by Daryl Banner
Of course I don’t recognize her until she turns to face me and I see the blue glow of one of her eyes, and even then it takes a moment, considering how the rest of her face has aged in all these twelve long years.
Gasping, I finally manage to say her name: “Megan?”
The ten-or-eleven-year-old who followed me to either corner of the world to end the reign of the Deathless and then the reign of Grim’s Green Army is no more. The girl who stands before me—the woman who stands before me—is now in her twenties. The soft face of Megan has been traded for a hardened, slender one with sunken eyes and a scar running down her face from temple to chin. Even the green glow of her Warlock eye has turned blue, sapphire-like. Her arms are long and her legs longer. Staring into her face, I realize she’s now older than I am; I died when I was only nineteen.
“Look who I dug up,” Helena says with bone-dry humor.
Megan and I can’t seem to break our mutual stare-off. Then, quite suddenly, she does, deciding in an instant to address a stack of papers on her desk and flippantly saying, “Yes, I see.” Her voice is rusty, dry and full of business, but still carries Megan’s familiar cadence. She pulls out a folder from one drawer, thrusts it into another. “Helena, can you give this to Len at the front desk? It’s regarding the missing blood from the hospital. He knows what to do with it.” She pushes another folder into Helena’s hand, then moves to a cabinet on the other side of the room, running her fingers through even more folders and files.
Helena gives me one dark look, then leaves, the door shutting quietly. I study Megan, smiling. “You’ve grown.”
“You haven’t,” she returns dryly.
Two folders find her hands, then find themselves thrust away somewhere else. She sighs and pulls open another drawer, scanning its contents. Whatever she’s doing, it’s suddenly the most important thing in the world. She’s hardly regarded me at all. I’m a cobweb under the floorboards. I could still be in the Whispers by John’s buried side for all the difference it’d make. It’s me, I want to say. It’s Winter, your friend. But something is totally off about her, something wrong. Her abrupt demeanor intimidates me instantly, worse than Helena’s ever did. I fear I’ve done something wrong and yet I’ve not done a thing but wait by John’s grave for him to Rise for the last twelve years.
Or … perhaps that’s what’s wrong.
“Forgive me. I’m still a bit in shock,” I tell her, feeling quite fruitless in my effort of speech. “I can’t even … I can’t even fathom that twelve years have truly gone by. I’m still feeling like I may at any moment wake up and … and maybe all of this was just … just …” I feel so stupid. The more I talk, the stupider I feel.
And Megan does little to comfort me. She moves a stack of files from her desk to the cabinet, filing them one by one. She sighs now and then, squinting to read one, then shoving it with due force into a drawer. She says nothing. I wonder if she’s even heard me.
“Megan?”
“Mayor,” she says, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s correcting me. Still skimming and sorting folders, she says, “Mayor Megan. Mayor of New Trenton for the last five and a half years, since Gunner wasn’t up for the job, clearly.” She slams a drawer shut, which makes me jump, then returns to her desk to examine notes jotted on a large yellow pad. “Of course, you’d know that, had you anything better to do than spend a decade on your knees in the Deadlands.”
“Deadlands?”
“Our new and official name for the Haunted Waste.” She hasn’t looked at me once since our initial stare-off when I came into the office. “It’s all that’s left, practically. Even Old Trenton is overgrown with vegetation. That’s Jasmine’s new playground when she’s bored. The Undead don’t even kill what they touch anymore, imagine that. Until you arrived with John, we were certain the Deadlands were, in fact, truly dead.”
“Well, they’re not,” I say, trying to sound confident, but she’s stolen all the smoke from my fire. “Megan … Why are we in the Necropolis?”
“Buildings here are solid and hold up against the rain. Unlike Old Trenton’s. That, and perhaps I thought it a fitting irony to move into the place of nightmares and make it my home.”
