by Joss Ware
“It’s pretty,” she said.
Wayren nodded. “No one can see it but you. It’s a gift. But more than that, it’s a responsibility. Now . . . hold her hand, for she’ll need you to help her. She’s about to leave us.”
Selena didn’t understand how the woman was going to leave if she held her hand, but she did as her guide said. Grasping fragile, skinny fingers, she looked into the elderly woman’s gray-brown eyes.
The flurry of glittering gray and blue fog grew larger and she knew something was going to happen. “Hold on to my hand,” Selena said, not knowing what prompted those words. “I’ll be here.”
And so it had happened. Selena hadn’t been frightened, or even particularly sad. She gained those attributes as she grew older and began to understand what it meant to the people left behind.
It took her longer to realize what Wayren had meant about it being a responsibility—that it was something she must employ, must use to help people find their way from life into death. She helped ease their discomforts—pains physical and, more importantly, emotional and spiritual.
But the greatest part of her calling she didn’t learn until she was much older, when she discovered the power of the crystal and what she had to do with it.
Giving herself a little mental shake, and coming back to the present, Selena gathered up Theo’s refilled mug and a clean spoon. After a moment of thought, she added a hunk of bread studded with sunflower seeds to a small plate. He looked hungry enough. As she passed by the window, she couldn’t ignore that the sun had lowered to rest on the horizon, an infinite expanse away.
Darkness in a few hours. Night seemed to come so much more quickly lately. Too quickly.
She’d have to go out into it too. Find whatever zombies she could—or have them find her. Selena looked into the distance, toward the purple-gray jut of the mountains, the dull green of forest, and the boxy shapes of ruined buildings studding the space between. So peaceful. Now.
But soon . . .
I could stay in tonight.
The temptation seized her, tightened like a vise on her throat. Just one night.
She could sit with her patients, she could even exchange jokingly rude comments with miraculous Theo, watch him gulp down more soup. Maybe even see if he’d give her a decent game of chess since no one else could; or if he’d try and figure out how to fix the old DVD player that had finally ground to a halt.
Staring at the long shadows, and at the same time watching for the hulking movements of the zombies, Selena’s shoulders tightened. She felt as if her muscles would snap at the slightest movement.
She knew she couldn’t save them all. Of course she couldn’t save them all. Just as she couldn’t ease every dying person into the next plane.
She could stay in.
But I wouldn’t, dammit.
She would’t.
Because it was her gift. And her responsibility.
Chapter 2
When Theo battled through the dreams and dragged his eyes open, it was dark. But this time, he didn’t need a moment to recall where he was.
“Ruuu-uuuthhhh. Ruthhhhhh.”
The distant, mournful cries of the zombie-like gangas filtered through the silence, and at first he thought they’d followed him from out of his dreams. The window next to Theo was open; a fresh night breeze streamed over his clammy skin. Damp and sticky he was, from the memories of death and destruction, as vivid and horrifying now as they had been in reality fifty years ago . . . and over all the years since. He closed his eyes, trying to banish the remnants of the nightmares that clung like stubborn moss. They wouldn’t release him.
They didn’t come every night, not anymore. But often enough that he had to drag himself free, and that the nights he didn’t, he awoke grateful for a full sleep.
“Ruuuuuuuthhhh.”
The hair on his body rose when he realized the groaning monsters were the real ones, out there somewhere in the night.
Still prone, he stared out the window, able to see only the black sky twinkling with stars. In the distance, he could make out a few awkward shadows with orange eyes, lurching and lost, beyond the other side of the safe wall enclosing the area. Zombie-like gangas, searching for a man named Remington Truth.
And somewhere out there, beyond, miles away, was Envy. And Sage.
With Simon.
Theo’s mouth twisted, flattened, in the dark where there was no one to witness his weakness. His heart hurt. Emptied. Why not me?
And what now? It would be a long time until he could bear seeing her with someone else.
