AFTERLIFE

by Marcus Sakey

  The clouds reflected off a thousand windows. It was so quiet Brody could hear himself breathing. He closed his eyes. Remembered Claire in her kitchen, talking while he cooked. The knowing tilt of her smile. The curve of her neck. The smell of onions sweating in butter. He took a breath, and tried to let her go. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They stayed for a while. Sometimes talking, sometimes not. Eventually, they stood, and stretched, and went back to the ladder, and headed for home.

  They were almost there when the screaming started.

  The voice was high-pitched and frantic. Brody thought it was a woman, though he couldn’t be sure. The sound shredded the silence and echoed off the buildings.

  They exchanged a glance, and then started to run.

  They’d made no more than a dozen strides when Brody remembered the difference between them.

  Kyle ran with everything he had. He was fast. But Brody had gone three times as far.

  I’m flush, he thought to himself, and now really came to understand what that might mean. Then he stopped thinking and just pushed.

  He left Kyle behind, the world blurring around him. Feeling like a demigod, or an avenging angel. The woman screamed again. Brody blasted around the corner of Randolph and Michigan, leaping up onto a nearby taxi, his steps crunching divots in the steel, trunk-roof-hood, then a leap to the SUV in front of it. The height gave him a vantage point to the intersection ahead. Two figures. One on the ground, one standing. A meat cleaver in his right hand.

  The figure on the ground was Emily Watkins.

  You were too late to save her once. Not again. Brody leapt off the cars to the street.

  The man straightened, turned. He was wiry and tattered looking, his clothes dirty. There was something about the way the light hit him that was strange, and yet faint. Like he’d fed some time ago. Then Brody was there, a hundred yards covered in heartbeats, bowling into the guy, one arm up to block his downward swipe. The blow had force, it smacked against Brody’s arm, might have broken it if he weren’t so full of power. He maintained his momentum, took the man off his feet and drove him into the girder of the El platform. The metal bent around the shape of the man’s back, and the cleaver went flying end over end to shatter the window of a frozen yogurt shop.

  This close he could see the hairs sprouting from the man’s neck, and smell him, a sour sweat odor. Brody cocked an arm and unleashed an elbow strike that snapped the guy’s head sideways. The man swayed, leaned, slumped. Rode the girder down. Brody raised a foot—

  “No!”

  He froze, his foot in the air, about to stomp down on the Eater’s temple and drive it into the concrete. Risked a glance over his shoulder.

  Kyle was rounding the corner a block back. “Brody! Don’t!”

  Why not? It wasn’t a man, it was an Eater who had tried to kill a woman. Besides, the energy Brody had used in the sprint, in the blow he’d absorbed and the blows he’d dished out, had sapped some of his power. It was only right that he replenish it. The Eater was weak, desperate, he still had strength, not a feast but a meal—

  Brody froze with his foot above the man’s skull. What had he been about to do?

  Feed, a voice inside him said, both an answer and a request. Feed.

  He stumbled back, lost his footing, landed hard. The impact rang up his spine, slammed his teeth together.

  Kyle slowed as he got closer. He took in the scene, Emily bleeding on the ground, Brody on his ass. “Good, man. You did good.” He unslung his axe. “You don’t want to do it twice, not so fast.”

  Brody was about to ask why, but realized he knew the answer. Felt it in his marrow, in the itch he had to stand up and stomp the Eater to death. “Emily?”

  She coughed, rolled on her side. Her shirt was soaked in crimson. Brody rose, hurried over to her. Though her eyes were wide with panic and pain, the wound was superficial. Ugly but not deadly, a raking blow that the ribs had stopped.

  He thought about carrying her, extended a hand instead. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

  After a moment, Emily took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet. She moaned, put an arm around his shoulder. Together they staggered over to where Kyle stood.

  The Eater was pushing himself off the ground. His breath whistled over broken teeth. “You bitch oh you bitch.”

