21st Century Dead

by Christopher Golden

  Jack shivered.

  Mom noticed it and wrapped her arm around his bony shoulders. “Hey, now … don’t worry. We’ll be safe here.”

  He made an agreeing noise but did not bother to correct her. He wasn’t frightened of the storm’s power. He was hoping it would become one of those category 5 things like they showed on Syfy. Or a bigger one. Big enough to blow the house down and let the waters of the river sweep him away from pain and sickness. The idea of being killed in a superstorm was so delightful that it made him shiver and raised goose bumps all along his arms. Lasting through the rain and wind so that he was back to where—and what—he was … that was far more frightening. Being suddenly dead was better than dying.

  On the other hand …

  “What about Jill?”

  “She’ll be fine,” said Mom, though her tone was less than convincing.

  “Mom…?”

  Mom was a thin, pretty woman whose black hair had started going gray around the time of the first diagnosis. Now it was more gray than black and there were dark circles under her eyes. Jill looked a little like Mom and would probably grow up to look a lot like her. Jack looked like her, too, right down to the dark circles under the eyes that looked out at him every morning from the bathroom mirror.

  “Mom,” Jack said tentatively, “Jill is going to be all right, isn’t she?”

  “She’s in school. If it gets bad they’ll bus the kids home.”

  “Shouldn’t someone go get her?”

  Mom looked at the open bedroom door. “Your dad and Uncle Roger are in town buying the pipes for the new irrigation system. They’ll see how bad it is, and if they have to, they’ll get her.” She smiled and Jack thought that it was every bit as false as the smile he’d given her a minute ago. “Jill will be fine. Don’t stress yourself out about it, you know it’s not good for you.”

  “Okay,” he said, resisting the urge to shake his head. He loved his mom, but she really didn’t understand him at all.

  “You should get some rest,” she said. “After you finish your muffin why not take a little nap?”

  Jeez-us, he thought. She was always saying stuff like that. Take a nap, get some rest. I’m going to be dead for a long time. Let me be awake as much as I can for now.

  “Sure,” he said. “Maybe in a bit.”

  Mom smiled brightly, as if they had sealed a deal. She kissed him on the head and went out of his room, closing the door three-quarters of the way. She never closed it all the way, so Jack got up and did that himself.

  Jack nibbled another microbite of the muffin, sighed, and set it down. He broke it up on the plate so it looked like he’d really savaged it. Then he drank the vitamin water, set the glass down, and stretched out on his stomach to watch the news.

  Rain drummed on the roof like nervous fingertips, and the wind was whistling through the trees. The storm was coming for sure. No way it was going to veer.

  Jack lay there in the blue glow of the TV and the brown shadows of his thoughts. He’d been dying for so long that he could barely remember what living felt like. Only Jill’s smile sometimes brought those memories back. Running together down the long lanes of cultivated crops. Waging war with broken ears of corn, and trying to juggle fist-size pumpkins. Jill was never any good at juggling, and she laughed so hard when Jack managed to get three pumpkins going that he started laughing, too, and dropped the gourds right on his head.

  He sighed and it almost hitched into a sob.

  He wanted to laugh again. Not careful laughs, like now, but real gut-busters like he used to. He wanted to run. God, how he wanted to run. That was something he hadn’t been able to do for over a year now. Not since the last surgery. And never again. Best he could manage was a hobbling half-run like Gran used to do when the Millers’ dog got into her herb garden.

  Jack closed his eyes and thought about the storm. About a flood.

  He really wanted Jill to come home. He loved his sister, and maybe today he’d open up and tell her what really went on in his head. Would she like that? Would she want to know?

  Those were tricky questions, and he didn’t have answers to them.

  Nor did he have an answer to why he wanted Jill home and wanted the flood at the same time. That was stupid. That was selfish.

  “I’m dying,” he whispered to the shadows.

  Dying people were supposed to get what they wanted, weren’t they? Trips to Disney, a letter from a celebrity. All that Make-A-Wish stuff. He wanted to see his sister and then let the storm take him away. Without hurting her, of course. Or Mom, or Dad, or Uncle Roger.

