Lesser Creatures

by Peter Giglio

  “No. Drink whiskey…no sleep. But hope to wake. Used to think only dreaming…would wake.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “Things more…real.”

  “So tell me about the darkness. It was dark when you died, and then…”

  “No remember.”

  “What about the others like you? Do you have a way of communicating with them?”

  “No.”

  “Do you feel any connection to them?”

  “No.”

  “Are any of them your friends?”

  “No.”

  “How would you describe them?”

  “Dead.”

  “And yourself? Would you say you’re dead?”

  A protracted pause, then: “Half. Was all dead before.”

  “Interesting. So you feel yourself changing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Into what?”

  “No know.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Some.” She held up two slightly separated fingers as a smile cracked her face.

  He chuckled. “That’s normal.”

  “None of this normal.”

  “Not yet,” he said, “but nothing is normal the first time. Do you know how special you are?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you are.”

  “Did same as others. Special, no.”

  “I understand,” he said gently.

  She pointed to her head and grimaced. “Machine hurt. Need music.”

  “Of course,” he said. He leaned forward and quickly pulled the wires from her head. Then she got off the couch and took her Mp3 player from an otherwise empty shelf. Her hands shook as she put the buds in her ears. But after starting the music, her tremors abated. She sat back on the couch, closed her eyes, and smiled.

  And he smiled, too.

  * * *

  It had been a whirlwind day for Julie Stewart, her phone ringing off the hook. Not often did journalists become the subject of reportage themselves, but public curiosity about the off-balanced and lesser-known reporter who’d single-handedly buried Steven Lingk on the back page and final minute of every major news source was piqued. At least compared to her previous experience. Perhaps this was her fifteen minutes. She didn’t know. One thing she did know for sure, she was moving to England.

  The offer to anchor an early morning news show had come from Globe’s UK branch early that morning. Yes had been her answer. Now she was celebrating with her two best friends from college, Connie and Stella. Though she wasn’t that close to her old sorority sisters anymore, she would miss them, but not so much that it ruined her excitement.

  She had the next five days off to get everything in order. Globe had already set her up with a flat in London. Thursday morning, she’d fly to her new home, her new life.

  The girls were chatting, laughing, and she wasn’t paying much attention. She was lost in her thoughts. Will I fit in? Can I handle the pressure? She drank the last of her beer down, looked at the empty pitcher in front of her, and interrupted the banter of her friends. “We need more beer.”

  They stopped talking and stared at her, then Stella chuckled. “Julie, you never drink like this anymore.”

  “Well,” she replied, “it’s not every day a girl finds out she’s leaving behind everything she’s ever known.”

  “You’re excited, aren’t you?” Connie asked.

  “Hell, yeah,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to make the most of tonight.”

  “Stay there,” Connie said, starting to get up. “I’ll get us more.”

  “No,” Julie said, motioning her friend to sit. “You’ve already paid for dinner and all of our drinks so far. Besides, I think we should do shots.”

  “Shots?” Stella said in a voice of disbelief.

  Julie had gone the way of career while Connie and Stella had taken more traditional paths. Both were married, and Stella had three children at home. In light of Connie and her husband’s difficulty conceiving, they were fast approaching the top of an adoption list, so it wouldn’t be long before she was a mother, too.

  “Why not?” Julie asked with a smile. “I was thinking about getting us some cosmopolitans and shots. It’ll be just like the old days. What do you think, Jägermeister?”

  “You’re kidding,” Stella said. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “I have to be getting home.”

  Julie felt her face go flush. When had this happened? she asked herself. When had fun been outlawed? She’d been so focused on her career that she’d hardly noticed the passage of the last five years, but every morning she still saw a young woman in the mirror, which she couldn’t say for Connie and Stella. That, she suspected, was part genetics (her mom had looked young well into her fifties), good diet (other than tonight, of course), and not giving herself over to the stresses of family or even a romantic relationship. She hadn’t even been laid in the last eight months. Tonight was supposed to be a celebration, though. And she wanted to have fun. One night of wild abandon couldn’t hurt.

  “Whatever,” Julie said to Stella, then turned to Connie: “What about you? You’ll party with me tonight, right?”

  “Oh shit, Jules,” Connie said with a heavy sigh. “I want to, I really do, but I told Rex I’d be home early. We have a golf thing in the morning.”

  “Golf?” Julie said. “When did you start playing golf?”

  “Last year. Look, I’m sorry. Maybe we can get together for lunch before you leave.”

  “Yeah,” Stella said, clearly trying to steer the conversation in a more jovial direction. “Let’s do lunch!”

  Julie leaned back and smiled. She always felt like something of an outcast with her old friends. Every gathering she attended was the same. Judgmental eyes told her she was selfish, and even though the girls—no, she corrected, the women—sitting with her now were her most loyal friends, their looks were slinging the same arrows. She cared and she didn’t. Once upon a time, perhaps she would have taken the same path as the others, but second life had changed that. While some people found hope in knowing life didn’t end after death, she didn’t. More than anything it made her want to make the most of every day, to accomplish something that would be remembered after she was gone. And second-lifers in her mind were just that. Gone. No distinguishable brain activity.

