by Daniel Marks
If Nick couldn’t do that, she decided, she’d still have faith that he could be an undertaker. Operating a living body was totally different from getting a dead one up and moving. Plus, the fly production was the real skill there.
Velvet was beginning to hope.
If he did end up being her undertaker, they’d get to spend time together.
It might not be so bad to work with Nick. And the eye-candy fringe benefits were clearly epic.
A groan brought her attention back to Mrs. Renjette, and Velvet stood and raced to the woman’s side. Her eyes had crept open just a bit, and Velvet could see Nick moving inside, turning the glassy cataracts in her direction. The woman’s hand moved shakily to the bed rail, and Velvet patted it.
“Took you long enough,” she said.
Another groan, and the woman’s shoulders shrugged.
“All right,” Velvet said, and nodded. “I’ll give you this.”
Nick jutted up out of the woman, beaming. He twisted around to see that the woman’s face was just as placid as before, and that seemed to be okay with him. He leapt from the bed and stood next to Velvet, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“A ‘Congratulations’ is in order, for I believe that”—he pointed toward Mrs. Renjette—“was some masterful body thieving,” Nick said.
Velvet rolled her eyes. “If by ‘masterful’ you mean ‘sluggish’ or ‘inadequate,’ then, yeah. Masterful. You are the grand master of incompetent body thieves.”
“What? I was just getting comfy with my new friend Rita.”
Velvet glowered and sauntered out of the room. Must not laugh, she told herself. Though Nick’s cocky self was a far better companion than the mopey version.
“Velvet!” he called into the hall. “Wait up!”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said.
Nick came up beside her, and they walked back toward the lobby.
“That was amazing. Rita was so nice, too. Really helpful.”
Velvet stopped dead and spun toward him. “Hold everything. You talked to her?”
“Yeah, totally. She even helped me out.”
“You’re like the coma whisperer, then, because I’ve never heard of that happening.”
“She was really very helpful, told me what to do. She even apologized for being so atrophied. Crazy, right?”
Velvet wondered if, in some horrible way, that was what had happened when she’d entered Ron Simanski’s head. Maybe he’d communicated.
“Maybe no one’s ever told you,” he said.
“Maybe.” She wasn’t convinced.
“So what’s next?” he asked breathlessly.
Nick actually sounded excited again. The tests had distracted him from hounding her. Definitely a good thing.
Velvet led him through the nursing home halls and back to the ballroom crack.
Chapter 19
She was dumped out into a hilly field. A barn was the home of her traveling crack, which was still shimmering as the passage sealed itself. A path stretched out to the left and right, and before her was a long berm fitted with rows of mounds, some heavy with dirt, others thin and lumpy with their rotty inhabitants.
When Nick hadn’t appeared by her side moments later, she remembered she hadn’t given him details for the passage. She slapped her leg and shook her head. “Stupid!” she chastised.
But then something astonishing happened. The crack in the old boards shimmered and Nick spilled out. He bounded up beside her with a broad smile and a wicked look in his eye. “Found ya,” he said, and reached out to push up Velvet’s jaw, which had dropped open in amazement.
“But how?” she asked. “I didn’t—”
“I thought of you,” he said, his tone misty and serious. “I could describe you in a hundred different ways. And I figured, as long as you were already here, that was all it would take.” He shrugged. “Guess I’m lucky it worked.”
It took a moment for Velvet to recover from this. She was left without words. If she’d been alive, her breath would have been sucked from her lungs. As it was, she felt a gentle vibration pass over her ethereal form.
“Where are we, anyway?”
“The body fields,” Velvet whispered, staring at him, uncertain whether he was something special or just so obsessed that he’d follow her anywhere. At that moment, she decided she’d be happy with either answer.
Nick’s eyes traveled over the tiny hills and valleys. “What are they?”
“You know how people give their bodies away for science or donate their organs and stuff?”
“Yeah?” Nick answered, his mouth left hanging open.