  He sighed again.

  Wishes were stupid. They never came true.

  4

  JACK WAS DROWSING when he heard his mother cry out.

  A single, strident “No!”

  Jack scrambled out of bed and opened his door a careful inch to try to catch the conversation Mom was having on the phone. She was in the big room down the hall, the one she and Dad used as the farm office.

  “Is she okay? God, Steve, tell me she’s okay!”

  Those words froze Jack to the spot.

  He mouthed the name: Jill …

  “Oh my god,” cried Mom. “Does she need to go to the hospital? What? How can the hospital be closed? Steve … how can the damn hospital be—”

  Mom stopped to listen, but Jack could see her body change, stiffening with fear and tension. She had the phone to her ear and her other hand at her throat.

  “Oh, God, Steve,” she said again, and even from where Jack stood he could see that Mom was pale as death. “What happened? Who did this? Oh, come on, Steve, that’s ridiculous … Steve…”

  Jack could hear Dad’s voice but not his words. He was yelling. Almost screaming.

  “Did you call the police?” Mom demanded. She listened for an answer, and whatever it was, it was clear to Jack that it shocked her. She staggered backward and sat down hard on a wooden chair. “Shooting? Who was shooting?”

  More yelling, none of it clear.

  Shooting? Jack stared at Mom as if he were peering into a different world than anything he knew. He tried to put the things he’d heard into some shape that made sense, but no picture formed.

  “Jesus Christ!” shrieked Mom. “Steve … forget about, forget about everything. Just get my baby home. Get yourself home. I have a first-aid kit here and … oh, yes, God, Steve … I love you, too. Hurry!”

  She lowered the phone and stared at it as if the device had done her some unspeakable harm. Her eyes were wide but she seemed not to be looking at anything.

  “Mom…?” Jack said softly, stepping out into the hall. “What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

  As soon as she looked up, Mom’s eyes filled with tears. She cried out his name and he rushed to her as she flew to him. Mom was always so careful with him, holding him as if he had bird bones that would snap with the slightest pressure, but right then she clutched him to her chest with all her strength. He could feel her trembling, could feel the heat of her panic through the cotton of her dress.

  “It’s Jilly,” said Mom, and her voice broke into sobs. “There was a fight at the school. Someone bit her.”

  “Bit—?” asked Jack, not sure he’d really heard that.

  Lightning flashed outside and thunder exploded overhead.

  5

  MOM RAN AROUND for a couple of minutes, grabbing first-aid stuff. There was always a lot of it on a farm, and Jack knew how to dress a wound and treat for shock. Then she fetched candles and matches, flashlights and a Coleman lantern. Big storms always knocked out the power in town and Mom was always ready.

  The storm kept getting bigger, rattling the old bones of the house, making the window glass chatter like teeth.

  “What’s taking them so damn long?” Mom said, and she said it every couple of minutes.

  Jack turned on the big TV in the living room.

  “Mom!” he called. “They have it on the news.”

  She came running into the roo
m with an armful of clean towels and stopped in the middle of the floor to watch. What they saw did not make much sense. The picture showed the Stebbins Little School, which was both the elementary school and the town’s evacuation shelter. It was on high ground and it had been built during an era when Americans worried about nuclear bombs and Russian air raids. Stuff Jack barely even knew about.

  In front of the school was a guest parking lot, which was also where the buses picked up and dropped off the kids. Usually there were lines of yellow buses standing in neat rows, or moving like a slow train as they pulled to the front, loaded or unloaded, then moved forward to catch up with the previous bus. There was nothing neat and orderly about the big yellow vehicles now.

  The heavy downpour made everything vague and fuzzy, but Jack could nevertheless see that the buses stood in haphazard lines in the parking lot and in the street. Cars were slotted in everywhere to create a total gridlock. One of the buses lay on its side.

  Two were burning.

