“What?” strained trust crowded his eyes.
“Just here, give me your forearm.” I placed the side of the blade on his forearm where it shone black in the pale moonlight. My left hand wrapped tight, steadying his flesh for puncture.
John took a deep breath,“Okay, but you're going to owe me, big time,” the whites of his eyes bulging.
I pressed the point of the blade against his arm until the pressure broke the skin. John sucked in a lungful, blood welled and I let up the pressure. The zombie's head jerked at the sight of the blood, causing the disturbing sound of neck bones popping.
Would I ever get used to that noise? I repeated the process with my own arm. Our identical wounds pressed together, I offered it to my zombie. I could feel somehow that he was mine, I knew it.
A vibrating tuning fork of trembling power welled up inside me. A strange mixture of fear, dread and excitement paralyzed me. My teeth throbbed with the intensity of it. The zombie's hand snaked out, taking hold of the offered forearm. It felt cold against my warm flesh, like iced tentacles. I swabbed a blot of blood, inking it with my index and middle fingers on the zombies forehead, like warpaint. It rolled those empty eyes up at me, its dead bones clinging to my fingertips.
We shared a suspended moment in time, a terrible beauty of control balanced precariously. “Go back and rest,” I said, feeling that balance reached, that I was choosing for both of us.
The zombie reluctantly let go of my arm, sand through a sieve, lying down on the disturbed ground while his grave encased him in a shroud of earth.
I was a corpse-raiser, one of two, and it was not a safe thing to be.
John and I stared at each other over the grave for a swollen minute, his face showing a mixture of sympathy and dread. He knew what this distinction would mean for me in the world we lived in.
I was shaking from the intensity of it all, there was no controlling it. This was not the same as Biology experiments and roadkill, this was real, this was huge. Looking outside the cemetery perimeter at two enemies and one friend, I knew it was time to swear the group to secrecy. A trickle of sweat slithered down my back, pooling at the waistband of my jeans, instantly chilling against my fevered flesh. I didn't want the same future as Parker, that loss of freedom was so not a part of The Plan, my plan.
John and I headed out of the cemetery in a wave of uncertain promise.
CHAPTER 2
I smacked my alarm, just five more minutes I thought, dozing off.
“Caleb!” Mom yelled up the stairs.
“Yeah?” I yelled back.
“School!”
I stumbled out of my bed and looked on the floor for today's clothes... Hmm, what to wear that wasn't too wrinkled. I picked up a pair of jeans and a shirt and took an experimental whiff. Good enough! I jerked the jeans on with a hop and a zip. Opened the underwear and sock drawer, nothing. I ripped open every drawer for socks, ah-huh! Finally, a couple of socks, not matched but clean... happy day.
I trudged over to the kitchen table, scarred from a thousand meals.
“You cookin' today?” I asked, hopeful.
“No, but you're eating.”
Eating in the morning blows. I was that lazy. I'd open the fridge, nothing. Then the freezer, repeat. I usually ended up cramming a yogurt down.
Mom looked in the fridge. “What flavor?”
“Do we have blueberry?” It was the only non-barf fruit I could think about eating this early.
“Last one.”
“Where's Dad?”
Mom and Dad were on the opposite end of the spectrum. She was free-spirited (read: hippie) and thought the mystery of life and choice was taken when the scientific puzzle of the genome mapping was solved.
It made for an interesting family life.
“He is working on that new project.”
Great, hopefully not anything new for kids to rant about. I'd gone through enough being hassled when I was growing up.
“Does that mean he'll be home for supper tonight? I've got something to talk to him about.” I wisely didn't want to mention the whole corpse-raising episode. Dad was logic and fairness mixed. He'd know what to do. This... I might need some help on.
“Yes, he will, you know how important meal time is,” Mom said.
Maybe, maybe not. Science was important to Dad.
After I wolfed down the yogurt, knowing the beast would awaken again at 10 a.m. in class (perfect), I made a 2-point shot at the trash can. Swish! No mess, but that didn't stop the frown forming on Mom's face.
