Rangers

by Chloe Garner

  She got to the driver’s side door and glanced at Jason. His silhouette nodded sharply, and she put her hand on the handle, leaving as much space as she could and standing far to the front of the door. A shadow fell out of the rafters and she spun away, ducking as a knife slit the air over her head. She stood, gaining distance, and pointed her gun. Standing in her partial shadow, she found a skinny old man with a scraggly beard and liver spots on his sun-leathered skin. His eyes were manic as he walked toward her.

  “You’re from the sheriff’s office,” she said. He grinned, rotted teeth making a strange shape out of his lips. She raised her gun and he swung the knife at her again. The car’s engine was spinning up, getting louder as she moved back further. He charged her, and she squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked and he froze, his face knowing what had happened.

  Then unfreezing. He grinned wider and Samantha dropped the gun, reaching to draw her machete.

  “He’s human,” she yelled. The gun had pulled the bullet. They had told her it would, but she hadn’t ever pulled the trigger on a human before. He lunged at her again, knife overhead, and Jason tackled her. A gun reported, and the man staggered past, falling. Sam followed him, standing over him and firing three more times into his back. Jason and Samantha picked themselves up slowly, watching the body of the old man.

  “He was only human,” she said, hands beginning to shake a bit with post-adrenaline comedown. She took a deep breath and mentally shook herself.

  “She’s hit,” Sam said, still pointing his gun at the body. Jason looked at Samantha, and she turned to let him look at her back.

  That was when the car’s brakes let go.

  <><><>

  Jason woke up in Heather’s living room and sat up, rubbing his eyes. Samantha was watching him from the armchair, sucking on one of her back teeth, her foot swinging a beat in the air. He frowned at her.

  “You look okay,” he said. She laughed unhappily and shrugged.

  “You don’t look that bad, either,” she said. She watched him as though waiting for something to sink in, and he raised his eyebrows. She pulled her tongue out of her cheek with a sucking noise and jerked her chin. He turned his head and his heart ran into his guts.

  Samantha was laying on the couch, head hanging off to one side, hand limp over the carpet, dripping blood. He looked down and found himself sitting in his own lap. He sprung to his feet, jerking involuntarily away from seeing his own absent eyes.

  “Doctor,” the Samantha on the arm chair said, jerking her head at a stranger who stood over her inanimate body.

  “What’s going on?” Jason asked. He retreated over to the floor below where she was sitting, comforted at having something solid behind his back.

  “You have brain swelling. Hit and thrown clear of the car. I helped the wall stop it.”

  He looked at her.

  “Are we dead?”

  “The angels call this Halfway. Our bodies have rejected us, but they’re still alive. So we wait it out, here.”

  “Have you been here before?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “No, I was good and dead, last time.”

  “She should be on a ventilator,” the doctor said. “They both should.”

  “No,” Sam said firmly. “We live off the grid. We die off the grid.”

  Jason looked up at Samantha and she nodded.

  “It’s the right call,” she said.

  “How bad is it?” he asked her gently.

  “Crushed pelvis, shattered femurs. Probably won’t walk again. Internal bleeding. Doesn’t know how bad it is, yet. Head injuries. Rib went clear on my right side. That’s the blood. He said it’s lucky it didn’t break the other way. Punctured lung, I’d have drowned in a couple of minutes.”

  She sounded dry, wrung out. He stood and went to look down at her.

  “You’ve got a great body,” he said. She smiled with a wry admission of humor and he nodded. “It’s a shame you’re going to die a virgin.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” she said. He grinned. She looked over his shoulder and smiled sadly.

  “Hello friend. I expected you’d make it, eventually.”

  Jason spun and nearly stumbled backward over his own body. He heard Samantha stand.

  “Jason, this is my friend, the Angel of Death.”

  The tall, athletic figure spoke a few soft words to her in greeting that Jason didn’t understand, and Samantha answered them.

  She addressed the angel by title and motioned to Jason, “this is my friend Jason.”

