The Company of Death

by Elisa Hansen

  “Are you…okay?”

  He shook his head and pushed back, gathering up the cards. “For now.”

  “How long is now?” What would happen to Death if dying ceased to exist?

  “I suppose we’ll find out.” The forward presence of his voice returned, but the grim humor to his tone troubled Emily. He knew everything of death. This was definitely a death thing. But he didn’t know? Or was he evading the question?

  He met her eyes and lifted a hand to her, palm up.

  Um? She blinked at it, her lips parting. What did he…? Oh! She slid the elastic off her wrist and dropped it into his metacarpals. “Sorry.”

  He bound the cards and tucked them away.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

  “You could kill Scott.”

  Emily laughed. He was joking. Right? He had to be joking.

  He shook his head in a dismissive gesture. Okay, yeah. Just joking.

  “Actually, I probably couldn’t.” It came out a bit strained despite her attempt at sounding bantery. Even if she wanted to do something so heinous, Scott was well-protected, and she was weaponless.

  “You’re probably right.” He sighed.

  She scowled at him. Like Scott was so much mightier?

  He looked up at her. “What?”

  “You’re not supposed to agree with me.”

  “Aren’t I? All right.” He paused as if giving it some thought. “You could snap his neck if you managed the proper leverage. Or mix a tincture from desert flora to poison him. Or even now break the window behind his head and slit his throat. Or—”

  “Dude, stop!”

  Death sighed heavily. But despite the dramatics, he seemed amused.

  “You are seriously awful.” Emily couldn’t help it, she was a little amused too. Poor Scott.

  Mostly, it shocked her Carol hadn’t stopped the truck and evicted them both. Maybe to conserve power for driving, she didn’t have her robot ears turned up high enough to hear them?

  Either way, Death needed to stop. No one was killing Scott. Scott would die an old man in his bed, gaming on his favorite channel or whatever he was into. No one was killing anyone as long as Emily could help it. So Death was hungry. People went hungry all the time. His turn for a while.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” she asked.

  “Distract me?”

  What, how? He refused to play cards with her. What else?

  “Talk to me,” he replied to her puzzled expression. “I like listening to you talk.”

  She almost laughed. She was tempted to quiz him on the life story she unfolded during their walk yesterday. But why would he lie? She was a decently interesting person. Maybe he had some kind of life-envy? Hmmm…

  “Did I tell you I won the lottery?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a funny story.”

  His posture lost some of its stiffness as he shifted against the tailgate. “I’m all ears.”

  “You don’t have ears.”

  “Not now.”

  Emily blinked. “Did you used to have ears?”

  “Tell me your lottery story.”

  She nodded and took a moment to dredge up the details. It felt like so long ago. “So, I was crossing the street, right? It was raining, but you know, SoCal rain, so I didn’t have an umbrella. And I saw this fifty-dollar bill stuck to a parked car’s tire. It was a gold car, a Lexus or something. Lots of mica in the paint. I called it the money car. Anyway, I was like ‘sweet, free coffee!’ but when I picked up the fifty, it was clipped to a bank deposit slip with some business checks. The slip had some company’s name on it. So I was like fiiiiine and looked up the company. I emailed them, and they asked me to drone the deposit back to them. They said I could keep the fifty as a thank you. I gave it back with the checks anyway, ‘cause, you know. But then they sent me fifty dollars’ worth of lottery tickets. I won six-point-three million.”

  “That is a lot?”

  “It’s more than fifty!”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I mean, not enough to quit my job and pack off to New Zealand or anything, but I could have finally moved out of my parents’ house. I’d been living there since I graduated, working seventeen-hour days out of my she-cave to chip away at my student loans.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Right. So, yeah, six-point-three million. Enough to get me out of debt and still have a little capital for the startup my friends and I were brainstorming for years. And then like three days later? Zombies.”

  Death stared at her as if waiting for more. But there was no more. Zombies killed everything.

  “I never even turned in the ticket.”

  He nodded contemplatively. “That is a funny story.”

  Neither of them laughed.

  Emily wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. “Though I guess the Ecuador Explosion was like winning the lottery to anyone with student loans.” None of the skills she learned in college helped her survive in the wild after the world fell apart. She should have majored in medicine or people management or something. Information systems? What a joke.

  But still not laughing.

  “Tell me about your ears.” Her turn to be distracted.

  “I don’t have ears.”

  “Not now.” She stared at him.

  He waved a hand in the air as if he could brush the conversation away. Emily stared harder.

  He stared back.

  She wasn’t going to stop this time.

  “Very well,” he said finally. “Why do you think I look like this?”

  “Because it’s what dead people look like? Eventually.”

  He plucked at the cloak over his lap and then studied his crusty skeleton hand. “This is a rather Western interpretation of me.”

  “So ‘Westerners’ had it right?” Emily frowned. Now that he mentioned it, that sounded seriously wrong.

  “I look like this often. Most often. But not always.”

  “Like shape-shifting?”

  “If you like. But I was with you when Time stopped me.”

  “Right…” And he looked exactly how she thought he should.

  “It was your time. I was there for you.”

  “So…you looked like what I wanted?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I basically willed you into existence?”