I moved quickly to grab my backpack but she blocked me and I was forced to look up at her. Every girl in the world was taller than me... wonderful.
She brushed the hair out of my eyes and it shot back down. “You need a haircut.”
“No, mom.” A time-sucker was all a haircut was and I had more important things to do.
Slamming the door behind me I took the stairs two at a time, cruising at a jog. I wanted to reconnoiter with the dudes, get things straight in my head from last night.
I slowed to a walk. I'd still be there early and I was feeling lazy. Looking up, I noticed the canopy of trees allowing filtered morning light to break through, speckling the ground with sunspots. My head began the familiar thrumming, a buzz seeping into the crevices of my mind as I walked toward the school.
I stopped where I stood, the buzzing had become whispering, my heart speeding, my breath quickening in response. My hands grew damp.
The whispering of the dead.
I looked around me, noticing the paved street, the pebbling of the asphalt worn away by a million cars, the shoulder giving way into the ditch.
Nothing.
I started walking again but the whispering grew louder. I followed the dull roar of the insidious voice like a magnet and was rewarded with volume.
There, on the border of the forest and the soft dirt of the ditch lay a crumpled body, torn and broken, its head at an awkward angle. My hands trembled as the whispering broke through to voices and images flooded my head like a pulse-screen.
I heard the thoughts:
headlights bursting like twin spots before its eyes as it tried to escape those lights... rushing forward... it sprinted across the street, not timing the advance properly and the twin orbs bore down on it.
Pain. Intense pain and blinding light.
The cat thought of its litter, its people... then, was no more.
My breath returned in a paralyzing rush, my feet planted at the base of her body. A small body that had shared the last moments of its life with me. A life that was now gone.
I stood for a moment, taking it in, realizing that life as I knew it was never going to be the same. I wasn't going to breeze through being a teenager.
Snapping back to reality I realized I was the pied piper of road kill.
Great. Definitely my life-goal.
This was just the kinda thing that had been happening. The frogs in Biology, there had been so many. I hadn't been able to camouflage that. People would be suspicious. Why couldn't I be developing something righteous like Pyrokenesis? Now that would be tight. At least only Brett and Carson knew the corpse-raising part. Getting them to cooperate with silence, that was another thing.
I trudged on, my limbs heavy, my head swimming with the heaviness of an undead-moment. I lifted my hands, the fine shaking almost gone. Beaded sweat decorated my upper lip and I wiped it off with the back of my hand. I needed to get a hold of this thing. I was on it. That's what I told myself but my gut churned.
The familiar doors to our daily prison came into view. I went inside the school, spotting the “cemetery group,” as I was not-so-fondly thinking of a few of them.
John and Jonesy stood apart from the others in stark contrast to each other. Almost 5'10” with a shock of frizzy, carrot-colored hair and pale blue eyes, John looked a little freakish but he was my main dude, the go-to guy when things went sideways. I gave Jonesy an unfriendly look, touching my face. He had short, nappy hair a
nd teeth that stood out like white Chiclets in a dark face. He was taller than me too, but built stocky. They'd been with me since Kindergarten.
The rest of the group was a mixed bag, didn't feel solid here. It would take some clever conniving to get promises of secrecy from the rest. Brett Mason and Carson Hamilton stood side-by-side with identical white-blond hair and height, hard to tell apart unless you looked at them full-on. They'd been with me since Kindergarten too, but not in a good way. We had about five minutes before first bell.
Edging through the throng of kids I made my way to John and Jonesy first. Jonesy leaned against the locker, arms crossed. John looked ready to explode, not typical.
Jonesy said, “Sorry about the bludgeoning.”
“Yeah... what the hell?” I asked.
“Your face sorta got in the way.”
“Oh... really?” Gee, hadn't noticed that.
“It was an accident, John and I were discussing...” Jonesy began.
“... arguing...” John interrupted.
Jonesy gave him a look. “I changed my mind is all.”
