Dying for a Living (A Jesse Sullivan Novel)

by Shrum, Kory M.

  “Yeah, I know,” I told him and he looked surprised. “We know about Atlanta.”

  Brinkley’s sad smile said a lot of things. “Not just Atlanta. Everywhere. Someone is setting up fake replacements and killing as many death replacement agents as they can.”

  My knees shook but didn’t give. “Who? And why would they?”

  “I don’t know,” Brinkley said and I saw his own frustration etched in his face. “At first I thought it was the Church. They aren’t exactly secret in their rejection of replacement agents and it isn’t like religion doesn’t have a habit of waging holy wars or acts of terrorism against those who they consider ‘God’s enemy.’ But our own man—that changes everything.”

  Winston snorted at her feet.

  “Tell us what you know,” Ally said. “The more we know the safer Jess is. We’ll have a better idea of what we’re facing and what to expect. They can’t kill her openly, so they’re trying secretly. Don’t leave us in the dark here.”

  Brinkley considered her for a moment. Then he spoke. “FBRD has a log of all active agents and their work assignments. They have the information and means to stage these attacks. They made me unavailable to my charge at a critical time. I wasn’t supposed to be debriefed for weeks. The time change, the abruptness of the request, all of it is suspicious. And then seeing our own guy on the footage—”

  “How did you see the footage?” Ally asked.

  “Busy boy,” I muttered. “No wonder you haven’t called.”

  Ally’s forehead pinched in tight furrow. “But the bureau was established to manage the death replacement industry. Without agents, it’ll be shut down.”

  “Not everyone wants to make death replacement a permanent fixture of American culture.”

  “What does that even mean?” I had a massive headache. Knowing the whole world wants you dead will do that to you.

  “The military never wanted replacement agents mainstreamed. The only reason they released them from protective custody was because the human rights activists raised hell and they felt pressure from the President come reelection time. The fact that the military wants you back in custody is hardly a secret.”

  “But that means FBRD and the military would have to be working together,” Ally said.

  Brinkley gave her an unkind look. “The union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.”

  “Are you quoting someone?” I asked. I’d never heard Brinkley talk bad about the FBRD before.

  Protective custody was before my time, thirty years back when NRD became a noticeable condition. History speculates that cases existed as far back as ancient times, and could be responsible for vampire and Christian mythologies involving resurrection. But it wasn’t until the 1990s that the numbers grew exponentially.

  When people started dying, but didn’t stay dead, let’s just say the public didn’t react so well. The military’s solution was to take Necronites into protective custody. Only protective custody turned out to be something between a science experiment and a torturous detainment camp.

  “They could use these attacks as an excuse to reinstate protective custody,” Brinkley said.

  “Or?” Ally asked. She was never happy with just one explanation.

  “Or FBRD might have another motive. This is why I have to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. If the agency considers you a threat, they will seek to terminate you. That’s always been protocol, if it can’t be fixed, kill it.”

  “Who are the most likely suspects?” Ally asked. I saw the questions racing in her mind. She formed her own beliefs and theories quicker than Brinkley could get the information out from between his lips. It’s one of the things I loved about her, that the girl was quick.

  I caught myself staring at the curve of her neck and the pout of her lips. She was terribly beautiful in the dim light. I wondered if I could convince her to make out with me just a little. That wouldn’t be emotionally confusing, right?

  Brinkley barreled on unaware of my distraction. “The Deputy Director, who answers only to the FBRD director, donates large sums of money to the Church. The Executor Assistant Director of our division must know because he is the only one who issues orders unless individual agents are being paid or coerced by outside forces. Many FBRD agents are ex-military. Maybe that is where their true loyalty lies. It is also possible that our division’s EAD is taking orders from the dirty-handed Deputy and not the Director himself. I hope so because I thought the Director was a good man. A man Hoover would be proud of.”

  I did not want Brinkley to start talking about Hoover again. Talk about hero worship. “So the Special Agents in Charge who order our handlers around as well as our EAD probably know. But you’re a Supervisory Special Field Agent and you didn’t know.”

  “Nor do I think we were to ever know given how close we work with replacement agents. They would expect us to become attached to our charges,” he replied. Again, blood flooded my face. “The bottom line is FBRD is like a three tiered cake—top to bottom: directors, branches, divisions. We’re on the bottom, so we don’t know anything. Most likely it’s the guys on top who know and they’re the ones I’m going after.”

  “Is it possible that Special Agents like Garrison might not know either?” Ally asked.

  Brinkley shrugged. “It’s possible, but for now everyone is a suspect. There are too many connections to the Church and the military both professional and personal. We have to be on our guard until we can identify the hand in the glove.”

  “Suddenly, I feel so damn lucky to be me,” I groaned. I pushed myself away from Ally and squeezed my temples.

  “Stay tough and keep your eyes open,” Brinkley said. He was unabashedly kind now, more kind than he’s ever been, but this was too much too fast. Someone had tried to kill me and I didn’t know why. All the possible explanations for that “why” weren’t making me feel any better either.

  “Why not just close the program?” Ally asked. “What’s to be accomplished by launching all out genocide against NRD?”

