The Dead Road

by Seth Patrick

‘So are you and Annabel an item?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah, we’ve been together a while now.’ ‘You’re living together?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ He was making sure to keep it all short and simple. And vague.

  ‘She’s a journalist, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you do? If you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Computers,’ said Jonah, not missing a beat.

  ‘Me too,’ said Cathy, and Jonah’s heart sank. He wasn’t sure how much supposed expertise he could fake.

  ‘What kind of . . . stuff?’ he managed.

  ‘I used to work at Green Bank,’ she said. ‘The Radio Telescope?’

  Jonah couldn’t help but smile. Living in the Radio Quiet Zone, if you didn’t know about Green Bank you’d really not been paying attention. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Are you an astronomer?’

  ‘Used to be,’ said Cathy. ‘Been retired for a decade. I was always hands-on with the hardware. I was the one who’d pull out circuit boards and get stuck in rather than wait for replacements to get to us.’

  ‘I have a friend who’d love you for that. So you stayed in the area?’

  ‘I met my husband there, we bought our place and didn’t ever want to leave.’ She paused. ‘He died three years back.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I miss him, that I do. He was more of a mathematician than I was, but he always wanted to understand the tech side better.’ She smiled. ‘He was hopeless at it. Our daughter’s out in Gainesville, with little Grady and his sister.’ Her hand went to her mouth. ‘I hope to God Grady’s OK.’

  When they pulled in outside the entrance to the ER, Cathy heaved a sigh. She looked worn down.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ said Jonah.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said. ‘And thanks.’ As she spoke, she reached out and put a hand on Jonah’s arm. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but the material was thin – he felt an unmistakeable chill as she touched him. He could see a flicker of puzzlement on Cathy’s face, but she said nothing, just got out of the car and gave him a grateful wave as she went into the building.

  *

  When he got back home, he winced as he saw Annabel’s car parked in the drive. The moment he shut off the engine, the front door opened. She was standing there, arms folded, face like thunder.

  He got out and walked over.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she said.

  He explained, although he made sure not to mention the chill. Angry as she seemed, there wasn’t much for her to complain about.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jonah. ‘I didn’t see what else I could do.’

  ‘Get in here,’ she scolded, but she gave him a long hug. ‘You just don’t have the capacity to be a selfish bastard, I guess, which isn’t a bad thing. So, your name’s Rob, then, huh?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And you work in computers?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Great. So now we have two Nevers, do we? And I thought one was plenty.’

  ‘Cathy mentioned you’d already met,’ he said.

  ‘I figured it would happen one way or another, better to get it out of the way early. Still, Cathy seems nice enough. Although when I spoke to her, she didn’t mention the astronomy. She just said she was a proud grandmother.’

  ‘We tech-savvy folk hide our lights under a bushel, don’t we?’

  Annabel grinned. ‘Jonah, you’ve hidden yours incredibly well.’

  *

  She remained a little unsettled into the evening, so Jonah tried to help her relax by making dinner (well, reheating dinner) and asking her about her day. The nitty-gritty of journalism held about as much interest for Jonah as office gossip, mainly because it was hard to follow unless you were heavily invested in the subject matter. The bits and pieces of information dripping through were rarely in the All the President’s Men category, and most of what Annabel found out about were things she’d promised not to divulge.

  As evening wore on, she headed off to run a bath. Jonah was tidying away the dishes when the doorbell rang.

  He checked the security camera.

  It was Cathy. She looked impossibly weary.

  Jonah took a deep breath and went to the door. ‘Cathy?’ he said as he opened it. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘And I need your help.’

  6

  Jonah felt his stomach lurch.

  From behind him came Annabel’s angry voice. ‘What the hell do you want?’ she said. Jonah turned to her – she’d got out of the bath and thrown on her clothes, her hair still wet.

  ‘Calm down,’ he told her.

  ‘Why?’ said Annabel. ‘She comes here and threatens you . . .’

