The Once-Dead Girl

by Laer Carroll

  But she didn’t. Her miraculous body knew exactly how much strength to use for every task. So much so that when lifting or tossing another cheerleader, for instance, the hardest part was making it look as if it were not easy .

  Naturally she quickly became good at dancing the tango. There being two girls for every boy in advanced dance class the girls had to take turns leading as well as following. Since Bethany knew precisely what was happening inside people she touched, she could tell if the follower was slow or confused and adjust her lead to make it easier for them.

  This ability was a handicap, however, when she acted as a follower. She could tell when a leader wanted her to move in some fashion almost before the leader did. But “anticipation” was not a good trait. Mr. Selaya had to correct her several times.

  “Bethany, you must resist the man. Be a little slow. Make him work just a little bit to move you. This forces him to be clearer in his signals to you. Here, lead me once around the room, just a simple walk along the line of dance.”

  This was counter-clockwise around the outside part of the dance floor, they’d learned on the first day. It helped keep the traffic moving all together so that people did not bump into each other.

  Carlos (as he’d insisted everyone call him) took her in a dance embrace. Bethany was almost overwhelmed by the sensation as she always was. His scent excited her. Her super sensitivity meant that she could feel his insides as well as the pressing of his body against hers. He might as well have been naked. And he was a virile man who had and enjoyed sex frequently.

  She wanted to lie down on the floor, pull him after her, and open her legs to him.

  She felt like such a slut.

  Stop that! she said to herself. And thankfully her body obeyed, damping its sensitivity to a normal level and a little below .

  “Now, step a little away from me and lean on me.”

  Tilted thus their bodies were lightly pushed against each other, welding them into a unit.

  She took a step forward. The pressure of her chest and belly on his pushed him backward. He let himself be moved, but not as if he were light as a feather.

  She walked around the room, passing around the slower couples, some of whom had stopped and were working on a problem, some just forgetting they were supposed to follow the line of dance.

  By the time they’d made one circuit of the room she’d caught on. She said so. He released her, gave her a smile, and turned to help another couple.

  Just as well. Bethany’d had to damp her senses way down to keep from responding to him as her body wanted to.

  After the first week Bethany began to go to his milonga on Sundays and spend the entire evening there. She came to enjoy herself and quickly became a popular dance partner. The men were too old for her to date (some were really old, fifty or sixty) so that helped. Some of them did make her feel sexy, but only enough to feel good, not to be tempted.

  It also gave her a good excuse to leave home early and return late. She was constantly stretching the limits of her parents’ restrictions on her movement.

  Maybe someday they’d trust her so much there’d be no restrictions.

  ·

  Toward the middle of the semester Bethany had her second taste of violence.

  The last Wednesday of October was Career Day. Teens were encouraged to spend the day with one of their parents. Those who didn’t or couldn’t attended a series of classes devoted to various jobs and careers.

  Bethany chose to spend it with her father. He’d resisted, giving several reasons, but the real reason (her super senses told her) was that being a policeman of any type could be risky. Even for those who did mostly desk work or worked in the labs or similar jobs.

  That morning she biked to the Burbank Police Station. It was near the court house, the fire station, and the city admin building, all of which clustered together on four large blocks just north of the outdoor mall. She racked her bike and locked it to the rack, then walked up the curving concrete steps. The day was already warming up at 9:00 o’clock and the cool inside the building was welcome—or it would have been if she weren’t a shapechanger equally at home in the Arctic or Sahara.

  “Hi,” she said to the uniformed policeman stationed behind a tall counter facing the large transparent double doors. The building had an odor she’d never encountered before. She resisted teasing out all the dozens of odors and smiled at the man.

  “Ms. Rossiter? We’re expecting you. Sign in here.” He pointed a finger at an info slate embedded in the top of the faux-granite counter top. She did so, clipped the TEMPORARY badge he gave her to a lapel, and followed his directions up an elevator and down a hall to her father’s office.

  She knocked on the jamb to the open door and her father looked up from his desk. Behind him a large plate-glass window looked out over the front of the building. With him was another policeman in a brown suit with a gold tie. Bethany noticed that his brown shoes were highly polished.

  Her father stood up, smiling, and walked around the desk to give her a quick hug and a kiss on her cheek.

  “Beth, I want to introduce you to a man I couldn’t do without: Detective Anthony Caruso. Tony, my daughter Bethany.”

  He reminded her of an older Carlos Seraya. She wondered if he were Argentine like the tango teacher. Thankfully when she shook the hand he held out to her she had none of the attraction to him as she did with Carlos. She did a quick probe of his body. She found a couple of minor problems and fired off routine instructions to his body so that it would fix them.

  “Hello, Bethany. Please call me Tony.”

  She returned his smile. Her Maelgyreyt side assessed him as a warrior and leader and approved.

  “If you call me Beth. Otherwise you’re Detective Caruso.”

  Her father explained to her that Tony would give her a brief tour of the building and the several departments housed under its roof. Then at 10:00 she’d attend a weekly status meeting which he presided over.

