by Elisa Hansen
The man, scythe, and horse left Death behind, a solid blot in the mist. They disappeared into the black fog, which followed them like the swirling train of a robe until it, too, evaporated. Alone, Death's robed arms rose in a furious shower of tattered darkness.
Emily closed her eyes again. Too weak to wonder, too dead to care. A sharp metal clang made her wince. A long, grave silence followed.
Alone again.
The air felt sticky, and she turned her face into the dirt. Dirt. Just regular old dirt. Grains stuck to her lips in a way far too annoying to be less than real.
Was she dead or not?
She felt sick, pukey, but the pain was manageable. Was she supposed to get up now? A thick groan worked its way through her throat, and she forced her eyes open. Shades of black. Night. Just regular old night. She sputtered at the grit and groaned again.
"What do you want?" a deep voice snapped above her. Fabric rustled, footsteps retreated.
Who?
Emily’s chest burned to cough, but she had no air for it. Could she speak? She had to try.
"Help." It came out little more than a whimper.
The footsteps halted. The grave silence returned.
Emily went still. Was she hearing imaginary voices now? She couldn’t be dreaming; everything hurt too much. But her brain felt mushy, disconnected. When nothing happened for another minute, she gritted her teeth and inched to sit up. She felt stiff and battered and queasy, but not dead.
So what, then?
She looked herself over, checked her limbs. Her hand ran up her sleeve. She froze. The high moonlight revealed, clearly enough, a bite-sized chunk of flesh missing beneath a ragged hole on the side of her shoulder.
"No," she moaned.
"Unfortunately."
She jumped to her feet. All blood flushed out of her head, and she wobbled, but she caught herself on the railing. As her swimming vision focused, Death stared back at her. His hooded skull was cocked at a curious angle, his bone hands hanging at his sides.
"You!" Her strangled voice hitched. “You…”
Death himself. No longer swirling ink in water but a cloaked skeleton shape with defined edges. So real and solid she could reach out and touch him. What would he feel like?
Emily shuddered. "Oh… You… Oh, god. That means I'm—"
"No." He cut her off. "Unfortunately." His skeleton mouth did not move when he spoke. His voice, though clear through the clenched teeth, sounded like it rose from a tunnel too cavernous to be concealed even within his imposing frame.
No? Not dead? Death stood there, three feet from her, but she wasn’t dead? What about the hole in her shoulder, the zombie that bit her?
She waited, but when he said nothing more, only the support of the railing kept her from crumpling. "Then…I'm one of them."
Pulling her eyes from him, she prodded at her wound. Though it was deep, no blood flowed. It did not even sting as she gingerly brushed the dirt from its sticky edges. What should have been red looked too, too gray in the night.
The impossible presence of a walking, talking, solid, real-life Death before her felt like sweet fantasy compared to the despair that plunked stones one by one to the bottom of her being. One of them.
She could feel him studying her in the silence as dark nausea welled in her guts. She wrapped her arms around herself and bent against the railing, but the nausea did no more than simmer. Her eyes focused in and out on the hair hanging past her face. A hysterical laugh struggled to escape, but the breath she drew for it made her choke.
Emily coughed, thick and wet, and she pushed her hair back from her clammy forehead with gnarled, trembling fingers. Her gaze found the cliff's edge. How long had it been? It seemed a lifetime ago she stood there with her teeth against gunmetal.
Her hand shot to her holster. Gone. But no, the gun lay in the dirt, not far from her feet. "I should have done it when I had the chance," she whispered to herself as she picked up her Glock. She almost sobbed.
"Indeed."
She jerked around. He was really still there. He was really still staring. He had no eyes in his skull’s black sockets, but she did not like the way the smoldering points of pale green light deep within them fixed on her. She blinked. The light flickered as if he blinked back.
"This can't be happening." She dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. "This isn't real. I don't believe in you. I don't…"
"You don't believe in death?"
