After The Apocalypse

by Roseman, Josh

  The thing is, other than the one car that drives past, either bringing someone home from a late night out or taking someone to an early shift at work, nothing weird seems to be going on. The neighborhood is quiet. I hear nocturnal wildlife in the trees; I see the occasional light on upstairs -- insomniacs reading or watching television. A few yards glisten in the streetlamps, although I don't know why someone would water the lawn at this time of year.

  Nothing weird except the pain and the tingling.

  I keep walking.

  I'm not going very fast, but I am counting the houses as I pass them. Once I get to the twentieth or so, I catch sight of a person walking down the street far ahead of me. I stay back, keeping a close watch and, at the same time, trying to figure out why my evil-sense is still making bile burn the back of my throat.

  When the person turns to go up the walk of one of the houses, I can see in the yellowish streetlamp light that it is definitely a woman. She goes to the front door, opens it, and is inside and out of sight. Probably just taking a very-early-morning stroll. Maybe trying to tire herself out because she can't sleep.

  It'd be nice to be asleep.

  As I walk past the house the woman went into, my stomach roils sharply and it takes everything I have to not spit up on the neatly-kept front lawn. I manage to keep going, though, until I'm at the twenty-sixth house, one past hers, and I duck behind some bushes so I can keep the place under surveillance.

  A minute later, I feel a few surges of unpleasantness. A minute after that, the woman comes out of the house and starts walking down the street. Before she can see me, I flash to my fallback position -- a stand of thick bushes across the street -- and wait for her to pass.

  Then I make for the house. Because this is weird.

  What's weirder is that the door isn't locked -- or even latched. I step inside, all my senses on high alert, just in case the owners have a gun or there's a dog or something, but nothing happens. My eyes, already adjusted to the dark, find the alarm control panel next to the door, but all its lights are off. I poke experimentally at the buttons, but there's no beep, no blink. It's just... dead.

  My heart starts to sink. Quick as I can, I check the main floor, but no one's here.

  They must all be upstairs.

  I move at a sprinter's pace, racing up the stairs, and I open the first door I see. It's a huge master suite: bathroom off to one side, bedroom on the other, and straight ahead a walk-in closet bigger than my entire kitchen. I stand in the entryway and stare at the bed.

  Two people. I'm too pragmatic to hope that they're asleep. I'm already pretty sure who's behind this.

  I check both of them anyway. No pulse, no breathing, and I know no amount of CPR is going to bring them back.

  At least their eyes are closed. At least they died in their sleep.

  I take out my phone and text the new information to the Professor and Dr. Colibri as I continue along the upstairs hallway.

  Both doors at the far end are standing open. I don't want to look, but I have to.

  A teenage girl and a middle-school-aged boy, both dead, both gone.

  Hot, wet anger spreads through my chest. I flash down the stairs and out the front door, just in time to see the woman coming out of another house. I know without having to ask that she's just killed another family.

  "How many?" I ask, moving so fast that it must look to the woman that I appeared out of thin air. "How many have you killed?"

  She feints in my direction and I step back -- the body Death has taken is that of an older, grandmotherly woman with her hair in a bun and two pairs of glasses hanging from ribbons around her neck. She's wearing pants and one of those... well, for lack of a better term, I've always called them "grandma shirts" -- t-shirts with swirly gold-and-silver paint patterns. My grandmother had a lot of them. Some had rhinestones; Death's doesn't. It feels weird to be on the verge of running away from a woman like this, but Death's touch can kill me just as easily as it can anyone else.

  "Answer me," I say, keeping my voice low. "How many have you killed?"

  "Does it matter?" The voice is taunting, incongruous as it comes from the body of a woman who should be offering cookies or volunteering at the playhouse. "They're dead. More are going to die tonight, and you can't stop me." She laughs, all broken-glass and gravel -- Death's real laugh in a mouth unprepared for such a thing. "You can't even touch me, Alexandra."

  "I'll be damned if I don't try, though."

