Ossified State (Chronicles of the Wraith Book 2)

by S. C. Green

  I couldn’t say how long I stood there, staring at that grey hump on the landscape where there had once been a thriving, living city. I was less than twenty miles from home, but I may as well have been on another planet. May’s tiny face blazed across my vision, that wicked smile she’d inherited from her father lighting up the sky until my tears blurred it into nothing.

  The guilt came to me even as the grief gripped my body, an assault of shame at my own part in this. I should never have agreed to come. I should have sensed that the government would pull something like this. I should have brought May with me. I should never have taken the job in Reaper Affairs. Alain hadn’t wanted me to work there. He’d feared something like this would happen, and I’d laughed it off. Laughed. He hated it when I laughed at him when he was being serious, and I’d done it because I knew it would start a fight. And now I’d lost them both.

  I didn’t remember getting back in my car, but I must have done it, because the next thing I remember was speeding away toward New Vegas. My arms ached as I gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands. All I wanted to do was hold my daughter in my arms again. There had to be something I could do. I had to appeal to Arnold. He was the only one with power who might actually listen to me.

  As soon as I arrived at the office, Arnold buzzed me in. He shut the door and apologised, but explained he’d done it for my own good.

  “You’re lucky I managed to save your skin. There were plenty in the organisation who wanted you to remain inside. But I knew we need you here,” he said. “Especially given what you know about the wraith.”

  I didn’t register his words. I was numb all over. My family were inside that thing they’d just dropped on the city. I was many things, but none of them were lucky.

  “What’s happened to them? Where are my family? When will they be free?” I asked in a voice that didn’t belong to me. It was filled with rage. Panicked.

  “Raine.” Arnold held up his hands. “You have to believe me. This is so far above my head, I can’t even bend over and see my own arse. I got you out, but it had to be only you.”

  “My child is in there!” I screamed at him. “You couldn’t even let me save my child! What are you doing to her?”

  “If your wraith friend tells us what we need to know, she’ll be free. But trust me, Raine, the way things are going, she might be safer inside.”

  In Arnold’s defence, he didn’t call security as I proceeded to trash his office. He quietly slipped out the door while I smashed his snow globe collection, destroyed his MIT degree frame, and crashed chairs through his windows.

  They took me to a small apartment they’d set aside for me, gave me some drugs, and left me to my grief. At some point – and the details are a little hazy – it was made clear to me that I would need to get back to work or else I’d end up thrown inside a prison like the rest of the Reapers they’d collected. Red was my only hope of seeing my daughter again.

  So I went back, but I didn’t intend to play on their terms. I told Red everything that had happened, that the government had trapped everyone inside the dome, including my family, and his Annabelle. I begged him, pleaded with him, screamed at him to tell me how to destroy the Reapers. I promised him he would be spared. I promised to save Annabelle, but still he would not do it. He would not speak again, not while the recordings were running and Arnold was watching.

  Finally, in desperation, I snuck in one night, shut off the recorders, and Red and I had a little talk. He confessed that he didn’t know how to kill the wraith. He didn’t know what he was, any more than I did. He’d led me to believe he knew because he wanted me to reunite him with Annabelle. We’d made a pact that if I could find a way to get into the dome, I would bring him with me as long as he kept me safe from the other wraith.

  Of course, Arnold found out about my little late-night conversation. They’d been recording me secretly for weeks, fearing I was part of the growing Reaper resistance movement they were trying to root out. That was the last straw, as far as Reaper Affairs was concerned. They sent me to jail for treason.

  All the years I’d lived in filth in a tiny cell, pumped with drugs and forced to reap, all the years I’d watched that silent dome from the monitoring station, I’d remembered that pact.

  A Reaper and a wraith, agreeing to work together. Such a pact was unimaginable. And yet, here we were, speeding toward the dome, ready to break every rule in the book.

  Ahead of us, the monitoring station jutted out of the debris, our floodlights illuminating long shadows over the ruined landscape. Beyond it, the dome towered into the heavens, its smooth grey surfaces faintly glowing with that strange, ethereal light.

  I slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded to a stop at the base of the telescope tower. I flung my door open and swung myself out. A stiff wind had kicked up, blowing my coat around my legs. I slammed my door shut just as Red floated through it and turned to pull Jack from the backseat.

  “Don’t …waste time …on me …” he wheezed.

  “Nonsense. We’ve got to get that bullet out.” I half carried, half-dragged him from the car, through the door, and up the stairs to our observation room and living quarters.

  He kept protesting, and I kept ignoring him. I laid Jack down on his bed in his cramped room and went to find the first aid kit.

  We each had a tiny, windowless bedroom – they used to be supply closets for telescope equipment – that opened out into the kitchen and shared living area. Not much, but definitely nicer than the cell I’d lived in for years. I dug around under the sink in the kitchen and found the emergency medical kit. Jack and I had compiled it from gear found in nearby houses and the local medical centre. You never knew what kind of surgery you’d need to perform out here. Inside, I located a scalpel and a pair of forceps – hopefully large enough to do the trick--as well as antibiotic sachets and all the saline solution I could ever want.