"I…" She tried to take a deep breath but choked again. She shook her head and tilted it back up to him, craned her neck. He was taller than anyone she’d ever met. Something like hope kindled in her chest, and she put her gun away. "Where are you going to take me?"
"I? Nowhere. You're not dead."
Hope snuffed to smoke. "Then…" Her gaze fell to her shaking hands. The skin around her knuckles puckered in blotchy lumps. "Why are you here?"
"Why are you talking?"
Her head snapped up. "It hasn't hit me yet."
His gaze raked her over, ending at the bite on her arm. Black now rimmed the wound. "Oh, no, it has."
Emily shoved away from the railing and prodded herself over. "Then why am I still…? I should be a drooling, man-eating monster by now."
"Yes." Death looked to the cliff's edge. "You should be." He lifted his face to the sky. Emily thought his hood would fall back, but it remained in place despite the wind. He sounded as confused as she felt. "I touched you."
She winced at the sudden image of his bone hand on her skin. Icy cold. She shuddered, folding her arms across her chest, glancing away. She failed to clear her throat as her eyes found the moon. It hung high in the midnight sky, and the completeness of the night’s silence struck her for the first time. When did the cries in the distance cease? Like a grenade blast, the evening came crashing back.
Ramon. The attack. Everyone down. And she gave the all clear. Emily groaned, the nausea rising again. She couldn’t see the factory from this part of the road, only the dying remnants of fire glow against the far sky. The thin blot rising beyond the bluff sharpened into a smoke plume when she squinted. If anything out there had been coming for her, it was gone now. She turned around, and the indistinguishable hills loomed in the distance.
The middle of nowhere.
Alone.
Everyone down.
"All I remember," she said more to herself than anything, "is being jumped by that hairy snake guy. He was one of the fast ones.” But how could he be? A slow one bit him. Only slow ones existed in town. Emily shook out her jumbled recollections. “I don’t… I remember him biting me."
Death rustled behind her. "It was just as I touched you." His voice was closer than before.
Touched her? He did touch her. Yes. So cold. She kept her eyes averted, refolded her arms in the opposite direction, shifted where she stood. Touched her.
"How do you feel?" he asked over her shoulder.
"Creeped the hell out."
"I mean, are you in pain?"
"No." Not anymore. How did it fade so fast? She frowned and looked back up at him. And up at him. She brushed her fingers over the hole in her arm. "I'm not, actually."
"Do you feel weak?"
She rocked on her feet, tested her balance. "Not now."
"Stiff?"
She was about to say yes, but the longer she stood, the looser she felt. She flexed her fingers then drew her gun, spinning it into her palm. As she re-holstered it, she shook her head.
"Hungry?"
She almost gagged. "No."
Death stared at her for a minute. Then he shrugged, turned around, and walked away.
"Hey, wait!" Emily lurched after him.
"Yes?"
"You can't just leave me here."
He turned back to look down at her. Something about the way he did it seemed bemused despite his lack of facial features. The light within his eyes was there and not at the same time.
She pushed against the rolling threat of panic. "Is this r
eally happening? Are you really the, the, what are you? The Grim Reaper?"
His eyes flickered before he answered, his voice quieter. "Yes."
She choked down a breath. "Then you have to do something. I can't, I can’t be a zombie."
"I don't think you can help it." He glanced over her as if to be certain, then gave a decisive nod.
"No," she cried. "Kill me! I'd rather be dead."
His shoulders sagged under his voluminous robe. "You are undead. I have no power over you."
"Chop off my head." She reached for him. "Burn me."
"It doesn't work that way." He took a step back, evading her grasp. "The undead do not die."
"Bullshit! I've killed hundreds of them."
"It's not the same." His voice fell even quieter as he took another step away from her hands.
She stopped. She should be on the verge of hyperventilating, but air proved impossible. "But I'm not really a zombie. Right? I can't be. I mean, I don't feel like a zombie. I'm not thinking like a zombie. I'm talking for god's sake." One of them.