From beyond the gently wafting blanket walls, Theo heard soft muttering, likely a fellow patient, followed by the rustle of bedding. Someone murmured back, low and soothing, and he wondered if it was the Death Lady crooning to one of her charges. What exactly did she do besides hold their hands and offer them pot?
What a depressing job. Watching people die. His mouth flattened again.
He’d seen enough suffering and death in his lifetime; more than most people of his generation would have ever expected. And he had so often relived the tragedies in dreams and memories that he couldn’t imagine choosing to face them every single day.
And yet . . . that woman, the Death Lady, had a peaceful, accepting aura about her.
Other than her offering of a replenishment of his broth, along with a hunk of thick, dark bread, Selena hadn’t made another appearance—at least not in Theo’s carrel. But her friend, the older, plumper woman whose name was Vonnie, had come by several times before night fell and the lights were turned off. She’d helped him wash up and get comfortable, all the while chattering on about . . . well, everything. To his mind, she seemed much too light and enthusiastic to be hanging around dying people all the time—knowing there was nothing that could be done for them but watch them in pain and weakness.
Within Vonnie’s nonstop prattle, she made a point of saying more than once that never before had one of Selena’s patients recovered as Theo had, which led him to his own snarly, grumpy thoughts: So why change her track record now?
And who the hell had seen fit to resurrect me from the dead—a second time? Wasn’t once enough?
Theo sighed and stared at the ceiling. Okay, so here he was again: should have been dead; brought back to life— For what? And why me?
Hell, he’d asked these questions for the last fifty years, and hadn’t gotten an answer yet. He’d been searching for the reason he’d been transformed—or not—and the purpose. He’d been going through life since then, watching and waiting for some great event to explain it all.
But nothing. Just days and days and years and years of trying to get beyond the horror of losing everything he’d ever known, except for Lou.
Lou.
Dammit.
His twin was probably worried beyond sick. And Theo had hardly given him a thought, being dead and all.
Though it wasn’t as if he hadn’t squeaked by death before. Lou said Theo had more lives than a cat, and that had been even before the Change. And since then . . . well, only a month ago, he’d been trapped by gangas in an old shopping mall with Elliott. And that was only the most recent brush he’d had with the Grim Reaper—other than this one.
He really had tried to curb his recklessness, his yen for adventure, in hopes that he and Sage would get together. She was quiet and studious and shy, and he hadn’t wanted to intimidate or worry her. But that had obviously not mattered—because Simon was a man with a past of violence and death.
Now, in darkness cut only by the wisp of moonlight and a distant glow beyond the cloth dividers, Theo pulled himself upright with sharp, frustrated movements. Easier to do now anyway, when he couldn’t see the room spinning quite so well. Head pounding. Ugh.
He had to contact his brother. His feet touched the floor, identifying some sort of bumpy, soft covering. He shifted off the edge of the bed . . . and had to grab at the table to keep himself from crashing to the floor as his knees buckled.
Guess I was only
mostly dead. The reference to the old movie made him smile in spite of himself, and he imagined Lou responding, Have fun storming the castle!
Seated on the edge of the bed, once again stable, Theo closed his eyes and extended a tentative thought, searching for Lou in his subconscious or whatever it was that connected the two of them so closely.
That was why Lou hadn’t ever stopped searching for Theo after the Change. They’d both been in Vegas together, working on that high-level computer security project for Casino Venuto. They liked to tell people they did stuff like in Ocean’s Eleven or Ocean’s Thirteen (never Ocean’s Twelve, because that movie sucked).
After all hell broke loose, Lou claimed he knew Theo was still alive. What he didn’t know at first was that Theo was buried, three levels below ground in a computer safe-room under Venuto. Theo had not only survived the Change, but he’d been physically altered.