  Cathy shook her head, distressed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like a threat. Believe me, I didn’t want to do this. But I googled revivers, and I saw your picture in an old news story. It said you were dead, but I kept looking at the picture and I thought about that weird feeling I’d had when I touched your arm, and . . .’ She closed her eyes. ‘I wish I didn’t know, Jonah,’ she said. ‘But I do, and I need your help.’

  Annabel came down the stairs, raging. Jonah held up his hand for her to wait.

  ‘Grady,’ said Jonah. ‘He didn’t make it.’

  Cathy’s tears flowed. ‘He’d stepped in front of a car,’ she said. ‘He had chest injuries. They thought he was doing well, but his heart gave out. His heart. He was five years old.’

  ‘Her grandson,’ he said to Annabel.

  Annabel looked to the ceiling, half in sympathy, half in anger. Jonah saw her face set firm; she was steeling herself. ‘You can’t do this, Cathy,’ she said. ‘You can’t come into my home and do this.’

  ‘They couldn’t afford the insurance,’ said Cathy, distraught. ‘Do you know how much the policies are these days? Crippling. And to hire a reviver outright, they charge the equivalent of decades of payments, and even then you don’t get the best people. A fifty-fifty chance they’ll succeed, and you pay the same either way, whether you get to say goodbye or not.’

  Annabel shook her head. ‘Don’t you get it? Do you think Jonah’s gone to all this trouble just for privacy? If people know he’s not dead, it puts his life at risk. You can’t ask him to do that. You can’t.’

  ‘I know,’ said Cathy. ‘I know you must have your reasons. I shouldn’t have come. It’s all been . . . it’s been . . .’ She shook her head, lost; then she turned and walked out.

  Jonah was torn. He’d always had the same problem – he wanted to help, even if it was a bad idea. Saying no to someone in that kind of pain didn’t sit well with him. He looked at Annabel. She shook her head, but it was a resigned shake. ‘If you’re going to do this,’ she said, ‘then you need to be careful. You do it exactly the way I tell you to, agreed?’

  He thought about letting Cathy just leave. Even though he hardly knew her, he didn’t think she was the kind of person who would abuse what she’d found out. He could refuse her request, if he chose to.

  Like hell he could. He knew what it meant for that one last chance to say goodbye to those you loved. He knew how important it was.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said.

  *

  He went after Cathy and told her what he’d decided. She was grateful, but it was with a degree of shame that she accepted his offer.

  ‘I don’t know what you’ll think of me after this, Jonah,’ she said. ‘But I’ll always hate myself a little for having asked.’

  Jonah shook his head. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘You did the only thing you could.’

  Annabel’s conditions were simple enough: when the body was released to the parents, it would be brought to Cathy’s home. Jonah’s face couldn’t be seen. The story had to be agreed up front, and Cathy would have to stick to it: that she had cashed in every favour she was owed, and had managed to get a private reviver to volunteer. No questions were to be asked about who or how. No recording would b
e made.

  Jonah added further conditions. The parents would only be allowed into the room after the revival was successful, and would leave before he released the boy. Given that he didn’t know the full extent of the injuries, he wasn’t prepared to have it any other way. He would try for a vocal revival, that being one where the lungs and vocal cords are intact enough to allow speech. Revival was usually mishandled in movies, since live actors were necessarily playing the role of the corpse. In reality, the only controlled movement present in the body came from the chest, throat and voice box. Any other muscle activity was essentially random – twitching, usually of smaller muscles such as the eyelids or cheek. The eyes rarely moved at all. The dead couldn’t see, and they could only hear what the reviver said, nothing else.

  Vocal revivals were the most compelling kind of evidence for court, and for private revivals they were also the preferred option, but in cases where the damage to the body was too great, either through injury or because of the time elapsed since death, then a non-vocal procedure was the only option. Only the reviver would hear the words of the subject, and would repeat them aloud, or use a one-handed stenography system to relay the words to those watching.

