by Daryl Banner
“Please. Keep us waiting longer,” says Helena dryly.
The Chief rises. He’s a proud Living man, his jaw housing a thick grey-streaked pointed beard pouring off his chin like a bib. He’s grown it out a lot, I notice. His eyes are flecks of blue-grey and his nose a bulb of flesh. He has little head-hair to speak of, and a thick ring of steel decorates each ear. The steel jewelry has become a bit of a fashion trend among the Humans, and for a good reason.
“Winter,” he greets me evenly.
“Chief,” I recite back. He has a real name, but stopped using it long ago after his wife and twin boys were eaten by Deathless. No one knows his name and no one asks.
“Representative of the Living and his assistant are now present,” announces Helena. “Me and my assistant too, so let’s get on with this.”
Say what? Assistant?
John takes a chair by the Chief. Reluctantly, I take the one by Hel. “It’s been a long time, Winter,” notes the Chief, his eyes heavy and bagged. I heard he sleeps with one eye open, cuddling an axe. “How’re you recovering?”
“Oh.” I’m not sure to what he’s referring. An excess of splendidly terrible things have happened to me so far in my Second Life from which I may never recover. “Quite well,” I answer anyway. “I think I might—”
“So what’s this meeting about?” John asks gruffly, getting to the point.
And interrupting me. I shoot him a look.
The Chief takes his seat. “Aside issues of inoperable toilets, sick or dying chickens, and bickering townsfolk, we face a far more pressing matter: the change of season.”
“It’s getting colder outside,” Helena elaborates, noting my puzzled expression. “A lot colder. Not such a big deal for us, but huge deal for them.”
“But you’re all taken care of here in Trenton, aren’t you?” I ask the Chief, confused. “You have walls, warm homes, clothing, food—”
“Cold weather is killing the crops,” explains the Chief. “We made the last three winters just fine at our last camp, but our food sources are running thin. The coming winter will kill what’s left.”
“Yes,” says John through his teeth, “and I’ve already offered a solution to this.”
“Garden doesn’t exist,” the Chief states, unbothered. “And I’m not gambling all our lives on a fantasy. Besides, we have secured a far more realistic solution. Helena has spoken with our Unliving neighbors to the north. A city, in fact, beyond the Haunted Waste—sorry, the Whispers. These neighbors of yours are able to supply food, yes?”
I gape at Helena. “We have neighbors??” She just rolls her eyes.
“We need to form a party willing to travel north and negotiate with them. I suggest a party of at least two alive so the food we accept from them is well-handled. I understand it dies when an Unliving touches it.” Helena snorts for a yes. “I nominate John and Gunner as our alive,” he goes on. “Helena, you’ll choose the others. You might find it well to include the one with the garden—”
I’m about to make a point about how we could wear gloves or something when suddenly the door bursts open and the usually-calm clerk shows us a very panicked face. “Chief! Chief and Judge! Emergency!”
Abandoning his seat, the Chief rushes out of the room without a second’s hesitation. I turn to John, sharing a look of concern with him.
Helena just sighs, annoyed. “Whatever is it …?”
Only one way to find out.
At the steps of the Town Hall, there is a commotion. “Quick!” I hear. “Hurry!” someone else shouts. It’s more irritating than alarming, considering I can’t see what the hell’s going on with all the people in the way. “We need the doctor!” I finally make out, someone in the front.
I break through, John at my side. A woman lies on the ground, cradled by what I take to be her husband. When he lifts her at the urgent request of some mouthy Undead, I realize she’s pregnant.
“Everyone, make room,” the Chief calls out. “Get out of the way, please, everyone. We need space.”
“We need a doctor,” the woman groans between short breaths. “H-Hurry!—Augh!—It’s just down the road!”
Her husband scoffs angrily and spits back: “I am not taking you to that Dead Doctor.”
It’s John who intercepts. “Listen, Gill. I get your trust issues, I had them too. But Collin knows what he’s doing. He has actual medical and surgical experience from when he was alive, back when the world was whole. He’s the safest hands Laura can hope for.”