  All around, inside and out, were people. Running, staggering, laying sprawled, fighting.

  Not even the thunder and the rain could drown out the sounds of screams.

  And gunfire.

  “Mom…?” asked Jack. “What’s happening?”

  But Mom had nothing to say. The bundle of towels fell softly to the floor by her feet.

  She ran to the table by the couch, snatched up the phone, and called 911. Jack stood so close that he could hear the rings.

  Seven. Eight. On the ninth ring there was a clicking sound and then a thump, as if someone had picked up the phone and dropped it.

  Mom said, “Hello—?”

  The sounds from the other end were confused and Jack tried to make sense of them. The scuff of a shoe? A soft, heavy bump as if someone banged into a desk. And a sound like someone makes when he’s asleep. Low and without any meaning.

  “Flower,” called Mom. Flower was the secretary and dispatcher at the police station. She’d gone to high school with Mom. “Flower—are you there? Can you hear me?”

  If there was a response, Jack couldn’t hear it.

  “Flower—come on, girl, I need some help. There was some kind of problem at the school and Steve’s bringing Jilly back with a bad bite. He tried to take her to the hospital but it was closed and there were barricades set up. We need an ambulance.…”

  Flower finally replied.

  It wasn’t words, just a long, deep, aching moan that came crawling down the phone line. Mom jerked the handset away from her ear, staring at it with horror and fear. Jack heard that sound and it chilled him to the bone.

  Not because it was so alien and unnatural … but because he recognized it. He knew that sound. He absolutely knew it.

  He’d heard Toby make it a couple of times during those last days, when the cancer was so bad that they had to keep Toby down in a dark pool of drugs. Painkillers didn’t really work at that level. The pain was everywhere. It was the whole universe because every single particle of your body knows that it’s being consumed. The cancer is winning, it’s devouring you, and you get to a point where it’s so big and you’re so small that you can’t even yell at it anymore. You can curse at it or shout at it or tell it that you won’t let it win. It already has won, and you know it. In those moments, those last crumbling moments, all you can do—all you can say—is throw noise at it. It’s not meaningless, even though it sounds like that. When Jack first heard those sounds coming out of Toby he thought that it was just noise, just a grunt or a moan. But those sounds do have meaning. So much meaning. Too much meaning. They’re filled with all the need in the world.

  The need to live, even though the dark is everywhere, inside and out.

  The need to survive, even though you know you can’t.

  The need to have just another hour, just another minute, but your clock is broken and all the time has leaked out.

  The need not to be devoured.

  Even though you already are.

  The need.

  Need.

  That moan, the one Jack heard at Toby’s bedside and the one he heard now over the phone line from Flower, was just that. Need.

  It was the sound Jack sometimes made in his dreams. Practicing for when it would be the only sound he could make.

  Mom said, “Flower…?”

  But this time her voice was small. Little-kid small.

  There were no more sounds from the other end, and Mom replaced the handset as carefully as if it were something that could wake up and bite her.

  She suddenly seemed to remember Jack was standing there and hoisted up as fake a smile as Jack had ever seen.

  “It’ll be okay,” Mom said. “It’s the storm causing trouble with the phone lines.”

  The lie was silly and weak, but they both accepted it because there was nothing else they could do.

  Then Jack saw the headlights on the road, turning off River Road and onto their driveway.

  “They’re here!” he cried, and rushed for the door, but Mom pushed past him, jerked the door open, and ran out onto the porch.

  “Stay back,” she yelled as he began to follow.

  Jack stopped in the doorway. Rain slashed at Mom as she stood on the top step, silhouetted by the headlights as Dad’s big Dodge Durango splashed through the water that completely covered the road. His brights were on, and Jack had to shield his eyes behind his hands. The pickup raced all the way up the half-mile drive and slewed sideways to a stop that sent muddy rainwater onto the porch, slapping wet across Mom’s legs. She didn’t care, she was already running down the steps toward the car.