  “No.”

  Basically, yes. Emily smirked at him. “Is that why you’re so attached to me?”

  “I could leave you.”

  “Sure you could.”

  He shrugged. His expression could not change, but he seemed even more amused than before. “Who else am I going to travel with?”

  “Literally anyone else? Or alone?”

  “Besides, you’re mine.”

  “Uh huh, sure. Cause horselady ‘gave’ me to you, right? And I was totally hers to give.”

  It seemed like he might laugh. He could laugh, right? He was close.

  “I’ve lost everything else,” he said. “I might as well keep you.”

  “Yes. You need me to be your ‘legion.’”

  “Legion…” He went still, then drew his touchscreen thing out of his cloak.

  What, did she say something wrong? “That’s what the horsepeople said.” Emily was just kidding, though. Why was he poking his screen so severely?

  He shook his head with an effect as pointed saying shut up aloud.

  She blinked and sank against the truck’s side. Well, he was distracted. Mission accomplished?

  Bounce, bounce, ouch.

  What was going on in his brain? Did he even have a brain inside that skull? Would she be able to see it if she peeked through the holes of his not-ears?

  Stop thinking about brains, you creep.

  Was Death’s personality also an aspect of him she willed into existence? Or did it remain the same regardless of how he looked? Probably that. What about his voice? His eyes? Did he have many friends before
? Or any ever? Other than his brethren, but fuck those guys.

  Though when would he ever have the time to socialize? Every moment he wasn’t reaping became a moment the world went wonky. Did natural moments on Earth when someone wasn’t dying ever exist? There had to be some once in a while, right? When he wasn’t bound by Time, he could presumably stretch those moments as long as he wanted. But who could he hang out with in a frozen moment?

  No wonder he missed his horse so much.

  Unprecedented.

  Emily folded her arms and smiled to herself.

  24

  The Airship

  An especially evil bump in the road jolted Scott awake. “The airship!” He gasped for breath.

  “There is no airship, Scott,” Carol said from the driver’s seat, her tone more mechanical than usual.

  Scott groaned and dragged his sandpapery fingers down his face. His tongue impersonated a block of driftwood in his mouth. He swallowed twice, three times, and shook out his head.

  “Watch the potholes,” he muttered.

  “I am.”

  “Not very well.”

  “As well as I’m capable.”

  His dried-out husk of a brain couldn’t decide between snapping a retort about her needing an upgrade or accusing her of doing it on purpose. And then too much time had passed for anything he said to be considered snappy.

  Cracking his neck, he sighed and rolled his face to the window. There never was an airship. Well, there were lots of airships, but never for Scott. The first ship he missed, though, was not his fault. That one was all on Jade.

  The day she left Curisa, he wanted to believe it was some kind of mistake. The battery in the alarm went bad or something. She couldn’t have intentionally reset it. She didn’t possess that kind of deviousness. She lacked the creativity. But reset, it had been. The battery ticked on in perfect working order.

  She must have gotten the idea from Colin. Mr. Frisco. Or maybe Colin even did it himself. Fuck Colin. If not for him, Scott would have been in New York almost a year ago. Fuck Colin and his fucking bald-headed, girlfriend-stealing, ship-seat-stealing, bald-headed baldness.

  Scott ran his hands through his own shaggy hair and glanced to Carol. Bald, bald Carol.

  The day Jade left, Carol lay in Nick’s lab, but he didn’t know if she witnessed his breakdown. Nick was working on her when Scott stormed in, but he never knew how much Carol recorded when she appeared to be off.

  Scott hadn’t been crying. Angry rage tears weren’t crying. Not the same thing at all.

  “Busy here,” Nick said without looking up.

  Scott kicked a table, and a tray of circuit boards took flight, clattering to the floor.

  Nick jerked up. “What the heck?”

  “Fuck Colin.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  He gripped the edge of the table and glared at it. Wrong? He wasn’t Colin. Apparently that’s what was wrong. “She left.”

  Nick’s gaze darted around the floor, tracking the scattered circuit boards, but she didn’t pull her hands out of Carol. “Midori!” she called over her shoulder.

  Scott looked to the door in the back of the room, but Midori didn’t appear. He was relieved. He did not need to see another girl right now.

  “Where the heck is she?” Nick shot Scott an accusatory scowl. “Pick them up. But be careful.”

  “She left,” he repeated.

  “Midori?”

  “Jade!”

  Nick would forget Scott existed if he didn’t force himself on her. Why did he even bother?

  “Good. That’s what you wanted, right?”

  Scott gaped. Didn’t Nick know he was supposed to be on that ship too? Would she have even noticed he left?

  “No! This is most definitely not what I wanted.” He wanted to be out of Curisa. He wanted to be in New York where there would be real food and normal people and Jade could finally relax and go back to treating him like she actually liked him.

  Nick stared at the circuit boards like they might combust. “Midori!”

  “I’ll get them,” Scott snapped.

  Nick gave him another glare but turned her attention back to Carol as Scott stooped to gather them up.

  “You two were awful together,” she said as if decreeing the final word on the longest romantic relationship of Scott’s life.