  "No, you'll just be damned." Another laugh, another feint, and I get well out of reach. "Now, if you'll excuse me..." She goes into another house, the door no barrier to her at all, and my fists clench.

  She's going to kill the people in there, and there's not a thing I can do about it. I can't touch her.

  But... but something is tickling the back of my brain. Some sort of detail that I'm missing.

  I stare down at my hands -- hands which, until now, have never failed me -- and know that I can't touch her with them.

  Then it hits me.

  Before I can consider the possible consequences, I'm pulling open the garage door of the house Death is in. I flip on the lights -- no point in being stealthy, not when lives are at stake -- and, after my eyes adjust, I scan the place. No workbench, no gardening equipment, but a bunch of scuba stuff in one corner.

  Scuba divers wear gloves, don't they?

  I'm there in an instant, digging through the dive bags, and there they are: blue-and-black scuba-diving gloves. They're a little big on me, but I don't have time to complain; I just tighten the velcro as much as I can and make for the door to the house. My stomach cramps up and I know I'm too late for at least one person, but I don't let it stop me. There could be more people in here that I can still save.

  It's only seconds to get upstairs, to catch Death in the hallway, to drive a vicious punch into her chest and send her crashing to the ground. "That's enough," I say, almost snarling. "Get the hell out of here."

  "Oh, you think I will, do you?" She gets to her feet, slow but confident, and reaches out. Her scythe coalesces out of thin air and now I'm wishing I'd grabbed the push-broom from the garage to make a staff of my own. "I think perhaps you'd better leave instead."

  "Why?"

  "Because you don't want to kill this body."

  "Well, no," I admit. I'm in a fighting stance, light on my feet, ready to get out of the way of that sharp, long blade at the end of the scythe. "I don't want to kill anybody."

  It's then that I realize someone else is in the hall with us. Someone short, with a young voice, asking what's going on.

  Oh, fuck!

  "Get out of here!" I snap. "Get downstairs and call the police."

  "Who are you?"

  "Alexandra." I turn and spare him a quick glance. "Now go!"

  He runs for it. Death is wearing an ugly smile in her kind face. "I'll get him too," she says. "It's only a matter of time. Everybody dies."

  "Yeah. I know. Including you."

  "You're not going to kill me."

  "You're awfully confident."

  "I am when the body belongs to Jacqueline Stearns."

  "Who?"

  The smile is even worse now, if such a thing is possible. "Jacqueline Stearns. Mother of Lisa Stearns."

  "And?" I move closer to Death. "Should I care?"

  "Your friend Jake will care when Alexandra's killed his wife's mother."

  "Shit. "

  She nods, then turns to go to the next door, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I can't let her do this.

  Jake will just have to understand.

  I grab Death by the shoulders, whirling and throwing her down the hall. She hits the far wall and tumbles down the stairs. When I get down there, the kid is cowering in a corner, phone in his hand, hopefully talking to the police, but I can't spare him any time. Death is up and I meet her charge, ducking under a swing of the scythe and kicking her through the still-open front door. She lands hard on the lawn but doesn't stay down; she's up in
a couple of seconds, coming for me.

  I need something to fight off that scythe. Something I can swing. Something metal.

  I look around the foyer, but there's nothing that jumps out at me. No baseball bags on the floor with bats to swing, no closet with a coat rack--

  Rack. Rack-like things. Metal bars.

  I check the windows. Then I float up and grab the drapery rod. It's another second's work to rip the fabric away, leaving me with a serviceable four-foot-long metal bar.

  Perfect.

  I'm out the door and advancing on Death again as soon as I can. The scythe swoops through the air, her body dancing in ways it was never meant to as she wields the weapon. She's as fast as me, which means my speed is no advantage -- and, in fact, is more of a hindrance because I have to use everything I have just to keep her from cutting me in half.

  I'm going to have to take that thing. To do that, I'm going to have to get in close.

  Unfortunately, it's easier said than done. I can barely catch the scythe on the metal rod, let alone get myself into position to fight back; the whole dance is more of a holding pattern than anything else, at least until I get tired. I don't know what's powering Death, but I highly doubt she's going to succumb to exhaustion.