  No fucking fun. No fucking fair. And that’s what she wanted to say to her friends now, but she didn’t. “All right,” she said. “You two run on home and I’ll call you Monday.”

  Connie and Stella grabbed their purses and stood, but Julie remained seated. “Aren’t you coming, too?” Stella asked.

  Julie, still smiling, shook her head.

  “You know,” Connie said, “it’s not a good idea for a celebrity to be alone in a public place.”

  Julie laughed and gave a dismissive wave. “I’m not a celebrity for crying out loud. I’ll be fine.”

  “Call us when you get home,” Stella said. “Let us know you’re okay.”

  “I will,” Julie said.

  Then her friends moved toward the door, chattering at each other as they went, leaving Julie to make a decision. She could head home and wallow in a fate worse than loneliness (having no one to celebrate good news with) or she could stick around and see what the night brought. Maybe she was something of a celebrity, although she didn’t like thinking that way, but just maybe. If so, she reasoned, she wouldn’t mind leveraging that status for one night. Hell, she was leaving the country in less than a week anyway.

  Her mind made up, she rose from the table and shimmied to the bar. She summoned the female bartender with a whimsical wave of her credit card. “Cosmo,” she said. Then she turned to the guy beside her. Good-looking, she thought, and alone. “And…” she continued with a smile. The man stared at her, clearly interested. Maybe he even recognized her. She didn’t care. “Excuse me,” she said, “but would you do a shot with me?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Good. I’m trying to
celebrate, but my friends are no fun. What would you like?”

  “Anything but cinnamon schnapps,” he said, then laughed.

  She mocked a gag, then turned to the bartender. “Two Jäger bombs.”

  She sat at the stool beside the man, then turned her full attention on him. It was her job to seek out stories, to care about details, and this man clearly had a tale to tell, but that was the furthest thing from her mind. His build was athletic, but he didn’t give off a macho vibe. His face was distinguished.

  “Wow,” he said. “I haven’t drank Jäger since college.”

  “Neither have I,” she said.

  “When was that?” He laughed. “Last month?”

  She feigned indignation. “Are you saying I look young?”

  “I’m sorry. Is that not a compliment these days?”

  She returned his smile, brushed bangs out of her eyes, then put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re okay.”

  “Good. I needed that.”

  “What, validation?”

  “Something like that.” His smile widened. She liked it. And his deep brown eyes.

  The shots arrived in plastic yellow cups, then the bartender started making her drink. Julie placed her credit card on the counter. “Tab,” she said, then snatched the shot from the bar, swiveling the stool to face her new friend.

  “Down the hatch,” she said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Monika listened to her song several times, forgetting about the man beside her. She jerked back when she turned and noticed him, then powered off the music and removed the wires from her ears.

  She’d lied to him earlier. The machine hadn’t really hurt her head; she didn’t even know if such a thing was possible. She’d simply grown tired of his questions. She’d enjoyed the experience at first, but whatever was happening, this dawning humanity, was also making her anxious and impatient. She looked at the pastor and envied his forbearance.

  He held something out to her. A necklace.

  “One more gift,” he said, “before I leave.” He showed her the pendant on a silver chain. A woman holding her hands wide with scars on her face. “This is Glory,” he said. “Wear this always. She will protect you.” He unclasped the chain and raised it toward her neck.

  “May I?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  Now wearing the necklace, she touched the pendant and smiled. She wished for a moment that he would reconnect her to the machine so she could properly thank him, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood and started gathering up his equipment.

  She watched him for a while.

  Then time shifted, and he was gone.

  * * *

  “Oh my God,” she said, “I used to love zombie movies. I miss them.”

  Eric and Julie had moved back to her table, sitting across from each other, drinking heavily. Her previous statement had been an out-of-the-blue musing that captured his interest. Most of their conversation to this point had been of the banal getting-to-know-you variety, which was fine with him; he hadn’t had this much fun talking about nothing in a long time.

  “I did, too,” he said. “What was your favorite?”

  “Dawn of the Dead,” she answered quickly. “But not the remake. The Romero classic.”

  “I’ll be honest,” he said. “I didn’t think you were old enough to remember such things.”

  “I’m thirty-three,” she said. “And I remember them well. Couldn’t get enough of that shit as a teenager, back in those apocalypse-ready days of the new millennium.” She laughed. “Yeah, I was a cliché.”

  “Weren’t we all?”

  “Isn’t it funny how things turned out? That what we stupid kids feared the most came to pass, but nothing happened the way it was supposed to.”

  “I think it happened the way it was meant to. It just didn’t happen the way we thought it would.”

  She nodded somewhat sadly, took a drink. “Strange days,” she said.

