The In-Betweener (Between Life and Death) (S) (11 page)

The gate is clear, but the next part is a bit tricky. I’m not sure he’ll go for it. From the car’s hatch I withdraw a dog-catcher I took from the vet hospital. It’s just a long metal pole with a plastic-covered braided wire looped at the end that I can tighten or loosen at the other end. I know they have some sort of official name, but I don’t know it, so dog-catchers they are. I have several, but I can only handle one at a time. I’d like to have a few extra arms so I could hold him with more, but I’ve just got the two. I could just leave him behind and go on my own, but I know what
I
would do if someone I didn’t know came sauntering up to this place.

People aren’t safe.

If I have Sam with me, then they’ll know he’s the one who brought me the note. It’s entirely possible that they’ve never seen me, that only he has, and that’s why they sent him. Even if not, they’re kids and probably very jumpy after losing their only remaining guardian. And I haven’t forgotten that the note said he had been shot by accident. I’d prefer no further accidents.

He retreats from the fence when he spies the dog-catcher. I wasn’t sure he’d know what it was—and I don’t think he does, really—but some memory is tickling at him because he frowns and holds out his hands as if to distance himself from me and my crazy tool.

I show him how it works by putting it around my neck and holding out the pole. “This is just to be sure I can be safe with you. That’s all. I promise I won’t hurt you,” I say.

This close, I can really see his face. His eyes are gray, the lashes around them so thick and dark that it almost looks like he’s wearing eyeliner. He has the exact kind of eyes I’d expect to see looking back out from the pages of a glossy magazine. Except, they’re also bloodshot and crusted with goop at the corners, which definitely kills the whole attraction thing.

We look at each other for a moment and the breeze shifts so that it flows from my direction toward him. Sam’s face goes feral again, his nose lifting to sniff the air. He lowers his head a little, staring at me like a rabid dog ready to lunge.

“Sam! Stay with me!” I snap.

His head jerks and a growl comes out of him that’s low and scary. I lift the crossbow and aim for the space between the bars of the gate. Only the gate is between us and he could climb that pretty fast if he wanted. He’s tall, in great shape, and full of that in-betweener rage at the moment. I can probably get to the car before he catches me, but there’s no one to drop the door for me at the furniture warehouse. I’d have to play chase with him around the complex until I could get the drop on him or until he got it on me.

If I can’t calm him, I’ll have to kill him and take my chances with the kids.

Then I remember the bag of leftover birds. It’s less than twenty feet from me. Can I get to it and get one out before he makes his move? Seven big strides equals about twenty feet. Twenty feet never seemed like such a long distance before.

“Sam, I’ve got more birds. Just hang on!” I yell and sidestep toward the bag on the ground.

I don’t take my eyes off of him for a second and my crossbow is pointed at his head the entire time. A single shot is unlikely to kill him, but it will disturb his ability to process information. If I’m lucky, a shot through the brain will hit something that he needs to remain mobile and cause one of those overdrive reactions. But I’ve shot some with three or four bolts and had them keep lurching along, so I’d rather not chance it.

As he did yesterday, he makes that horrible keening noise and starts beating at his head. He stumbles in a small circle, his fists making thuds against his skull even I can hear. Snatching the bag, I let my crossbow dangle from my shoulder, rip open the top of the bag, and sink my fingers into the unpleasantly cool carcasses. I throw my handful over the fence directly in Sam’s direction. At the motion, his head whips up. The presence of fresh food does what I had hoped and he makes for the little bodies.

He doesn’t even bother to sit down this time, merely taking small steps around the litter of bodies as if he needs to keep them in view. I toss over all the remaining birds—seven in total—and then watch as he eats.

If he can only keep himself in check for an hour or so after each meal, then how am I going to control him for the entire trip? And there’s no time for me to go shoot more. Getting this many took more than an hour last evening and I was only able to do it because the light had dimmed and they were settled down for the night on the roofs. In the bright light of day, they’ll just fly away.

Then again, he went without feeding for most of the day and all night. Who knows how long it was before then that he ate. It’s possible that he’s just catching up. I’m being far too optimistic and I know it, but I really don’t want to get shot by some nervous kids.

