Medium Dead

by Chris Dolley

  “What’s happening?” asked the detective.

  “Don’t know,” said the driver. “It was fine driving down.”

  The engine died and the ambulance slowed to a stop.

  Brian waited. The success of his plan depended on what happened next. The second ambulance had to stop and pick him up. He was critically wounded, they couldn’t drive past. And Brenda had to be in that second ambulance. If not...

  He didn’t want to consider the ‘if not’ scenario. He didn’t have enough magic for a plan B.

  The second ambulance stopped. He could hear people talking outside through the open door at the back of the bus. The detective who’d been watching him was outside now talking to a colleague and the paramedic from the second ambulance. They wanted to move Brian to the other bus, but were concerned about Brenda.

  “She can’t stay in the back with her attacker. It wouldn’t be right. Every time I try to question her about what happened, she starts to cry.”

  “She’s walking wounded. She can sit up front.”

  Not ideal, but at least Brenda was there. He felt her mind as they wheeled him from one bus to the other. ‘I’m ready, Brian, but make it quick. I don’t know how much longer I can string them along.’

  They strapped him in the back of the second ambulance and prepared to set off. Brenda was in the front with the driver. Two paramedics and a single detective were in the back with Brian. The other detective had cadged a lift to the hospital with the escort car.

  Now was the time to show his hand – or, more accurately, what he was holding in his hand. A grenade. Not a real grenade, but one he’d teased into shape from the sheets and material his hand had been resting upon. He slipped his restraints and held the grenade aloft, holding his finger where the pin should have been.

  “Everybody out,” he said. “My finger could slip any time.”

  He gripped the grenade tighter, not sure if the sole detective would try and grapple for it.

  Both paramedics wanted to leave, but the detective wasn’t moving. And he was between them and the door.

  “Come on,” they urged. “We’ve got to get out.”

  Brian scanned for the detective’s mind, picking up a rush of thoughts, most were garbled, but some were crystal clear. Where’d he get the grenade? Didn’t anyone search him? What am I going to do?

  “Do what I say and no one gets hurt,” said Brian. Every word was a strain, but he had to get his message across. “I just want to talk to Jane. In private. That’s all. I know I might die. I need to make my peace with her in case I don’t make it.”

  The detective wasn’t buying it. He didn’t trust Brian and he didn’t want to leave Brenda alone with him. But there was something else, a series of thoughts bubbling up behind the others, tantalizingly close, but every time Brian thought he had them his concentration was rent by zigzagging flashes and pain. Such pain. It was like having all his teeth struck by lightning one after the other and then plunged into ice.

  He clung on, fighting through the pain. There! He had an image now. A woman and two children. In a picture frame. On a video. In the flesh.

  “Do you want to see your children again!” Brian shouted, shaking his fist. He could barely focus. “My finger’s slipping. I can feel it!”

  The driver was the first to run. Then the rear doors were wrestled open and soon everyone had piled out.

  ‘Brenda, come into the back and close the doors,’ said Brian. ‘We’re going.’

  As soon as Brenda closed the rear doors he rolled over and thrust his right hand through the body of the ambulance into the petrol tank. The pain was constant now. He gritted his teeth, made a hole in the top, then fashioned a fuse from the bed material, plunging it deep into the tank, soaking it thoroughly, then pulling enough free to give them enough of a delay.

  “You’re going to blow it up?” asked Brenda.

  “Can’t have them looking for us. They’ve got to think we’re dead.”

  “But they won’t find our bodies inside. Will they?”

  “Tomorrow’s problem. Stand behind me and grab hold.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a book of matches. An essential part of his crime fighter’s wardrobe.

  He lit the fuse, waited just long enough to feel it catch, then pushed all his remaining power into one final teleport.

  o0o

  Brenda looked down at the scene below. They were hovering at tree height above Forester Road. The escort car had pulled over fifty yards down the road and one of the officers was running back towards the ambulances. The other officer was standing twenty yards back from the rear of the second vehicle. The paramedics had scattered. There was no one else for miles. Then came the explosion. A roiling ball of flame and silent black smoke rising towards them.