I frown. “But Megan … this place is where … this is where you and I and—”
“I know exactly what this place is,” she snaps back at me, tossing a notebook aside and starting to skim through another bigger one. “I’ve had to make decisions, Winter. And one of them was, I will conquer our fears by making this place ours. The people need a leader. Who else would it be but me, when the old Chief’s turned Undead and no one else volunteers? The Chief took two years to recover his First Life’s memories, so he was about as useful as nipples on a man.” She flips a page so hard it tears. “And the next closest thing to a leader, Gunner, couldn’t even handle a damaged arm after the fall of Garden. Unable to aim an arrow anymore, fell into a horrible depression, went and threw himself off the cliff. No, he never Rose because nowadays, the dead, in fact, do not Rise again. Imagine that: the dead staying dead. Oh, I’m sorry, did you actually need something Winter? Or are you just fashionably late to the party and wondering where the refreshments are at?”
It’s now that Megan’s steely eyes find mine at last—and they sting with resentment.
My mouth is parted, I’m hugging myself, arms crossed. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t even bring myself to produce words. Doesn’t she understand what I’ve gone through? Megan … She was with me in Garden so long ago … She witnessed the death of John and the price we had to pay for our freedom from Grim’s Green Army. It might’ve been twelve years ago for her, but it feels like yesterday to me.
“Why … Why are you being so …?” I can’t finish.
“You left me,” Megan answers simply. “You could’ve stayed. You could’ve helped me make a home for all of us still alive, yet you chose to stay with John in the Whispers. You didn’t choose the Living, you chose the Dead.” Her Human eye flickers with anger. “I went to you, so many times. As a child I went to you and begged your advice. You didn’t respond. As a teen I went. Nothing. It was like visiting a tombstone. I stopped going after three years of silence. You’d become a tombstone.” Megan looks away, pushes a tear out of her eye, angry.
“Megan,” I start to say, searching for the words. “I’m sorry, I … I was grief-stricken and … and my mother—”
“Oh, yes. Your mother,” she says darkly, cutting me off. My eyebrows lift, dreading whatever else it is she’s preparing to say. “I suppose you’d love to hear about your mother. Has Helena told you? Has Ann even bothered to?” The blank look in my eyes is her answer. “Of course not. Like everything else, they’ve left it up to me. Well, where do I start? You directed us to your mother. We found her in a … bad state. Faceless. Nothing left but half a spine. I was still young and naïve and you had convinced me to ‘save’ your mother instead of give her what I think she deserved: a fresh grave in which I would’ve happily buried her head so that it may suffer the rest of eternity with only dirt and earthworms for company, after the hell she’s done to this world. But no, of course not. I must ‘honor Winter’s wishes’ or whatever. Winter’s wishes for her mother, whom she suddenly has decided to love …”
Megan stops the fussing of books and papers at her desk and, leaning against it, faces me with a coldness in her eyes that both freezes and burns me.
“So I brought Marigold to the bottom of that cliff and I had her perform a miracle,” she says. “Yes, right there at the base of that cliff, we turned your mother back into a respectable-looking woman. With flesh and bone and hair, we wiped away all her sins. What a lucky lady, your mother. Getting a third chance at ruining a world.”
“Megan …”
“No matter,” she goes on, not caring to relent or grant me sympathy in any form, “she gave herself a new name and Trenton accepted her as a brand new Raise without question. The secret stayed with us. Imagine that.” Her eyebrows lift innocently. “What
else do you want to hear? Want me to tell you all about how the people cry and fight and blame me for all their heartaches? Helena, our former Judge, left all that burden to me. I keep forgetting to thank her. Want to know the price for keeping the peace, Winter? The price is anything but peaceful, let me assure you, and no matter how you color it, I’m the bad guy in the end. I pay the price. No one else. The people need a leader.” She swipes the notebook off the desk, pushes it into a cabinet. “The people need a leader,” she grunts again, her back turned.
She has to know my intentions were always good. She has to know I didn’t mean to abandon her and leave her with all this … responsibility, lonesomeness, pain …
“Megan,” I finally say, my voice trembling despite my utter lack of a nervous system. “I didn’t know, truly, I had no idea how much time was passing. I didn’t mean to abandon you. You have to believe me. I—”
“What’d you expect?” she asks, her voice soft now, almost kind. Her hands rest on another stack of papers as she regards me with her chilly eyes. “I’ve had to run this city, and I’ve had to run it alone. I’ve had to make decisions, Winter. Tough decisions, like giving your mother—whom I hate—a new face and a new name and a new life. What I wouldn’t give for two or three of those things I gave her. Tough decisions. Life and death, which I’d imagine your kind to know quite intimately, but the Dead have proved remarkably unhelpful in my affairs, which mainly concern the Living. Now, there’s no more Raises—with the obvious exception of John—and the Dead are falling apart before our eyes, while the—”
Then the world shatters into digital screams.