  They stood above him for a moment.

  From his belt, Brody pulled the knife he’d taken from Raquel. Offered it to Emily handle first. For a moment, he thought she was going to refuse. Then her eyes focused, and she extended a hand.

  As she bent over the Eater, Brody saw something happen to her. Before the knife plunged down, before the Eater buckled, before her chest knit itself back together.

  Something like ownership, or birth.

  Something that told the jackals and the savages to beware.

  Emily was done being a victim.

  NINETEEN

  Claire spun into the church, weapon in one hand, flashlight in the other. The beam made the world, the circle of white creating graffiti and garbage, a tableau of urban ruin. Pews spattered white by birds. A heap of broken glass three feet high.

  There was no one waiting.

  As the other cops searched, she drifted away. Stooped to pick up a discarded paperback and read the first line—The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

  Out a panel of broken plywood, she could see the sky, and part of a building. A man stood on the fire escape, smoking and using his phone.

  Claire knew what happened next. She turned and ran for the nearest cop, sending him sprawling as a sun flared beneath the glass, and she was lifted by rainbow razors—

  She jerked awake, flailing. One hand hit something it wasn’t expecting, and the thing moved. She was just conscious enough to realize it was a lamp. It toppled sideways, the shade bouncing off the bedside table as the bulb burst with a pop.

  A dream. It had just been a dream. She drew a shuddering breath through cupped hands.

  Whose lamp was that?

  She sat up. A strange room. A hotel. She’d checked into a hotel. Couldn’t bear going home.

  Claire sat, calming her breath and rebuilding herself. Remembering Will’s ruined body. The bland voice of the man who’d murdered him. The dishes still in her sink.

  Through the gap in the curtains, the sky was softening. She pushed out of the blankets, stumbled to the bathroom. Peed, then brushed her teeth. She looked half-dead in the bathroom fluorescents.

  That dream.

  The detail had been incredible: the streaked bird droppings, the texture of the light, the grip of the Glock against her palm. Nothing impressionistic or symbolic about it. Her subconscious had really pulled out all the stops.

  Strangest of all had been seeing the man on the fire escape. Usually dream monsters lurked unseen, always just behind you. But he’d been so . . . physical. Cigarette in one hand, phone in the other. Pale skin and droopy features. The whole thing didn’t feel like an invention so much as a reliving of Will’s last minutes.

  Shower. Coffee. Bagel. Then head in, see if there had been any progress overnight.

  As she stood under the steaming water, she pondered the dream. Everyone liked to believe they were in charge of their thoughts, but it just wasn’t so. If the mind was a factory, then the machinery that did the real work was a closed system, and the finished products rarely resembled the raw materials. We don’t build our thoughts any more than the CEO of Ford builds cars.

  Obviously, she hadn’t lived Will’s last minutes. The man on the fire escape was a figment, a stand-in. His face belonged to a forgotten teacher, or someone who had served her coffee. But the intensity of the dream made her wonder if her subconscious, grinding away in the dark factory of her being, had discovered something. Sometimes small details unnoticed by the conscious mind were caught by the machinery beneath.

  She got out of the shower, checked her watch. There was time.


  The church was in a drab zone of slumping frame houses, discount cell phone shops, fried fish joints. It wasn’t yet seven in the morning, and she’d crossed the city without the usual snarl of delays. The corner kids were out even at this hour, and she felt their eyes tracking her, noting the municipal license plates on the sedan.

  The church had been sealed off, and yellow tape fluttered around the perimeter. Down the street she saw a liquor store, the only thing open at this hour. A CPD squad car was parked on the street to discourage disaster tourists. She pulled alongside and they both rolled down their windows. The cop had black hair and that Chicago build. “Help you?”

  “Yeah.” She flashed ID. “You have a key?”

  They walked up the path together, weeds growing through the sidewalk. The officer unlocked the door. “Need a flashlight?”

  “Thanks.”