  “It’s blown. Now go!” shouted Brenda, clutching Brian’s hand and pointing it at the sky.

  They rose, streaking into the cloudless blue sky. “Make this quick,” said Brian. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up.”

  He looked terrible. The gunshot wounds were bad enough, but his face had a pale sickly pallor. His hands were cold and he was sweating.

  “Faster,” said Brenda. “As fast as you can.” She’d fly high enough to see the Great Lakes this time, and cut out as many roads as she could.

  “Stop!” She could see them now away to the left and behind. She adjusted position, aligning herself with north. Now, whereabouts would Richwood be on a map?

  “Hurry,” he said.

  She hurried, pointing his finger where she hoped her house was and telling him to go for it as fast as he could.

  “When you say you’ll not sure how long you can keep this up. Do you mean literally? We might materialize any second?”

  “Yes.”

  Crap! She urged him to go faster. The ground moved beneath her, sliding past so fast they had to be travelling at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Spaceship fast. Would he be able to stop?

  “Slower,” she said. “Slower. Brian, you’re not slowing. Brian!”

  His eyes were closed and he was starting to slump in her arms. She shook him. “Brian!”

  “What?”

  “Slow down.”

  They slowed. Brenda tried to get her bearings. Everything was passing by so fast. Why weren’t all towns placed next to distinctively shaped lakes?

  She made a guess and adjusted Brian’s steering finger.

  That’s when they materialized.

  Crap. Brenda was in free fall, twenty thousand feet above something very, very hard. Wind whistled past her ears. She couldn’t breathe. It was freezing and ... she’d let go of Brian.

  Did she mention the spinning?

  Sky, ground, sky, ground, there went lunch.

  She punched her hands and feet out. Isn’t that what skydivers do? The world stopped spinning. And started coming up at her very, very fast.

  Shit! Shit! Shit!

  She saw Brian. He was a plummeting rag doll hundreds of feet below her and over to her left. Think, Brenda! You can do this. You saw that documentary on skydiving. How did they steer?

  Hello? Paging inner Brenda.

  Not a squeak. Inner Brenda was probably pinned against an intra-cranial ceiling.

  Brenda experimented. It had to be something to do with moving your arms and legs. That was it! And if you tucked your hands and legs in and pointed down you sped up. She aimed at Brian, streamlined her body and accelerated. She overshot, she threw her limbs out and slowed herself, she banked left, she banked right, she spun uncontrollably. But little by little she was getting closer to Brian until...

  She grabbed him by the arm.

  “Teleport! Brian! Teleport now!”

  Not a word. Maybe he couldn’t hear. The wind noise was overpowering. She pulled him closer, grabbing his other arm as well. She shouted with her mind this time, screaming his name and aiming it at his head. ‘Brian! Wake up! If you don’t wake up we’re going to die!’

&nb
sp; ‘What?’

  ‘Teleport! Teleport now! It’s our only chance!’

  The ground was coming up so fast now. She could see individual houses and cars. Come on Brian!

  They dematerialized. Away went the roar of the wind and the heavy tug of gravity. They hung there, in a silent bubble a thousand feet in the air. He looked like a zombie – white face, bloody wounds, and empty half-lidded eyes. She grabbed his index finger and stabbed it at the ground. “Down. Fast. And stay with me this time. Keep talking.”

  They reached the ground. Brenda headed for the nearest road, making sure they never rose more than ten feet off the ground. And she kept him talking, even though his conversation was limited to grunts and mumbles. At least they didn’t have far to go. The road led them to a small town she recognized. Ten miles to go at most. ‘We can do this, Brian. You can do this.’

  Brenda wasn’t sure how many times she breathed during those last ten miles, but it felt like the entire journey was accomplished in one long bated breath. As soon as they reached Brenda’s living room, they both collapsed.