  Her father smiled. “After the meeting you may wish you’d spent all day at school.” Tony Caruso chuckled and led her out of the office.

  The tour covered all three stories and the basement but they didn’t spend a lot of time in any office. The biggest was a large room with two or three dozen cubicle offices with walls about five feet high, the outsides painted in pastels of all the colors of the rainbow but the insides a medium grey.

  The last stop was the basement. It took up most of the block. It included dozens of filing cabinets and shelves holding large white cardboard boxes. There were also two free-standing locked rooms with walls of steel grillwork.

  “This room,” Tony said, “contains evidence of pending cases or those with appeals of convictions still running thorough the courts. And this,” he pointed across the aisle separating the two rooms, “is the confiscated weapons room. ”

  “It’s not very big,” Bethany said.

  “Yes. Burbank has a very low crime rate. Especially of violent ones.”

  “I know. I memorized the history posted on your Web site a few days ago: last month there were two rapes, eight robberies, and 15 aggravated assaults. And one murder a year ago.”

  “You’ve done your homework.”

  “I always do. I could probably give you more statistics about the department than almost anyone here. But that wouldn’t give me any real understanding of what you do. So don’t think I think I know it all.”

  “You’re older than your years.” He gestured her through the door of the elevator which had just opened for them.

  “I almost died a year ago. You re-think a lot of things when that happens.”

  “I know,” he said. His thoughts for a few moments were elsewhere and elsewhen.

  “Now, do you drink coffee? It’s about time for the meeting.” Do they let you drink coffee, little girl?

  “Yes. Could we stop along the way at a restroom?”

  They could. They also stopped inside the door to the briefing room to get two cups of co
ffee, along with a dozen other men and a few women.

  “This is pretty good,” she said as they walked to her seat. “I always read in detective stories how bad coffee is in a police station.” She sat. He remained standing.

  He grinned. “Not in this building. Our jobs are hard enough without being tortured while doing them. Oh, hey, got to go.”

  “Thanks for the tour, Tony.”

  “I enjoyed it. It was good meeting you, Ms. Rossiter.” More than I expected (she guessed) ran through his mind. She could not read minds but she could read bodies. And his had been showing signs that her boost to his health was already taking effect.

  She flashed him a smile. “Ditto, Detective Caruso!”

  ·

  The meeting could have been boring. It dealt with a dozen minor items and a couple of major ones, none of which meant anything to her. However, she enjoyed seeing her father manage the meeting. He kept it running smoothly without a lot of finicky attention to detail, but also not speeding over important points. He assigned a couple of “action items” to people, but more often they assigned them to themselves without needing an order from him.

  All in all, it showed him in a light she’d never seen. Or had seen but never understood that she was seeing it.

  “Hello,” he said to her, coming up to her chair as everyone else was leaving the room and she was standing up. “Ready for lunch?”

  She smiled at him. “I’m always ready, you know that.”

  She still hid just how much she ate from her family and friends, but she’d been letting them see more of it lately. As an excuse she gave her growth spurt since her accident. Her command to her body months ago had brought her up to 5’ 7” tall. Most of that was in her leg bones and only a little in her spine.

  Also her hips had broadened to give better support to her enormous strength, matched by broadening shoulders. She was no longer the little girl she had been a year ago.

  There was a modest lunch area in the center of the building with an inner patio half covered by an awning. The uncovered tables had umbrellas to protect them from the noonday sun. They took their trays to one where a woman sat eating a brown-bag lunch.

  “Margie! Let me introduce you to my daughter Bethany.” Beth’s father set his tray down opposite the woman. Beth sat beside him so she could speak directly to Margie, a lithe 40- or 50-something with beautiful straight mahogany hair. She smiled and nodded Hello and the woman did the same.

  “Margaret is the head of our K-9 Corps. When the last head put in for retirement she put in for the spot. Then took a two-month leave of absence to go to a veterinary school.”

  “Not because I planned to become a veterinarian. That takes years. But so that I would better understand what vets said to me.”

  Her father explained that the Department had a full-time vet but retained two more to take up the slack when their vet went on vacation or to a conference or refresher course. He asked his daughter if she’d like to spend an hour with Margaret.

  “I like dogs,” Beth said to Margaret. “But Mom is allergic and we never could have one.”

  “Good. I’d love to introduce you to ours.”

  Then she began to question Bethany about her classes and outside activities. Beth talked about cheerleading—”We’re athletes and not just pretty faces”—and the tango part of her dance class.

  “I still go on Sunday’s. I’ve gotten pretty obsessed with it.”

  Then she turned the talk back to Margaret. She had a daughter a year ahead of Bethany who also attended Burbank High.

  By the time lunch ended the two women were getting along so well that they almost didn’t notice Beth’s father leave them.

  The K-9 building was half a mile away from the main police building. She made friends with the K-9 dogs, who were completely different from their fierce reputation when someone was properly introduced to them. And fed the occasional snack.

  Beth made full use of her healing powers. These dogs, some of them suffering scars as impressive as any human who had gone into danger, would live longer and healthier from now on. She almost regretted she’d have to leave them at 2:00.