  The cut of its beam through darkness gave her a shiver of déjà vu, but only for a moment. The inside of the church looked different than her dream. She’d imagined it as Brody had found it, before the explosion and the investigation. Now there were footprints everywhere, and yellow evidence flags. A fine layer of sparkling dust blanketed the interior. Slender tracks marked where a gurney had been pushed through it.

  For a moment she stood in the center, spinning in slow arcs. Examining both the scene and her emotions.

  A shaft of light fell through the single busted window. Claire moved to it, her footsteps mirroring the ones in her dream. Through it she could see the apartment building, and the fire escape where they had found cigarette butts. The sniper’s vantage point, where he’d stood to murder Will Brody. The same place she’d dreamed of, and from the same angle.

  There was no sad-faced man smoking a cigarette and holding a cell phone. Obviously.

  She felt suddenly foolish. This was not the time to humor the preposterous. Hundreds of cops and techs had scoured the area. If there were clues, they’d have found them. She was just tired and sad and furious, and it was affecting her judgment.

  No harm done, but no point wasting more time.

  Claire turned to leave, and as she did, her flashlight played across something white tucked into a mound of trash. Her first thought was, bone, but it wasn’t. It was paper. Stained and faded, rain soaked and dried fat. A book. Just one more piece of trash left by a squatter. Nothing at all to do with the sniper.

  There was no cover. She opened it. As her mind processed the first line a tremor ran from her chest to her fingers. The book slipped from her shaking hands. But not before she’d taken in the words.

  The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

  TWENTY

  I’m losing it.

  That was the only explanation.

  Too much stress, too little sleep.

  She was the head of an FBI task force that was failing to catch a terrorist. The man she loved—admit it—had been murdered. They had no leads, none. Someone was going to die today. And now she was looking for clues in her dreams. Claire McCoy, Psychic Detective.

  It was funny in a way that did not make her laugh.

  Was it time to call the director and step down? She wouldn’t have to mention the emotional entanglements. Her ride in the fast lane would come to an abrupt end, but it wouldn’t destroy her career.

  Thing was, she didn’t believe anyone else could do a better job. They weren’t failing, they were getting beaten. Somehow.

  Someone knocked on her office door, and she jumped, knocking over her mug. Tepid coffee spilled across her desk.

  “Shit.” She yanked open a drawer, dug for napkins. Snapped, “What?”

  “Umm. Want anything to eat?” Her assistant, through the door.

  “No.” She said it sharply and didn’t add thanks.

  Okay, yes, it was very weird that she had dreamed the book. But she could have noticed it yesterday when she was on the scene—

  The cover was torn off. Even if you’d spotted it, you wouldn’t have known what book it was. According to Google, that’s the first line of Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, which you’ve never read. So how did you know it?

  Alright, fine, but—

  And how did you dream the church the way Will experienced it, when you only saw it after the explosion?

  Well, visualization is an important part of the job, and it’s not like—

  And how is it that you can still remember the man’s face so clearly? Usually dreams melt before you’re out of bed.

  She would stand up, leave her office and go do one of the thousand things people were depending on her for. Yes. That’s what she would do.

  Claire leaned forward, logged in to her laptop, and then to the FBI database. Navigated to records, then facial recognition. Opened a blank search, and clicked on the physical description section. She paused for a moment, focusing on her dream. Confirming the memory.

  The face lingered in front of her eyes so clearly she could almost touch him.

  Claire twisted a curl of hair into her mouth and started typing. Entering gender, race, age range, estimated weight and height, hair color.

  The search returned 72,904 results.

  She presumed no gang affiliation, US citizen. Voice analysis suggested that the target had been born in the Midwest and lived in Chicago for at least five years.

  11,062 results.

  Claire clicked to apply linear discriminant analysis, scanned through the classes of facial structure, selected the four that seemed closest.

  962 results.

