by Libba Bray
Alma shook her head. “Lord Almighty.”
“Folks left in a hurry. That body’s been there for weeks,” Doc said. “Who would run off and leave a dead body on the table?”
“So far, it’s the only person we’ve seen in this town,” Jericho said.
“Yeah. Don’t that seem mighty odd to you?”
“This whole town feels like it’s been embalmed, too,” Alma said, spritzing herself and the room with an atomizer of perfume she’d taken from her purse.
“Yes. Preserved,” Ling said. She wanted to look away from the dead body but found herself oddly fascinated. The man was naked, and that alone caused her to blush. Her true fascination, though, was for the man’s ravaged state. In the end, this was what happened to everyone. One minute, you were gloriously alive. A sentient creature. Making plans. Full of purpose. The next, you were a cadaver on a cooling table in a funeral parlor with purpled fingertips and yellowed, engorged skin ready to burst. You were stiff and cold and just plain gone. Ling had seen the dead before. Cleaned up. Prepared. She’d even talked to spirits in dreams. But this sudden encounter with the cold reality of death was so startling and violent in its erasure of any illusion that one could escape it. The absence of life was palpable in the room. It made her desperate to prove how alive she was. She wanted to kiss Alma. To eat her father’s soup dumplings. To get out of this town. She wanted to think, because thinking made her feel so very alive, but right now, she was having trouble doing even that. The town was wrong. And had she seen Will back on the street? Or had she imagined it, a manifestation of her fear?
Flies swarmed around the lightbulbs and flitted past a tin of Bickmore Mortician’s Powder and tubs of paints and waxes, and then over a magazine, The Embalmer’s Monthly, open to an advertisement.
“‘Clark’s Hard Rubber Embalming Pump and Bulb Syringe and Extras.’ I don’t believe I want to know about the extras,” Alma said, her mouth turned downward in utter distaste. She threw her hands in the air. “I’ve had enough. There’s bound to be a filling station down the road. But I am not staying one more doggone minute in this tomb of a town.”
They left the funeral home and stepped back out into the street. The sky overhead was unsettled, announcing an approaching storm. Doc sneezed twice and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “This dust is getting to me.”
Across the street was a diner. The blinds were drawn at all of the windows except for one, where it was halfway up. Through the narrow space at the bottom, Ling could swear she saw people inside.
“Hey, I think I found them!” She moved her crutches forward, going faster than she should, feeling the ache in her hips. She’d need a long soak and some aspirin tonight if she hoped to get any sleep. Gold lettering across a front window identified the diner as the Blue Moon Cafe. Jericho pushed open the door to let Ling in.
“Hello?” Ling called into the semidarkness. On the luncheonette counter, cups of congealed coffee sat next to plates of rotting food being scavenged by clumps of flies. The stale air carried the punch of sour milk and rotting meat. More of those indeterminate shadows had been burned into the walls of the diner. It was still and quiet. No one was working behind the counter or in the kitchen, that Ling could see. But in the very back of the diner, a half dozen people were huddled around the same table—not eating. Not talking. Just sitting.
“Pardon me, do you have a filling station in town?” Alma called from the front door.
No one answered.
“We’re down to our last little bit,” Alma said nervously.
She was met with silence. Ling’s earlier apprehension became anger. It was like they were purposefully ignoring Alma, and Ling had a good idea as to why.
“The lady asked a simple question,” she said with an edge to her voice.
“Let’s just go,” Alma said in a stage whisper.
“Not yet,” Ling said and moved forward, maneuvering around tables on her way to the townspeople who were being so rude. She was almost to them when she noticed that the man on the end was covered in that same fine gray powder as the rest of Beckettsville. His hand rested on the table, and though the room was dark, Ling thought that his hand looked… unwell. Ling came to a stop. “Alma…” she started.
“So much… dust.” Doc said and sneezed hard.
The gray man on the end caved in on himself, turning into a pile of ash.
Alma’s scream was like a fist.
