AFTERLIFE

by Marcus Sakey

  Kyle waited until the teenager finished, then said, “Hey DeAndre, want you to meet somebody. New arrival. This is Will Brody.”

  The teenager held the guitar by its neck and stuck out his right hand, then looked at Brody and made a double take. “Whoa. You did an Eater?”

  It was going to need some getting used to, the idea that people could see on him a physical manifestation of something that had happened hours ago. “Yes.”

  “Damn, man. New to the show and you faced off a vamp. That’s something.”

  “Three,” Kyle said. “My man here got jumped by three Eaters, and came out on top.”

  “Shit.” DeAndre stretched the word out. “That’s something,” he repeated.

  “It was luck,” Brody said. “I mostly got my butt kicked.” As he spoke, he saw that the boy’s eyes had dropped to the Glock on his hip.

  DeAndre’s posture had stiffened. In a colder tone, he said, “You police?”

  “FBI.”

  “He’s one of the good guys,” Kyle said. “But he’s had a long day. We need to fill him in on things. Lucy’s grabbing Sonny; could you do me a favor and find the Professor, send him up to the lounge?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks, man.” Kyle bumped fists with the boy and then gestured for Brody to follow. When they were out of earshot, the man said, “Sorry about that. He’s not a big fan of cops.”

  “Why?”

  “One of them killed him.”

  “Huh?”

  “Chi-raq, right? That’s what DeAndre tells me people are calling it now.”

  “He was a gangbanger?”

  “Nope. Just black at the wrong moment.”

  Suddenly Brody remembered why the kid had looked familiar. DeAndre Williams had been shot and killed by police officers in June. The cops’ claim that he had fired first had withered under scrutiny—he’d been an honors student with no history of violence, no weapon was found, and their body cams had mysteriously failed. Brody sighed, rubbed his eyes. “Crap.”

  “Yeah. Speaking of, unless you’ve got a sentimental attachment, you may as well toss that.” Kyle gestured at the Glock.

  “Guns don’t work here?”

  “Not much does. Come on.”

  They’d gone through the lobby and up a set of stairs to the lounge. Brody imagined the space was normally seductive; dim lights and glowing candles, wall-to-wall glass showcasing the river and the sparkling city beyond. But seductive wasn’t the word he’d choose now. The only illumination was muddy daylight. The river looked cold and the city beyond was dark. Kyle flopped on a couch. “You a bourbon man?”

  “Sure.”

  “In the other room, behind the bar, top shelf, there’s a bottle of Pappy. Wanna grab it?”

  Brody nodded, then headed off in the direction of Kyle’s wave. The floors were pale polished hardwood, and the light fixtures funky discs of bronze, the bulbs unlit. As he rounded the corner, he saw a massive glass-fronted wine cellar, hundreds of bottles presented like holy artifacts. At the top of the tiered bar, he found a three-quarters-full bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23. He’d never tried the stuff—it was way above his pay grade—and couldn’t resist pulling the top to inhale the rich caramel heat.

  He returned, bottle in one hand and two rocks glasses in the other, and set them on the table. Before he could sit down, Kyle said, “Thanks, man. But we’ve got friends joining. Could you grab a couple more glasses?”

  Annoyance spiked him. He’d died, and somehow he was a gopher? He grunted, said, “Sure.”

  When he was five steps away, Kyle said, “Oh, while you’re there, grab the Pappy, would you?”

  He stopped. Spun on a heel. Looked at Kyle splayed on the couch, already pouring from the bottle of bourbon. The man winked at him, a small smile on his face.

  Brody turned, walked back around to the bar. Took in the wine cellar. The tiered bar. The bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23, right exactly where it had been when he grabbed it a minute ago. It appeared to be identical: it faced the same direction, had the exact same amount of bourbon in it.

  No. Not identical.

  The same.

  He took it and a couple more glasses, then walked back. “So that was a teachable moment, then?”

  Kyle smiled. “Better to show than tell, right?”

  “Does your elbow agree?”