There had to be a way to end it. Anything would be better. For almost two years, she’d clung to that vow like a religion. Anything but one of them.
The memory of the first time she saw them assaulted her like a headbutt to the gut. It had been such a pretty day. And there they were, out in the suburban sunlight, on the other side of her house’s plate-glass windows. Her mother in the center of the family room, shrieking and shrieking, making everything worse. Such a difference between seeing them on TV versus her own back yard, the glass barrier between them so much more fragile. And even after everything Emily had done, had fought, had killed, now she shuffled with them there on the back porch. Two years for nothing.
She grimaced and wrapped her arms around her waist as if she could squeeze the plague out of her tissues. "This isn't real.” She blinked up at Death through her hanging hair. “It isn't. Zombies can’t talk."
"I know." His gaze swept her over once more, then he lifted his hands, studied the bones as if they might reveal answers.
"You.” She rounded on him. “This is your fault. You're Death.” As batshit as it seemed, it made more sense than anything else she could let herself believe. “If you touched me, why aren't I dead? That’s how it works, right? You touch people and they die?"
"I was too late." He spoke to his hands rather than to her. "It was at the same moment."
“Too late?” Same moment? She shook her head, swallowing back a tight, raw lump in her throat. Something twisted in her stomach. She watched him for a minute, but nothing else happened. "Then why are you still here?"
"I am at the mercy of time." He dropped his hands and turned to walk along the cliff, away from the visitor’s center compound. In the opposite direction of absolutely everything that mattered to Emily only hours ago.
"Wait." She fidgeted, then jogged after him. "Wait, what does that mean?"
"It means everything has changed." His trailing cloak fanned behind him on the desert road. "And the balance is destroyed."
"Oh. Is that all." She ignored the writhing in her stomach, told herself it wasn’t there, kept her eyes on the side of his hood. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"I don't know."
She wanted to scream. She was a zombie, or she wasn’t. He was the actual physical embodiment of Death, or she was insane. But she couldn’t be lucky enough to just be insane; it was all too literal and clear. "You have to know!”
He shrugged. "Go to an undead dinner party?"
"God!"
He left the road and crossed the stony plane toward the hills. Emily followed right after him. Just let him even try to object. What else was she supposed to do? Her team was gone. She was gone. Their mission lost. The Amargosa hostages would never be rescued. Not by her team.
But… Could it still happen? Someone else could still do it. If she told them they needed to. It could still happen. That was the important thing. Emily had to focus on the important thing. Focus. Mission 12 was still out there, on its way. Coming down that highway. There must be someone she could find, something she could do. But she was getting farther from the highway with every step.
She stared at Death’s back as if she would find solutions in the darker impressions of the ancient fabric folds. He was all she had to work with, wasn’t he? After another minute, she managed to speak in a calmer tone. "So…what are you doing?"
Death stopped as if her voice startled him, but he only stared into the distance.
Emily waited a minute, then edged in front of him. In the sharp moonlight, his skull face looked bleached, the color of chalk. Bone that never held muscle or sinew. She had seen skulls aplenty during a college-era trip to Paris and its catacombs. At the time, it was a badass way to spend spring break. Now, it felt disrespectfully morbid and like a million years ago, but the human-bone-lined underground labyrinths held favorite memories. All those grinning former-heads had been dirt-brown with age. She’d never seen a white skull before. Not a real one.
Within the white sockets, Death’s gaze fixed over her head at the night.
"Hey," she said. What is he staring at? She glanced over her shoulder, then back to him. "Hey, look. My name's Emily. Emily Campbell."
His head creaked down to meet her eyes.
She gave him a little wave. He waited.
“Okay.” The writhing in her stomach calmed bit by bit, and she squared herself where she stood. "So. Right. Here’s the thing. I don't understand what the hell happened to me. And you, you're like some kind of god. And you're…here. With me."
"I am not a god."
She shook her head. "But you can help me, right?"
