Death Series 08 - Death Blinks

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

Name change suits the place. I pat my shirt pocket, find an empty carton where fine cigarettes used to reside, and glower.

  Don't like blinking back in the present one little bit. The group's fatigued. Hungry. Pissed.

  The sanction screwballs are waiting with some real firepower there in our home world.

  Probably have a hundred five-point Nulls lounging around.

  All because Deedie spun off those goonsʼ body parts like she was throwing a Frisbee.

  I chuckle.

  Everyone frowns.

  I guess my internal monologue is not transparent enough. Probably a good thing. Don't know if folks would understand my brand of humor. But that's the beauty—they don't have to for me to get a laugh. Sometimes humor is all that's left.

  I glance over at Clyde. He might understand. He being of a similar ilk and a relation and all.

  Gotta figure that out when we're not ass deep in alligators.

  I let my hand fall to my side, feeling the ghost of my cigarette like a weight. “We should go to Kim's. I don't like Pax blinking the gang back without adequate stores. When was the last time we slept—or ate?”

  Nobody knows. Vacant expressions and drooping eyelids greet my old eyes. Thanks to the rejuvenation, I no longer need reading glasses. I dig being eight-five and looking fifty. Don't want to get too young, though.

  I was an asshole back in the day.

  “Thoughts?” I spread my hands.

  Jonesy opens his mouth, and Sophie says, “Quiet, Jonesy, we all know your belly calls.”

  In silent consensus, we had all moved carefully out of the mass grave of infants and back to the top of the ravine.

  None of us speak about Tiff’s meltdown.

  Deedie broke her wrist and got a big lump on her noggin for her trouble, along with a macabre stabbing from a broken bone.

  That girl could always trip over her own feet. But Pax set the mess of her injuries to rights.

  I give a critical eyeball to Pax, who's looking so tired, his skin is ashen. We need rest. The boy simply can't heal everyone then blink us all back.

  We might lose more people.

  Like we did with Bry Weller and Archer. Where in the seven shades of hell did they run off to?

  Later.

  I look around at the rag-tag mess of family and friends. “Let's just stay on task, get to Kim's house and regroup.”

  “Can I say something?” Ron asks, wheezing exhaustively through his mouth.

  I kind of feel bad about his mashed nose, but the man has a mouth that begs for slapping. Talking about my dick and that. Hmm.

  “May I cuff him?” Clyde inches closer.

  Ron the Null flinches.

  I chuckle. I liked him better when he was just trotting along behind us like a puppy. We sure pick up a lot of strays. My eyes trail over Kim. Some I like.

  “No ear cuffs, Clyde.” Caleb sounds weary.

  Morose group.

  “Lead on,” I say to Kim.

  She surprises me by taking my hand. “I'm so glad I saved you.”

  That gets my dander up. “I would have worked out a plan.” I'm not ruffled that a woman thinks I needed saving. At all.

  She winks. “Uh-huh.”

  Tart.

  The crowd quiets, silently walking behind us, though the grandkids with their astute sight are flanking me and Kim.

  Somehow, I can't shake the feeling that danger is waiting for us. This world. Our world.

  Danger waits.

  *

  Pax slaps a palm on the last big tree before forestland breaks to cityscape.

  “What do you call this city?” I ask, thinking it looks eerily like Kent from back home.

  “Kent,” Kim says.

  Chicken skin breaks out, and I rub my hands over my arms.

  “What is it, Gramps?” Jade asks at my elbow.

  I gaze down at her, see the ghost of Deedie hidden in those features, and raise my arm.

  Jade's small hand encircles my bare skin.

  Seconds slip by, and when she lifts her hand, I feel the absence of that all-knowing touch.

  “You don't think we're out of danger?”

  I shake my head, because I certainly can't shake the feeling of impending doom. “Got a feel for that kind of business.”

  “What kind of business?” Pax asks, forehead against the rough bark of the tree.

  “The bad kind, son.”

  He turns his head, and dark bluish-gray eyes meet mine. I know their color but can't make it out in the deepest part of the night. He can see the flecks of gray swimming in mine. I know because he's told me.