“Well, sometimes the whole body comes here. But it’s not so they can give a kidney to some poor kid that needs one. It’s so scientists can watch how the person rots, so they can tell things about how long they’ve been dead, or what it looks like if someone sprinkles Liquid-Plumr all over them, or how the flesh around a stab wound caves in over time.”
Nick clutched the spot over his phantom stomach. “That’s some CSI crap right there.”
“Totally.”
Velvet crossed the path and climbed the small hill, gesturing toward the nearest mound and a little sign stuck at the foot of it like a garden marker.
“See, this one’s already covered in maggots.” She squatted next to it. “Male. Thirty-four. Hear them?”
Nick squatted next to the grave, but he didn’t need to. You couldn’t help but hear the sound of something snapping, crackling, and popping, so clear and unmuffled. A bowl of Rice Krispies could have been sitting nearby. But there was none.
“What’s that sound?” he asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
She pressed on down the first row, reading each of the little signs, looking for the perfect one. A challenge. Something disgusting but mobile. There’d be no point in testing the boy in a body that was just going to fall apart.
Velvet stopped before a shallow hillock and brushed some spatter from the white metal marker. Nick peered over her shoulder. The gray nose and cheeks of a cadaver poked from freshly crumbled loam, as though the body were wrapped in a blanket instead of lying in a grave. Velvet turned in time to see the shiver tear through him. If he’d had flesh, the goose bumps would have covered it.
“Oh, man,” he said. “That’s creepy.”
“Subject number twenty-seven,” Velvet read. “A John Doe found prone on the banks of the Elk River. Multiple stab wounds, postmortem bloating.”
She looked up at Nick, raised an eyebrow.
“I’m fine,” he shot back. “I’m not going to vomit.”
Velvet grinned. “I’ve actually never seen a ghost puke. Souls, sure. You’re a perfect example of that. I don’t think ghosts can, but if anyone could prove me wrong, it’s you.”
She stood next to him and looked around the farm. It was early still, and a light mist clung to the undergrowth in the forest surrounding the hilly field. Velvet couldn’t tell it from the air, but she thought it might be cold, as though her breath would have turned to fog if she’d been a living, breathing girl.
“We’re alone,” she said without glancing in his direction. “You ready?”
He exhaled heavily, staring at the placid corpse at his feet, and sat down next to the mound. Then, taking a deep but useless breath, he dropped into the space occupied by John Doe.
Velvet stood back and watched. She was filled with both hope and dread. The zombies were a necessary evil, but they were gross and creepy and she never got used to working around her undertaker’s rotting flesh suits. But Nick needed to be able to do this. Sure, she could train him to be a body thief, but with the revolution looming, she didn’t have the time for that.
Time was something everybody was running a little short of lately.
She glanced around at the walls of trees surrounding the body farm and thought of the girl in Bonesaw’s shed. Velvet needed to get back there. After her last run-in with the man, he’d be on edge, and that was never good
. It made him more aggressive. More invested in his gouging and grating.
She shivered, and a second later, the corpse’s eyelids snapped open and Velvet screamed uncontrollably. Nick chuckled. The corpse’s vocal cords were gravelly, like it had strep throat or laryngitis or worms coiled in the back of its esophagus. Velvet composed herself and nodded in his direction.
“That was quick.”
Nick sat up and shook away the dirt from the zombie’s shoulders and bare chest. The body was wearing a pair of decomposing jeans, and he brushed the rest of the mounded dirt from its legs before hoisting himself up.
“Good thing he’s got jeans on. Would hate for you to feel awkward,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Gross.”
Velvet started walking back toward the barn.
Behind her, she could hear the cracking heavy-footed machinations of the corpse. Nick maneuvered the thing like a pro. Velvet felt something well inside her that she thought might be pride, but then he tried to run and tripped over a garden marker. He dropped like a sack of potatoes and jarred an eyeball from its socket. It rolled across the dirt, getting coated with the dark soil like a meatball in bread crumbs.
