by Eros, Marata
The strength of a man.
Hell, he was fourteen and didn't know how to fight. But he could take a hell of a punch.
None of Mom's Guys had ever been able to knock Jeffrey out. No glass jaw for him; it was a small point of pride.
Dave turned and did the expected, whaling on Jeffrey. The symphony of Mom's screaming a backdrop to the numb pain that began to seep in from the repetitive abuse.
That familiar noise was shattered when the door burst open.
A creature that Jeffrey didn't even know what to call entered their shabby rental, and with it, the smell of rotting garbage and ripe shit.
Jeffrey looked at the figure from upside down, step-monster's fist poised above his face with his other hand deeply fisting Jeffrey's T-shirt.
“What the fuck is that?” Dave asked in a hoarse whisper.
Jeffrey had a good idea, but was afraid to admit it.
The creature's eyes found Jeffrey's, and in that precise moment, he knew it belonged to him. Jeffrey guessed the corpse showing up cleared up the mystery of what ability he had.
Didn't get the placebo after all. Figures.
It'd been one of the abilities they'd listed as theory only. See, they knew there'd be Empaths, Telekinetics—standard issue skills.
Yeah, right. It was all pretty out there anyway. But the rarest of the listed skills was Affinity for the Dead.
And this thing was dead.
As a doornail. Six feet under. Pushing up daisies. Taking a dirt nap.
The zombie stood framed in the doorway, smelling like a rotting sewer.
Mom screamed and the thing didn't even flicker.
“Master,” it said as if through a mouthful of gravel.
Jeffrey's swollen eyes widened. He didn't respond as the zombie moved in a slow and graceful shamble toward Dave.
Shock was beginning to creep in around the edges of Jeffrey's mind, grayness teasing at his reality, his consciousness.
Dave dropped Jeffrey's head like a hot rock and his skull bounced off the cheap vinyl floor, stained and cracked from the hordes of low-income renters that had lived there before him.
“This isn't natural!” Dave bellowed irrationally.
Well wasn't Dave the clever one?
Corpse dude hissed, and kept coming.
Dave pegged Jeffrey with a hard stare full of accusation. “It's not good enough that you have to be as dumb as a post and lippy. No- oh !” Dave's eyes watched the zombie Jeffrey had accidentally raised move toward Dave with grim determination. “You gotta be one of those AFTD weirdos too. Uh-huh, I see where this is going.”
Mom plucked at his sleeve with a whimper, her naked fear at seeing a dead man walk into their House of Squalor tangible.
Dave turned on her like a cobra and struck, lashing a meaty palm out that laid the flesh of her cheek open. At first it was an open wound, deep and white, an oyster shell pried apart.
Jeffrey knew from experience those were the worst, they never bled at first but later bled like an open fire hydrant.
“Mom!” Jeffrey shouted, the dead guy forgotten even as he did a gagging dry cough at the smell of him. Jeffrey's anger and fear for her ignited into a neat flame. The zombie responded to Jeffrey's emotional signature, reaching out with one hand it latched onto Dave's throat and squeezed.
Jeffrey didn't know a throat could make noise when it collapsed. That thought just sorta floated into his consciousness as Mom's face dripped blood all over the dirty floor, the red mixing in with the blood that had dried before it.
Jeffrey heard a noise from behind and swung around to meet the new threat just as the zombie dumped Dave, gurgling and gasping onto the floor where he writhed around without sufficient oxygen. Dave's arms slapped the ground at his side, bloody handprints decorating the dirt of the floor like errant finger painting. A crushed esophagus just doesn't bring in the O2.
The government guys were back, swarming inside his house like a living wall of black hornets. The one in the lead said in the cool and slightly raspy voice of a serious smoker, “Move.”
Jeffrey did, staggering backward and watched as the skinny guy with the cigarette did a double tap on Dave.
One in the head and one in the chest.
Assurance of death.
The gurgling stopped abruptly. The waving arms fell lifelessly beside him.