The man, Gill, has a face as stern and deadly as a wolf. But even a wolf knows when to bite and when to stand down. “John. Please. It’s our baby … our baby …”
Gill. That name … That’s the name of the boy I went to prom with when I was alive. Obviously it’s not the same person, but just hearing the name spoken aloud … Gill was the last person to see me alive.
“She can hardly move,” this Gill complains, tears in his eyes. “John—”
“I’ll carry her there.”
It’s me who volunteers.
The Gill man burns me with his oily eyes, reeking of his distaste for the Undead. Yeah, I get it, but what choice does he have? Undead can carry far more than Humans.
“John. You carry her. I won’t have anything touching my wife and that baby boy.”
“Girl,” grunts the wife, huffing and groaning.
Gill doesn’t respond to his wife’s little jest, too focused on the argument of who’s carrying who, and not minding in the least how insulted I am that he just called me an ‘anything’. “John, please. I carried her this far, I can’t carry her farther. My leg—”
“Fine.” John throws an arm around the woman—Laura, I believe he said—and she’s helped out of the Square, step by agonizingly slow step. The Chief is pulling the crowd apart, making room for them. The half-gym, half-hospital is only a merciful minute’s walk away.
I realize Gill is limping, wincing every other step. “What’s with the leg?” I ask, hurrying behind them.
“No one asked you to come,” he spits back.
I saved the city of Trenton and welcomed in all the Humans from the wretched wilderness and this is the respect I get. “You’re bleeding,” I point out, noting his soaked-red pant leg.
“Fell on the way out of the house. Dropped my wife.”
John huffs and puffs along with the Laura woman, whether out of encouragement or because he’s struggling to hold up her weight, I can’t tell. Gill is rasping for his own reasons, tears in his eyes; it’s obvious the pain he’s in. Helena, I only just now notice, is following behind.
“Stay away,” he breathes, noticing her as well. “All of you Crypters. Stay away from me and my—”
“Screw it. Hel, get the wife. I’ll get the whiner.”
Yes, he protests mightily, but within seconds Helena’s carrying the wife with ease and I’m carrying the husband. I’m sure the scene appears very comical, but there’s nothing funny about a woman in labor.
Only one and a half minutes later, we’re surrounding a table, and the Undead Doctor Collin takes charge.
Laura’s baby comes into this world like most babies do: screaming.
“A girl! She’s a girl! Oh, her eyes!”
I listen to this and remind myself that I’m a kind and patient person and that I love the miracle of childbirth and there’s nothing gross or repulsive about it at all. Also, my hands and arms are covered in the man’s leg-blood and I’m not happy about the stains it’s leaving on my shirt.
“Ooh, look. Gill … Gill, she has your eyes …”
It’s not that I’m annoyed, not exactly. How could a decent person be annoyed by the birth of a beautiful baby girl in this beautiful dead world? Is it that the husband treated me with such contempt the whole way here? Is it that no amount of help seems to be enough for the Humans? Do I resent them so much …?
Do I resent John?
“Oh, she’s so precious,” says the nurse, then quickly beckons for more towels or to
ols or something. I don’t know, I’m not really paying attention.
And the Human Laura whispers something. I look up. Her watery Living eyes find my icy Undead ones. She reaches out a hand, says it again, a gentle smile finding her face. What did she just say?
Then the life slips from her eyes, and her hand falls.
“Doctor Collin. Doctor!” The nurse makes a grab at something, a tool drops from the tray and clatters loudly against the tile, startling me. Suddenly the room is in commotion and the screams of a newborn girl are long forgotten.
“What’s happened to her!!” screams Gill, shaking his wife. “Where’d she go?! Honey? … What happened??”
Undead Doctor Collin stoops forward to examine the mother and I’m up from the chair in an instant to give the experts room, watching wide-eyed as the nurses bustle about, panicked, unorganized.
I’m still holding out my hands, painted red and frightful, afraid to touch anything.