  “What did you call him?” Jason asked. She repeated the noises. They slipped away from his brain as soon as she said them.

  “It translates ‘my friend’. It’s a joke the other angels use to make fun of him.”

  She walked around the couch and knelt on one knee before the angel.

  “Greetings to one of the chief redemptions of mankind.”

  “You speak too highly of me. There is only one redeemer,” he answered.

  “Yes, but there are many redemptions.”

  She stood and hugged him. The angel stretched long white wings around her and after a moment Jason looked away, embarrassed to watch the intimacy of the moment. She stepped away and knelt again, just touching her knee to the ground and standing again. The angel turned his brilliant blue eyes to Jason.

  “I admire your strength,” it said, voice a pleasant tenor over the sound of wind in grass. Jason stepped away, then went and grabbed Samantha’s elbow, pulling her behind him.

  “We aren’t going with you,” he said.

  “Relax, Jason. He doesn’t make the call. He’s just here to keep us company while the decision happens.”

  The eyes dipped and the angel blinked, acknowledging what Samantha had said.

  “Stay with me,” Sam said softly. Jason looked down. Sam was talking to Samantha.

  “Don’t be jealous,” Samantha said. “They think it’s only a matter of time before you wake up.”

  “Is it?”

  “Not if you’re here.”

  Jason nodded and looked up at the angel.

  “What’s going to happen?” he asked. The angel shook his head.

  “The future unfolds for me as it does for you,” it said. Jason frowned.

  “Could you put on a shirt, or something?” he asked. The angel looked down at his fair chest and back up at Jason, smiling.

  “This is my form. I’m sorry if it makes you insecure.”

  Samantha laughed.

  “I have missed you more than anything,” she said. The blond creature smiled at her.

  “I miss you, too, but your heart beats. Celebrate.”

  She sighed and returned to her chair.

  “So what do we do now?” Jason asked.

  “We wait,” she said.

  “You make the closure that you can,” the angel said.

  “Dearest beloved,” Samantha said. Jason waited, but that was all she was going to say. He looked at her and shook his head.

  “You’re kind of sick.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Something occurred to him.

  “You aren’t completely crazy, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You can see him all the time.”

  “Any time someone is on the verge of death, yes. I can see him when he comes.”

  “Why don’t you just say so?”

  “Which is more crazy: talking to my imaginary friend, or talking to my imaginary friend, the angel of death?”

  Jason shrugged an acknowledgment. That was fair. He looked back at the angel.

  “Are you Abby?”

  “No.”

  “Jason,” Samantha said. He looked at her. “Is there anything you need to say to Sam?”

  He frowned.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  She stood and took his hand and knelt next to his body. She put his hand on his own chest. It was warm and rose and fell, breathing. His brain revolted for a frac
tion of a second at the unreality of it.

  “Your heartbeat,” she said. He felt the thrum under his palm as his heartbeat echoed against his ribcage. He nodded.

  “Better than fifty-fifty, it’s going to stop. They’re going to come and try to push your body to keep living, and then you’ll go cold. You won’t be here for that part. When your heart stops beating, you’ll leave with him.” The idea shook him. “Is there anything you need to say to Sam?”

  “He can’t hear me,” Jason said.

  “No. It isn’t for him.”

  “What about you?” he asked. She pushed her hair up off of her forehead, looking away.

  “I’ve been talking to him for twenty minutes.”

  He swallowed and nodded, then he looked at her.

  “What if I won’t go?” he asked.

  “How many good ghosts do you know of?” she asked. He nodded again.

  “Can you give me a minute?”

  “I wish I could, but I can’t go anywhere.” She smiled bitterly and turned her head further away, speaking into her shoulder now. “And I suspect you want to finish whatever it is you want to say before I die.” She coughed into her shoulder and put her hand over her mouth. “That’s going to be hard.”

