Not in words. I’m not sure this new emotional tether works that way. But with her spirit…for lack of a better word. Or maybe consciousness. Some essential part of her, it acknowledges me. I reach out to Mom. I beg, hold on! Hold on! I’m coming, but I don’t feel anything back. Her fear is all over me. It makes my limbs weak and stomach sick. But I don’t sense her acknowledgment the way I felt Jesse’s.

  It’s one-sided.

  I don’t have time to consider what this means as Sam launches me over yet another fence and a cluster of trash cans.

  Then something else. Thunder rattles the bones in my chest.

  I slow, trying to understand what I’m hearing.

  Recognition dawns.

  The distinct whirl of blades cutting through the atmosphere.

  A helicopter in the distance.

  They’re here.

  Chapter 18

  Jesse

  The front door to the last house on the lane is already open. I close it so I don’t have to listen to Georgia scream and cry behind me. It’s like listening to a cat being skinned alive. It’s wretched. No matter how I feel about that hateful bitch, it doesn’t change how heartbreaking her pleas are. Or maybe I don’t have a stomach for begging.

  Somehow, she loves Caldwell. Whatever happened in the camps, whatever brought them together, it solidified a relationship I’ll never understand. Because of that, she doesn’t want him to die any more than I want Ally to be dead.

  Don’t think about that, I warn myself. Don’t start humanizing the monsters now.

  It helps to remember how many times Caldwell and Georgia have hurt Ally. Every bruise. Every stab wound. All of it piled on top of the emotional trauma. That makes the line between good and evil more clear.

  I find myself in a kitchen. The floor is standard linoleum, coated in dirt and blood. I follow this trail into the living room.

  By the coffee table, there’s a red stain on the carpet. It’s blood but the wetness is from something else. I bend down and press my fingers to the moist fibers. I sniff it. Hydrogen peroxide.

  So they stitched him up here.

  “Where’s the body?” I ask.

  Gabriel places a hand on my back. His fingers push, turning me toward a door on the right.

  I hold my breath and brace myself for whatever I might see on the other side, and cross the threshold.

  I’m assaulted by a splash of yellow. Sports paraphernalia soaks the walls. Against the left wall is a cluttered desk with a landslide of photos on it.

  Caldwell is in the bed.

  My whole body tenses.

  A piercing and vivid memory surfaces from somewhere deep in my brain-damaged mind.

  I was eight years old, had to be, because I came into the living room, proudly displaying my math test with a unicorn good job! sticker beside the A-. Unicorn stickers were a Mrs. Yu thing, Mrs. Yu being my third-grade teacher.

  “Look! Look!” I wailed. I’d run all the way up the driveway from where the bus had dropped me and into the house, desperate to show it to my parents. Instead of being instantly proud as I expected, my mother’s face twisted up in a rage.

  “Hush!” she hissed. She turned with a knife in her hand, a red bell pepper laid on the cutting board. “Your father’s sleeping.”

  I screeched to a halt in the kitchen where she’d intercepted me.

  “He’s exhausted. Let him sleep.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. “But look! I got an A!”

  “A-,” my mother corrected, turning back to the stove. She didn’t look at the sticker.

  Dejected, I crossed the kitchen into the living room, as there was no real barrier between the two. I saw Dad’s white socks propped up on one arm of the couch and his head on the mauve throw pillow.

  He wore his dark blue mechanic’s uniform, his eyes closed and mouth parted in sleep.

  Knowing my mother was going to yell at me, I crept toward him anyway, slipping off my backpack and stopping at the side of the couch, leaning one hip against it.

  His lips curled into a smile. Then one eye peeked open mischievously.

  “You’re pretending!” I whispered.

  He reached out and pulled me onto him, snuggling me into the small space between the cushions and his side. He stank of sweat, oil, and the strong orange-scented soap that all the mechanics used. I loved it.

  I thrust my crumpled test into his face. “I got an A-!”

  “A-!” he said, his face lighting up. “That’s amazing! Did you study hard?”

  “No!” I said.

  His mouth rounded in surprise and he snorted. “You’re a genius.”

  “Look at the sticker!” I pointed at the sticker, now curling at the edge and threatening to fall off the page from the stress of my abuse.

  My dad smoothed the sticker down with his fingers. The whites of his fingernails were blackened out with grease. Then he kissed my forehead, holding me tight against him.

  “Good job, baby. I’m so proud.”