I shiver away from the window, startled, but Megan only regards it with a careless roll of her eyes. “Yes, yes,” she says, unfazed, “and then there’s that. Brace yourself.”
“Brace myself for what?” I ask.
But barely half the question is uttered before suddenly the Cyclops window is inundated in water. It was the sirens. Another storm as bad as the first shreds the air in an angry torrent that sounds more like the raging growls and snapping jowls of great, toothy beasts. Through it all, the digital screams sound like actual screams. I worry the rain’s caught some Undead on the road and perhaps it is their screams I’m hearing. I bring myself to the window, but see no one. I remember nearly falling to pieces on the steps of the Trenton Town Hall if it weren’t for the kindness of Gunner who dragged me out of the rain.
“Gunner,” I whisper. I turn to face Megan, find that she’s returned to the business of filing things into one of her countless drawers. “You said he—”
“Jumped off the cliff, yes,” she answers bluntly. “Your cliff, naturally. I guess he figured the spot at the bottom was available, since your mother vacated it. No, he hasn’t come back, like I said. No one does anymore. When we die, we die for good. Your kind aren’t made anymore, you understand what I’m saying? You’re not even immortal, it turns out … The Undead are all dying off too.”
“Wait … What do you mean?”
“You haven’t noticed the world? Kept your eyes shut since John’s Raising? Notice anything thriving, lately?”
“The planet’s finally embracing our kind,” I insist. “I mean, the grass no longer recoils in our presence. Nature is starting to—”
“Nature is washing your kind away, Winter.” Her eyes meet mine, cold and hard as a certain death. “The Dead are disappearing from the planet.” She makes a deliberate move to the window, taps against the glass. “You seeing the same storm I’m seeing?”
I peer out at the courtyard again, though I can hardly see it through the impossibly thick rain. I’m just staring into the nothingness, staring at nothing, seeing nothing. The sirens, I can’t even hear them anymore; only the relentless pounding of water against glass, against metal roof, against concrete.
“The Dead are crumbling to dust before our eyes,” she says. “Even this eye of mine. This Warlock eye, it’s useless.” It seems to flash blue, as if in response to her words, as if it has a mind of its own. “Didn’t Helena mention how the Dead are spontaneously crumbling to dust? Didn’t Ann? … or were they too afraid to hurt your sensitive feelings?”
“Dust …?” The rain outside grows louder, louder.
“Yeah.” Her Human eye turns dark and beady. Her blue one burns like hot ice. “Imagine it. You’re talking to your best Undead friend, carrying on like there’s a million more tomorrows, then suddenly … POOF! Dust.” Megan shakes her head. “I’m guessing Doctor Collin failed to mention that his own brother, the owner of the gym, went that very same way. One evening he was training a group of children … then fell apart before their eyes. After they screamed and ran away, Collin found his brother in the form of a pile of ash and crumbled bone.”
“Stop,” I beg her, grabbing my head with a hand at each temple and holding back a scream of mania. “Please, Megan, I’ve heard enough.”
I’m shaking, thrown into a panic, overwhelmed, and the rain keeps thrashing against the window, thrashing, thrashing, thrashing. I clench shut my eyes and collapse to the floor. A true drama queen, from my First Life to this one. Someone toss flowers on me and applaud, please.
“Facts, Winter. This is the world we live in. The Dead have ruled long enough. It’s our turn now. This is my Necropolis now and there will be no nightmares here.”
“This is the nightmare,” I breathe, hyperventilating on absolutely nothing, filling and emptying my lungs of air I don’t need over and over. All these habits of my First Life rush back to support me in this time of need. I’m two steps from throwing one of my infamous tantrums that used to get Claire whatever she wanted.