  The fireman, halfway through a slug of bourbon, cough-laughed amber liquid across the expensive couches. “Hey, don’t make me waste it. People are crazy for this stuff, drop a couple grand a bottle.”

  “Lemme ask you. What would happen if I went back to that wine cellar and smashed everything?”

  “You’d make a helluva mess.”

  “But only here.”

  Kyle nodded. “Echo only goes one direction. There were probably plenty of moments in your life when some dead dude was having a screaming hissy fit right next to you, smashing up the place and crying his eyes out, and you never knew it.”

  “Or maybe,” a man said, “you sensed it even if you couldn’t see it.”

  Brody turned to see a short, paunchy man standing at the entrance to the lounge. There was something almost grey about him, like in the right light he might be translucent. “Maybe we affect the world of the living all the time. Did you ever have a moment when—for no reason at all—you were suddenly melancholy, or angry? Nothing to do with you. As though the mood had been floating around like weather.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, maybe that was a dead man having a ‘hissy fit.’ Maybe you felt his pain and loss. Maybe the connection between life and death is more porous than we think.”

  “Brody—I assume everybody calls you Brody, I’m sure going to—this is Arthur Johnson. We call him Professor.”

  “Kyle does, at least.”

  “You were a professor.”

  “I taught high school science. I was a babysitter.” Arthur stepped forward, held out a hand. “Nice to meet you. So you killed an Eater?”

  Brody sighed. “Yes. Barely.”

  Kyle grinned. “My man Brody here took on five Eaters—”

  “Three.”

  “And came out on top.”

  “And got lucky.”

  “I assume,” Arthur gestured at the sidearm, “you were in law enforcement?”

  “I am—was—an FBI agent.”

  Arthur lit up. “That’s wonderful! Just wonderful.”

  “It is?”

  Kyle nodded. “You’re going to be a very popular boy, Brody.”

  “What he means to say,” Arthur said, taking the glass Kyle handed him, “is that trained fighters are always welcome. You’re going to make this a safer place.”

  “I . . .” Brody raised his arms, lowered them. It was nice to know he was welcome, but somehow he wasn’t in the mental space to take on responsibility for other people right now. “Can I have one of those?”

  Kyle slid a drink across the table, the liquid sploshing over the side. Brody caught it just before it fell. He raised it, took a moment to bask in the glow of the scent, then sipped. Autumn sunlight slipped down his throat and radiated through his body.

  “Good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Enjoy it. It won’t always taste so sweet.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “You boys started without us.” Apart from the katana jutting up from her hip, Lucy looked like a soccer mom, the sexy new breed that did CrossFit and wore yoga pants. She was of average height, but the guy beside her made her look like a miniature. Brody put him at six four and 240. His shaggy hair and biker leathers gave him the aspect of a Viking. There was something odd about him. At first Brody thought he’d turned the lights on, but nothing else was brighter. It was just that the dim illumination of the lounge seemed to fall more strongly on him.

  Like Raquel and her friends.

  Like you.

  Brody set down the glass and stood. There were knives slung on the biker’s belt and patches on the leathers. They marked hi
m as an Outlaw, a one-percenter motorcycle club that trafficked meth in significant quantities. For a moment everyone stopped.

  “Sonny,” the biker said.

  “Brody.”

  “You killed. Recently.”

  “You too.”

  “Self-defense.”

  “Me too.”

  Sonny paused, nodded, then came around the side of the chairs and lowered himself onto a loveseat. Lucy unbuckled her sword, leaned it against the table, and sat down beside him. Brody noticed their thighs touched.

  “You get that we’re dead, right?” Sonny’s voice was surprisingly mellifluous.

  “Yeah.”

  “So the things between us don’t much matter anymore.”

  There was a part of Brody that wanted to argue. The choices made in life had to count for something, even in death, or what was the point? But he reminded himself that he was in a new world with new rules. Not like he was going to flash his badge. He made a noncommittal shrug and kept his gaze steady.