“What’s happened to her!? What’d you do!??”
He doesn’t seem to be accusing anyone in particular. The baby cries and cries and cries, but the man’s attached to his wife, tears in his eyes. “Honey?? Honey?? Laura??” He’s shaking her, throttling her.
I don’t realize it, but I’ve stepped away so much, my back hits the wall. My hands still up, touching nothing, and the Human Gill is yelling and screaming, accusing everything and everyone now. Despite Doctor Collin trying to save her, there is no saving Gill. John moves in to help, but he’s elbowed in the face and screamed at, too.
Helena’s in front of me suddenly. “Winter, we’d better go. This isn’t going to end nicely.”
“But John’s just—”
“Go, Winter.”
“The baby’s—”
Hel pulls at my shoulder and guides me out of the room. The door shuts behind us and she’s moving me down the hall. I can still hear the screaming of men.
“Is she going to make it?” I ask, feeling like a child, feeling as lost as Megan in the Whispers this morning.
“Go, Winter,” my Reaper tells me. “Go and clean up. Bathroom’s at the end of the hall. Wash the blood off.”
“Yes, alright.” I’m in a daze. So much has happened so fast, I find myself thankful for Helena’s direction.
The bathroom door opens, I move inside, then close it with my back. For a while, I just stare at my strange, pale reflection in the mirror that’s warped by a lightning-shaped fissure running down the middle. My hair white, my clothes red, blood running up my arms and fingers.
I remember the First Life Gill … the other Gill. I feel the heat of his body in those last minutes of my life … when Gill, my prom date, took me out to those cold, icy woods. I remember where he opened me up, pulling apart my prom dress. I remember not wanting it anymore and feeling the guilt of all my ugly, teenage defiance rush in. I can still hear the panting of his breath, still see the mist it made in the deathly cold. I changed my mind. After he left me, abandoned in the woods, I started running, shivering, my dress and my coat torn open. I changed my mind, I kept thinking as I raced through icy woods, not knowing that I didn’t have the rest of my life waiting for me. I didn’t have several more years to grow, to make amends, to ‘make right by all my wrongs,’ as my mother would say. I wasn’t even aware of the cracking surface of a frozen lake resting just beneath my cold, stupid feet.
My hands are bloody. I move to the sink, twist the faucet on … but I’m still staring at my face in the mirror. When I look up, I notice a skinny horizontal window at the top of the wall. It reveals an endless, silver, nothing sky. I think about how winter skies always look grey, and how the cold is so like death, warm summers so like life.
Helena must’ve named me Winter for a reason.
I think about Gill … and realize I’m not putting my hands under the running water of the faucet. I’ve brought one to my mouth instead.
I part my lips.
I press a red finger to my tongue. Two red fingers.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
You did this to yourself, I remember mom saying.
The only one left to blame is you … Yes, I remember, I remember it all.
And I know exactly what I’m doing.
Blood … I can taste it.
The silver of the sky turns grey-blue, then full-blue, then a blue so burning bright it threatens to dislodge my senses, or already has, and I’m brought to imaginary tears.
Almost alive.
The running water of the faucet is long forgotten, and instead, I’m licking my hands clean, gazing longingly through that tiny window, imagining what my own heartbeat might sound like if I had one.
C H A P T E R – T W O
H A P P Y
Helena joins me on the trek back home. It’s like my first day as an Undead all over again.
“You don’t mind if I call you Hel?”
She smiles wanly. “If you insist. Hell. What else has our Second Life become?”
I appreciate so much that she’s taken a kinder attitude toward me, especially after what happened at the hospital. “I can’t believe she died.”
“Birth and death,” murmurs Hel. “They go hand in hand. Sort of like—oh, what’s the word—rotting carcasses and unrequited love.”
“Yes, that’s it.” I can never tell when she’s joking, or if it’s another of her strange Undeadisms.
We pass a couple of ladies chatting on their porch, both of them wrapped up ridiculously in thick jackets and scarves and puffy hats.
