Death 07 - For the Love of Death

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

Deegan

  I don’t realize how much I’m hurting until I notice what’s going on around me.

  Paxton heals me, and I watch the stubs of my nails regrow. They spread, climbing over the raw puffy nail bed.

  I moan, turning my head as the thin, brand new layer of nail covers raw, torn flesh.

  “Just a minute, Dee… just a little more.”

  “Oh God—Pax, what is this?”

  I cringe into Mitchell, and he tightens his arms. When I see my own face and what I look like dead, it is the most surreal experience of my life.

  Corpse Deegan and I look at each other.

  Pax is less blown away, apparently.

  “Kill Parker,” Pax instructs casually, without looking at them.

  “No—Pax,” I struggle to sit up, and my breasts threaten to plop out of my shirt. My face heats, and I try to stuff them back inside the unhooked bra.

  I yelp when I use my right hand. The nails are new, the flesh abused and sore beneath.

  “What?” Mitch asks.

  Then he sees me fiddling with my top and looks away. “Oh.”

  “There is only ‘yes’ here, Dee. This nut job was going to do—I don’t know what to you…”

  I do know but don’t say.

  “And Parker is sideways here. We gotta do him in. Lot of pervs with rats in the attic, Dee.”

  We’re casually talking about the premeditated murder of a bunch of lunatics.

  I look at the ruin of Brad’s head and three zombies feeding on him.

  I cough, bile rising in my throat.

  “Whoa… no Dee! It’s—they’re just”—he seems at a loss for words—“ah, taking care of the Thompson leftovers.” He shrugs, giving me a calming smile.

  I barf on him Exorcist style.

  I’ve never seen my brother move that fast.

  Mitch swings my hair out of the way.

  “Sorry,” Pax whispers with a little wave as he backs away. He flicks his gaze to Mitch and jogs into the horde.

  There’s something funny about my vomit grossing Pax out after he sends zombies to eat Brad Thompson’s brains.

  I wipe a shaky hand over my mouth and survey everyone, counting heads. Mia stands with Bry, a janitor’s broom in one hand as he knocks zombies with whatever end is handy.

  Gramps is holding his own, with corpse Gramps at his side. They work well together.

  Gram! I breathe out of my mouth, inflating my nostrils and instantly stuffing my nose, as tears swarm my eyes.

  She’s the best sight, her and Grandpa Kyle. He has her up against a wall, protecting her with his body. Tiff stands in front of them with the entire group of Dad’s friends.

  They’re all dead, but they’re on our side. In this world, Tiff commands them.

  I need to get to Pax so when he blinks, I’m out of here. I’m terrified of staying. Even with Brad dead, I have to get away.

  I turn in Mitchell’s arms, and he locks me inside the circle of his protection.

  He wipes a tear from my face, and I hug his thick neck.

  “I can’t feel like this, Deegan,” he says. “I know you’re going. It’s inside your mind.”

  The door buckles then explodes behind us.

  Mitchell ducks, taking me with him while debris scatters around us.

  A piece of flying rebar carves a chunk out of his shoulder, and a sob tears out of me.

  We crouch together, tears running down my face, our hands on each other’s shoulders. I whisk a finger over the deep wound, and it knits.

  His eyes soften.

  “Feel like what?” I ask.

  The fire charges inside and sauna-like heat envelopes us.

  Gramps is shouting. My parents and Parker are arguing, but all I see are Mitch’s eyes, drowning blue and deep, only for me.

  He cups my face with a hand, palming it entirely.

  “This,” he answers softly and scoops me against him. My bra falls out of my shirt but catches on my shoulder.

  He moves his hand over my button-up blouse to cover my chest. His concern for my dignity makes everything so much more. Mitchell’s lips advance against my mouth, kissing me softly. Reverently.

  I’m instantly lost and I groan, my fingers plunging into his short, inky hair.

  He gathers me closer, stealing my breath, my thoughts… my heart.

  We pull away, and mine hands slide from his neck to grip his shoulders. “Mitchell…”

  His gaze is the tell as he shifts it above my head and a hand jerks me away from him.