  She displayed them as tiles, four photos to a row, eight rows to a page. Thirty-two mug shots appeared. None of them were him.

  Claire clicked for the next set.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  Like a late-night slot machine addict. The sheep who stared and spun and stared and spun, each time believing that this was the one that would pay off.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  This is ridiculous. Stop.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  Seriously. Stop. You’re losing perspective. Maybe you should call the director—

  The man from her dream stared from her computer screen.

  Claire closed her eyes, rubbed at them, looked again.

  The man from her dream stared from her computer screen.

  Pale skin, drooping face, aura of sadness. A little bit younger, but that was him. She clicked up his sheet.

  Simon Tucks, currently 41, arrested five years ago for solicitation. Probation and a fine. Last known address, 1739 N. Orleans. No other arrests. No prison time. No military record.

  He was white and male, but other than that he didn’t match their profile in any way. There was nothing to suggest that he could be the man who had killed eighteen people.

  Except her dream.

  This was ridiculous. The sniper pulled off single-shot kills on moving targets from blocks away. He’d wired an IED and laid a trap for the FBI and evaded capture despite an unprecedented effort.

  Simon Tucks, on the other hand, had been busted trying to get a hand job.

  Claire had a press conference at one. A call with the director. A meeting that included the mayor and the governor. She’d averaged four hours of sleep a night for weeks. The man she loved had been brutally killed and she hadn’t cried about it and no one even knew what they’d meant to each other. She was exhausted. This was clearly an attempt to exert control over a situation spinning away from her.

  But how did you know the first line of that book?

  Claire took another look at the address, then stood up and walked out.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Brody’s sleep was a troubled and fractious thing. Dream fragments like pieces from different puzzles. A rainbow sun in a darkened church. Emily’s face as she leaned in with the knife. The view through a bay window of a sad-faced man, somehow familiar, pacing a dark living room. Claire in her car on a tree-lined street, staring out th
e windshield, her gun in her lap. A woman with impossibly white hair and ancient eyes, talking to him calmly, telling him secrets. A boy alone on a broken ship, chewing smoked meat.

  He woke tangled and sweaty, still in his clothes. Grey daylight poured through the windows. He staggered to the bathroom, dumped half a bottle of water over his head. Splashed the rest on his face. Jesus, those dreams. They’d had a clarity, a simplicity, that made them hard to shake.

  Claire in her car on a tree-lined street, her gun in her lap. He planted his fists on the counter and leaned in, closing his eyes, straining to remember.

  He knew that street. It was in Old Town, an area where he jogged all the time; it was pretty and largely untrafficked. The street—Willow? Orleans? Menomonee?—was in the heart of the neighborhood, a tangle of one-ways and dead ends near St. Michael’s.

  The thing that made it odd, though, was that in the dream he hadn’t known she was in Old Town, or what street she was on. It was only in hindsight that he could put it together. His conscious mind was analyzing the imagery.

  So keep going.

  The more he focused, the more detail he could remember. The image was like a still from a film. Claire with eyes ringed in black and hair mussed, fingers tracing the grip of her Glock as she stared out the windshield. It had the tenor of a suicide, but he couldn’t imagine her eating her gun.

  Then why the drawn weapon? Hell, Claire had outshot him; she wasn’t the type to pull her sidearm to play with it. Which meant there was a reason.

  Maybe she hadn’t been staring blankly. Maybe she’d been looking at something.

  He was surprised to realize that he could remember what, as though seeing it through her eyes. A brick townhouse choked in ivy, with a large bay window.

  A bay window like the one he’d dreamed a sad-faced man pacing behind.

  No. A window like the one he’d dreamed the sniper pacing behind.

  The man had seemed familiar because he was the man Brody had seen on the balcony, cell phone in hand, detonating the bomb that had sent him to this pale place. Which meant that he’d dreamed Claire sitting outside the sniper’s house. Without backup. No SWAT team, no support. She was walking in alone.