I raised my eyebrows, Jonesy never switched gears.
“About the merit of them knowing,” John finished.
We looked at Bret and Carson. Too late now, spilled milk on the table and dripping on the floor.
Later, I thought. “I wasn't pulling a hypo in Biology,” giving a hard look at Brett and Carson, the used-to-be-non-believers, “and now APs are coming up.”
“Yeah, you have your dad to thank for that,” Brett smirked.
I knew that was coming.
My eyes caught sight of a grape sized bruise the color of pale chartreuse, the edges fanning to green then finally purple. Brett's smirk faded under my gaze as he shifted his shoulder, his shirt falling over the mark that lingered on his throat. Someone's hand had left that, not my problem, but...
“Shut up, it's Caleb's ass on the line,” Jonesy said, jamming a thumb at my chest. “You know what happens when you hit the radar as a corpse-raiser. He'd be a government squirrel, like that Parker dude.”
“Nobody wants to have their life planned by somebody else,” John said.
“My dad didn't have anything to do with that,” I said.
“But thanks to him, everyone's tested now because of the mapping. All the do-gooders want to 'realize our full potential',” Brett made quote signs in the air, “what an ass-load of crap that was.”
Carson chimed in, “So even if we don't want to be mathematicians or scientists we're on that freight train until it reaches the depot.”
Carson's murky-green eyes burrowed into mine. This was an old argument. Kinda like being the preacher's kid, you got blamed for everything your parent did, or didn't do.
“You dickface... yeah you,” Jonesy looked at Carson, whose eyes narrowed. “It isn't Caleb's fault that his dad started that ball rolling with the mapping. If it hadn't been him, it would've been someone else...”
Carson's fists clenched and flexed, he didn't like being told the obvious. Probably shouldn't have opened his mouth and crammed a foot in there until he choked. Kinda brain dead, kinda consistent.
“Listen guys, this isn't helping. It's the now we need to figure out. I don't want to pop a five-point AFTD on the APs. They're what, a week away? My dad,” Carson rolled his eyes and I ignored him, plowing forward, “says that puberty is the exact time they test because scientists have proven that abilities come online then, sometimes for the first time.” Not for me, I added silently.
The first bell gave its shrill beckon exactly then. I looked at Brett and Carson. “I need you guys to cover for me. At least until the tests are finished.”
I was appealing to their good side.
You can't force us to, Hart,” Brett said.
“Yeah, just because daddy's famous doesn't give you clout,” Carson echoed.
So much for that.
“How about doing it because it's the right thing to do?” asked Jonesy, out of the blue.
“The human thing to do,” interjected John.
“He's not human.” Carson said, stabbing a finger toward my chest.
Prejudice at its finest. But what did I expect from these two? They'd never been my friends.
“You got that right,” Brett agreed, walking off with Carson.
We watched them move away into the multicolor sea of kids.
“Did ya see that bruise necklace Brett was wearing?” Jonesy asked.
Yeah, some people had more than corpse-raising to worry about.
“It's the dad,” John said.
Jonesy turned those liquid eyes to me, “Feel sorry for him Caleb? Don't go soft on me bro. You're always giving jackasses the benefit of the doubt.”
Not yet, I thought, saying nothing.
Seeing my expression he said, “Yeah, my cup of care is empty too.”
My conscious teetered on the balance of right and wrong. Brett had it bad, but he chose to act bad. It didn't make things easier, it made it more complicated.
Jonesy clapped me on the back and John gave me the nod. My friends had my back.
It was gonna be a hurricane of crap and I was in the eye of it. The Js and I walked off to Shop class. Time to make my mom a heart-shaped box, when my heart was definitely not into it.
CHAPTER 3
The Js and I had Shop first period and it was a good thing because we needed to figure out A Plan.
After talking to the ass-monkeys I couldn't get the genome out of my head, cramming into the tight space of my skull like a song that wouldn't stop playing.