  I hear a car drive past, slow down, and come back. I don't have time to pay attention to it -- I'm too busy fighting -- but when Jake calls out, I levitate out of the fighting and arrow back down to him. "What the hell are you doing here?" I ask, trying not to sound angry, trying to control the massive lump that's just taken up residence in my chest.

  "I got a call from Lisa," he says. He's not close enough to touch, and honestly I don't blame him. "Her mother was acting weird -- shouting and convulsing. Then she was gone. Lisa called the police, then me."

  I see Death standing in the street ten yards away. She's grinning that horrific grin, arms folded under her breasts. "That's your mother-in-law?"

  "Y... yeah." He tries to take a step toward her, but I put my hand on his arm. He jerks away like I burned him. "What?" he says, his voice sharp.

  "Death," I tell him. "Death is in her. He's using her body."

  "Shit."

  "That's what I said too."

  "How do we get her back?"

  "You don't." Death laughs and I see the effect it has on Jake. She jams the butt end of the scythe into the street, easily breaking through the pavement. She leaves it standing upright in the middle of the street and begins walking casually in our direction, as if she hasn't got a care in the world. "She's mine until Alexandra kills me or until I kill her. And when I do kill her, it won't matter anymore, because you'll be next. Then your wife, and then your child, and--"

  "No," Jake whispers, half-stumbling until his back is against the car. I catch him, make sure he doesn't fall. "Please... please, help her. Stop her."

  "To do that," I say, "you know I'll have to kill her."

  Jake's eyes close. "I know," he says, and I see tears leaking out from beneath his eyelids. "Don't let her win, An--" He stops himself. "Just... just stop her."

  "I will," I say. "I promise."

  Death is close now, rubbing her hands together, and in that moment I'm filled with pure, unadulterated hatred for this creature. How dare Death take over this woman? How dare she threaten Jake's family; how dare she threaten Jake, the only person who's cared about me, no matter what I looked like, since the very first day we met?

  "No," I say, standing my ground, standing between the two of them. "You can't have him."

  "Oh, I'll have him," Death says. "I'll have him, and his family, and anyone else I want." She smiles. "But first, I'm going to have you."

  "No," I say again. "You're not." Because now we're close enough, and Death doesn't have the scythe, and I'm fast enough that when I blur into action and whip the rod against Death's elbow, she flies to one side, landing hard in the bushes. She still gets to her feet, but her right arm is hanging at an odd angle and I know I've broken it.

  "This is nothing," she says, and as I watch the arm moves as if possessed -- which, I suppose, it is -- until it's back to normal. "You can't stop me. You can't kill me."

  "Maybe." I meet Death's next rush, catching her fist in my gloved hand and pushing hard against it. Death goes a little off-balance -- she's probably not used to using this body -- and I stamp-kick her knee. It crunches under my boot and she starts to fall.

  I meet her on the way down with my other foot, rocking her backward. Her body isn't able to compensate and the broken knee bends in the wrong direction as she falls.

  Hopefully that'll take longer to heal, because I'm already on the move, going for the scythe. Death must see it because she screams and tries to get up, forgetting to heal the damage; she screams again -- fury, not pain -- as she hits the ground once more, and then it's too late. I have the scythe in my hands; I've pulled it out of the pavement and given it a couple of experimental swings.

  Death stares at me. I stare at her. I know she's trying to heal the damage, and I know I don't have much time. The scythe keeps me from flashing to Jake's car, but I can run there quickly enough. I rest the blade end on the ground and prop the butt end on the hood of the car.

  "Don't you dare," Death growls. "Don't you dare--"

  She screams again as my foot comes down, snapping the scythe right in the center.

  I don't know what I'd been hoping for. If I broke the scythe, maybe it would be the source of Death's power and the creature would leave Jacqueline's body. Would that it was that easy. "You bitch!" Death screams. "You're going to die! I'm going to fucking kill you!"