One by one, the remaining customers shriveled into dust. With horror, Ling and Jericho realized that what they’d seen in the town, what coated their hands and shoes and clothes, were the remains of every man, woman, and child of Beckettsville.
“Doc! Get the bus!” Alma screamed. “Go! Go!”
Doc wasted no time. He pushed out the door and raced down the street. Giant storm clouds were massing in a strange pattern at the edge of town.
“Jericho…” Alma said. “What’s that?”
“Nothing we want to be here for,” Jericho said grimly.
“Ling!” Alma shouted. “Ling!”
Ling didn’t move. Instead, she stared at the people who were now piles of ash and at the ash that had spattered the front of her dress. She pawed frantically at it, but all it did was ink itself in deeper, a tattoo of death.
“Ling,” Jericho said, coming to her side. “We have to go.”
“I can’t run,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You don’t have to,” Jericho said and lifted Ling and her crutches into his arms because he was her friend, and right now Ling needed him to be the kind of friend who could help carry her to safety.
Outside, the sky had gone from hazy to angry. Blue lightning fractured the ominous clouds. Carrying Ling, Jericho ran back toward the courthouse with Alma on his heels. They were relieved to see the Ford bus rounding the corner, Doc blasting the horn as he drove toward them. He yanked open the door.
“Get in! Get in!” Doc called. Jericho helped Ling and Alma inside. They plopped into their seats, breathing hard.
“Is anybody gonna tell us what’s going on?” Babe asked, wiping sleep from her eyes.
Doc gunned the Ford’s motor once more and careened down the abandoned street, driving among piles of ash.
“Hey! What about the filling station?” Eloise asked.
The bus bounced, coming down hard, sending the girls into screams.
“What in the Sam Hill!” Lupe said, bracing herself between two seat backs.
“Doc, go, go, GO!” Alma shouted.
“I am going!”
Lightning struck the land and bit into the rooftops. The energy of it danced on Ling’s and Jericho’s back molars. This was no ordinary lightning, they knew. Doc had steered the bus back toward the town boundary.
“Ling,” Jericho said, and she looked over her shoulder. She saw the first one shuffling out of a house. The next two came down a side street on the left. Two more. Three. As the bus came even with the church, Ling saw the disturbed graves on the hillside. Saw the dead streaming down toward the town with the angry storm growling around them. His dead. The hungry kind.
“Sweet Jesus in heaven, what is that?” Eloise shouted.
“Doc, don’t you stop driving,” Alma commanded.
“Wasn’t planning on it, Miss LaVoy!”
The little girl came out of nowhere, into the center of the road.
“Lord Almighty!” Doc said and slammed the brakes hard. Everyone screamed as the Ford fishtailed wildly, before coming to a stop. In the road, the little girl hadn’t moved. She had the soulless eyes of the dead. Her lips spread into a smile, exposing the gleaming points of her teeth. The other dead swarmed the street, coming to stand beside her.
“How many of them are there, you reckon?” Doc said, reaching for the sawed-off shotgun he kept hidden under the dashboard.
“That won’t help,” Ling said, and Doc clutched the gun to his chest, not sure what to do.
“I count twelve,” Jericho said.
“F
ifteen,” Lupe whispered.
“They planned this,” Ling said. “They’re… thinking. How did they start thinking?”
The dead joined hands.
“What are they doing?” Jericho asked Ling.
“I-I don’t know.”
All at once, they opened their dark mouths. A piercing shriek rent the stillness and sent the vultures flying. Everyone on the bus clapped their hands over their ears. Jericho dropped to his knees, howling in pain. As one, the dead lifted their arms. The road buckled. The air around the bus warped visibly. The force of it spun the bus around like a toy until Ling feared she might vomit, if she didn’t pass out first. The girls screamed and slammed from one side to the other. Ling gripped the back of the driver’s seat, grateful for the strength she’d built in her arms. The bus rocked back and forth, threatening to tip over, then settled. The engine cut out. The windshield wipers swished of their own accord.
Jericho pushed himself up from the floor. He checked on Lupe. “I’m jake,” she said.