After the Change, Theo’s body was almost frozen in time; he hadn’t aged for decades . . . or, at least, had aged but very, very slowly. His nails and stubble hardly grew at all for the first thirty years; and the day he’d found his first gray hair—long after Lou had gone white—was a time of celebration for Theo. But this wasn’t the extent of the changes to his body that had occurred in the computer safe-room, deep below the surface of Vegas. Something else had happened during the cataclysmic events, when everything in the room of mainframes and computers and wires had exploded and shifted and sizzled into darkness . . .
When Theo woke up, he’d found his body battered, bruised, and lacerated. And, in the lower part of his back, a wound that took too long to heal. It wasn’t until weeks after Lou had dragged him from beneath the ground that Theo realized a small integrated circuit had become embedded there in the soft flesh at the back of his hip. And it wasn’t until weeks later that Theo realized this little IC could send a surge of energy through his body at will.
He was, in short—Holy shock-me-Batman, let me light your fire!—a superhero: Theo the Energizer.
Now, miles away from the place he’d considered home for fifty years, that connection was still there with Lou. Theo reached out, felt that little sizzle of awareness . . . and just as it connected, he drew in a deep breath . . . felt his brother . . . and that wave of familiarity. Hey.
Theo! The response was immediate, and Theo felt a wave of guilt for not remembering to contact him sooner.
I’m here. I’m fine. Tired. Safe. His reply wasn’t so much sent in words but in sensations and feelings. They understood and read each other thus.
Thank God! Worried, damn you!
Theo nodded to himself. Sorry. More later.
Hands closed tightly over his knees, he stared into the dark and allowed the connection to sever. He wasn’t ready for more, yet. Nothing more than that brief Yo, I’m here and safe. That, at least, would keep his brother from coming to look for him. Bringing Simon.
He needed . . . time. Time to figure out what he was. Who he was.
And why in the hell he’d been resurrected, so to speak, for a second time.
“Ruuuuuthhhhhhh.”
The groans pulled his attention back to the world outside.
Holding on to the bed and then the table, he leaned toward the window, then braced himself as he thrust his head through its opening. The cool breeze, tinged with the foul scent of rotting ganga flesh, brushed over him.
The flicker of orange lights, always in pairs, caught his attention. They might be coming closer, but the zombies were far beyond the wall that had been erected around this . . . building. A large house? Maybe some sort of apartment building? Theo hadn’t seen enough to be able to tell exactly what it was, and now it was too dark.
But whatever it was, he and the other occupants of the structure were safe from the gangas. They couldn’t climb, so there was no way they could get over the walls. And even if they were smart enough to find an entrance, they’d never be able to figure out how to open a gate or door.
Stupid, slow, and single-minded, the zombies nevertheless were tall and strong—and a threat to everyone. They fed on human flesh, tearing into it and leaving nothing behind but piles of bone and tendons. The only way to destroy them was to smash their brain; though they were afraid of fire and light, they were impervious to it, to falling, or to bullets or even knives. Bottle bombs had become the defense weapon of choice for humans, knowing that the explosion would destroy many at one time.
The darkness wasn’t spinning any longer, and Theo pulled carefully to his feet. Still holding the edge of the table, his fingers brushing the wilted sage leaves, he paused to get his bearings.
Moved by curiosity as well as the mundane desire to relieve himself, Theo eased toward the entrance to his corner of the hospice. The fact that he remained upright emboldened him further, and he walked with more confidence beyond the dividing wall.
There he found that he was in a sort of corridor that was made up of more sheets. Dark spaces between the colorless fabric walls indicated other “rooms” or spaces for patients, and Theo paused to determine which way might take him to a lavatory. Or at least something more interesting than billowing blankets hung from a high ceiling.
A noise in the distance caught his attention. It wasn’t the muffled voice he’d heard earlier, nor did it sound like someone soothing another in pain.
It sounded like . . . urgency. That was the only thing he could think of to describe the dull noise, quick and short, followed by the low snap of a voice. And another in sharp response.