  That done, I rooted through the pantry. “Where did we hide that last bottle of scotch?”

  “In the stationary cupboard,” Jack coughed out.

  “Right.” I rushed off to get it. Sure enough, it was stored in a box that used to hold printer paper. I unscrewed the bottle and passed it to Jack, then tugged off my belt and handed that to him, too.

  “Finally stripping for me.” He grinned but it was shaky.

  “Just drink before I take that scotch off you and drink it myself. You know how much I hate blood.”

  Jack tilted his head and tossed back a third of the bottle.

  I put the kettle on to boil. While I waited, I pulled apart the wound, inspecting it for shards of the bullet and mentally running over my medical training in my head. If I left a single piece inside Jack, he’d be a goner. It was a neat little hole, the edges slightly jagged. I double-checked, but there was no exit wound. I wiped the area down with saline.

  The kettle hissed. I poured the boiling water into a bowl and dumped all the implements into it. The tips of my fingers burned as I picked up the scalpel, but the sting couldn’t have been as bad as what Jack was feeling.

  He bit down on my belt, his whole body tensing, as I used the scalpel to enlarge the hole enough so I could pull it open and get inside. Blood oozed out, coating my fingers. My stomach twisted, and I fought the urge to gag. I’d always been squeamish about blood and gore and wounds. Whenever May scraped her knee or cut herself as a kid, I’d always get Alain to handle it. But Alain wasn’t here now, and I could hardly ask Red to hold the forceps. It was all down to me.

  I dropped the scalpel and picked up the forceps, using them to feel inside the wound for the bullet. Jack stiffened as the forceps slid through his muscle, and he groaned loudly. I screwed my face up, fighting the urge to vomit. Finally, the forceps brushed against the bullet. It had lodged itself into the bone of his leg, but as best as I could discern, it appeared to be completely intact. I sucked in a breath, willing my stomach to stop squirming, and went in with the forceps. I managed to grab it on both sides and wiggle
it, trying to dislodge it from the bone.

  Jack bellowed, his whole body bucking. He knocked the forceps from my hand, and they clattered across the floor. I retrieved them, washed them again in spirits, and went in for a second time. I clamped my whole arm around Jack’s leg, using my body weight to hold it in place.

  His groans turned into horrific cries. I tried to tune them out as I dug around the bullet, and finally, finally, I was able to wriggle it out of the bone. I dropped it into Jack’s empty water glass, holding it up in front of his weeping eyes.

  “The bullet is out.” I wiped the sweat from his forehead, then mine too. “Now I just have to stitch you up.”

  He replied with a string of obscenities unbecoming of his usual all-American manner, and I flipped him the bird. I was doing the best I could.

  I tipped a sachet of antibiotics into the wound, the way I’d seen soldiers do it in the movies. I knew from my nursing training days (I never finished my training because of all my fainting at the sight of blood. You might’ve thought I would’ve figured that out before training, but I’d had this crazy notion that I’d get used to it) that I’d cut through serious muscle. I needed to stitch that together before I worked on the skin. I stitched as slowly and carefully as I could, trying to pretend I was sewing a tea cosy instead of my friend’s leg. But that didn’t work so great. Bile rose in my throat, and I couldn’t take it any longer. I tied the last knot, slapped a waterproof dressing over the wound, leaned over the bed, and threw up on the floor.

  I gasped, my stomach heaving. “All done now. You’re welcome.”

  Jack spat out the belt and chugged another huge gulp of whisky. “Raine,” he slurred.

  “Don’t speak. I’m fine, Jack. I have to get you comfortable—”

  “Raine.” He coughed. “You have to go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Get to the dome. Finish the mission. Find May. You’ve already wasted enough time—”

  “Shut up, Jack. You’re drunk.”

  “I’m not,” he slurred. “Okay, maybe a little. But that’s exactly why you have to go. I’m drunk. My leg is fucked. I’m only going to slow you down. Leave me here. Get into the dome.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you, Jack.”

  “I’m ordering you, and I outrank you.”

  “Not when you’re drunk, you don’t.”

  “Dammit!” Jack yelled. “I’m not going to be able to walk on this leg for days. In the meantime, they’ll find us and arrest us, and you’ll have lost your chance. Besides, you don’t need me. You’ve got that wraith. Who’s going to attack you with him around?”

  “But Lacey—” Jack’s twin sister was inside the dome, as well.

  Jack squeezed his eyes shut. A spasm of pain shot across his features. “I’m no good to her like this. Keep an eye out for her, would you?”

  “Of course.”

  The tears that had been threatening spilled over. We’d been waiting for this day for so long. Jack had lost just as much as me to the dome. If I had been in his place, watching him leave while I nursed a bullet wound, I’d be feeling pretty goddamned bitter. I reached down and embraced him, my tears falling on his shoulder.

  Jack reached up a shaky hand and patted my back. “Raine?”

  “Yeah?”

  His eyes swam with pain and longing. “Give ‘em hell for me.”

  “It will be my pleasure.”