Jeffrey felt Dave's life become malleable as Dave blinked onto his new undead radar.
Jeffrey Parker's zombie turned at the men in black and hissed.
He pulled his gaze away from his mom's abusive dead boyfriend just as the blood began to pool underneath Dave's body and saturate the filth of the floor.
Jeffrey realized his zombie viewed the government guys as a threat and was crouching in front of him protectively.
Pretty smart for a dead dude.
Jeffrey had never felt the power of protection in his entire life. It was a heady thing. Didn't matter that he had AFTD—that his life had been solely about surviving shit—that he was brilliant and nobody noticed, nobody cared.
This dead guy was going to take them apart.
For him.
As he moved in to do it, the guy with the cigarette and gun said, “Torch it.”
“Fuck me! Look at that thing...” one of the guys in black began backing up and another sprayed puke as the smell enfolded the group.
Assassins.
The skinny guy, with plumes of smoke rising on either side of his face like devil's horns said, “Give it to me, dickless.”
He grabbed a thing that looked like a gun but had a blue flame like a sideways teardrop feathered at its tip.
Jeffrey realized too late what they were going to do, and his zombie responded to his distress.
He turned a devoted face to Jeffrey, the gore of strung tendons and partial flesh a chaotic dance of macabre reverence.
The dude with the silencer used his other hand to point the tip at Jeffrey's zombie as fire spouted from the end of it and lathered that face that had been staring into Jeffrey's eyes moments before, melting it like candle wax.
The zombie sprung at the trigger man, his body aflame, heat and rot coming off him in waves as the other agents sprayed bullets into its body until daylight shone through the holes like Swiss cheese.
Jeffrey puked then. Mom was moaning behind him, Dave was good and dead, and this thing... that Jeffrey was somehow responsible for, had been tortured because of him.
At heart, Jeffrey was a survivor. That's what he excelled at. If the dead guy hadn't shown up right when he did, well—Jeffrey might be dead by Dave's hand.
Jeffrey slapped a palm against the wall to steady himself. His minds was beginning to fit the pieces together. Jeffrey had also learned to be adaptive. There really hadn't been a buttload of choice in his life anyway.
The smoldering corpse cooked on the vinyl floor. Forget chalk outlines, his shape was permanently etched there.
Jeffrey met the flame-thrower's eyes, and intuited his intent instantly, even as his mind rejected the possibility.
“No,” Jeffrey whispered.
“Yes,” he said, plugging Jeffrey's mother in the forehead with the last bullet in his gun.
Of course, he thought dreamily, these guys wouldn't want any witnesses. It was the last thought he'd ever have in his old life. Because when Jeffrey woke, everything was gone.
A new path had been laid. One he was forced to follow.
Jeffrey thought it was worse than the one he'd been on before.
CHAPTER FOUR
1929
Clyde put the last of the luggage in the small trunk of his 1929 Buick Coupe, slapping the metal with his palm to settle it into the latch. The new smell off the upholstered seats still assaulted his nose. Clyde gave a small smile, he took special pride in the mechanical systems and care taking of the vehicle.
The coupe would be the last inanimate object he would ever let go of. So he fought in the ring. With Maggie expecting, and the stigma associated without the bene
fit of marriage, he'd have to step up his pace. This would be his final spar, then he'd tie the knot, bringing the babe into the world the right way.
Clyde came around to the driver's side and jerked the handle up. The weight of the door swung wide as he dropped in beside Maggie, the stiff and long gearshift a barrier between them.
Clyde eyed her appreciatively, for she wore her hair unfashionably long.
Just for him.
He grinned. The bob haircut that had neutered the femininity of his era had not latched onto his Maggie. No, her deep red hair swept off a smooth forehead, her pale green eyes like the fresh water of the sea. Maggie was beautiful.
She was his.
Clyde reached over and with the pad of his thumb he stroked the velvet skin of her cheek, a surge of emotion swelling inside him.
He had a perfect life, charmed as a point of fact. The farm's debt stood on the verge of full recompense. His impending nuptials, and the fighting finally coming to an end.
