Beyond Dead

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  A dark shape crept through the trees not too far ahead of us. I couldn’t hear anything over my ragged breathing. The silhouette was too big to be Emma, but the way it moved looked too fluid and relaxed to be Alex.

  “Oz?” I mouthed and Sabrina shrugged.

  Yeah, probably wasn't the best idea to just shout out to him. Maybe it was Oz. Maybe it wasn't. If it wasn't that meant someone else was out here. Did these people have nothing better to do with their time than skulk around a cemetery?

  As the figure moved into the trees on the right, Sabrina gestured to keep moving forwards but cut deep behind them. I nodded and we moved slowly, keeping low. I took pains to take light steps and shallow breaths. Reaching another bank of trees, I peered around the edge and an audible sigh of relief escaped me as the shape melted into the distant blackness. With Sabrina in tow, I stepped out from our tree bank and directly into Emma’s path.

  Her eyes stretched wide in surprise, a mirror of my own expression. Automatically, she raised her gun, but we were too close. I blinked. Then she was on the ground, unconscious, and my right hand began to throb as if it had been crushed in a vice.

  “Bloody hell!” Sabrina hissed. She dropped to grab the gun from Emma’s limp hand. “Where did you learn to punch like that?”

  I glanced from Sabrina to Emma and back again. “Like what?”

  “Like that.” Sabrina tucked the gun into her pocket and bound Emma’s hands and feet with a spare shoelace.

  I stared down at our unconscious murderer. I’d punched her. I’d punched her.

  “I punched her?” A thin dark line blossomed on Emma's lower lip. I’d punched her so hard I’d split her lip? I’d never punched anyone in my life. I didn’t even know how to punch someone. No. Wait, I’d done Boxercising for nearly six months to tone up my abs and bingo wings for the holiday to the Costa Brava with Michael. Huh, practical real life application. I made a mental note to tell Frankie, my instructor, next time I saw her.

  Then it hit me. The proud smile wilted on my face. I would never get to tell Frankie. Or anyone else I’d known. I wouldn’t get to go on that holiday. I’d never get to make Michael suffer for his cheating. Or see my mum get remarried. Or plan another bachelorette party. Or go bargain hunting in the Boxing Day sales. Or get Sash to do my nails. I was dead. Dead.

  A wall of loss slammed into me so hard I doubled over, panting to catch my breath. A montage of all the things I’d never do flashed through my brain like a slideshow on super-fast forward. My knees gave out. I landed heavily in the dirt, leaning forwards so I could support myself on my hands. The images wouldn’t stop. Things I’d never even wanted to do had joined the parade. Fly fishing. Surfing. Cross-stitch.

  I fumbled the top button of my jumpsuit open as if that would help me suck down more air. Oz’s whistle swung out. I held on to it with one hand, trying to slow my breathing. He said it would get better. That it wasn’t so bad here. So. Okay. Things to be grateful for? Sabrina. Edith. Never getting more wrinkles. Being able to eat what I wanted. Happy hour in Aruba when I learned to tunnel that far. More time. Time to learn to fly fish. And cross-stitch. And surf. Maybe Oz could teach me. Oz in swimming trunks. Now that was something I would be grateful for.

  By the time Sabrina had finished hogtying Emma, I was sitting in the shrubbery, legs stretched out in front of me, back against a tree, still clutching Oz’s whistle.

  “Okay, we have both guns now.” Sabrina double-checked something on her gun. Her eyes snagged on me as she checked our surroundings. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I gave her a one-shouldered shrug. “Just a mini meltdown.”

  Sabrina leaned into my face as if she was searching for the first hint of tears. “Are you done? Because we still need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah.” I pushed up into a crouch. “I’m done.”

  “Good.” She slapped me on that back. “Thanks for not crying.”

  “Would I do that to you?” I whispered over my shoulder as I pointed in the direction we should head in.

  We kept low and scurried towards the direction of the gate. At least I hoped it was. The truth was with all the panic, dead realisation, nearly being shot and the general afterlife-threatening situation, I’d gotten a little turned around.

  “It shouldn’t be much further,” I whispered, casting my voice over my shoulder when I finally recognised where we were.