  All Jonah knew about the boy’s injuries was that he’d suffered damage to the chest. A vocal revival could still be possible, but the accompanying sounds might prove too distressing – liquid, muscle, bone, a creaking and gurgling that nobody would want to hear from the body of a loved one.

  By keeping the parents out for the beginning, he could make sure that those kinds of things wouldn’t be an issue.

  *

  The release of the boy’s body required that no post-mortem was necessary and, further, that there was no pending request for a forensic revival. Both were officially ruled out by the next afternoon, and by early evening the body of Grady Reed was in the guest bedroom of his grandmother’s house.

  There was one other thing Jonah needed, though, and for that he’d had to ask Never to come round after work.

  Annabel answered the door just before 7 p.m., and Never came in with a look of baffled irritation.

  ‘Can I ask what the fuck?’ said Never. ‘Just, what the fuck?’

  ‘Did you bring it?’ said Annabel. Jonah was coming through from the kitchen and gave Never a sheepish wave.

  ‘Of course I brought it,’ said Never. ‘Also: what the fuck?’

  ‘Hand it over, then,’ said Jonah.

  ‘Here,’ grumped Never. ‘Standard field med pack.’ He passed Jonah a small plastic box with medication. Revivers were prone to a variety of problems, ranging from nausea to a form of PTSD. Performing revivals on a regular basis took its toll. Jonah, with one of the shortest recovery times in the FRS, had been particularly at risk as he’d be able to perform more revivals in a given period. The medication they took in advance of a revival was proven to reduce the problems they were exposed to, but the dosage of each drug was controlled precisely. The med packs contained a wide range of doses of each medication that, in combination, allowed their own prescription to be adequately approximated.

  Jonah snapped the protective tab on the med pack and looked at the various blister packs. ‘I was on six hundred and thirty-seven micrograms of BPV,’ he said. ‘Can you make sure I add this up right, Never?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, give it here,’ said Never, starting to pop out the pills Jonah would need. ‘Five hundred. One twenty-five. Ten. Two. Easy.’

  ‘The BPV was always the tricky one,’ said Jonah. ‘My anti-nausea is a standard dose.’ He took the pills and headed to the kitchen for a drink to take them with, along with a couple of aspirin from the cupboard.

  When he came back, Never was standing with his arms folded. ‘She won’t tell me what’s happening,’ he said, nodding to Annabel. ‘So out with it.’

  Jonah explained.

  ‘You are such a fucking boy scout, Jonah Miller,’ said Never.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Annabel. ‘But I wouldn’t have him any other way, I guess.’

  ‘Conceded,’ said Never. ‘Sorry to cut and run, but I’ll let you two handle this one yourselves. Dead kids are not my idea of time off.’ He turned to leave, but paused. ‘Oh, I’m working the weekend, off Thursday and Friday. If you want a repeat of last time?’

  ‘Maybe not quite a repeat,’ said Annabel. ‘You two overdid it by some margin.’

  ‘You weren’t exactly teetotal either, as I recall,’ said Never.

  ‘I reckon I’ll need it,’ said Jonah. ‘But like she says, we’ll try and cut it back, huh?’

  ‘Hah!’ said Never. ‘Amateurs!’ He put his hand on Jonah’s shoulder, and his expression grew serious. ‘Be careful,’ he said, and off he went.

  *

  Jonah rang Cathy’s landline to let her know he was coming soon. He’d typed up instructions for her – Annabel wasn’t coming, either. Cathy would sit in the room with him and bring the parents inside. She would also have to abide by the lie Annabel had suggested. It wouldn’t be an easy thing, lying to her own daughter on such a day of family torment, but she agreed without hesitation.

  It was already dark when Jonah drove up and parked at the entrance to Cathy’s drive. He wore sunglasses and a hoodie, with the hood up. Cathy brought him in. Jonah saw a doorway ahead, open a crack, silent faces barely visible: Grady’s parents, Sara and Armel. They had a daughter, too, a little older than Grady, but she was staying with friends. They’d not thought she was strong enough to deal with the revival.