  I turn and it’s Dad.

  “No!” I scream in a panic so absolute it blanks my thoughts. I reach for Mitchell and him for me.

  Centimeters separate our fingertips from touching.

  I feel the flicker before Pax finishes blinking.

  Then our separation becomes worlds.

  *

  Caleb

  I see myself, as a dead guy, come through the door and carefully hold it open for the rest of my dead family from this world.

  It’s so unreal it seems like the whole event is happening to someone else.

  I take in the scene. Three-Musketeer zombies are eating the brains of the guy who kidnapped Deegan.

  Can't think of a better finale for that squirrel.

  Parker and his horde are retreating. I stride to him, and he gives me the once-over.

  I turn to my right, and there I am as a corpse.

  Corpse Caleb grunts at me, and I instantly critique Pax’s abilities. No higher reasoning, pal? Really.

  As if reading my mind, Pax walks up. “Don’t judge, Dad. It’s a rush job.”

  “Right, thanks. Let’s get out of here, huh?”

  Paxton and I search the building's interior, the fire pressing in at all sides. “No exit.”

  I wipe sweat off my forehead. “No.”

  “Grab everyone, Dad.”

  My gaze lights on Parker. “Stay where you are, Parker,” I warn.

  I see Jonesy, Soph, Tiff, Bry, Mia, and John.

  No Clyde and Roberta. I begin to panic.

  The parents are with Pax now. I swivel my head, and my gaze stutters over the feasting zombies. Then stops dead at Deegan.

  She’s making out with Mitch.

  Bad. Very bad.

  I race toward them as Clyde bursts through the door. “Master!” he bellows and I turn, a meter away from laying hands on my daughter.

  Jade and Roberta run to me, Clyde on their heels.

  My world is right again. Clyde has appeared like a corpse-in-the-box, and Pax is gathering everyone.

  There are no bots for the moment, and half the horde is contained.

  Pax sprints to my position, and I jerk Deegan out of Mitch’s arms, giving him the look he deserves.

  Calm eyes, more alive than dead, stare defiantly back.

  “No!” she wails, her voice stricken.

  I roll my eyes.

  Kids.

  Mitch gives me a look of such utter contempt and anger I take a huge step backward with Deegan as she swings her arm out to reconnect with Romeo corpse.

  Not happening.

  “Pax!” I bellow behind me, and he flinches.

  He’s right next to me. He slaps my back, grabbing a handful of shirt, and I sink my other hand into Jade’s jean jacket. She hugs Deegan to her, and my other hand is on her shoulder.

  The fire is so close I can touch the flames, though the cement isn’t conducive to burning. It’s the only thing giving us time.

  Pax’s eyes meet mine.

  His gaze sweeps the corpses he’s raised.

  We flicker in this realm, like a hiccup of time. Fear thrills through me. My trust in my twenty-year-old son weighs in at around a ton.

  Rest, I hear like a bell being struck. I recognize Pax’s confident command to the dead. I should—I taught him how.

  I close my eyes. When I open them, the world runs in streams like water sheeting over glass. I see through it to something else.

  Something familiar.
<
br />   “Daddy! I can’t put Mitchell back!” Deegan screams.

  I ignore it all, my fingers tightening on my family. I have the women, Pax hangs onto me, and like a train of hands, steel-like grips claim a row of over a dozen people.

  All of them are mine.

  They belong to me. And for once, they’re not the dead but the living.

  My final image is of Parker running for the caboose at the end of the line.

  Bry snatches Mia up against him at the last second.

  I don’t see Parker get a hold, and a sigh of relief slides out of me.

  Adrenaline sinks its teeth as we shift from this world into our own. Deegan’s tears are wet fire on my knuckles.

  Pax blinks, and we are no longer in the world of murdering ALBs.

  We spit out of a portal of fire and ice, and I look around.

  We’re lying on Jonesy’s front yard like human lawn ornaments.

  It’s that young AFTD I left under the charge of the Skopamish. The barrel of his weapon is steady on my face.

  “Gotcha,” he says.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Deegan

  I'm so numb I float.