  When Sabrina didn’t respond I slowed and glanced back. I nearly tripped over my feet. Sabrina was gone.

  I stopped, crouched low and hid behind the nearest tree, though I wasn’t sure which direction to hide from. Where’d she gone? Did Alex have her? How come I didn’t hear him snatch her? Surely, I’d have heard something. Sabrina wouldn’t exactly have let him abduct her quietly. My heart began pounding too loudly to be able to hear my own thoughts.

  When it’d been the two of us it hadn’t been quite as frightening. Right now, I was alone in a wooded cemetery, surrounded by murderers. It was like an advert for an awful horror movie. I had two options: carry on going and try to save myself or go back and try to rescue her. Phrased like that, there really weren’t two options after all.

  Making sure the gun was still in my pocket and hoping it wouldn’t accidentally go off and shoot me in the foot, or worse, I crept out from behind my tree shield. More careful and cautious than I had been all night, I tip-toed in a wide circle back to survey the route we’d taken, making sure to keep as low as possible.

  I stepped over a tree branch as thick as my upper arm and decided to take it with me. I felt happier swinging a branch at someone than pointing a gun. It said something about your afterlife when those were your choices. It was heavier than expected but I held it close to my body, refusing to consider all the creepy crawlies that were probably upset at being disturbed and going to let me know by crawling up my arms.

  I hadn’t gone too far when I heard the rustling of clothes and a faint grunting. I paused until I was certain it was coming from the left. I stepped lightly in that direction and peered around the nearest tree. A tall, broad figure with his back to me was trying to restrain Sabrina like Pete had me. I watched for a few seconds, confused about her lack of fight since it definitely wasn't Oz. And since Oz was the only person, apart from Sabrina, I trusted I sneaked up behind the figure and swung my log at his head. He dropped like a stone.

  Sabrina stepped forward out of his grip and turned to stare at my grinning face.

  I rested my log on my shoulder and cocked a hip. “Aren’t you going to tie him up?” I whispered.

  “No.” She rolled the unconscious figure onto his back.

  It was Officer Leonard.

  “Good guy?” I whispered, hoping for the opposite.

  “In this instance.” Sabrina nodded. “He was here to tunnel us out. At least that’s what he said.”

  I dropped my log with an earthy thud. “We don’t believe him?”

  “I don’t know.” Sabrina crouched next to his unconscious form and pulled me down with her. “There are just far too many people running around this cemetery for my liking.”

  I glanced down at his unconscious, masked form. “What are we going to do with him?”

  Sabrina’s head snapped around, her eyes narrowing into the darkness. Something or someone was rustling their way around the trees. “We can’t leave him here and run off to safety.”

  I grabbed an arm and tried to move him. It wasn’t happening. “I can’t lug that much man out of here.”

  Sabrina nodded in agreement. “We’ll have to go back to Emma and call Alex out.”

  “We’ll have to go back to one murderer that wants to kill us to call out her scapegoat who also possibly wants to kill us?” I lifted the corner of Officer Leonard’s mask. I was just curious, but it wouldn’t budge.

  Sabrina tried the other side. That was firmly attached too. “We have Emma secured, so we just have to survive Alex.”

  “Oh. Is that all?”

  “We’ll tell him w
e have Emma and he’ll come to us,” Sabrina explained reasonably.

  “Yes, I understand how the plan works. I’m just a little fuzzy on the logic of calling a potential murderer back to us.”

  “Look, we have both guns. We have the edge.”

  “He’ll have the element of surprise.” I scanned the woods behind me. “And have I mentioned I have no clue how to use this thing?”

  Sabrina reached for my gun and did one of those gun check things I’d only ever seen in the movies, lots of clicking and snapping that reverberated off the trees around us. She handed the gun back to me hilt first.

  “It’s ready to go. All you have to do is pull the trigger.” She eyed me cautiously. “Just don’t shoot yourself. Or me.”

  “Gotcha.” I saluted her with my ready gun and she closed her eyes and sighed.