Despite his weakened state, Theo moved quite rapidly down the hall toward the sounds. A thump and bump reached his ears as he walked through an entrance—an actual entrance in the building not one constructed of blankets or sheets—and found himself in another room. Beyond it, he saw the gleam of metal counters; and farther on, a sink. A kitchen. So he was in a dining room, perhaps, and there ahead was a kitchen.
A huge one, he saw when he got closer, with a large island in the center and gleaming countertops stretching for miles. The voices, low and staccato with need, came from a dark corner somewhere in there. He paused when he heard one of them say, “Shush. You’ll wake—”
“I don’t care,” replied another low one, this with anger spiking it. “You’ve got to stop doing this. My saints. Look at you.” The volume rose, sharp with fear, and Theo recognized Vonnie’s voice. No longer sounding enthusiastic or sunny.
“I didn’t finish. I’ve got to—”
“No. You’re not.”
He peered around the corner and saw two figures struggling in the corner. Not with each other; that was immediately clear in the dim light from over the kitchen sink. No. The larger, cushier one had her arm around the slighter one and was moving awkwardly toward the island counter. The fall of sleek dark hair identified Selena as the one staggering in a steadying embrace.
Something gleamed on the front of her clothing. Something dark and shiny. Wet.
“What happened?” Theo said. He couldn’t call what he did bursting into the room, but he moved pretty quickly considering that he’d been dead three days ago.
Both faces lifted to look at him, a pale circle and a shadowed oval marred by dark streaks. Shock widened two sets of eyes. A slash of light bounced over unbound hair and a face tight with pain.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Vonnie said, looking as if she’d been caught with her hand in some cookie jar. “Go back now.”
Theo suspected that Selena would have looked furious if she hadn’t been moving so slowly due to the blood that shone and glistened on her shirt and face. She opened her mouth to say something, but whatever it was turned into a gasp as her companion clumsily bumped her into the edge of the counter.
Theo was there in a heartbeat, shoving Vonnie out of the way and sliding Selena’s arm around his shoulder. Despite her agitated attempts at protest—which included a feeble shove at him and a muttered, “Go back to bed”—he easily got her to a chair in the corner of the kitchen. It was only then that he realiz
ed the room was tilting a bit and that his knees threatened to give way again, but there was no chance in hell he was going to let them go right now.
“What the hell happened to you?” he asked, clutching the counter as an overhead light came on.
“I’m fine,” Selena said with a definite glare as she sagged in the chair. “You shouldn’t—be out of—bed.” The hitch in her voice told him that she was struggling to keep her breath steady.
Once relieved of her awkward burden and turning on the light, Vonnie had metamorphosed into calm efficiency. Water splashed in the sink and cupboard doors thumped and banged as she, presumably, searched for first aid supplies.
But from what Theo could see, Selena needed more than simple first aid. “Where are you hurt?” he asked, plucking at her shirt with one hand while steadying himself against the counter with his other.
He realized it was testament to her weakness that she allowed him to yank at her shirt after trying so hard to push him away only moments before. In fact, she tilted her head back, eyes shuttering, and leaned against the wall behind her. And let him have his way, so to speak.
Theo hadn’t undressed a woman in more than a year, but there was nothing about this moment of tearing (literally) the blood-soaked shirt from her body that he found erotic. Beneath the tatters of the thin cotton, he found gashes in her left shoulder, nearly to the top of her breast. He also noted that she wore surprisingly interesting lingerie, a rarity in this world—lacy pink shells, one of which was now dark with her blood.
Ganga slashes. Deep and ragged.
“Out of my way,” Vonnie said, barreling over. Theo complied and she snatched in a horrified gasp when she saw the four bloody slashes. “My God,” she breathed. “Selena. You’ve got to stop. You’ve got to stop.”
The other woman hissed—a warning, or was it the pain? And rolled her head from side to side in a quick jerk of negation. But that didn’t keep Theo from asking, “Doing what?”
What the hell was so important that she had to go out of the walls at night? Alone? Even Theo, who’d done his share of ballsy and crazy things over the years, rarely took such a chance.