“Nobody’s jake,” a frightened Babe corrected.
Jericho ran up and sat next to Ling. “How did they do that?” he asked as quietly as possible.
Ling’s eyes were wide. “I think… I think they’re combining their powers, like we do.”
Jericho shook his head, as if it might do some good. “How is that possible?”
“Doc, get us out of here,” Alma said. More dead were streaming down from the graveyard.
“Trying, ain’t I?” The Ford made a strangled-duck sound as Doc pumped the gas pedal.
“No, wait! You’ll flood the… engine,” Jericho warned as the bus died.
“Doggone it!” Babe said.
“I don’t wanna get turned into dust,” Alma said, fighting tears.
“Jericho. I need your help.”
“You mean destroy them,” Jericho said. “Blast their atoms apart. Be a weapon.”
“What choice do we have right now?” Ling asked.
“We could use our powers to fix the bus, get away,” Jericho suggested.
“You think they’re going to let us out of here?” Ling said.
“We can’t take them all on.”
“We can’t leave them behind to go after the next people who wander through here.”
It’s a real conundrum, ain’t it, kid? Sergeant Leonard said. He was seated at the back of the bus. I’m sorry I asked you to help me kill myself. That was a terrible thing to do to a kid.
Tears sprang to Jericho’s eyes. He could hear his blood thrumming. “No. You’re not here.”
“Jericho! What are you talking about?” Ling said.
“Who’s Jericho?” Doc said.
Jericho kept his eyes trained on the dead soldier sitting at the back of the bus.
You’re the only one who made it. Impressive. Sergeant Leonard’s expression darkened. But for how long?
“You go to hell!” Jericho screeched at the empty seat.
“Who’s he talking to?” Babe whispered.
Everyone was looking at him. Lupe was looking at him. He wanted to tell her to run as far away from him as she could get. He wanted her to hold him close and promise everything would be all right. Jericho’s fingers twitched. Make a fist, he thought. He was too afraid.
“Jericho, what’s the matter with you?” Ling.
“Why you keep calling him Jericho?” Doc demanded.
“It’s his middle name,” Lupe said.
Jericho’s heart beat strangely. What’s the matter what’s the matter what’s the matter with me?
“There’s more coming!” Alma yelled, panicked.
“Jericho. Please,” Ling said.
With a growl, Jericho pushed himself out of the seat, bending it slightly as he did. “Open the door, Doc,” he said.
“Don’t go out there,” Lupe begged. Jericho looked at the dead gathering in the road like a flock of predator birds. He imagined them coming for her and the rest of the Haymakers.
“Doc. Open the door or I’ll tear it off,” Jericho said.
Doc opened the door.
Jericho helped Ling down. The two of them stood in front of the bus, facing the dead of Beckettsville. “We could still fix the engine and run,” he said.
“We have to eliminate the threat,” she said.
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“We can’t think about that.” Ling reached out. Jericho accepted her hand. “Now!” Ling said. She squeezed Jericho’s hand tightly, thinking only of destroying every last ghost in Beckettsville. She could feel the first inklings of their gifts coming together, signals seeking each other. Out of the corner of her eye, Ling saw Will Fitzgerald up on the hill, barely a glimmer, his eyes wide and his mouth open, his splayed hand reaching toward the two Diviners as their bodies jerked with the strength of their joining. Ling and Jericho weaponized their power, sending it toward the line of dead in the road. The dead shut their eyes. They smiled, as if welcoming the destruction. And then their atoms blasted apart, knocking Jericho and Ling backward.
Ling grimaced as she hit the ground. The usual high that accompanied a “kill” was absent, and in its place was nausea and the taste of blood in the back of her mouth. The storm clouds had cleared. Ash swirled in the air like gray snow.
Behind them, the bus roared to life. “Get on this bus now!” Doc shouted.
The bus doors flew open and Alma rushed to Ling’s side, helping her up, half carrying her onto the bus. “Jericho! Get her crutches!”