“Ah, crap. Hang on a minute, will ya?”
Velvet bent over with laughter. “You lost something!”
He searched through the dirt for the dark little orb, but in that single moment of looking up at Velvet, he’d lost sight of it, so to speak.
“Yep,” he said. “Eyeball.”
She laughed again, intentionally morbidly, like a mad scientist. “Muhahaha!”
Nick stood up, giving up the search, and jogged forward again. On his second step, he landed square on the missing organ, and it splattered beneath his bare foot. Velvet felt a gag rising in her throat.
“Sorry, dude,” Nick said. He stumbled down the far side of the hill to where Velvet stood at the corner of the old red barn. The doors were chained shut, and a combination padlock was looped through the chain.
“Let’s test your manual dexterity.” She flipped the lock up, and it clanged against the door, making the chain jingle.
“Um, brilliant idea, boss. Except I don’t know the combination.”
She glared. “Yeah, I know. I’m giving it to you.”
“Are you?” he asked. The tone was salacious, she guessed, but Velvet couldn’t tell whether he was trying to start something, not with the remaining eye twitching like it was inside the socket.
“Not that you’re not completely gorgeous like this, but if you’re looking for some romance, might I suggest one of these lovely Jane Does?” She stabbed her thumb in the direction of the fields.
Nick gagged a bit.
“Defeat!” she cried, savoring the victory.
He opened his mouth to retort, but a thin strand of mist flew out—ectoplasm—forcing wild guffaws of laughter from Velvet. Back in purgatory it would have been a spark, and she would have really keeled over busting up.
“Seriously,” she said. “Let’s get this open and move on. There’s another salon tonight, and I’m hoping Kipper is back from his mission with news on Aloysius Clay.”
“Who’s that?” Nick asked.
“Clay’s a lead we’re following up on. He’s probably involved in the revolution and is likely involved in your death and soul imprisonment.”
“That guy sounds really awesome,” Nick said sarcastically.
Velvet suppressed a laugh and continued. “If it is him, then Kipper can find out what exactly the Departurists are planning before their magic causes another shadowquake. That’s why it’s so urgent that we complete your tests. We’re not sure what’s going to happen or when. The departure could be happening right now.”
Nick whistled through the corpse’s loose lips.
Velvet recited the combination, and Nick spun the lock open with ease, jiggled the shackle from the chamber, and left the chain to dangle, all in record time. She ran him through some more tests, lifting tools, jumping through hoops, mostly physical stuff that Nick seemed to have no problem with.
“You know,” he said, “I realize salon has its purposes and all, but I could really go for some nachos.”
“Ooh, yeah. Or some fried cheese.” Velvet bit her lip and glanced off into the distance, lost in a great big food memory.
“I love mozzarella sticks!” Nick added. “Dipped in ranch.”
Velvet brightened. “Shut up! Everyone thinks I’m crazy ’cause I don’t like the marinara dip.”
Nick shrugged the corpse’s shoulders and winked his eye at the girl.
Her expression crinkled. “You do know that’s not cute, right?”
“Hey!” he garbled. “You try to be charming when your skin is sagging around you like a shar-pei’s!”
“The real test will be whether you can generate the flies.”
Nick shivered. “Now?”
Velvet looked him up and down, wondering if she’d misjudged his stamina. But rather than sagging away from the task, Nick puffed out the corpse’s chest and shrugged nonchalantly. “One fly machine, coming up.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Right now. And don’t bother asking me how it works. I could never get them to do it when I did the test.”
The boy bounded up the hill and planted himself in the groove of earth where they’d found the John Doe. He pulled the dirt up around himself like a kid on a day at the beach.
Velvet followed and stood over him, brow furrowed with confusion. “Getting comfy?”
“Yes, gots to concentrate. Shh.”