  Jake is beside me now. "You have to do it," he says. "It's the only way."

  "I know." I put my hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry I have to do this." I look up into his eyes. "And I'm so sorry about before. I don't know... I mean, I would never..."

  He nods and puts his hand over mine where it rests on his shoulder. He squeezes gently, and I know that even if I'm not forgiven right now, eventually I will be. "Go," he says. "Before she does something else."

  I slip away and walk slowly over to Death, who's still prone on the pavement. I kneel down and, steeling myself, take hold of her throat. "If you're in there," I say, speaking directly to Jake's mother-in-law, "then please know that I'm sorry."

  "Fuck... you!" It's still Death, who reaches up to grab at my arm.

  My bare arm.

  Oh, I am a fucking moron. I'm going to die, and then the Dark King will take over, and all because I let Death touch me.

  I spare a thought for Buffy and Willow.

  When I'm not dead after that, I wonder if there really is an afterlife, despite the fact that I don't believe in one.

  When I'm not dead after that, I let go of Death's throat and she lets go of my arm.

  "How...?"

  Death's smile is just as bad when it's a mere brush over the lips instead of a full-on grin. "You destroyed the scythe. Don't you know anything about power objects?"

  I peer down at her. "You mean to tell me that... that all your power..."

  "Without the scythe, you might as well finish choking me to death, because when the King finds out he'll kill this body anyway."

  "No powers?"

  Death doesn't reply; she just closes her eyes and lets herself lie there supine. It looks horrible with her knee bent like that, so I straighten her leg before I scoop her into my arms and start carrying her toward Jake's car.

  "What happened?" he asks, moving back as I come closer.

  "The scythe," I tell him. "Without it, Death has no power here."

  "Then what are you going to do?"

  "I'm going to bring her to the lab. Hopefully Dr. Colibri will be able to... I don't know, exorcise Death, I guess."

  "You can't," Death says.

  "Can't stop me from trying." Jake has popped the trunk and has a coil of rope in his hands. I think it's been there since the time I helped him bring a new mattress home about three years ago. "Good idea. Just in case."

  "I
t won't change things," Death says. I tie her wrists together and then loop the rope around her body. Even if she gets her hands loose, there's no way she can move, not wrapped like this. The last of it goes around her ankles, tied so securely that it's going to take a knife to get her free. "Even if you manage to defeat him," and there's no question who she's talking about, "when I'm torn from this body, it'll die. There's no way to win, Alexandra." The smile is back in full force. "You might as well surrender all hope now."

  "She's not going to lose," Jake says.

  "She'll die!" Death spits. "She'll die, and then I'll make you watch as I kill your child, and then--"

  Jake's hand comes up and I just know he's about to backhand his mother-in-law. I catch his wrist before he knows what's happening, and he gives me a sharp look. "What are you doing?"

  "You shouldn't be the one who does it."

  "Why not?"

  "Just in case we get her back. I don't want her knowing you hit her."

  Jake relaxes; I let go of his arm.

  Then I smash Death in the jaw. Her head lolls and she pitches forward, unconscious. It takes only a few seconds to get her secured in the backseat, and once the door's shut I look back at Jake.

  He's staring at me, incredulous. "I thought you said--"

  "I didn't say anything about me hitting her."

  Jake smiles. I smile back and take his hand, and he lets me.

  "Come on," I say. "Let's get back to the lab. It's time to end this, once and for all."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  REVELATIONS

  +++++

  I get Jake's mother-in-law into a secure area in the lab and then join Dr. Colibri and the Professor in the main room. "What happened?" she asks. "Why is Death here? Don't you know how dangerous that is?"

  "She's powerless." I gave them a quick explanation on our way in, but now I tell them the rest: the people she killed -- we passed police cars and ambulances heading into the neighborhood as we drove out -- and the breaking of the scythe. Both pieces of it are on Dr. Colibri's lab table. "I'm not sure why or how, but Death said all her power was concentrated in the weapon."

  "How did you think to break it?" the Professor asks.