Clyde wrapped his large hand around the soft skin of her neck, feeling the delicate bones underneath his calloused caress, placing his opposite hand on the wheel.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Maggie asked, leaning her head against Clyde's forearm, their bare skin pressed together, his sleeves rolled up to accommodate the heat of the day.
He gave a small sigh. Clyde wasn't keen on sharing his mercurial thought processes. He wished to keep Maggie as insulated as possible. After all, protection was more than merely physical, but mental as well. What kind of man would he be if he shared thoughts that were dark even by his own musing?
He let his hand fall from the heated skin of her neck and placed both hands on the steering column, reflexively gripping it.
Maggie gazed at him with those eyes of hers, holding him prisoner. “You can tell me your thoughts, Clyde. You think you protect me with your reticence but it only makes me feel isolated from you.” She smiled. “And,” she pointed to the wheel, “I know you don't need both hands to crank that wheel. You be strong!” she scoffed.
“You just want my hands on you,” Clyde said softly and winked.
“Aye, I do!” she said with her faint accent from her homeland, a fine blush flaring across her cheekbones in a lovely pink wash.
Clyde stared at the pulse that beat in the hollow of her throat, remembering how it felt beneath his lips and his smile became a grin.
Maggie whacked him softly with her handbag. “Scoundrel!” she huffed. But she didn't mean it.
No, not at all; their glances locked in unspoken understanding. Clyde turned away without answering her questions about his thoughts.
He put his hand back on her, shifting once on the way down the drive. His palm heated the skin beneath silk stockings where the hem of her dress met her knee.
*
Clyde was as distracted as he'd ever been in his illegal fighting career. He'd gotten what he'd wished for: anonymity. But with that came a steep price. He remembered when he'd arrived in Olympia the day before.
The ring leader looked him up and down, a cigar of the cheapest variety chewed and wet, clamped between teeth that had not seen a toothbrush this year. He circled Clyde like a shark that's gotten a hint of blood.
When he reached out to clasp a hand around Clyde's bicep, he snapped his hand around the leader's forearm. “You don't need to touch my person to glean what I am about.”
Jonas Richter narrowed his eyes on Clyde as he met that stare with impunity. “I always feel what I'm putting in the ring. There's a lot of dough riding on you, Thomas. I'm not putting a slippery weasel in there.” His gun metal irises shone underneath the dim lighting inside the building, his gaze nailing Clyde to the spot.
“I've never lost,” Clyde replied simply.
“A man's bound to meet his match sometime,” Richter responded, lighting the foul-smelling cigar. The wet end looked far to soggy to hold up through the forty minute smoke.
Clyde rolled his broad shoulders into a shrug.
“This isn't Kent,” Richter warned, his hard eyes like an approaching storm cloud.
“I know that,” Clyde said, restraining himself from wafting the horrid smoke away from his face, his hand tightening by his side.
Everyone smoked, and Clyde hated it. Waste of a person's time and money. He'd see old men staked around like bowling pins on their front stoops, rolling their smokes.
They'd be the death of people someday, Clyde always told everyone. Mark my words, he'd say. After all, it wasn't natural to draw smoke into your lungs. Even animals fled from fire.
“One more question,” Richter paused, meeting Clyde's gaze through the fog of cigar smoke.
Clyde waited.
“Why do you fight?”
Clyde raised his eyebrows. “Why would you ask that?” No one had ever cared about his motivation. It had always been about getting him in the ring, getting money from the abuse he meted upon others.
Clyde frowned.
Richter folded his lean arms over his chest, adjusting his hat. Finally he said, “Are you familiar with the expression: it's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog?”
Clyde nodded. He was very familiar with that precept. “Mark Twain.”
“That's good, Thomas.” He gave Clyde steady eyes, “Because you're gonna be needing all the heart you can get.” Richter's eyes remained unwavering. “Jack Dempsey is your opponent.”
Clyde's breath stood in the hot oven his lungs had become.