  She lay there, counting her blessings. One, she was alive and, two, she didn’t have to feel guilty about the extra calories she’d consumed at lunch – they were now fertilizing someone’s cornfield.

  She rolled over and looked at Brian. He was shivering now, a feverish white-faced zombie. She dragged him across the floor and onto the sofa, then ran upstairs and grabbed a handful of blankets.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” she asked, enunciating each word and giving his shoulder a shake to make sure he was listening. “Do you want sugary food?”

  He made a grunt that sounded like a ‘yes’ so she rustled together an assortment of cookies and chocolate and put the kettle on for a mug of hot sugary tea.

  Then she rushed upstairs. After that free fall she so needed to visit the bathroom.

  An hour later Brian was still out of it, but at least he’d stopped shivering and his color was coming back. Brenda went upstairs to Google her three mysterious boxes of drugs.

  Adenosine appeared to be primarily an antiarrhythmic drug used to treat heart conditions. It seemed to have other uses too. Pages of them – all written in obscure medical-speak. The one common thread was that Adenosine worked on the heart.

  Lignocaine was an antiarrhythmic drug too, but primary it was a local anaesthetic.

  Trimazepine was used to treat cardiac arrest. It was an enhanced version of Epinephrine.

  So, three heart drugs – what did it mean?

  She tried searching on all three to see if they were used in combination and found a hundred thousand hits. She picked through pages and pages of abstruse medical texts before finding what she was looking for.

  Administering Adenosine and Lignocaine together stopped the heart. The other shoe dropped immediately. Trimazepine was used to start the heart.

  She sat up and blinked. Was Daddy deliberately killing and reviving Sacrifice? It might explain the ghosts. If ghosts were a snapshot of personality, something ejected into the ether at death, rather than, for want of a better word, a soul.

  She shook her head. It still didn’t explain why he was doing it. Was he feeding on her death? If so, wouldn’t it be easier to hang around hospitals? There’d be a continuous supply there, and far less hassle.

  She switched on her TV and made another sweep of the news channels. Still no word on the raid on the cabin or the exploding ambulance.

  Time to check on Brian again. As she trotted downstairs, she was surprised to see him up and walking. He’d even healed his wounds. His red check shirt was unmarked. Then she saw the other ‘Daddy’ still asleep on the sofa, and realized.

  Daddy had found them.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Brenda froze. Her brain trying to catch up with her fear. How had he found them?

  “Move and I squash you like bug.” Daddy was glaring at her, his right hand raised, fingers spread, ready to send her crashing against the wall. She’d seen what he’d done to Brian. Her bones wouldn’t regenerate if smashed.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “You come down. Go stand in corner by TV.”

  She obeyed, firing a thought towards Brian as she descended the stairs. ‘Brian? Are you okay. Has he hurt you?’

  ‘I’m pretending to be unconscious. Do as he says.’

  “No touch him,” commanded Daddy as she approached the sofa. “Keep hands in air, walk past, be quiet.”

  ‘Can you teleport?’ she asked Brian. ‘I might be able to grab you before he can react.’

  ‘Too weak,’ he said. ‘I need more time to recover.’

  She reached the TV and turned. Daddy had pulled out a small black box the size of a cigarette packet from his shirt pocket. He was standing over Brian, sliding back the lid.

  ‘He’s taking something out of a small box,’ said Brenda. ‘It’s...’ She strained to make it out. It looked revolting. ‘It’s like a large, green slug flecked with yellow.’

  He had it in his hand now. Was he going to put it on Brian? Make him eat it? Let it crawl inside his ear?

  What happened next was so fast Brenda didn’t have time to fire off a warning. Daddy fell on Brian, pinning him with his left arm and body while his right hand placed the slug on Brian’s forehead.

  Brian’s eyes opened wide. He struggled ineffectually.

  “You no teleport now,” said Daddy, his face inches away from Brian’s. “Leech stick like glue. I bet you think, ‘no problem. I shapeshift leech off when he not look.’ I say, ‘go ahead. Many shapeshifter try. No one ever succeed.’ You mine.”