Jericho staggered to his feet. Across the street, Sergeant Leonard stood with his hands in his pockets, his expression grim. That’s how they get you, kid. It’s a slippery slope.
Jericho grabbed Ling’s crutches and limped onto the bus.
“I don’t know what you did, but it feels like this baby’s running on pure electricity,” Doc said appreciatively. He gunned the motor and swung into reverse and finally they were speeding away from the town of Beckettsville. In their seats, the girls clutched one another, eyes wide.
Jericho stared at his shaking hands. And then Lupe was beside him, her hands covering his till they quieted.
“I’m guessing you’re some of those Diviners they’re looking for,” Doc said at last.
Ling nodded.
“Well, I’ll be.… You’re that same Diviner after all?” Babe said.
“Are you going to turn us in?” Ling asked.
“Nobody here will do that. Am I right?” Alma looked around the bus for confirmation and got it in nods and amens.
“What’s your power?” Lupe asked Jericho.
“Super strength.”
“Ohhhh,” the girls said in unison.
Lupe threaded her arm through Jericho’s. “He’s taken, ladies.”
“We didn’t mean to put you in harm’s way by keeping secrets,” Jericho said to the others. “We just needed help.”
Lupe rested her head on Jericho’s shoulder. “Doesn’t everybody?”
Ten miles down the road, they found a service station. As the attendant filled the tank, Lupe asked if he’d heard anything about a town called Beckettsville. “I don’t keep up with the news,” the man said. “If it doesn’t concern me, I don’t concern myself.”
“You might want to think twice about that,” she said, handing him the money.
They drove toward Chicago. It was getting dark. After the earlier excitement, the girls had gone to sleep. Jericho relieved Doc at the wheel so he could get some rest, too. Ling came to sit in the seat behind him.
“You jake?” she asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t they fight back?”
“I don’t know,” Ling said. “It was almost as if…”
“They were waiting for us to do it?” Jericho finished.
“Yes.” Ling felt queasy. Something was fighting to take shape inside her head.
“You said that energy can’t be created or destroyed, right?” Jericho said.
&nb
sp; “Right,” Ling said. “But it can be transferred.”
“Transferred,” Jericho repeated.
“Maybe our energy went to them,” Ling said, thinking aloud. “Maybe every time we obliterated one of them, they absorbed our power, and it only made the whole stronger. Jericho, I think the dead are starting to develop Diviner powers.”
Jericho thought back to the night of the Casino restaurant and the ghosts’ peculiar words: You did this. “Ling, where did you get the idea to annihilate the ghosts in the first place?”
It was the first time they met the King of Crows at the asylum. He’d told them to destroy the ghosts, Ling remembered. No. That wasn’t precisely what he’d said. Words mattered, she knew. What he’d said to them was that power lay in information—both in what was told and in what was held back. Will and Sister Walker had kept the truth from them, and it had carried a price.
But what else? Ling concentrated, trying to bring up more. The King of Crows had asked if they’d felt a surge of power when they dispatched the dead. Ling had been the first to answer honestly: Yes. It was intoxicating to blast apart the dead, nearly primal. She shut her eyes, trying to recall his exact words. She could see him preening before them. His smudged, tattered cuffs peeking out from his coat. Memphis’s sad mother standing behind him. The rain. Conor Flynn and Luther Clayton moments before the King and his dead claimed them.
His words. His words. Words were important.
“‘Did they not tell you that with each wraith you destroy, your powers grow?’” she repeated now. And only as she said it aloud did she realize what a twisty bit of word gaming it was. Did they not tell you. No, Will and Sister Walker had not told them that. Because, she realized just now, it wasn’t true. In fact, after their initial intoxication, the Diviners felt weakened and sick… and vulnerable. And when Theta wanted to know if the King of Crows was actually asking them to destroy his ghosts in a bid to get information from them, he’d given a trickster’s smile and said, “I ask nothing. Your choices are yours alone.”
You did this.
Your fault.
This is your doing.
How could they have been so foolish? He’d baited them to give up their power to him and his dead, and they’d fallen into his trap so easily.