  I left my zombie to die in a crappy world of bots, enemy zombies and fire.

  I want to die. Of guilt or heartsickness, it all feels the same.

  I’m so empty without Mitchell, which isn’t possible, yet is. It’s the dumbest thing. Over a corpse. As Gramps always says, “It is what it is.”

  I ignore the jerks with guns. It’s easy when my missing guy devastates me so much.

  I shouldn’t own him. He’s dead, obviously.

  It’s just—I’ve never been kissed before. I’m a Random. Guys steer clear. Even though there aren’t many girls my age because of the sterilization, I still have limited charms as an AFTD.

  “Get up,” a guy close to my age says, his gun barrel never wavering.

  I set my jaw. “No.” I dig my fingers into the cool sod beneath my hands.

  He smiles.

  I lift like a plank of wood. His telekinesis has mine by a point. I could never be that precise with my talent.

  Blades of grass fall from my listless fingertips.

  Suddenly, his eyes are eighty centimeters higher and a half-meter away.

  My heart races.

  “You’re cute,” he says.

  My body goes numb. I lock up what happened in bot world with Brad Thompson.

  I swim back to myself, wanting to gag. Too bad I can’t manufacture another barf-o-matic. He’d be a good recipient.

  I fold my arms, trying for calm as I look around at the others. The Outback has an anti-motion shield on it. Confiscated.

  Sirens wail.

  Regular police now?

  Not so regular.

  SPs show up, hover cars floating to the ground. Invisible pulse tracks engage to lock them into position.

  Wish we had free parking over everyone else’s property, too. Must be nice.

  A blip of feeling creeps through the numbness when the SPs go to my parents.

  My eyes meet Pax’s, his arms straight up in the air in classic hostage posture.

  An SP slams the butt of his gun into my brother's gut. He hits the ground.

  Pax! I scream.

  I use my ability to snap the same butt he used on my brother and upend it into the SP’s jaw, a lucky strike. He flies backward. As usual, I’m overenthusiastic and nail him harder than I mean to.

  Dee—stay where ya are! They’ve got two five-point Nulls. We’re cooked, sis.

  Our gazes lock, then mine shift to the SP’s pulling my parents apart.

  I think of Mitchell and of my brother on the ground.

  My parents are being taken somewhere. Whatever's inside of me overflows like water. I can't stop.

  Don't want to.

  A cool wind starts. Behind me, in front, sideways. All around.

  From me.

  My long hair lifts, no longer sweaty along my head.

  One of the Randoms bellows, “She’s charging up! Do something!”

  The SP, backing away, doesn’t think I’m cute anymore.

  Good.

  I smile.

  Gramps grips Mom from behind while Dad moves between her and the SPs whose hands are on her.

  Mom’s eyes are wide with their intent. They flick to mine. I recognize broken images, untranslatable to someone else, from when I was little. It’s just Mom’s way; fractured telepathy. But I understand mind transference like a family language.

  As do Gramps’ and Dad. Permission stands in their gazes as they regard me. I’m scared.

  It’s like peeing my pants in public.

  Never, never, never, Deedie. I hear the ghosts of their voices from when I was small. That’s the problem with potty training. Sometimes you just have to go.

  Gramps nods, watching my expression. “It’s okay, Deedie. Sometimes ya gotta do what needs doing.”

  Tears I didn’t realize I’d shed until they’re cool pools of captured water in my collarbone soak my sweaty shirt.

  The SPs advance on me.

  “Shoot her Random ass,” one of them says.

  Who appears to be the head SP shakes his head, sighted on me. “No, she's the main target.”

  “Not if we're all dead, she's not.”

  They look at each other.

  “Cripple her, moron.”

  I speak for the first time, in a distracted way. “I don’t think you’ll die.”

  The ends of my hair float horizontally away from my body. A static-like charge in a three-meter radius encompasses me like a perfect donut.

  And I’m in the hole.

  “Don’t get trigger happy, asshole,” the one Random says to the AFTD.

  Too late.

  The bullet hits that invisible layer of charging energy around me.

  It leaves the space of this world and moves to wherever stuff goes that I make disappear.