“The Indian?”
Richter nodded. “He's back to bar room brawling.”
“But, he's not out of retirement?”
“No sir, but he can, and has—put a hurt on a few men.”
More than a few , Clyde thought. He had heard the rumors of Dempsey's vicious fighting style. He would get up and fight when most men would have died.
Dempsey's life had shaped him. A nomadic existence that would have left others hopeless, fueled the fire of who Dempsey became.
He fought for the love of survival.
Clyde fought for Maggie, for the child she carried within her body.
His child. Their future. “It's for a woman,” Clyde finally answered.
“So you'd fight Attila the Hun?”
Clyde paused, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. “For her, yes.”
Richter's eyebrows rose to his hairline, hidden briefly underneath the brim of his hat. “That may be enough then.”
“What's the pool?”
Richter clapped him on the back. “Now, you know I can't let you know that, Thomas. Just fight. You're evenly matched, his reach, his height—what do you weigh?”
“Two hundred.”
“On the nose?”
“Dead-on.”
Richter nodded. “Okay. Be back here at this time tomorrow for the usual prep.”
They'd be taping him. Maggie could lather the grease beneath his eyes. He'd check the lighting of the ring as well—see what the potential for glare was.
They shook hands, Richter wincing at the grip that Clyde held him in before he released him.
“That's some grip you got there.”
Clyde met his eyes, “Yes.” He walked away, with Richter's eyes following after him, heading for the car, for Maggie.
Thoughts of fighting the meanest fighter of the decade stretched before him.
For the very first time he wondered if the money was worth it.
Then he caught sight of Maggie inside the Coupe, the sun turning her hair into flame, her smile full of trust and love.
For him.
Resolution propelled Clyde forward, as love made the decision for him.
****
A haze of bluish smoke hung like noxious clouds at the top of the building that housed the fight. The casement style divided windows, swung out, and were held in place by hooks of brass. The small amount of sunlight and air filtration barely put a dent in the smell of human bodies crammed too tightly, every other person smoking.
/>
Dempsey slouched, calm and sullen on his hard wooden stool in his corner, black silk boxers complimenting the dusky complexion of his red skin. He was Irish, like Maggie, but his Cherokee blood marked him as the Indian he was. That's all everyone had ever seen while he was raised up. It'd made him mean.
These were not tolerant times.
Those dark eyes burned holes through Clyde.
Clyde ignored him. Instead he scanned the crowd for Maggie. He caught sight of her red hair gleaming like a banner.
Maggie lifted her gloved hand, and he nodded back. He'd told her to stay put. Clyde couldn't have the distraction of Maggie's safety. He'd be fighting for his life here.
Their lives.
Dempsey stood, his fists hovering tight by either side of his face.
The bell rung.
The fighters met with a kiss of gloves, Clyde's healing fists offered temporary reprieve.
*
2010
Brandt set the electrodes on the subject and stepped back, noticing that some of his cheeseburger was smeared on his tie. Hmm—maybe the stain would blend with the pattern.
He looked into Mary's eyes and smiled, patting her shoulder. “This will work like charm.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Sounds like some creepy voodoo crap to me.”
Brandt smiled. The show and tell today was a mere formality. He glanced with trepidation at the spook squad behind him, and couldn't help the frown that crossed his features.
They seemed like the boogeyman of technological advancement. Scientists were always grubbing for financial support. Too bad it was always these types that showed up.
Their involvement gave Brandt a bad vibe.
Kyle Hart walked in through the swinging doors, and Brandt was struck again by how un-scientific he appeared. Hart was lean and hard, worked out a lot. Six-one and athletic, his sharp brown eyes were framed by chestnut hair that was constantly slipping down to cover his eyes.
That intense gaze swept the government suits that were here to appraise where their money was going. That the innovations that were finalized were the results they'd paid dearly for.
Kyle met Brandt's stare and a silent communication passed between the pair. Both of them taking in the group who'd funded both the Cocktail, and Brain Impulse Technology.