  Judging by how I feel, the old bod would love to be under the covers and toasty warm about now.

  Instead, I find my old ass in another world, in a version of Kent that has a hundred bots to one human.

  Swell.

  Clyde's smell precedes him, and I wrinkle my nose.

  “Apologies,” he says, though the one word sounds garbled. Caleb has told me the mouth is the last to get nailed down and the first to go.

  Zombie anecdotal facts. “Can't help the reek, I suppose.”

  “Too true,” Clyde says, swiping his hand against some hanging skin and flicking it off his fingers.

  The glob of flesh lands against the tree beside us, and the flap of skin sticks like a grotesque gory flag against the bark.

  “That is so gross,” Sophie says.

  It is, but I've seen worse. Hell, back in the Gulf War, I saw stuff that I could never unsee. A little bit of cadaver flesh flying around isn't going to get me squeamish.

  “I live there,” Kim says, dropping my hand to point.

  I follow the direction of her finger.

  A narrow strip of older brick buildings are railroad tracks in their design, so close together that the alley separating them could hardly accommodate a fossil fuel car.

  Thinking it makes me miss the Camaro. Those sanction fellas better not have any ideas about running through my place. Chumps.

  Everyone looks to the sky.

  No hover transport. Huh. “Where's the transport?” I ask.

  “Curfew,” Kim replies.

  Of course, the tyrant bots are all over control. Probably make it sound plausible and justified to the human populace. I'm naturally suspicious, so to me, it stinks like a skunk.

  I survey the group, seeing everyone is more or less ready, and a somber Tiff gives me a jerking nod. “Let's go.”

  “Wait,” Kim says, her hand floating to my arm. Warming it. She turns around, her back to the waiting city, facing everyone. “There is a strict curfew in effect. That means that if we trip one of the cyborg wires, they will make us Compliant.”

  What?

  “Don't like the sound of that,” Pax replies slowly.

  “Me, either,” Caleb agrees.

  “They sound a lot like the Sanction Police.” Deedie gazes around the forest, like the bots will jump out of the ground. Robot zombies.

  I laugh.

  Everyone gives me strange looks. “Just thought of something. No worries,” I say, using an ancient expression.

  Caleb smiles because he's always had a bit of a challenge with controlling his urge to laugh. I just let it rip.

  “So how do we avoid the bot booby traps?” Jonesy asks, getting to the crux of it.

  “I see them,” Pax says in a soft voice.

  “Me, too,” Deedie echoes.

  I look where they're looking. Don't see squat.

  “That's not possible. They're infrared.”

  Mitch's eyes travel the first half block or so of the edge of the city. “It's a graph of some kind. We'll have to walk through it like a maze.”

  Deedie looks down, and I sharpen right up at Mitch.

  “What in the hell is going on here, Deegan?” Caleb asks.

  “Now don't go too hard on her,” I begin. The poor kids can't help their genetic deck of cards they got dealt.

  Deedie's bottom lip trembles. “I was hoping he'd stop blinkin
g, Dad.”

  Oh boy.

  “What is it, baby?” Jade asks, pushing all the snarled dark hair behind Deedie’s ear. Half of her thick long hair is in a braid, and the rest a mess. Leaves and twigs are sticking out of it from the cartwheels she did down the hill.

  Mitch plucks a few pieces of forest debris from her hair like a devoted chimp. His face turns to mine.

  He blinks, and an eyelid descends. A second one.

  This isn't good.

  “I didn't mean to give him my blink.”

  “Oh, Caleb, this is dreadful.”

  “I didn't think anyone who was dead could take on the attributes of the AftD?” John states.

  “Looks like Deegan's got all kinds of stuff she can do,” Tiff says.

  “Can he blink, or can he blink?” Pax asks.

  “Ah—no. Don't want to see if Deegan's corpse-boy can jettison us to some other place even more screwed up than this one.”

  Hate to say it, but for once, I agree with Jonesy.