  Meanwhile, Kyle had poured two more bourbons and passed them out. He threw the now empty bottle of Pappy against a mirrored wall, where it exploded. With a grin, he raised his own glass. “To our newest arrival.”

  Brody hesitated, then leaned in. The five of them clinked glasses.

  “Mr. Brody—” Arthur started.

  “Just Brody is fine.”

  “You must have questions.”

  Not an hour ago Kyle had delivered the most dramatic understatement of Brody’s life. What are the odds another would top it in the same day? He wanted to know so many things it was hard to figure out where to start. He paused, tried to organize his thoughts, then just picked one at random. “The math doesn’t work.”

  The others exchanged glances. Arthur said, “Which math?”

  “Kyle says this is where we go when we die. But if that’s true, it should be elbow to elbow. Like fifty people should’ve popped in while you poured drinks.”

  “Not everyone ends up here,” Lucy said. “Just people who died too soon.”

  “No,” Arthur cut in. “That suggests destiny. We don’t know that predestination is involved. It’s more accurate to say those who die abruptly. Especially those who were vital and strong. Murders, fatal accidents, tragedies.”

  “Why?”

  “Are you religious?”

  Brody held up a hand, rocked it back and forth.

  “Religions are rooted in explaining what happens after death. Live by certain tenets, and afterward you float on clouds playing a harp, or lie in gardens with virgins, or join the mind of God. Maybe that’s true, but it’s not where we are. And unfortunately all any of us know about this world is what we’ve been able to figure out for ourselves.”

  “Kinda like life,” Kyle said.

  Arthur continued as if undisturbed. “I was stabbed trying to fight off a mugger. Stupid. Kyle fell fighting a fire. Sonny was executed by the cartels. Lucy—well, she’ll tell you if she wants. Drive-bys, car accidents, house fires, domestic violence. That’s the start to everyone’s story here. How did you die?”

  “In an explosion,” Brody said. “I was chasing a terrorist. He’s killed seventeen people in the last two weeks.”

  “We know,” Lucy said. “Where do you think they went?”

  Brody flashed back to Emily Watkins, staring out at the river. Holy shit. If the victims were here, he could talk to them, see what they remembered. Maybe they’d seen something useful, something that could—

  What? Help you arrest the man who killed you?

  Brody said, “Why just people who die that way?”

  “Are you familiar with the term ‘potential energy’?”

  “More or less.”

  “Watch.” Arthur scooped up a glass with an unlit votive candle and held it above the table. “Mass, height, and gravity combine to give this potential energy measured in joules. The candle itself hasn’t changed. But.” He opened his fingers, and the glass and votive clattered to the polished wood surface of the table. They bounced apart, then rolled to a stop. “Simple physics. Now, a thought experiment. Imagine two people die. One is an old man riddled with cancer. And the other is a little girl hit by a car.”

  Brody shrugged. “One’s typical and the other’s a tragedy.”

  “Yes, but imagine the potential energy that child possesses. How many decades might she have lived? How many children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren died along with her? Think of the weight of that, the energy, the mass of the future gathered in a child.”

  “You’re talking about fate,” Brody said. “I don’t believe in fate.”

  “No, I’m talking about undiscovered science. A thousand years ago, people believed the earth was flat. Five hundred years ago, doctors thought diseases were caused by an imbalance in the humors. A century ago, visiting the moon was the stuff of fantasists. There are always things we don’t know yet, and they always look like superstition until we understand.” Arthur paused, leaned forward. The light played strangely on his skin, and for a moment Brody almost thought he could see through him to the window beyond. “Is it really so hard to imagine there’s energy to life we don’t know how to measure? Some vital, quantifiable connection between ourselves and the universe that doesn’t appear under a microscope?”

  “So this is a behind-the-scenes dimension.” Brody stared at the amber reflections on his fingers. “A filing cabinet for people that slip through the existential colander.”

  “For people who died with too much potential energy to move on to whatever comes next. Yes.”

  “How long?”

  “How long what?”

  “How long do I stay here?”