The rain keeps pummeling the glass, taunting me, like Mother Nature herself were a bully, laughing, slamming fists made of water and life and time against the windows. Gunner, who had a troubled past himself, who’d helped me fend off a giant spider, who helped defend Trenton in its time of need, then fought valiantly at Garden, only to be knocked off the roof of a building—hence his injury. And somehow during his years of recovery, he couldn’t manage, he couldn’t cope, and now he’s …
“Dead,” I whisper, my eyes clenched shut and my hands gripping my ears so tight, I’m certain I might pull them right off—then I’d be spared having to hear anymore of Megan’s horrible news. “Dead, dead, dead. They’re all dead and we’ll all be dead soon. The real dead, the certain dead, the forever dead. Dead, dead, dead.” My voice trails off, dead, dead, dead, until not even a thought can find me, drowned in the raging storm outside.
Then suddenly the rain relents, or perhaps it’s that Megan has come to my side. She’s standing there, and the presence of her body distorts the sound.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. With my ears shielded, it feels like I’m the only person in the world who heard my apology. I don’t even know what I’m apologizing for.
Through the hands that desperately cover my ears, I hear her response perfectly: “This is the only life I know. My emotions died with my parents. My emotions died with John, with Grim, with you. This is all that’s left.”
The storm exhausts the remainder of its wrath, and soon the peace, if it can be called that, is returned in an instant. The silence of the room after the storm is louder.
When I finally remove my hands, the first thing I hear is the beating of Megan’s heart. The rhythm of life, the drumming, the thrashing of blood in her veins. It makes me think of the tavern where John and I first met. It lends me memories both wonderful and terribly painful.
“There’s nothing left …” I whisper.
I imagine my mother with a face I may not recognize. I feel the horror and the pain and the resentment Megan must have felt, watching the Deathless Queen being put back together before her eyes. My mother.
“There’s nothing left …” I whisper once more, twice more, and I realize that I will never, ever hear John’s heartbeat again.
Megan, the Mayor, extends a hand to me. “Come,” she says. “I’ll take you to the Housing Manager.
”
C H A P T E R – T H R E E
N E W T R E N T O N
The Necropolis, which I will forever call it, is a well-oiled machine of commerce, industry, and peaceful cooperation. Whatever the hell that means.
Living and Undead are nearly identical, told apart only if one observes their daily routine, their nature given away when one is spotted eating. The “Pretender” nature that I’d gotten so used to back in Old Trenton is, both regrettably and thankfully, a thing of the past. I still remember a quaint, upscale dinner that Grimsky tried to get me to eat—a meal that was likely made of wax, for all I would know or taste.
The Necropolis is generously filled with many covered walkways, should an Undead find themselves exposed during a sudden siren-sounding. After all, as I witnessed twice already myself, the sirens do not, in fact, give fair warning before the rainclouds tear in half.
Gardening areas, “Bio-pods” and rows of produce seem to be spread throughout the entire city, instead of being kept in one location or area. On the way to my new home, I pass six different spreads of vegetation. The Housing Manager even walks me past a large rice field with a thin metal bridge stretched across it.
Finally, there is a network of streets in the center of the Necropolis which holds a large array of four-story apartment buildings where most of the Undead live. The Housing Manager tells me it’s called the Neighborhood, clearly someone’s bad joke. The buildings have covered walkway accesses connecting one another on multiple floors, and each holds an average of twenty to thirty apartments per floor. Building 2A, apartment 412—that is, the twelfth apartment on the fourth floor—has been assigned to me.
When the Housing Manager shows me inside, I find a clean, empty room painted grey, flat and featureless carpet, also grey, and two windows at the far end. A beige couch sits on one end of the room opposite a kitchenette and dining area. A door near the stove leads into a bedroom where two more windows let in more sunlight I cannot see. A bathroom that I will never use is attached to the bedroom, stocked with a toothbrush, hairspray, and nail clippers. I stifle a laugh, putting a hand to my mouth, and when the Housing Manager asks me what’s funny, I tell him, “Nothing. Nothing’s funny at all about this.” I start to laugh again, so I bite a fist to suppress the untimely urge.