  “I'm not going to do anything like that. I said there's a grid in a graph-like pattern. I can see it, and Deegan and Pax can see it.” He looks at each one of us. “I say we split up, everyone hold the back of everyone else, and we move through the grid. Between the three of us, we should navigate the pattern easily.”

  Pax sighs, ripping a hand through his hair. “Fine. But I'm beat.”

  We all are.

  “I don't know what this blinking thing is precisely, but it better work. None of us want to become Compliant.” Kim's eyes are too wide in her pale face.

  “What's ʻcompliantʼ exactly?” Deedie asks.

  “Have you heard of the lobotomies given in the early twentieth?” Kim's dark eyebrows arch.

  Christ on a crutch.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Deegan

  Fine drops of sweat cascade down between my shoulder blades, soaking the center of my already-filthy shirt.

  And my menstrual cleanser is nearly full.

  Sophie's fingers through my shirt like a bad feeling I can't shake. I suck in air through my nose, trying to calm my shredded nerves.

  Good luck with that.

  I know that we've split the group to be fair to the three of us who have the enhanced vision because of the blink. I have the smallest number of people. Gramps is the caboose of my danger train.

  I begin to tremble, and a lone drop of sweat slides from my temple to my jaw before falling to my shirt.

  “Stop,” I say, and everyone halts.

  I turn to Mitch, who is about three meters to my right. Pax is exactly the same distance to my left.

  Everyone's wide eyes look to me. It's not lost on any of us that we’re literally walking through a mine field.

  My head feels hot and weightless. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

  “No, Deegan,” Pax says immediately. “You puke, and bodily crap's gonna get on the grid.”

  “She's exhausted,” Mom says.

  A scalding tear joins the sweat rolling down my face.

  “What if I trip?” I whisper.

  Grampsʼs hand lands on my shoulder, breeching the distance between me and Sophie. “Listen to me, Deedie.”

  I zoom in on Grampsʼs voice and exhale, smelling my own sour breath. My stomach flips.

  “I'm scared, Gramps.”

  He squeezes my shoulder hard enough for me to swallow a yelp. “You're a good girl. Shore up now, Deedie—we need you.” He hesitates. “I promise you an ice cream when we get back home.”

  Sugar is illegal now. But Gramps has everything we can't have because of his holographic card that states his grandfathered status.

  I smile, take in a breath, then let it out.

  I can do this.

  “You can do this, Deedie.” Gramps echoes my thought, giving another one of his painful squeezes, and releases me.

  Pax raises an inky eyebrow. “We gotta do this before light comes, Dee. If we don't, our sight will be back to normal, and we'll be as blind as them.”

  Aunt Tiff snorts. She's been so quiet since the baby skeletons that I'm glad to hear anything from her. Even if it's a pissed-off snort.

  “Okay,” I say, proud my voice doesn't shake.

  I inch forward, sighting in on the dotted sharp red lines that run in a zig-zag pattern all around us.

  Part of genius is innovation. My mind effortlessly finds the “holes” in the patterns, the “gaps” I can move between.

  My zombie has the hardest time. Those voids in the grid are almost too narrow for a person as large as he is to pass through.

  “I'm not so sure I don't want to take my chances here,” Ron the Null mutters.

  “Whatever. When we get out of gridland here, pal, you can take your chances with the bots,” Gramps growls.

  “Blinking? Zombies collecting trash? And what about all this nonsense about Pulse Tech? Your world sounds barely better than mine.”

  At least we're not baby killers.

  “It's not nonsense,” Sophie says in a lofty voice right behind me. “I don't have to use keys or handheld devices. We just think our communication needs, and poof! Done. And no zombie brothels, by the way.”

  Ron's irritated voice rants on, as he ignores the obvious issues of bot world, “Sounds like a great way for the government to keep tabs.”

  Nobody replies to that. We're so tense, we can hardly think, and discussing our messed up government history, the Graysheets, and all that's gone so wrong in our world isn't worth mentioning. Still, this world has worse problems than ours.

  Gramps would think Ron's right, though. He won't allow the final pulse implantation that everyone gets when the cerebral cortex is fully formed after age twenty-five.