  Cathy brought Jonah to the room where Grady’s body lay, and shut the door. Jonah took off his sunglasses, lowered his hood, and looked at the boy. The undertakers they’d used had been familiar with revivals, of course. They’d prepared his body with a minimum of disruption. He was laid out on a mid-level transportation trolley that was well-padded and large enough to seem like a small bed, once the sides were folded down. His little face was clean, with the slightest hint of make-up disguising some abrasions. His body was dressed in vaguely formal clothing, the kind of thing a kid would be made to wear to church – their finger constantly tugging at the collar, complaining of its tightness.

  But these clothes were a facade, a one-piece that opened at the back and could be laid on top of the body without it being moved significantly, something that was crucial for revival. It was then tucked under the legs and arms and tightened to appear like shirt and jacket and trousers, creating an effective illusion.

  Jonah handed his instructions to Cathy. ‘Read this,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to check . . .’ The condition of the lungs, the ribs . . . Not appropriate to say. Not for his grandma. ‘I’m just going to check him, and see how we should progress.’

  Cathy nodded. She turned away and started to read.

  With care, Jonah undid the Velcro tabs at the neck and shoulders of the one-piece and folded it back. Beneath it, the undertakers had placed a layer of waterproof padding. Jonah peeled it away from the skin.

  The mark of the impact was obvious, across the left side of his chest, but the skin wasn’t broken. He felt the ribs, and all were intact. The hospital report had been provided; no intrusive measures had been made in the attempt to save him. As Cathy had said, his heart had given out unexpectedly. It had happened a few hours after staff had stabilized him, with an expectation that he would make a good recovery.

  A vocal revival would be straightforward.

  He replaced the padding, then the one-piece, making sure it looked exactly as it should. He looked up to Cathy. She’d finished reading, and had been watching him work.

  ‘You’ve read everything?’ said Jonah.

  She nodded. ‘You’ll attempt revival, and if you’re successful, you’ll indicate for me to bring Sara and Armel in. We should keep it short, and as soon as you think we’re done you make it clear to me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonah. ‘People think the longer the better, but younger children get impatient. They can become upset, or even bored. That can be hard for the parents to deal with. As
soon as I sense him going that way, we’ll bring it to a close.’

  ‘OK. Then I show them out, and you’ll . . . finish.’

  Jonah nodded. He pulled up his hood and got his seat ready. The room was brightly lit, and Cathy had positioned more subtle lighting around for the revival. ‘Let’s try it with the main light out,’ said Jonah. She switched it off, and the lower light level seemed fine. ‘I’m going to start, if you’re ready?’

  Cathy nodded.

  Jonah took Grady’s hand in his, then let out a long breath. The hand was so small. He thought back to some of the revivals he’d done in the past, those rare few where a child so young was treated as a witness. Those cases had been difficult, to say the least. Now, with Grady, he didn’t have any of the fear he’d had then. This was to let the boy say goodbye.

  He closed his eyes and readied himself for the first stage of the process, the part known as the reversal. Reaching out, finding the subject; sinking into the sensation of death that pervaded the corpse, allowing that coldness to fill him. When that was done, he focused, and Grady’s injuries gradually reversed in his mind. He was aware of every contusion, every scrape, even the pinprick needle entry points of the lines the ER staff had put in the boy.

  Jonah waited, focusing, as Grady’s body became – in Jonah’s mind – restored to the way it had been before death. The moment he reached that point, the second stage came.

  The surge.

  It was an unpredictable thing. The difficulty of the reversal was something you could tell just by looking at the state of the body. The worse the injury, the more time since death, and the harder it would be, the longer it would take.

  The surge could be anything. At its best it could be a gentle sense of connection, going almost unnoticed. Jonah’s first revival had been of his own mother, an accidental revival he wasn’t even aware was happening until she’d taken that sudden gasping breath.

  The worst surges were overwhelming. Memories of the subject, pouring into his mind; an avalanche of experience, images, emotions, battering him until he was ready to scream and give up, potentially rendering the whole revival a failure if he was to let go of the hand.