The mapping of 2010 happened under pressure from President Obama. Desperate for health care reform, mapping offered incentive to activate “markers” for the population. It was the key to identifying genetic potential for: cancer, heart disease, stroke, even alcoholism and drug addictions. If the People wanted universal health care, they would be mapped, with a microchip put underneath the skin. Every marker identified genetic codes and a percentage of the person's wage taken for the “privilege.” Now, if someone didn't want the microchip, no health care. There was a helluva lot more than just disease markers now. Teens were the proof.
We sat around the table together and our Shop teacher, Mr Morginstern, approached us with a cheery, “Good morning fellas!”
It was criminal he was happy. Doesn't he know the Monday-is-hateful-rule?
“Hey,” I mumbled.
Jonesy and John gave Morginstern the nod. Morginstern was excited about teaching and we were excited about school ending for the day.
“So, how was your guys' weekend? Do anything interesting?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
Yeah, I think.
I imagined a conversation like: Ah no problem, Mr. Morginstern, just creeping around illegally in a graveyard, raising a corpse, enemies seeing the blow-by-blow...real interesting.
Instead I said, “It was okay.”
Jonesy was choking up on it. I gave him a look that said clearly, don't blow it. “Yeah.”
John was unflappably silent as usual, controlling a sly grin with effort, the anchor to our madness.
Morginstern seemed to accept our weird responses and went over the whole process of our boxes again; adults, painfully redundant. We got to decide what kind of “box” to make. Heart-shaped was the hardest shape of all (masochist). I got out my sandpaper, one-twenty grit, extra fine.
John kept his voice low, “So what's the plan?”
A fine dust fell from the interior arc of the heart onto the work table. The sanding from the three of us served as an excellent conversation concealer.
“I don't know yet, I gotta think about it more. I'm not ending up like Parker. 'Affinity for the Dead,' wasn't that cool for him,” I said.
“Ask your dad, he's the genius,” Jonesy said.
“Quiet, smack attack.”
Jonesy ducked his head, half-apology, half-embarrassment.
“I'm sorry bro, it was an accident,” he said.
“Gotcha, just wan
ted to see what you'd say,” I joked.
“Oh man! Don't do that dude!” Jonesy threw his sand paper at me and I deflected, the paper landing on John, embedding in his hair.
Morginstern glanced over at us and gave us the “warning” voice, “Caleb Hart! Jonesy and John, no throwing supplies.”
“Come on you guys, stop screwing around. This is serious,” John said.
As serious as a heart attack, I thought, struggling not to laugh. “I'll talk with my dad tonight, he'll have ideas.”
“He's got resources, right?” Jonesy asked.
“Using your big boy words Jonesy?” I smiled.
We all laughed and agreed to meet up at my place late. Maybe I'd con mom into making extra hamburger helper for the Js.
The rest of the day was not as insane as the morning. I had every class with John except PE, Jonesy was in PE (I was never without a J). That was the class where we got to check out the girls. One in particular I liked a lot.
“I want to play dodge ball today,” Jonesy said.
“Yeah, that'll happen. 'No head shots, no body shots above the waist, no leg shots'...” I imitated Miss Griswold's annoying voice.
The girls are playing and that means we have to be super careful. I sighed. Dodge ball rocked but Griswold was a joy-sucker. I mean, what part of the body could we hit if everything was a no-hit zone?
Retarded.
Just then Jade LeClerc walked by, my eyes tracking her. She wasn't popular, but she had something special. Jet black hair gleamed like a curtain of silk waiting to be touched. She had the greatest eyes, green like a cat's. A memory shimmered just out of reach...a red shirt, concrete and dirt... Ow! Jonesy gave me a strategic elbow to the side, the memory slipping away in a vapor.
I turned to him. “What was that for?”
“Stop staring, she'll notice,” Jonesy said. “Why do you like her anyway, she's kinda emo.”
“No she's not, she just wants people to think she is. Keeps them away,” I said, trying to recapture that fleeting shard of the past.
The Death Series, Books 1-3 Page 2