  The four exchanged glances. Finally, Arthur said, “I’ve been here twenty years.”

  Brody laughed, once. The sound hung awkwardly in the air. The others just looked at him. After a moment he stood and walked to the window. The ghost of his reflection overlaid the city. Even with all the lights out and darkness falling, it was a tremendous view, the skyline a graphite cliff. On the sidewalk below, he could see shadowy figures lounging on couches. Laughter carried up, and the sound of DeAndre’s guitar. Brody took a sip of bourbon. It reminded him of something. “What did you mean before, Kyle? About this not always tasting good.”

  “Remember how I told you to think of this as an echo? I didn’t just mean the city. I meant us too.”

  “So?”

  “So, what happens to echoes?”

  It all clicked. Brody had an almost physical sensation of understanding, an intuitive leap that he knew to be true. A clean, cold, ruthless logic underpinning all he’d seen. He walked back and dropped on the couch. The leather was very soft. He felt a sudden urge to lie down, to use his forearm for a pillow and stretch his legs and close his eyes. “They fade. Echoes fade.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s why there are no lights on, or fires going. Why my gun doesn’t work.”

  “Those things either require or create energy.”

  “And that’s the real reason the Eaters do what they do. Because echoes fade. They never get stronger. So the only energy here”—he paused—“is us. What we bring.”

  Arthur nodded. “And we’re fading too.”

  “But you can take the energy from others,” Sonny said. “Kill here, the sky gets brighter, food tastes better. Do it enough and maybe you live forever.”

  “Not to mention being able to punch through a wall,” Kyle added.

  “My god.” Brody rested his hands on the table and took deep breaths. It was as though he’d been studying blueprints, only to realize they were for a concentration camp. People cut down in their prime, cast into a bleak middle space, hunting each other for the scraps of remaining life. “My god.”

  “There have always been people willing to crush others for their own benefit.” Arthur shrugged. “It’s just more literal here.”

  From outside came the sound of glass shattering. The bourbon’s glow had turne
d into fiery heartburn, and he had an urge to vomit right on this expensive table. This morning he’d woken in a warm bed with the woman he loved. “No,” Brody said. “This can’t be it. This can’t be what happens.”

  “It is.” Sonny’s voice was calm and steady.

  “No.” He rose fast. The motion felt right, vital. Brody stood looking at them. Four armed strangers sprawled across the darkening lounge of a luxury hotel in an abandoned city in a dead world.

  “Brody—” Kyle started to say.

  But he was already heading for the door.

  SIXTEEN

  Walking turned to jogging turned to running turned to sprinting.

  Down the steps and through the lobby, blowing past two people coming in, their startled exclamations left behind as he hit the curved driveway. Night was falling, and the people arrayed on couches were dodgy shadows and eye glints, their voices rising to him, some jovial, some alarmed, but Brody ignored it all, just chose left at random and pushed into the sprint. His muscles reveled in it, the motions easy and strong, leaning into the run and bounding on his toes, each stride longer than the one before. Running like he’d never run before, running faster than it was possible to run, the wind whipping his face and the world almost blurring. He gave it everything, wanting his lungs to burn and his heart to rage and his guts to tremble. The physical sensations would overwhelm anything else, and though they wouldn’t last, for a brief time the world would narrow to nothing but screaming muscles and a gasping for breath.

  It occurred to him to wonder if being out alone would make him a target for Eaters, and he felt a flash of savage joy at the prospect. Bring them on.

  Blocks flowed beneath his feet, became a mile. Then two. Five. All at an impossible, inhuman sprint.

  And yet the pain wouldn’t come.

  When he finally realized he wasn’t going to be able to punish the world away, he let the run fade. He drifted to a stop, the sound of his footfalls bouncing off the walls of empty buildings. His breath came as easily as if he’d been sitting still.

  While he’d been sprinting, he’d paid no attention to where he was going, taking turns at random, focusing on nothing but trying to find the pain. Now, as he looked up and saw where his feet and subconscious had brought him, he realized he’d been successful after all.