  Wrong. She was just wrong. Things had been bad for a while, but they were going to get better again. How could Jade just go without him? Just…go. No. Not even just go. Actively rob him of his escape. Scott won the right to that ship seat along with hers in the last lottery. Colin didn’t win shit. And now Colin was floating off to the promised land and Scott was stuck in Curisa purgatory, and all Nick cared about were her precious circuit boards. He should snap them in half.

  “I never should have let her start hanging out with him,” he said to the boards he collected in the tray on his lap.

  Nick made a pbtbtbt sound. “Oh yeah, can’t imagine why she ever would want to leave you.”

  Scott’s anger had him shaking. Literally shaking. He tried to fold one of the boards between his hands, but it didn’t so much as bow. The knobby parts bit into his fingers, and he dropped it in pain.

  He looked up at Nick from the floor. She hadn’t so much as noticed. Fuck her too. She didn’t give a shit.

  He hiccupped. “What is wrong with me?” He wasn’t going to cry. No.

  This was where Nick was supposed to say, Do you want the whole list or just the highlights? or some other sisterly insult, but she didn’t answer. She apparently didn’t even hear him.

  Is this what Scott deserved because he stopped sending her birthday messages? Well, she stopped too. She moved out when she turned eighteen and never came back. Two years later, Scott did the same. They grew up. Life moved on. Who even cared about birthdays anymore? No one. No one cared. Scott’s birthday had been two days ago. Jade spent it drunk. Nick spent it working. It didn’t matter. Twenty-three wasn’t an important year.

  He pushed the tray off his lap, but Nick caught it before it scraped to the floor. Setting it aside, she knelt and pressed his shoulder. She looked kind of pissed, but she was there, really studying him, which was enough to surprise Scott. He didn’t know what to do with it. He felt more awkward than comforted.

  Get over yourself. You’re better off without her. Told you so.

  But Nick didn’t say any of those things. She just looked at him, her hand on his shoulder, warm and light. As the quiet minutes ticked by, Scott’s breathing evened out, the waves of fury and misery receded.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  Nick gave him a little squeeze before letting her hand fall to the lap of her green coveralls. He didn’t know how long they sat there like that, staring at the red-brown stains in the grout between the floor tiles, not saying anything. But by the time they finally got to their feet, Scott’s knees felt numb. Numb knees, but his soft insides hurt less.

  “Just keep it together, Scoscar,” she said. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d used that nickname. Years. It almost made him want to cry for real. “We’ve got the next ship, right?”

  He nodded and put the tray on the table for her. Gently. “Yeah.”

  Yeah. Missing the first ship? Not his fault.

  Missing that next ship, though? The last ship… Scott’s throat tightened as Carol jerked the truck around another pothole. He clenched his teeth, shaking the memories out of his head, and he focused on the road through the windshield. Silver mirages shimmered in each dip of the unending pavement stretching before the bumper. He should probably drink some water.

  “Carol.” He shifted in his seat to face her. “How many days since we left Curisa?”

  “One hundred and sixteen.”

  “No, not the first time, this time.”

  “Four-point-four-one.”

  How many hours did that work out to? Point-four-one times twenty-four… Wait, what was he was doing? He shook out his focus. So f
ar, he’d only finished three of his water bottles, and all his purification tablets remained. He could definitely spare a bottle now. Digging one out of his backpack, he chugged.

  He braced for Carol to chastise his indulgence, but to his surprise, she kept her mouth shut. He found himself strangely disappointed.

  Reaching over, he flipped up the soft pad under her arm to check her power meter. On reserve already? Shit. No wonder she was being so weird. “You’re low.”

  “Go back to sleep. I’ll alert you if I reach emergency levels.”

  No way. He needed to think up a backup plan in case this factory ahead didn’t have juice and Carol couldn’t charge. The last thing he needed was to be stuck with a brainless junkbot and Death following him around.

  Scott shivered just thinking about him. When he’d joined them in the truck and the distance between them shrank to the closest since early morning, Scott braced himself to be hit with the chill. But though he felt something like it slither under his skin, the sensation hadn’t staggered him like before. A sort of hollowness swirled in the center of his being, but it grumbled more like hunger than the terror of his own mortality. Maybe he was too exhausted to be afraid of Death at the time? Though now that he’d napped, he didn’t feel any of it at all, even though Death was still back there. But Emily would keep him in check. He obeyed her for whatever reason. And the fact that Death answered to some random zombie chick made Scott find him much less intimidating.

  “What do you think of her?” he asked Carol.

  “Are you referring to Emily Campbell?”

  He nodded and wiped his mouth, capping the bottle even though it was empty.

  “You know what I think.” Her eyes never left the road. “Why do you ask if you will only dismiss my conclusions? She presents danger to you, and you should get away from her.”

  “No, I mean, what’s her deal? How does she exist?”

  Carol’s bluish-gray lips pursed in a silicone frown. After a silent minute, she shook her head. “I can’t answer that.”

  Scott should know better than to ask a robot to theorize. He wondered if Nick would have speculated with him. She wasn’t That Kind of Scientist, but Emily would pique her curiosity for sure. And then Death…

  It was going to be one interesting reunion when they all got to New York.