Velvet stepped back and crossed her arms. She studied the corpse for signs of an eruption, but the only thing Nick seemed to be able to do was cause a maggot to dance on the puckered flesh of the empty eye socket.
“Come on!” she chided.
“Just a second!” the zombie graveled.
The corpse tensed, and a scream bellowed from the body’s slimy lungs like a ship’s whistle. There was a low buzzing sound and then a whoosh of air, and then, suddenly, the flies buzzed around Velvet everywhere. She grinned down at Nick, who beamed with pride and nodded.
“Who’s a stud?” he said.
Velvet crinkled her nose, but she was definitely impressed. “That was good work, dude. Seriously.”
Without a clear target to devour, the flies dispersed quickly, and soon the body farm fell back into silence.
Nick bounced to his feet and planted his translucent fists on his hips heroically. Thankfully, he resisted the urge to do a douchey fist pump; that would have stripped away any admiration Velvet had developed.
“So does that mean I get to be the undertaker?”
Velvet ignored him and stomped away over the edge of the berm.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Seriously?”
She tossed a quick grin over her shoulder and slipped into the undergrowth of the surrounding forest.
The woods were dense but stretched only about twenty yards before they opened onto the grounds of what looked like a college campus. Young people bustled about carrying backpacks over their shoulders, or sat around under trees reading books and crap. Velvet felt a pang of loss at the sight. She’d dreamed of going to school for filmmaking, directing.
Her mother had definitely helped to push her in that direction. She wondered what it would be like to actually do it. To be like these young adults, bustling back and forth to classes, piecing together student films about ice cream melting or kisses that make your lips turn black.
She glanced over at Nick and thought she recognized the look in his eyes, the regret, the grief.
They were all grieving, she suspected. Logan and Luisa, too—despite their love for the Salvaging life and missions and junk. But especially Nick. There was a sadness in him, playing out just behind the cockiness like some off-camera backstory. When she thought about it, that’s what connected them.
“What did you want to be?” he asked her, sinking onto the grass.
Velvet sat next to him, leaning back on her elbows and
crossing her legs out in front of her. “Flight attendant.”
Nick spat laughter. “What? You?”
Velvet shrugged. “Just kidding. I wanted to make movies.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You wanted to act?”
She shook her head. “Oh, God no. I’m definitely more the directing type.”
“Well, you are bossy.”
Velvet ignored him. “My mother took me to the movies. Lots of movies.”
She trailed away into memory. It seemed that the cinema was all they’d had. It had been her mother’s response to every problem. Kids bullying? Let’s go see West Side Story. Down in the dumps? Willy Wonka will clear that up!
“Yeah?” Nick was watching her out of the corner of his eye.
“Yeah! What of it?” She punched his thigh playfully.
“Nothing,” he laughed. “You just make it sound like you’ve thought about it a lot.”
“All the time.” Her voice was small, nearly a whisper. “What about you?”
Nick turned toward her, resting his head in his palm. “I wanted to write.”
“Yeah? You don’t strike me as much of a reader.”
He chuffed. “What gave you that impression?”
“I guess I’ve judged a book by its cover.” She shrugged and shifted toward him a bit. “Jock boys aren’t typically the well-read types, you know. They’re more the groping-girls-in-the-back-of-their-trucks types.”
“I don’t have a truck.”
“That’s a relief,” she said. “So what was your favorite book?”
“The Velveteen Rabbit.”
Velvet sputtered. If she’d been drinking something, which she would have loved to have been doing, she’d have spit it across the lawn. “It is not!”
He shook his head. “Just fucking with you. No. It’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”
“Mmm.” Velvet bit her lip. “A boy who digs Vonnegut.”
She stopped short of letting him know that made him at least 50 percent more attractive. “Vonnegut’s not an easy guy to love,” she said instead. “He was weird, rambly, jumped from point to point, and didn’t give a crap about linear storytelling. Probably why the film version of Slaughterhouse wasn’t so well liked.”