  No one offered theories. We didn’t have any.

  “The bottom line is they failed to kill her,” Ally said. “And you know what they say about failure.”

  “Try, try again,” Brinkley answered. He turned to me and squeezed my shoulders. “You can’t give them the opportunity. They will bait you, manipulate you and try to get you alone.”

  Winston snorted again as if these decaying leaves were fresh bouquets.

  “You need to head back,” Brinkley says, releasing me. “They’re about to come looking for you.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “I’ve been following FBRD protocol since before you were born,” Brinkley said. I couldn’t see his face clearly in the darkness anymore, but I heard that sarcastic smile and had seen it enough over the last seven years to picture it perfectly. “Off you go.”

  Ally didn’t need to be told twice. She scooped Winston out of the underbrush around her feet and turned back toward the house. We’d only made it to the edge of the trees before I turned back.

  “Brinkley, hey, Brinkley!” I yelled in a hoarse whisper.

  “Don’t worry, kid. We will always be close by.” It was Boston’s voice. So not comforting considering I couldn’t even see where the creepy bastard was hiding.

  “No, seriously, Brinkley, I need to talk to you,” I demanded.

  First it was only silence. Then the silence grew so long and thick that I thought they’d just slipped out of the woods like ghosts and I’d never get an answer to the question I’d meant to ask in the first place.

  “What?” he groaned.

  I jumped again. I hadn’t seen or heard him approach through the darkness of the trees. Good to know he still had some moves. We might need those.

  I clutched my chest. “Give me a freaking heart attack.”

  “What?” he asked again, this time with less patience.

&nbs
p; “What’s our story?” I asked him, heart still racing. I panted the question. “About—the fire?”

  Brinkley was quiet for a moment. “Tell them you don’t remember.”

  “But—”

  “Listen,” Brinkley said before I could get started. “You’re different and Garrison will figure this out. He’ll be curious and he’ll poke around, but he won’t find much because I’ve made sure there isn’t much to find. No matter what they say or do, no matter how they try to intimidate you, it is only important that you don’t confess outright. As long as you don’t, they have nothing.”

  I looked down the trail to see Ally as nothing more than a red outline in the distance, Winston waddling at her feet.

  “No confessions. Got it,” I said. Then I caught what he said. “Wait—what do you mean by different?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “How am I—” I started again, but when I turned to face him, Brinkley was already gone.

  Chapter 10

  In all the excitement of the woods, I didn’t get a chance to tell Brinkley about Gabriel. And did I really want to tell Brinkley that another one of his agents was losing her shit? Not really.

  I didn’t mention it to Dr. York either when I showed up to help with the sensitivity seminar.

  I just walked into the spacious white room on the main level of the hospital and sat down at a table, without any attempt at conversation. The room was set up like a conference room, except instead of one long table there were several smaller, moveable tables for people to cluster around in groups of four or five.

  Gloria walked in and took the chair beside me, even closer to the door, as if she too intended to flee the moment this was over. I didn’t do so well with crowds and already two dozen people had taken their chairs. Their various uniforms suggested they’d only gotten a few hours off of work to complete this training.

  Gloria’s face had washed with relief as soon as she saw me and a small smile dimpled her milk chocolate cheeks. Her eyes were bright amber, lips full and hair cropped close to her head, a leftover preference from her former life as a soldier.

  “You’re still alive,” she said.

  “Please tell me that you didn’t see that coming,” I demanded.

  It was my understanding that remote-viewing was like clairvoyance because viewers see pictures of stuff in their heads, but remote-viewers can do more than just see something. Somehow they can keep “entering” into a vision or asking the question differently to get several pictures. When Gloria used her skills to find missing kids, sometimes she’d remote-view the same child a dozen times. Every time she’d get something new: a house, a landmark, a suggestive sound like water or trains. Then all of these clues were used to pinpoint a location. This is why it usually took time, sometimes a week or more, to do a full reading and get all the pieces into place. She kept track of the info by sketching it down in the spiral bound pad I gave her for her birthday. Before that, she did the creepy pictures-all-over-the walls-like-a-psycho thing.

  Gloria’s face pinched and I feared maybe she hadn’t realized I was joking. Of course she hadn’t seen Eve cutting off my head. It wasn’t her job to view me after all. And if it was, it wasn’t like I’d blame her for something like that.

  But before I could clarify she opened her sketchbook and picked a page in the middle. She’d already half-filled this one-thousand page monstrosity since her birthday in February. Clearly, she worked too much. What she showed me was an astonishing charcoal rendering of a man. This disturbingly lifelike headshot featured long shaggy hair, prominent eyes, a wide mouth and sharp jaw. She’d drawn Gabriel as both strikingly beautiful and with wings.

  “I’ve been drawing him for days,” she explained and held her hand above the picture as if she could feel the heat radiating off of it. She repositioned the sketchbook turned back a few pages. “Every time I try to view you, he’s all I get. I wanted to know if the danger has passed, but he is all around you.” She gestured toward the picture.