A gust of wind snaked down from the hills. It caught in Death’s tattered sleeves, sighed straight through him. His gaze slipped from her, as if the distance beckoned.
No, no. Nope. Never mind. There was no way any of this could be real.
Yes, Emily was definitely insane. She had to be. She bit down hard on her lip and clenched her trembling fists. The flesh sank under her fingernails.
Like a wet sponge.
With a sharp gasp, she shook out her hands. Okay, no such luck. Far too real.
Emily scrubbed at her eyes, then sidestepped to force herself back into Death’s line of sight.
"Please. Just, just listen. Please. The point is, you’re here. And I’m here. Right? Look. I'm with the Southland ring of the LPI. And, as I guess you probably know, all of my unit are dead or taken. I'm the only one left alive."
"No, you're not."
She stopped. "You mean someone else survived? Who?"
"No.” It almost seemed like he meant to laugh, if that were even possible, but his deep tone remained even. “I mean you're not alive."
Emily’s heart twisted. Everyone down…
No, shake it off. Focus. "But I'm not dead either."
"Nor are they."
Undead. She grimaced and fought the overwhelming urge to turn away, to pretend he wasn’t there. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she could go insane.
Focus! Work with it.
Emily forced herself to recall the highway they left behind. "That commune, those vampires, the ones that took down my team. They had human guards, but they didn't have a herd. Any human slaves, you know? That’s what we do, right? The LPI.” He must know about them. He was the Grim Reaper. He knew everything. “We rescue the slaves and disband the communes. We kill the vampires if we can.”
He shifted to interrupt, but she powered on. “But see, we figured out where this big commune was leading these hostages from Amargosa. Innocents. They’re going to come through that valley back there and three of us, of my team, were going to pose as survivors, ask to join them, spy it out so the rest of us could break in.”
Three of their bravest. Three of their—no. Emily couldn’t dwell on that now.
“The plan was solid. We've been staking out that valley for weeks. Everything was going to line up perfect. But then today, thes
e assholes show up. But it's not too late. If I could just get the info to another unit…” A chill rushed through her. Yes. It could work! “There are other units. Not too far from here. They could pick up where we left off. That's the important thing. I mean, that's what we died for."
"You mean un-died," Death said.
"Whatever. Look, there's this unit at the Nevada border we met on our way out here. If I could just get to them." But would they be able to drop their own mission to finish hers? They had to!
“You wish to seek out mortals?” Death looked from the hole in her arm to her hands to her face. "Do you think they would listen to you?"
Emily's eyes itched as if they were creeping into her skull. She shook off the feeling. "Yes! I don't know what this is. They'd have to know there’s something up when they see I can talk."
"If they gave you the chance to open your undead mouth."
Her mouth popped closed. Undead. One of them. Zombie. Her tongue grated against her palate like steel wool.
Death started to walk again, down the slope to a dry riverbed path between the high rocks. "Nevada is that way." He pointed straight ahead. "But Emily, you must learn to let go. Your mortal concerns are over now." The way he said it sounded like it must be something he repeated often.
"No, they're not." She followed right behind him. Could he possibly mean to lead her there? Or was his direction coincidence? "There are people out there who still need help."
"The living must help themselves."
"Or what? You'll kill them all?"
Death stopped again. Something about his stillness this time made Emily want to shiver. She waited for a minute and then obeyed her overwhelming urge to edge away. Maybe him pointing the direction helped enough. What else could she even ask Death to do for her? She would get to the border somehow. Pass on Mission 12 somehow. How far was she? Fifty miles or so? A solid day of good hiking. If they had trucks, they could make it back to Suncrest Hill with plenty of time to spare.
She circumvented Death to start out on her own but froze when he withdrew something from the recesses of his cloak. It was a blocky device, the size of a small book, but with tapered ends that gave it the overall shape of a squashed octagon. As a screen on its flat surface illuminated, Emily couldn't resist moving nearer. It changed pale colors as Death's bone fingertip stroked it, casting an eerie glow up into his hood.