  ·

  Shortly a blue-over-white police car drove up and stopped at the curb near her. The passenger-side door opened. It was her father.

  She got in, closed the door, and put on the seat belts. They were unusual. In addition to the lap and shoulder belt, there was another shoulder belt which crossed over the other.

  “I thought we’d go to the gun range. Would you like that?”

  “Sure! Can I shoot a gun?”

  “You can. Part of being a police officer is being willing and able to use deadly force. You need to know that, really understand it, if you do become a police officer.”

  He didn’t really believe she would, she could tell. He was just enjoying the chance to get a little closer to her. Since the divorce she and Helen had distanced themselves from him and only in the last year had reversed the situation.

  “Notice the seat belts? That’s because of this.”

  THIS was the police car rising a foot in the air. She laughed, delighted. Because he’d come to her in one of the new air cars the department had leased from the Prince Air Car Service.

  Her father raised his voice and spoke toward the middle of the dashboard.

  “Burbank Control. This is air car P-zero-zero-five-eleven. Requesting a flight path to this destination.”

  Meanwhile he’d pressed a button on the dash which lit up a map of the city, then tapped a red circle with an X inside it. This drew a purple line from one spot to another north and a little west.

  “Proceed, P-zero-zero-five-eleven. You are clear of all traffic in a three-mile radius. Be advised your ceiling is 1000 feet.”

  “Thank you. Lifting now.”

  Her father pushed the steering wheel forward and tilted it toward his lap. The car began moving forward and upward at a mild angle. At the same time a humming began. It increased in volume and tone as the air car rose. At the same time Bethany noticed reflections of alternating red, white, and blue light off the nearby buildings. Atop the police car a strobe light had begun to warn everyone that the police were taking some kind of action.

  As the car rose above the highest building nearby, a bank, the sound cut off. At a tap on the dashboard display so did the strobe light.

  “The sound is just a warning to bystanders to stay away. The car engine runs completely silently when we’re on ground effect.”

  That last was a “paramagnetic cushion” upon which the vehicle floated when near the ground. Above that height four air jets, also powered by the paramagnetic effect, drove the car through the air. Their action was accompanied by a loud hissing sound, muffled by the closed doors and windows.

  Bethany wondered how the cushion and jets worked, but put that out of her mind. Lihua would surely explain it to her later. And the panorama of the city below her took her full attention as it fell away below them.

  Her father was turning the steering wheel to the left and lifting it to a level attitude. At that the car turned and tilted to the left and leveled off. On the dashboard screen a big 1000 flashed on, then began to flash off and on for a few seconds before vanishing. Bethany took that to mean they were now 1000 feet in the air.

  The car had been traveling roughly east when it began rolling. Now the curve brought them mostly to the north. The VerdugoMountains loomed before them, it’s peaks still higher by another 2000 feet.

  The lower hills and ravines at the foot of the mountains were below them still, however. One of those ravines was now approaching. To the left of the ravine was a broad swath of green. On it she could see a few golfers scattered on it and a few small buildings to one side. Suddenly she recognized the green.

  “That’s the Golf Course! And there’s the Overlook!” She leaned forward and zoomed her eyes to get a better view of the large building perched on a flattened area above the golf course. There were a couple dozen cars and va
ns parked in the large parking lot behind the building.

  It was an upscale restaurant which overlooked Burbank and the valley. The view was spectacular at sunset, as she knew from several visits there for special occasions. It included rooms for meetings and a big ballroom. Special events such as New Year’s Eve parties were often held there.

  The land had risen so they were perhaps 500 foot above it now, following a street which wound upward around the golf course and took a sharp turn to the left toward the Overlook. Another street peeled off to the right and wound up a canyon. Trees lined both sides of that street.

  Then the air car began descending in a slow arc. At the end of it she could see a long white barn-like building, several smaller brown buildings, a large parking area (sparsely filled), and a central green. They approached the front of the white building and a loud humming sound cut in: the warning sound. The flasher atop the car began to pulse also, though the telltale flashes reflected off the land and buildings below were so faint no ordinary human sitting in her seat could see them.

  The air car settled gently onto its cushion. The jet hissing died away and she heard a clunking sound. The car’s wheels had just rotated out of the car’s body. Then the car descended to a rest spot.

  The two got out. The afternoon sun was hot on them despite the cool front which had recently come through. She smelled a sharp odor she never scented before overlaying all the familiar ones: dust, grass, people, gasoline, and so on.

  A translucent image spun into existence which overlaid the big white building toward which they were walking. It was a chemical formula made up of rounded molecules of several sizes and colors attached in a sort-of sculpture. And an understanding of what happened when it burned.

  Bethany almost paused at this new phenomenon: somehow she’d developed a biochemical laboratory somewhere inside her. Which identified this strange scent as gunpowder.

  She took this new “superpower” in stride, literally, and followed her father through a large double door. Inside a sound became louder, which she’d noticed but ignored as her latest power asserted itself. Gunshots, muffled by distance and sound-proofing.