  “Jesse! Did you wake your father?”

  “Quick!” Dad had said, his eyes big. “Pretend you’re asleep.”

  And we did. I laid in the crook of his arm until I fell asleep there. I’d slept curled against him like that until dinner time.

  I exhale and blink away the memory and the tears that’ve collected in the corners of my eyes.

  It’s hard to look at Caldwell and not see my father.

  My eyes start at his black boots, dusty with sand, and travel up his pants legs to the bottom of his blood-stained shirt, over his stomach and chest to his brutalized neck. I linger here. There’s a lot to take in with the Frankenstein-esque stitches and pinched flesh.

  It’s amazing how something as simple as sleep can transform the polished church leader, the charismatic demagogue, into the family man I knew long ago.

  His lips are parted, showing the tips of his front teeth.

  But he isn’t the same man, I remind myself. Eric Sullivan died and as Caldwell, he’s done more terrible things than I can count. The kind and attentive father who carried me in his arms, doted on his wife, and worked hard to support his family, that man was a good man.

  The man that crawled out of my father’s ashes murdered hundreds of thousands of people. And he will destroy the rest of world if given the chance.

  I tell myself this over and over again. I repeat it, hoping to drill it into my heart. He tried to stab me to death only hours ago.

  I feel the temperature change in the room. I turn toward Gabriel, who’s tucked in his black wings to accommodate the cramped space. Now he looks like a man, wingless, in a suit worthy of an Armani model.

  “Did you feel that?”

  Gabriel flickers. His body bleeds to transparency, and I can see the ASU poster on the wall behind him as if looking through an opaque water glass. The yellow brightens with each second.

  “What the hell?”

  Then I rush to the side of the bed where Caldwell’s body is stretched long. I stare down at his placid face, looking for any signs of life.

  My fingers brush the stitches, and I’m horrified by what I don’t see. Death. Decay. The line is healed, the flesh holds no red tinge of infection.

  “Shit,” I say. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  As if to make this point, Caldwell’s chest rises with his first breath. The soft whisper of exhalation slips past those parted lips.

  “Fuck!”

  You must hurry, Gabriel whispers. He’s whispering because that’s all he can manage as he flickers and fades beside me.

  I turn on the desk, shoving the pictures into the floor. I yank open drawers. There’s nothing.

  Unless
I want to bludgeon Caldwell to death with sports memoirs or papercut him to death with old photos, I’m screwed. There are no weapons here. I need something to destroy the brain with. The idea of bludgeoning him with a blunt object is a big fat no. I could burn him to death, but that will probably set the bed and then the house on fire too.

  My heart broke when my house burned. I can’t do that to someone else.

  I run to the kitchen. I cut the corner too close and clip my hip on the edge of the counter. A ping of pain shoots up to my collarbone as I rifle through more drawers.

  Soup ladles, cheese graters, measuring cups and spoons. What the fuck? I am not shoving a soup ladle up this man’s nose. Where are the knives? I throw a rolling pin and give up on that drawer in favor of another.

  Bingo!

  Long shiny knives with black handles lay in a drawer all their own. I grab one about half as long as my forearm.

  I stumble back to the room half expecting to find Caldwell gone, the bed empty, and another whirlwind adventure on the horizon. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gotten this freaking close only to have the devil slip through my fingers.

  But he’s there. The same sweet and sleeping face turned toward the wall.

  Jesse.

  I’m back on the bed, crawling on top of him. I place a knee on either side of his body and look down into that calm face. The carving knife in my hand shines in the sunlight pouring through the window.

  I raise the blade to Caldwell’s throat and hold it there against the stitches. It strikes me as some sort of bizarre Cut-Him-Yourself template. Follow the pre-drawn lines!

  I press the tip of the blade under his nose. I point up.

  It’s one thing to stab a man who’s actively trying to tear you apart. The lines are clear, the battle obvious. You or me, buddy.

  But finishing off a man while he’s in a coma, sleeping like a swaddled baby, feels unfair. It feels cheap. Like I’m cheating.

  It’s worse that I’m about to stab him through the nose, straight into the skull matter, all to be sure he freaking stays dead this time.

  I look ready to plunge the tip of the blade into Caldwell’s nostrils. My reflection gleams in the metal and my heart pounds harder. I hope I don’t faint. Real smooth, Sullivan.

  I have to ask. “What’s going to happen to me?”