  Brenda couldn’t keep her eyes off the leech. It was moving, flattening itself against Brian’s forehead. Was it feeding on him? Leeching the magic out of him?

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ she asked. ‘Will it kill you?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Daddy was still on top of Brian, studying his face, sniffing at him. “What are you?” he asked. “You smell human, but ... you not.”

  Brian didn’t answer.

  “And why you mess with me? Why you come my house and poke nose in business that no concern you?”

  “I was looking for the girl,” said Brian. “You abducted her.”

  “So? I break no rule. I do everything Synod tell me. Be discreet, they say. I be discreet. No one see me take her, and no one know I have her.”

  “The Synod have to check up now and then.”

  Daddy lifted his head slightly. His eyes narrowed. “You no work for Synod. If Synod want know what I do, they come see me. They no sneak in basement.”

  “They do now.”

  “You lie! You smell like liar. I give you to Inquisitors. They soon find out what you are.”

  This was going from bad to worse. Brian didn’t have the magic to get out of the situation, now it looked like he couldn’t talk himself out either.

  “We’re private investigators,” said Brenda, so desperate she was about to fall back on the truth. Well, a near neighbor. “We’re contacted by spirits of people who die. Sacrifice kept coming to us and that’s how we tracked you down. She was the one we were looking for. Not you.”

  Daddy pushed himself off Brian and stood up. He narrowed his eyes at Brenda.

  “You see dead?”

  “Yes. I don’t want to, but ... they keep coming to me.”

  “Why my Sacrifice come to you?”

  Good question. Now she needed to keep him talking. The longer she delayed him, the more time Brian had to recover. And knowledge was power – if they were to stand a chance of outwitting Daddy, they had to know more about him.

  “She wanted to know why you, um, feed off her. She couldn’t–”

  “You lie! She would never say that. She think she die to save world.”

  “Not the young Sacrifice. Not Mary Alice. The girl that came to me was only five or six years old.”

  His anger died down. He looked surprised.

  Brenda pressed on. “S
he kept asking why you didn’t go to the hospitals.”

  “What hospitals? What you talking about?”

  He was getting angry again.

  “To feed,” she said. “She couldn’t understand why you fed on her, when there were thousands of people dying in hospitals.”

  He looked at her as though she were crazy. “You eat rotten food? Sick people taste bad. Everyone know that. Disease. Bruising. What you think I am? Ghoul? I dzindi.”

  “Dzindi?”

  “Yes, dzindi. How you say? Addict? Not my fault. Human life essence very addictive. And children....” He licked his lips as if recalling a fine wine. “Essence of human children very pure, very strong.”

  “Is one child enough?” asked Brian. “Do you have other girls besides Sacrifice?”

  Daddy turned on him. “Why you ask all these questions?” He thumped his chest. “I in charge here.”

  “Sorry,” said Brian. “We’re curious that’s all.”

  Daddy ignored him. He beckoned to Brenda. “You. Come here.”

  Brenda stayed where she was, contemplating whether this was the moment she should run for it. She might be able to dive behind the sofa, roll and come up running. If Brian could distract him she might be able to reach the back door without being blasted by magic.

  ‘No!’ That was Brian in her head. ‘I can’t do anything yet. Try to keep him talking.’

  “Come here!” said Daddy.

  Brenda walked towards him, taking slow deliberate steps. She felt like she was walking meekly to her death when she should be running or fighting. But what could she do? Except play for time and hope.

  He sniffed at her face. Brenda closed her eyes. Her body began to shake.

  “You no bruised,” he said. “Your face shapeshifted. Why? So I not feed on you? You think I no smell fake broken nose?”

  Brenda swallowed hard. “No, it’s a disguise. How do you–”

  “Bad disguise. Come. Over there by table.”

  He pulled her towards the dining table. Her brain cycling wildly. What was he going to do? And where had that black leather bag on the table come from? It wasn’t hers.

  He lifted the bag with his free hand and placed it on one of the dining room chairs. “You lie on table. Now!”