  She went and sat in the chair again, refusing to look at him, and Jason made his way around the cot they had put his body on, sitting on the ground next to Sam.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said. “I always figured it would be me and you laid out like this. I never counted on leaving you on your own like this. I’m sorry.” He paused, swallowing hard and looking over at his body again, still unable to look at the eyes. He looked at Sam’s hands, stroking Samantha’s fingers. The blood had dried.

  “It’s okay,” he started again. “You’re going to be okay. And, let’s face it, getting hit by a car wasn’t the worst it could have been. I mean, I don’t even remember it. It didn’t hurt, Sam. Quick. That’s what we always said we wanted.” He rubbed his chin hard. “I don’t regret it. I don’t regret any of it. We did what Mom and Dad would have wanted us to do, and we did some damned good work.” He nodded, looking at Sam’s face. “Don’t you ever regret it either, okay, buddy?” He nodded aggressively. “This was how it had to be. Don’t you take any of it back.”

  He looked away and coughed into his hand, his throat thick.

  “Take good care of Gwen. She never did love you, but maybe you could learn to get along. Let Heather check on her once in a while, just to make sure she’s doing okay. Tell Kara…” He closed his eyes. Kara. “Tell her we got him.”

  He stood and walked away, facing a wall for several minutes while he pushed his mind back into the machine it was supposed to be, then he turned back to look at Samantha. Solid lines of tears ran down her face, splashing on the hardwood floor.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what?” he asked, then cleared his throat. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I can’t help feeling like, if I hadn’t been here…”

  “If you hadn’t been here, I’d have a hunting knife buried in my chest, and that psychopath probably would have killed Sam. He just about got you, you know.”

  She nodded.

  “Apparently he got me, after all.”

  He glanced over at her again, the IV drip in her arm the only sign of medical intervention as she slowly faded away. He frowned.

  “It isn’t over,” he said. “You have to want it. You have to fight for it.”

  Who he was came flooding back to him, and he shook his head.

  “We can’t give up and just lay there. We aren’t dead.” He looked at her, eyes charged. “If you don’t want to wake up, you aren’t going to.”

  She tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows painfully.

  “I never reject life. My heart is beating. I rejoice. But how hard would you fight for that?” she asked. She had a blanket up over her chest, but the shape of her waist was off, flat.

  “I wouldn’t walk again. Probably paralyzed from the waist down. Maybe brain damage. I live in my brain. If I stopped thinking like me… Jason, that’s terrifying to me.” Her eyes, watching him, were flat, hopeless. “What would you do?”

  He had no answer.

  “Please don’t go,” Sam said. His voice echoed slightly, as though the walls were closer and harder than the thickly-adorned walls of Heather’s living room. Samantha licked her lips.

  “That’s the only reason I haven’t begged him to just take me,” she said, indicating the silent angel standing over her body.

  “Your heart beats,” the angel said softly.

  “I rejoice,” she answered.

  The room stirred like a wind had blown through it, but nothing moved. Samantha sat up and Jason looked at her, suddenly alert.

  “You heard that?” he asked. She nodded. “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t actually know the rules here.”

  Jason looked around the room, the corners of his eyes telling him there was something he wasn’t seeing.

  “Do you see it?”

  “Look at me,” Samantha ordered, standing. She had the stiletto out of her boot. He discovered he was wearing his gun. He looked at her.

  “Look hard,” she said. The harder he looked at her, the easier it was to pick out the shape that was in his peripheral vision. He couldn’t see it, but he could at least know where it was.

  “I’ve kicked up something, leaving my body undefended like this,” she said. “We can’t let it possess me.”

  “How do we stop it?” he asked. The shape was creeping closer, trying to get past him. He pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, and it blurred away. She nodded.

  “We just have to hold it off until I die,” she said. “Then my body won’t be of any use to it.”

  They took spots on either side of Jason’s body, Samantha standing with her back to herself, the stiletto in one hand and her machete in the other.

  “We can’t kill it, but we can keep it off.”

  “Am I going to hurt anything, shooting it?” Jason asked. He had never, ever been reckless with a gun, and it was strongly against his nature to do so now.