  “What do you think would happen if a second-lifer were shown an old zombie film?” The question was out of his mouth before he could pull it back, and he waited anxiously for her reaction, afraid she would get up and leave at his suggestion of breaking the law.

  To his relief, she didn’t get angry, just shrugged. “I don’t think anything would happen. I think the government banned them as a precautionary measure, afraid that second-lifers were easily influenced, that if they saw what we really thought of them, what we feared they’d become, they’d emulate that. But some of them hold on to trace memories of their former lives, and I’m sure a few of them remember Dawn of the Dead. Hasn’t caused a problem yet.”

  “The power of words,” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking about how terrified of speech society has been. Historically, I mean.”

  “And images,” she said.

  “The thing everyone should be afraid of is love.”

  “Hey, pal, you’re preaching to the choir.”

  He laughed.

  “Everyone was afraid,” she said, “so no one stood in the way, not even Hollywood. It really comes down to the power of fear. Just like all the knee-jerk shit after 9/11, something that I am actually too young to remember, not that the world is done with the ripples of those days.”

  “You seem pretty up on shit, Julie.”

  “Have to. I’m a reporter.”

  He forced himself to look surprised. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but I don’t want to talk about that tonight. It’s a thing that dominates my life, and it will always be waiting for me when I’m ready for reality again.”

  “You know what we should do?” he said, leaning forward in a conspiratorial manner.

  She did the same. “What?”

  “I have an old copy of Dawn of the Dead stashed away at my place. A few others, too.”

  She laughed. “You should be careful. I just told you what I do for a living.”

  “Hell, dead letter laws don’t scare me, and I hardly think what I watch in the privacy of my home is newsworthy. We should watch it. I live right upstairs.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but I’m not finished drinking yet.”

  He looked down at their almost empty glasses. He was starting to wobble from the alcohol, and he liked it. Every concern lay a million miles from him and this girl and the booze they were drowning in. Precisely where he needed to be, and he sensed Julie needed to be here, too.

  “Good point,” he said. “But it looks like we’re running dry.”

  She put a finger to her nose and smiled so wide she squinted.

  Raising his hand, he turned to the bar and hollered, “Another round, please.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Glory stared vacantly upward through the thick green pool as Steven checked his watch. Another twenty minutes left before he could pull her out of the bath. He wondered what she thought with her entire body and head submerged. If fear was a factor, she didn’t show it, but he hoped his presence on the other side of the liquid eased any possible distress. All of his worry, all his love, had been for her for so long. Now there was Monika, his possible link to Glory. His breakthrough.

  From the living room came a beep, which could mean only one thing. Monika had left her apartment. He reached through the goo and gently touched Glory’s coarse shoulder. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart,” he said. “I promise.” Then he stood and walked into the living room. Picked the computer tablet off a table, then used his fingers to zoom in on the blinking red dot. She was moving, but not toward him as he’d hoped.

  She was leaving 913.

  While he was glad she was wearing the necklace containing the tracking device, and that he’d given it to her in time, his heart raced. He was afraid for her. Second-lifers didn’t make a habit of roaming the streets after dark, and those with Blue status were common targets for hate groups. They wouldn’t terminate her, of course, but that wouldn’t keep them from abducting and torturing her, a fate worse than
death, and a vile action beyond the protection of The Curse.

  He rushed back into the bathroom and kneeled before the tub. Releasing the drain guard, he said, “We’ll have to cut this session short.” He scooped his hands beneath her back and gently lifted. He’d injured her before, in the early days, and was always careful not to break bones or accidentally flay her brittle skin. The ravages of time had already taken their toll on her, now thirteen years into second life, more than five beyond the average expiration date.

  When he had her standing, he toweled her off, trying to maintain a steady hand despite the urgency that pressed his nerves to the breaking point.

  “I have a special errand,” he told her, but nothing registered upon her stoic visage. Despite that, he thought, Monika had a special connection to Glory. Perhaps she was even a reborn embodiment of Glory’s soul. A third life? She had said she loved him, which was something no one but Glory and Charity had ever articulated.

  He didn’t believe in coincidences.

  When Glory was finally dry, he draped her fragile body in a robe and led her to bed. Second-lifers didn’t sleep, but they did rest. He laid her on the bed, then ran a hand through her brittle hair. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised, then gave her a kiss on the forehead, suddenly aware of the burning sensation on the flesh of his hands. Humans weren’t supposed to come in contact with PSL-9, the substance he submerged Glory in daily, but his well-being was far from paramount.

  In the bathroom, he quickly lathered his hands with soap, then rinsed them beneath near-scalding water. The burning tingles abated as he toweled his hands dry, then he rushed toward the front door, grabbing the computer tablet on his way out.

  She hadn’t gone far, he assessed in the elevator, keeping a close eye on the blinking dot. And then her destination hit him. Eric Cooper. In the lobby of the building, still moving, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through contacts until he found Eric’s. He enlarged the entry to show personal information, then looked back at Monika’s location.