  There’s a vacuum-like silence.

  Then gunfire explodes.

  I close my eyes, the mass of the bullets swarming like bees that don’t buzz.

  I capture them in the moat of my energy and fling them to parts unknown.

  Screaming erupts all around me.

  “Don't come close,” I whisper.

  Then they do.

  I take the guns when I feel their weight at the atomic level. Those atoms spin and float constantly, but I make substance shift and leave us, like the bullets seconds before.

  “Fuck!” someone screams, and I open my eyes. One of the Random government creeps is grabbing his own wrist.

  His hand is missing.

  I ignore that, my eyes restlessly moving. I scan my environment, totally in the black hole zone. It’s almost scarier than using the power.

  It feels good to be in the zone.

  As Jonesy would say, “I’m feeling it.”

  SPs, with their horrible little uniforms and hate logo insignias, race around, weapons drawn, trying to normalize my very un-normal manifestation of a yet-unknown power.

  An ear-piercing whistle breaks through the chaos. The ripple of it passes through my bubble and abruptly cuts off.

  I move my gaze to the person who made it.

  Mitchell looks back at me. He gives me a lopsided grin, walking toward me, hands outstretched.

  Weapons rise to shoot him.

  I feel their unique composition, their weight.

  The tentacles of my black hole-ness snap out and take them all.

  Some fingers go, too.

  Oops.

  Like a rusty tool, a butter knife, I’m not precise enough.

  I get the job done anyway.

  More screams separate the air particles, which softly tap the edges of my floating circle and grow quiet as they enter.

  Mitchell ignores it all. He reaches the edge of my power. After a moment’s pause, he closes his eyes and passes through.

  He doesn’t disappear but moves through it with a sucking pop, the powerful r
ing edging back around him.

  Mitchell puts his arms around me, and I slide my arms around his waist.

  My power dissolves, and I cave against him.

  He holds me tight.

  “I got you. It’s okay, Deegan.”

  It is now.

  I stand on tiptoe, throwing my arms around his neck. I smell death and life on him like cologne and breathe deeply of it.

  *

  Pax

  That's creepy as fuck.

  I shiver as Dee’s talent powers down. It lingers like ozone. I’m not the only one; there are wide eyes on the government Random dudes. Some of our group and the parents look like they were goosed with a cattle prod.

  I recognize the larger issue of Deegan’s zombie from the bot world somehow getting back to ours. Bet he caught a nifty little tailwind on my blink. They’re locked in each other’s arms like glue.

  Great.

  I survey the damage.

  There’s a lot. Like, five guys don’t have hands. My gaze tracks one as he comes screaming by with the right hand’s fingertips gone, the pinky finger absent on the left.

  Yeah, don't think the parents can contain Dee's black hole ability anymore.

  Or the fact we harbor illegal corpses from other worlds I blink to.

  I sigh. At least George and the corpse family stayed put and I got the gang back to rest on Sanction the Paranormals Central.

  I approach Dee and Mitch, holding my disgust back by a thread.

  He’s going to be one of those dudes the parents say no to (ʼcuz he’s dead, for fuck’s sake), and that’ll make Dee want him more, of course.

  Chicks.

  The Random boys back up as I approach.

  Good thinkinʼ, guys.

  Since sis brought it and the Nulls couldn’t do dick. A thought for another day.

  “Dee,” I say.

  She stares at me. So does Mitch, and I’m not a fan of the way he does.

  Like he owns her.

  Uh-uh.

  “We got trouble, sis. They’re gonna, like, drop a bomb on Jonesy’s house or something.”

  “Come on, man. Don’t say that shit.” Jonesy swings up his arms then slaps them on jean-clad thighs. “It’s like a self-fulfilling prophesy!”

  Jones turns to Gramps, fast approaching from the left. “Can’t you pull a ʽgrandfatheredʼ something, Mac?”

  He shrugs. “Don’t know. I’ve got Peanut back, thanks to the whole blinking madness, and that’s the main thing.” He pulls in Gram at his side and I have to admit, it’s been a stupid mess, but having Gram back makes it worth it. She seems a little tired, though.