  Leaving Officer Leonard where he was, hopefully out of harm’s way, we retraced our steps back to Emma. She was shuffling around on her side like a worm, straining to undo Sabrina's hogtying handiwork. The moment she saw us she stopped and sat up, trying to retain some dignity.

  It was an odd situation, staring at someone who’d tried to kill you. A twig snapped behind me and I whirled around, gun raised and ready. The darkness accentuated Alex’s hard features, making him look even more menacing.

  “Don’t,” I warned him and he stopped a few feet away from me.

  I couldn’t make out the colour of his face in the darkness but I was pretty sure it was the colour livid. Obviously chasing us around in the dark hadn’t convinced him of our innocence. His eyes squinted at me as if I were the only other person there. I genuinely didn’t understand why he blamed me so totally for Bertha’s death.

  “You going to shoot me, Birget?” The way he mispronounced my name at this point made me wonder if he and Bertha had been in the badge misprint joke together. Maybe he just needed someone to blame and it was easier if it was someone Bertha hadn’t liked.

  “If I have to.” I nodded, thinking that even if he charged at me I wasn’t sure I could pull the trigger.

  “I don’t think—” Alex fell forwards and dropped to his knees with a painfully hard thud and a loud yelp.

  “I don’t appreciate your threatening behaviour towards my ward.” Oz pulled Alex’s arms behind him and snapped some cuffs, ignoring Alex’s complaints about his wrist. “Are you both okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” I nodded, incredibly happy to see someone else apart from Sabrina who didn’t want me dead. I looked at Alex’s slouched form. “So … exactly how much trouble are we in here?”

  “With me? For nearly being murdered?” Oz asked, scanning the woods. “So very, very much. We’re talking a decade of cooking and laundry duties. No socialising whatsoever. And you’re grounded until you’re ninety.”

  “Right, so, since I’ll never actually get any older, that’s like eternity?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Exactly.”

  “But other than that we’re good?”

  “You and me?” Oz nodded. “Yeah.”

  “The implication being that we’re in trouble with someone else?” I said and threw a glance at Sabrina who was inspecting the cuff of her jumpsuit.

  “Oh, yeah.” He nodded and waved David over. “You’re in a shed load of trouble with everyone else.”

  “We haven’t done anything wrong,” Sabrina protested.

  “You’re kidding? Right?”

  “We solved the murders and caught the murderers.” Sabrina pointed to Emma and Alex.

  “You did.” David checked on Alex’s injured wrist. “While flouting nearly every single law we have.”

  “But the ends have justified the means, right?” Sabrina asked.

  “No.” David shook his head. “I’ll be amazed if you avoid jail time.”

  Sabrina shrieked. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” Oz rubbed the back of his neck. “The only reason the GBs have let you get away with it is because they were using you as bait. Right, Officer?”

  “I’ll petition for leniency since you’re newly transitioned.” David dragged Alex to his feet and took hold of Emma’s shoulder. “But you should prepare for the worst.”

  With David’s dire warning lingering in the air, he tunnelled out of the graveyard in a puff of smoke.

  “Hey.” Sabrina pointed to where David had been standing. “How can he tunnel here?

  I faced Sabrina. “The GB just said ‘prepare for the worst’ and you’re bothered about where he can tunnel?”

  “I just think it's unfair.” She waved her hand at me. “And we're dead. What’s the worst they can do?”

  I covered my face with my hands. “I can’t believe you’ve just jinxed us like that. Again.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I still can’t believe you tied me up.” Pete rubbed his wrists with a wince, a thin red line clearly visible from where the shoelace had dug in to his skin. “Or knocked me out.” He adjusted the cold compress against his forehead and leaned back in his seat.

  The police and the GBs had questioned us separately for several hours and now we were sitting in the police booking area waiting to be released. It reminded me of an accident and emergency waiting room. Lots of chairs, one employee, a reception desk and nothing happening. Except there were no injured people.

  “Well, honestly,” Sabrina sniped over the rim of her machine coffee. “I don’t know what you expected grabbing Bridget like that.”

  “I expected you—” Pete raised his voice, winced and then lowered it. “I expected you to be grateful for the help.”