  A few moments later, Jack passed out. I rolled him into the recovery position in case he threw up from the whisky. Then I placed some of the things he might need close to the bed--a bucket, the first aid kit, all the painkillers we had, an old tray of microwave mac and cheese, a tall glass of water, and the whisky bottle. I stood back and surveyed his now peaceful face, taking in his strong jaw and the way his long eyelashes fanned his cheeks, the way his blond hair was matted against his face. He still looked like a college football star, but one who had just passed out at a frat party and was about to be teabagged by his mates. Poor guy.

  Doubts niggled at my head at leaving him like this. No, not just leaving him like this, but leaving, period. We’d been cooped up in close proximity for years, and now my chest clenched at the idea of going off on my own. I opened my mouth to say something, but realised I didn’t really know what to say. He couldn’t hear me, anyway. I took a deep breath, turned on my heel, and walked out of the room.

  Once in the hall, I switched gears. I’d taken care of him as best I could. I needed to focus on the task ahead – for me and for Jack.

  Red was waiting in the main control room, floating between our desks and inspecting all the monitors and machinery. “What witchcraft is thisss?”

  “They’re for monitoring the dome.” I jabbed my finger at the window, where the dome glowed pale grey in the orange morning light. “They’re similar to the machines I used to study you, only this time they’re measuring air pressure, temperature, that kind of thing.”

  “That’sss where my Annabelle isss?” Red peered out the window, his gaunt face twisting with pain. It was odd to see something like emotion on a wraith’s face.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “None of thessse are making any noissse.” Red frowned at the wall behind us. “The machinesss in the calaboossse alwaysss made noissse.”

  My heart flipped over and sputtered. I didn’t want to tell him what Jack and I had discovered, that there weren’t any wraith left inside the dome. He’d likely not take it well, and I might lose my one chance to find May.

  “We turned them off,” I blurted. “Before we, uh, left to come find you. Jack is very big on conserving energy.”

  Red nodded, turning back to the window and studying the globe. I shoved my hand in my pocket, and my fingers closed over a smooth, metal object. Jack’s pistol. I took it out and stared at it, shuddering at the weight of it in my hands.

  “That’sss a fine gun,” Red said, peering at the weapon. “Pretty as a red heifer. I had two jussst like it. Courssse, I ain’t ssshootin’ no more.”

  “Neither am I.” I stuffed the gun back into my pocket. I didn’t like carrying irons. They made me nervous. Guns often resulted in blood, and then more fainting and puking. Not a good time had by all.

  Jack must’ve slipped it into my pocket while I was moving him inside. In my other pocket was a handful of bullets. Even when he was in agony, he was still thinking about me. He was a good man.

  “How do we get inssside?” Red asked.

  “Since that flash went off in the dome, it’s opened up a gap of sorts,” I explained. “Getting through to the other side is as easy as walking through the door, as long as you know where the door is.”

  Again, that wasn’t entirely true. But Red didn’t need to know that.

  I tucked the gun back into my pocket and transformed into my bird form. The grey room swirled and twisted as my bird eyes struggled to focus. The first few seconds were always a little disorienting as my body grew accustomed to the shock of a whole new plethora of sights and sensations. Now, the room where Jack and I comfortably worked seemed claustrophobic, too small for maneuvering while in flight. I tipped my body toward the door.

  I beckoned with my wing for Red to follow me out the door, around the corner, and down the road to an old apartment block that butted up next to the dome. One entire side of the building had caved in when the dome had sliced through it. Only three of the apartments had survived intact, and the rest had at least one wall torn away, their furnishings and possessions ravaged by weather and looters, like every other building nearby. What made this building different was its unusually deep basement.

  Before the building was transformed into a brutalist apartment complex, it must have been some kind of government facility, or perhaps a financial institution. The concrete sub-basement stretched for what seemed like miles underground, floor after floor of cold concrete walls and lightless halls. We’d only explored it once by torchlight, just in case those dark rooms yielded a surprise stash of chocolate cookies
. What I wouldn’t do for some chocolate. We didn’t find any cookies, but twenty floors down we’d found something that became the focus of our lives.

  A tunnel.

  The small hatch Jack had noticed on the wall of the building led into a dark tunnel. The tunnel pre-dated the building by a good two-hundred years. It was lined with brick, and the air inside was thick with damp that clung to my throat.

  “It’s probably part of the old bootlegger’s network,” Jack had said as we shone our torches over the surface, the beams barely penetrating into the gloom. “There are tunnels all over the city leading down to the river where boats would wait to take illicit cargo to the larger cities. They must have incorporated it into the building when they erected it.”

  “Why is it so deep?”

  Jack shrugged. “Do you think it’s deep enough?”

  I understood instantly what he’d meant. The dome stretched far below the surface, the strange grey shell digging great fissures into the earth, preventing those inside from being able to dig their way underneath it. But it had to stop somewhere. Could this tunnel go under the dome? Could it be a way into the city?

  There had been only one way to find out. We’d crawled into the tunnel; I took the lead with Jack grunting behind me as his broad shoulders scraped against the narrow walls. I imagined bootleggers trying to maneuver heavy barrels of hooch through these tunnels. It seemed an impossible task, but I’d learned early in my life that nothing was impossible when it could come between a man and his drink.