  “Weird.” I shrugged her off. And as I did a few pages fell forward. Something caught my eye. I snatched the book from her in order to get a better look at the pines encircling a small clearing. In this picture, I stood on the clearing’s edge, half-hidden in the pines as if afraid to go farther. I knew that place.

  “When did you draw this?”

  “Months ago,” she said, as she reached into my lap and flipped the page. The next one was an unfinished door centered above a porch.

  So this was the future, not the past.

  I burst out laughing. Not like ha ha, so funny, but hysterically, like a crazy person. A few heads turned my way before losing interest and returning to their conversations.

  “What is it?” Gloria asked.

  “That’s my mother’s house,” I said. “You couldn’t pay me to go back.”

  “Why don’t you want to go back?” She leaned back in her chair.

  “It’s complicated,” I muttered and looked down at my mismatched shoes.

  Gloria’s eyes glazed again, giving them that I’m communicating with the universe. Leave a message look. “But your little brother. He—”

  “You could be wrong,” I said and hoped it wasn’t too obvious that I’d intentionally changed the subject. I didn’t like to talk about my family.

  And Gloria wasn’t as good at reading Necronites, especially agents. I guess because the flow of time was choppier around us given the die-rise-die cycle we operate on. It makes it harder for her to follow the “threads” as she calls them because we’re always upsetting the magnetic fields.

  “He’s all I see.” She pointed at Gabriel’s picture again, but there was something else in her expression that I couldn’t quite peg. Insecurity, maybe, though I’ve never known Gloria to be insecure about anything. She was an amazing AMP, so she had no reason to doubt her abilities—even if I was a hard read.

  Dr. York clapped his hands to get our attention then slipped his hands in the front pockets of his lab coat. “I want to welcome everyone. I know most of you are here because your employer requires it. Regardless, I hope you find the information interesting and helpful. Our program is divided into two parts: a short orientation video about twenty minutes long, followed by a Q&A with an actual death-replacement agent and an Analyst of Necro-Magnetic Phenomenon.”

  Everyone sat up in their seats glancing eagerly around. It was like a game of “Who’s the Zombie?” Slowly, all eyes settled on me. Me. I started to panic. How did they know it’s me? No one ever guessed me—then I remembered. The freaking newscast of Eve’s attack. One attempted decapitation and suddenly everyone knew who I was.

  Dr. York killed half of the lights ending the painful staring contest. Slowly the eyes turned toward the video flashing an opening montage of healthcare professionals, law enforcement and school teachers before moving into the testimonies.

  Ally rushed in then, mouthing ‘Sorry’ to Dr. York just before handing me a Starbucks cup. Dr. York graced her with a patient smile and motioned for her to sit down. I pulled out the chair on the opposite side of me, furthest from the door.

  “Death-replacement is the greatest scientific discovery of the twenty-first century,” a doctor with coke bottle glasses said as the video rolled on. His eyes were magnified by those thick lenses and looked twice the average size. He had this habit of flicking his tongue over his lips between words. “NRD opened a Pandora’s box for neurologists.”

  I huffed. “Yes, just equate us with a legend of how all suffering entered the world.”

  The announcer continued, “…not all of those with NRD choose to be death-replacement agents. Most fear announcing their condition to their communities because of discrimination, possible violence…”

  I was dozing off when Ally nudged me. I reluctantly sat up straighter and focused my attention on the TV. A pretty blond schoolteacher appeared. The camera panned over her classroom before zooming in on her as she wrote on the board, explaining something. The children sat rap
t in their seats, hands neatly folded. Clearly, this was staged.

  The following clip was her again, post-mortem and racked with rigor mortis. She moved with the shuffle-step most replacement agents have before a good rub down and steam.

  “I know this might be frightening,” the teacher said. Her neck was twisted oddly to the side, looking pale and bloody. “But I’m perfectly harmless.”

  “Oh, come on, this isn’t muscular dystrophy,” I said. “She just needs a bath.” That woman didn’t have to look that way, which is why her pulling the sympathy card irritated me.

  Ally pinched my leg as several people glanced my way. Dr. York was one of them.

  A social worker spoke now as a child stood beside him. “Most of their families turn them away. They can’t handle the adjustment of raising a special-needs child.”

  Ally leaned toward me, keeping her voice low. “How are Necronite children special-needs? As long as you don’t kill them, they are no different.”

  I smiled at her, but my mind had begun to wander at the idea of Necronite children and their families.

  “And sometimes the children must be removed from the home for safety reasons. A child who can be tortured to death, and then resurrect, attracts the wrong kind of foster parent.”

  The video gave a parting shot of a mother who’d discovered her six-year-old daughter, thought dead after drowning in a river, was NRD-positive. “I’m just so happy she’s alive,” she cried. “It’s a miracle.”

  That’s not how my mother took the news, let me tell you. Yes, when I woke up from my very first death to find Brinkley recruiter extraordinaire, I did make one last call to my mother. I am not sure why I did this. I think a part of me wished that since her child-molester husband was dead, maybe I could repair my relationship with her. Maybe she’d even thank me for rescuing her from a perverted husband, because maybe she’d just been too scared to kick him to the curb herself. I was willing to forgive her for everything, if only I could come home to her and Danny.