“I don’t think some of the Undead get it,” I whisper quietly to Helena. “They look ready to brave a blizzard.”
The two ladies lift their chins as though they heard my remark … then give us a polite wave. We wave back, though a tad less enthusiastically.
“Most of the Undead are simply excited,” Hel explains. “They see the Humans bundling up, and they want to join in. You’d think they were celebrating the winter.”
I laugh, and the laughter dies quickly. “Laura almost said something to me,” I suddenly confess. Helena lifts a brow. “I didn’t hear what it was. She died before she … Well, I thought maybe she was going to thank me. I’m not sure. She seemed so happy in that last instant.”
“Not all of us get the joy of being so happy in our last instant.” Helena’s remark is laced with venom.
“The husband blames us,” I point out unnecessarily, as Hel’s already plenty aware. “I’m worried about that. So many Livings already hate us enough.”
“We’re steadily improving Human-Undead relations. We have the Chief’s full support. Nothing to worry on.”
I’ve been told that before: don’t worry, just relax, smile, everything’s fine. I’m so tired of being lied to. “There’s plenty to worry on, Hel.”
“I suddenly prefer Helena again.”
We’ve already reached my house, much to my surprise. I wasn’t paying attention; the whole journey home, I’ve been marveling at the rich blue of the sky, Gill’s blood still affecting me. Even now, I can smell the dust of the Trenton outskirts. I feel the wooden, dry aroma of my own house filling my senses for the first time. I think I can even taste it … the taste of nature.
I also know that soon, and sadly, it will wear off.
When the door permits us and we’re seated across from one another at my tiny table, I hear her let out a big, dramatic, unnecessary sigh. “Oh, the nature of politics. I never wanted to be Judge.”
Judge Helena. I keep forgetting that’s her official title now. “You can still turn the position over. I’m quite sure we have other candidates.”
“Oh? You mean like Jasmine, who refused to take part in politics? Or Headless Ann, who can’t keep her hands to herself? Ugh. Of all the things I thought I’d have to worry about, hormonal Undead teens was not one of them.”
I’m distracted by the blue that still strikes my eyes through the window. The sun is directly above, which frustrates me desperately. I so want to be outside right now while t
his experience lasts. “So … we do have legitimate worries?”
“No.” Helena crosses her legs, sighing tragically. “Listen. Our sweet little haven in this world is very, very fragile. There are a staggering amount of things that can ruin this for all of us, Living and Not. And I’m talking far more than just dropping temperatures.”
“Horny teenagers?” I offer helpfully, still staring at the endless blue. I think I see a cloud …
She ignores my quip. “This is serious.” I face her, ears perked. “Very serious. Only you and I and the Chief know that we have had no new Raises in nearly a month.”
If Marigold or Roxie or anyone else at that squatty pink building have half a brain, they’re well aware, too. “The workers at the Refinery have to know. Why else haven’t they had any new Raise work in so long?”
“I know,” Helena says, biting that last word with too-white teeth. “It still remains imperative that we’re quiet. Without Raises, it seems that even the Undead’s days are numbered. We must prevent widespread panic, Winter.”
“Okay.”
“That brings me to my next point.” Hel leans across the table and lowers her voice, as though others were lurking in the house. I wonder if she expects the spiders and cockroaches to eavesdrop. “There are only a handful of us who know about … the Deathless practice …”
I stare at her hard in the eye. “Deathless practice?”
“Of feeding.” She licks her lips, lifts a careful brow. I keep my face plain and dead as a porcelain mask. “The Humans are not all aware of what happens when an Undead feeds on the stuff of the Living.” She nearly gags after saying that, then resumes: “I know of it, Jasmine knows of it, John and Megan and the Chief know—thanks to you—and of course, you know.” Her dark eyes narrow. “That is already far too many people to share a deadly secret. Should that news spread, the Humans will fear for their lives and—forgive me—some of our Undead may be far too tempted. I don’t know everyone in Trenton. There are too many people. I cannot trust them all to behave and to keep their … teeth … to themselves.”