  “Nothing in the physical plane is even going to know it’s happening,” she said. “And my friend is immortal. You won’t hurt him. Right about now, I’m tempted to ask you to try to shoot me, proactively, but I doubt that would work.”

  “What’s wrong?” Sam asked. “What’s going on, Sam?”

  She closed her eyes and groaned.

  “He can still feel what’s going on,” she said, then her eyes focused on Jason again. She slashed to her left and the shape that his mind had failed to notice melted away again. She looked hard at him and she pressed her lips together.

  “It’s been an honor,” she said. He nodded.

  They stood for several minutes like that, defending feints and rushes, her machete going through the dark shape completely, several times.

  “It won’t die,” Jason said. She shook her head.

  “It’s immortal, too. You can’t take existence away from the immortal. You can just make the current task too expensive to be worth it.” She bared her teeth. “I bite back.”

  Suddenly the world pitched. She didn’t seem to notice it, but Jason fell forward over his body, his chest falling clean through itself and not stopping until he hit the cot.

  “Get Carter!” she screamed. The world rolled and his feet dropped as he grabbed at the edge of the cot. “Get Carter. Get Carter. Get Carter. Get Carter. Get Carter. Get Carter. Get Carter…”

  <><><>

  Jason groaned.

  “Carter,” he muttered, then tried to raise his arm to rub his face. The rush of blood just from lifting his arm made his brain scream.

  “Jason,” Sam said, spinning. “You’re awake.”

  “What happened?” Jason asked.

  “You got hit by a car. Do you remember the car?”

  Jason nodded, realizing immediately that
that was a mistake.

  “He’s awake,” Sam called.

  “Not so loud,” Jason said, holding up his hand to shield his face. A strange man was standing over him, looking into his eyes.

  “What’s today?” the man asked. Jason rolled his head away.

  “Not too early for whiskey,” Jason said. “What happened?”

  “The psychopath that was killing the cows,” Sam cued.

  “Sam shot him and missed,” Jason said. “Do I pass?”

  He remembered.

  “She got hit,” he said. Sam stepped to the side and Jason saw her. Her skin was pale, at the edge of gray.

  “How bad is it?” he asked, his mouth dry.

  “Bad,” Sam said softly. “Wait a minute. What did you say?”

  “How bad is it?” Jason repeated, confused brain unwilling to process how bad she looked. It had to be faking. Something had gone wrong and this wasn’t real.

  “No,” he said, blinking heavy eyes. “No, that’s not right.”

  “No, you said Carter,” Sam said. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  He pulled out his cell phone and stood. Jason stared at Samantha.

  “She really is pretty,” he mumbled, thoughts bouncing randomly in his head. The doctor tried to pull at his eyes again, and he pulled away. The room spun and he blinked, trying to get his eyes to behave. He had been drunk enough times to cope with being unable to see straight. He sat up and up went down. He found himself laying on the cot again.

  “Here,” Heather said, sitting down next to him and helping him up. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “You what?” Sam asked, then left the room. Jason stared at Samantha, leaning hard against Heather, who put her arm around his waist.

  “She’s a fighter,” Heather said. “If anyone can pull out of this, it’s her.”

  It was an empty phrase. They said it about all of the Rangers right before they died, if they lasted long enough for someone to say it. He nodded anyway. It was his part.

  “It took you long enough,” a smug voice said from the front hallway. Jason closed his eyes. Carter. It left a bad taste in his mouth that that was his first waking thought. Carter came into view and Jason struggled to his feet. The doctor pushed him back down and said something. Jason waved him off and tried to stand, but Heather held him down. There was a stab of pain in his arm and he nearly jerked away, but Heather’s gentle hand on the back of his elbow stayed the motion. He sat, glancing down once to see a syringe in his arm. The doctor said something about swelling, but Jason wasn’t up for paying attention to two things at the same time, and he was presently busy glaring at Carter.