Sam finally finishes, goes through the same wiping process he did before, but he looks a lot less appalled by his actions this time. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

He stands up and at the sound of my feet on the drive, he turns. His fists clench, but he says, “Ya,” and glances down at the dog-catcher at my feet.

I’m still not sure this is such a good idea. But when he sidles up and sticks his clenched fists through the gap between two rails in the gate, I move forward with my zip ties as if he’s the one in charge. With his wrists bound, he lets them fall to his waist. I stick the dog-catcher through the fence and slip the loop over his head.

Now I have him. Useful for keeping an angry dog out of reach, the dog-catcher also works splendidly for deaders and now, in-betweeners.

After a quick look around, I open the gate—carefully maneuvering the dog-catcher’s handle so that I can keep him away from me as I shift my grip—then lead Sam to the car. There’s a pull cord I’ve rigged up using some rope and I hook it up to the dog-catcher pole while I stand at the back of the car and wonder what the hell kind of stupidity this whole idea is.

After that, I have my only moment of real vulnerability. The pull cord goes from the end of the dog-catcher into the back hatch of the car and through the dog fence, then trails out the driver’s side door. I have no idea if this will work. I reach down and grab the cord, pulling in the slack as fast as I can while keeping a good grip on the dog-catcher.

It jerks Sam almost off his feet and toward the back of the car when I finally get the last of the slack out. He goes compliantly enough and doesn’t do more than wail softly when I yank on the cord to get the end of the pole through the dog fence. There’s no resistance from him and he goes into the hatch with only a few bumps and bangs. Tossing in the pull cord, I tie it to the seat just to make myself feel better.

It takes every ounce of willpower I have to get in the driver’s seat. Sam’s face is pressed against the window behind my seat.

“This is so stupid,” I say and get into the car.

Thirteen Months Ago – Studying Death

“Okay, time for school,” my mom says, hefting a three-pound sledgehammer and putting the handle through the loop at her belt. She’s got a deader hooked to the fence with a loop of wire, a length of pipe attached to the wire keeping it in place. This is what she’s using for show-and-tell today.

We’ve been getting a surge of deaders in our area lately. Every morning when we make the rounds, there are at least a dozen of them at various points along the perimeter. And at the gate, there can be as many as a full dozen more. My mom has been adamant that I not do much in the way of dispatching the deaders, but the work is just too much for her to do alone anymore.

“So, what stage would you put this one at? And what does this deader tell you about where it might have come from and how it came to be here?”

“Mom, I don’t see why that’s important. I really don’t want to know anything about them. Let’s just get rid of them,” I say, gesturing with my own sledge at the corpse at the fence. It keeps reaching out for my mom with its one remaining hand, the fingers like animated sticks they’re so withered. It’s a really gross one and I don’t even want to get near it. I can’t tell her that, though. She’s finally going to teach me, let me be more than a passenger in this endless flight of ours.

She sighs, deeply and with suppressed irritation, and shoots a level look my way that I take to mean I’m being difficult.

“Emily. Ask yourself this question. Why are we suddenly getting more deaders here?” she asks, knocking down the deader’s reaching hand again.

“I don’t know. Because it’s summer? Deaders are out of school and going on vacation?” I ask and shrug.

When she answers, each word is clearly enunciated like I’m trying her patience. Which, I think I might be doing. “Because wherever they were before is no longer supporting them and they are seeking food. And look at the condition of them. Something is going on. Wouldn’t you say that’s something we might be more than a little curious about?”

Ah, so this
is
important. I totally didn’t get that.

“Alright, got it,” I say and turn to really look at the deader. For the most part, I try to avoid looking too carefully at their features or anything about them that might make me see remnants of their former humanity. It’s too hard to smash their heads if I start thinking of them that way.

Swallowing, I look at the deader’s face. This one was female if the clothes are any indication. The ragged remains of a T-shirt emblazoned with a movie logo popular with the teen girl set hangs from its skinny frame. I was a huge fan of that series of books and movies, too, and it looks like this girl and I were both rooting for the same boy to get the girl in the end. The long hair sort of reinforces the notion of it being a girl, though now hunks of scalp are missing and what’s left of the hair is a snarled mess of leaves, twigs, and assorted debris I’d rather not know much about.