  I placed my hand on Sabrina’s knee before she could retort, “To be fair, Pete, you did look kinda guilty. You threatened Fenton, then you showed up at his house looking for the notebook and then at the cemetery.”

  “I didn’t threaten him.” Pete threw me an unhappy glare. “And I told you, I was warning him not to get involved in the investigation that got Jim killed. And as for the notebook. We were trying to find it to exonerate you two. This is the thanks we get.” Pete gestured to both his and Charlie’s ice packs.

  Charlie briefly removed the ice compress from the side of his head and I winced. He had a red, swollen, teaspoon-sized lump just on his hairline. It gave me a headache just looking at it.

  Sabrina folded her arms and leaned back, lips pursed and eyebrows raised. “Well, let it be a lesson to you.”

  “For trying to help someone?” Pete readjusted his ice pack and winced.

  “Yes,” Sabrina snipped. “Because you could've just told us what you were doing or that you were trying to help instead of being all secretive.”

  “Because both of you were so forthcoming,” Pete said.

  “And how did you even know where we were?” I asked.

  “Luckily Sabrina didn’t know where the cemetery was so she had to google map it.”

  “You were following me?” Sabrina's voice was heavy with indignation.

  “Where did you google map it from?” I asked.

  “Oh, y’know.” Sabrina shrugged.

  “From some psychic’s shop computer.” Pete snapped. “Of all the places she could go to. Not the library or an internet cafe.”

  I suddenly became very interested in the cuff of my jumpsuit. I was fairly certain the medium in question was Madame Zorina.

  “So then you just went running to the GBs?” Sabrina asked. “I'll have you know we had everything under control.”

  “Then why did Bridge whistle for Oz?” Pete snapped back. “And no, we went to see if Oz knew what you were up to but he was busy singing Bridget's praises to Officer Leonard at the remembrance service and trying to distract him from the fact neither of you were there. So when Oz heard the whistle it wasn't like he could hide it from the GBs since they were standing right in front of him. We figured you were in trouble so we came to help. All of us.”

  “And I’m so grateful.” Sabrina mocked with her hand over her heart. "How would we have survived if you hadn't shown up?”

&n
bsp; “Okay.” Officer Leonard appeared out of one of the doors to the left of the reception desk. “Thanks for waiting. You gentlemen are free to go. Ladies, if you could follow me?”

  None of us moved.

  “What you do mean they’re free to go?” Sabrina placed her half-finished coffee on the table attached to her chair so quickly a little sloshed out of the cup.

  “I mean, we’re not charging them with anything. Like assault.” Officer Leonard gave me a pointed look. “So they are free to go about their day. You two, however …”

  “Come on, ladies.” Oz climbed to his feet. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “You’re not required.” Officer Leonard gestured to the door on the far side of the canteen. “Officer Salier.”

  “Bridget’s my ward.” Oz folded his arms and stood his ground. “Needed or not, it’s my right to be there when she’s sentenced.”

  “Sentenced?” I squeaked.

  “Whoa.” Sabrina held up her hands. “Isn’t there some sort of legal system? A trial where we get to explain our side? Present evidence? Call witnesses?”

  “No.” Officer Leonard motioned for us to stand and follow him. Pete, Charlie and Oz all started talking at once while Sabrina and I stared at each other. I gave her a small nod and we stood up.

  “You do remember our deal?” I whispered as she reached for my hand. “You’d take half my workload if we were sentenced to hard labour?”

  She gave me a flat stare. “I’m fairly sure we settled on a quarter.”

  “Ladies?” Officer Leonard repeated, turned and extended his arm in from of him to guide the way. “Officer Salier, as I said, you’re not required. You may, however, wait here.”

  “Required or not, I’m legally allowed to be there.” Oz placed a hand low on my back as we followed Officer Leonard to our possible doom. If Sabrina and I survived, I’d really have to try to do as he asked.

  ∞

  A week later I found Sabrina sitting hunched in on herself on the grass outside the fort. Thankfully the GBs had finished their crime scene investigation and cleared up the evidence so we were free to use it again. Personally, I found that a little creepy with Bertha only being murdered in it a week before, but as long as I wasn’t in there alone my nerve would hold. Probably.