  The doors flew open and Dad jumped out from behind the wheel and ran around the front of the truck. Uncle Roger had something in his arms. Something that was limp and wrapped in a blanket that looked like it was soaked with oil. Only it wasn’t oil, and Jack knew it. Lightning flashed continually and in its stark glow the oily black became gleaming red.

  Dad took the bundle from him and rushed through ankle-deep mud toward the porch. Mom reached him and tugged back the cloth. Jack saw the tattered sleeve of an olive-drab sweatshirt and one ice-pale hand streaked with crooked lines of red.

  Mom screamed.

  Jack did, too, even though he could not see what she saw. Mom said that she’d been bitten … but this couldn’t be a bite. Not with this much blood. Not with Jill not moving.

  “Jill!”

  He ran out onto the porch and down the steps and into the teeth of the storm.

  “Get back,” screeched Mom as she and Dad bulled their way past him onto the porch and into the house. Nobody wiped his feet.

  Roger caught up with him. He was bare-chested despite the cold and had his undershirt wrapped around his left arm. In the glare of the lightning his skin looked milk white.

  “What is it? What’s happening? What’s wrong with Jill?” demanded Jack, but Uncle Roger grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him toward the house.

  “Get inside,” he growled. “Now.”

  Jack staggered toward the steps and lost his balance. He dropped to his knees in the mud, but Uncle Roger caught him under the arms and hauled him roughly to his feet and pushed him up the steps. All the while, Uncle Roger kept looking over his shoulder. Jack twisted around to see what he was looking at. The bursts of lightning made everything look weird and for a moment he thought that there were people at the far end of the road, but when the next bolt forked through the sky, he saw that it was only cornstalks battered by the wind.

  Only that.

  “Get inside,” urged Roger. “It’s not safe out here.”

  Jack looked at him. Roger was soaked to the skin. His face was swollen, as if he’d been punched, and the shirt wrapped around his left arm was soaked through with blood.

  It’s not safe out here.

  Jack knew for certain that his uncle was not referring to the weather.

  The lightning flashed again, and the shadows in the corn seemed wrong.

  All wrong.

&n
bsp; 6

  JACK STOOD SILENT and unnoticed in the corner of the living room, like a ghost haunting his own family. No one spoke to him, no one looked in his direction. Not even Jill.

  As soon as they’d come in, Dad had laid Jill down on the couch. No time even to put a sheet under her. Rainwater pooled under the couch in pink puddles. Uncle Roger stood behind the couch, looking down at Mom and Dad as they used rags soaked with fresh water and alcohol to sponge away mud and blood. Mom snipped away the sleeves of the torn and ragged army sweatshirt.

  “It was like something off the news. It was like one of those riots you see on TV,” said Roger. His eyes were glassy and his voice had a distant quality, as if his body and his thoughts were in separate rooms. “People just going apeshit crazy for no reason. Good people. People we know. I saw Dix Howard take a tire iron out of his car and lay into Joe Fielding, the baseball coach from the high school. Just laid into him, swinging on him like he was a total stranger. Beat the shit out of him, too. Joe’s glasses went flying off his face and his nose just bursting with blood. Crazy shit.”

  “… Give me the peroxide,” said Mom, working furiously. “There’s another little bite on her wrist.”

  “The big one’s not that bad,” Dad said, speaking over her rather than to her. “Looks like it missed the artery. But Jilly’s always been a bleeder.”

  “It was like that when we drove up,” said Uncle Roger, continuing his account even though he had no audience. Jack didn’t think that his uncle was speaking to him. Or … to anyone. He was speaking because he needed to get it out of his head, as if that was going to help make sense of it. “With the rain and all, it was hard to tell what was going on. Not at first. Just buses and cars parked every which way and lots of people running and shouting. We thought there’d been an accident. You know people panic when there’s an accident and kids are involved. They run around like chickens with their heads cut off, screaming and making a fuss instead of doing what needs to be done. So, Steve and I got out of the truck and started pushing our way into the crowd. To find Jill and to, you know, see if we could do something. To help.”