  The implementation advancement wasn't without problems. Some subjects had implantation too early, resulting in some fried brains. Now the incomplete installation happens at five years, like a raw install. Everyone must be at least twenty-six and a half years to receive the complete Pulse chip.

  I slow, and Sophie does the same behind me. My eyes travel the grid, and I see it collapse at the alley where Kim said she lives.

  Okay. Just three more meters. I resume walking.

  Pax uses his shoulder to wipe sweat from his forehead. First one side, then the other.

  Mitchell doesn't sweat. Must be nice. Except the undead part.

  We shuffle slowly to the end of the grid, where there's a solid line without breaks. It runs from the corner of one of the brick buildings all the way to the other.

  “How do we get past this?” I ask, a lump of unshed tears seating itself in my throat. The line is chest height on me and has crosshatching from that point to the ground.

  There's no way through.

  Fear crawls up my throat like freed razor blades, spinning and slicing. I wipe my hands off on the scratchy polka dot pattern on my leggings.

  “I can jump it then haul everyone over,” Mitchell says, his gaze clearly traveling the same hurdle mine just did.

  Gramps gives him a considering look, as do the other guys in the group. Except Pax and Dad. They know what zombies can do.

  I look at Mitchell. His eyes meet mine. The expression in them simply says I'll be the very first person he hauls over.

  That's okay by me. I'm scared to my marrow.

  “Deegan first,” Mom says unnecessarily.

  “Makes sense, her being the youngest,” John says.

  Gawd.

  Mitchell chuckles.

  I hate being the baby.

  Then his features smooth to serious. “Step back.”

  Everyone takes a cautious step backward exactly the way they came.

  Mitchell plants his left foot behind his right as though he's at the starting line for a race.

  Then he jumps.

  I keep forgetting how strong zombies are until mine leaps from a nearly still position to a midair jump, sailing over the red grid line.

  He twists before he lands with a single bouncing hop. Straightening, he
moves quickly to where I stand. Mitchell's somber eyes meet mine. “Arms up, Deegan.”

  I nod but bite my lip. Terror makes my hands tingle. I lift my arms anyway.

  Strong hands grip my wrists, and with a numbing jerk, I'm airborne.

  I flip upside down and squeeze my eyes shut, thinking about my disheveled braid at the last second. Is it long enough to hit the grid?

  I'm caught in his arms rather than the ground's hard embrace. A soft kiss lands on my forehead, then I'm set on my feet.

  My eyelids burst open, and I let out air I didn't even realize I was holding.

  It takes ten minutes to get everyone over. Mitchell never tires, ceaselessly chucking people.

  Pax helps, everyone getting handed off to him or landing on him.

  I do wonder if Mitch does a few tosses a little hard at my brother.

  When he throws John over, Pax lands on his butt, with Uncle John on top. “Watch it, dead head.” Pax scowls at Mitchell.

  I catch Mitchell's small smile. Pretty evil.

  For the millionth time, I wish my brother and my zombie could get along.

  With a weary sigh, Kim pushes away from the old brick wall when everyone assembles. At an all-metal door that's shadowed by the deep sandwiching of the buildings proximity, she flips the cover up on an ancient keypad thing with softly lit numbers.

  “Been a long time since I've seen one of those,” Gramps remarks.

  I've never seen one.

  Kim punches in a code so quickly, it's obvious she's done it a lot.

  The door lock disengages, and we walk into the building.

  The first sound I hear is the soft whir of air conditioning and the unmistakable noiselessness of humanity in slumber.

  That's where I want to be. Just thinking about a bed makes me realize how exhausted I am. My relief about getting through the grid without a fleet of bots descending feels almost anticlimactic simply because I'm too tired to give a crap.

  The low-wattage antique LED lights don't burden my second lids too badly, but I retract anyway. I turn to tell Mitchell to retract his, but he already has.

  There are no elevators in the building. Actual stairs mount the sides of the center of the building for up-and-down traffic, and we trudge over to the bottom.

  I eye up the fresh slice of hell the stairs represent at the moment and sigh deeply.