She’s got no eyes, which is fairly normal for one this bad off, and her entire face from just below the nose to the chin is a raw and ragged mess from licking and sucking metal. She has no front teeth at all. The missing arm was torn off at the elbow and the wound hasn’t healed at all. The wound also looks very dry. My guess is that her arm got torn off after she went deader and the nanite repairs slowed down substantially.

As far as what killed her? That’s obvious, even in the condition she’s in. The neat slice across her neck healed over after she was revived, with the typical weird, bumpy tissue the nanites stimulate the skin to develop.

“She’s been like this a while, I’d say. Someone cut her throat and I think that’s what killed her. So, it was a human who killed her or she did it herself. Her clothes aren’t practical for being on the run, so I’d guess she was killed while in hiding or very early on,” I say, checking my mother’s reactions to see how well I do.

She nods at each one of my statements, a little smile on her face. “Excellent! I’d say the same thing. What else? Why is she here?”

That’s much harder for me to guess at. I have no idea why we’re seeing so many of them. And why they’re coming at night is a mystery as well. The woods back up to this complex with the barrier of a wide field between us and the trees. They seem to be coming from that direction because they all cluster at the rear fence. The rest seem to be coming from town because they wind up at the gate. This one is on the back side of the fence, which means it came from the woods.

“She’s barefoot but her feet aren’t torn up enough for her to have been outside for all this time,” I say, then think about what’s beyond the woods. “That big subdivision, the one right before the farms start, the one with all the big houses? Maybe she came from there.”

My mom nods and says, “That’s what I was thinking. She’s not that much different from the deaders I’ve been seeing lately. And you’ll see the pattern when we get to the others.”

She points to the clothes the deader is wearing and then waves a hand at a few others stuck to the fence a little farther down. “None of them are wearing discount clothes. Even the ones dressed for being outside are wearing good quality. And they’re all wearing clothes suited for summer, which makes me agree with you that these people turned early. And, I agree with you on their condition. They are a mess and haven’t been eating much in the way of fresh kills, but they aren’t torn up by the elements. I think they were trapped inside somewhere, probably the houses in that subdivision. So, why is she here?”

As my mom speaks, it all sort of comes together for me. The amount of information we can get from a single deader is astounding, and I have a new appreciation for how thorough my mom is. I thought she was being a little obsessive, but she’s kept us safe, always makes the right decision, and constantly seems one step ahead of what’s happening. That’s not the same kind of obsessive behavior as counting tiles on the floor or checking the locks over and over to no purpose. This is a different sort of obsessive, the good kind.

This is using everything around her to create a picture that is more complete than the one someone less observant would have. This is attention to detail. It’s an edge.

“Okay, yeah. So if they were inside somewhere and now they are suddenly out, then something happened to let them out,” I say, walking away to get a look at a few of the others. My mom says nothing and just lets me go and figure out what I can for myself.

The next three deaders don’t just look like deaders to me now. They still don’t resonate with me as human, which is a relief. Instead, they’re puzzle pieces or clues to some mystery. And like the first deader, these are all barefoot, which is unusual. Shoes fall off, but running shoes and anything boot-like tends to stay on their feet pretty well, so long as they stay tied. And even if their shoes fall off, it’s fairly common to see deaders with a ring of material banding their ankles or calves left over after the bottoms of their socks wear away. It’s odd that there are no shoes or sock remains on any of these.

And like the first one, these deaders are all extremely withered, wearing light clothes and sporting wounds that signal how they died. Two of them are men and both of them have bare patches of bumpy nanite-grown skin on the backs of their heads. If I had to guess, I’d say both of them were shot or bludgeoned. The other is another woman, though this one is older. Like the girl, she’s got a slit throat but unlike the others, she’s also sporting a pretty horrendous old bite wound. That one has scarred like a normal human’s skin would. I think I’m starting to get a picture of their ends.