The Hospital

Previous

Dr. Castro was about to sit down and eat his lunch – finally. The medical center never seemed to be busy until he was hungry, and then the whole town suddenly needed to see him urgently. He’d intended to get his sandwich out of the fridge at a quarter past noon. Now it was practically three and he didn’t care if the Pope came in with an active heart attack he was going to eat, God damn it.

So when his cell phone started ringing he almost ignored it. When he saw an unrecognized phone number displayed on the front it was a relief. Another scammer, telling him his computer had been infected with three dozen viruses or his social security number had been ‘suspended,’ whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

The area code, though. Didn’t he know that area code?

He did, come to think of it. Philadelphia. Where he had gone to medical school.

Alumni association?

But he’d had their number labeled as Money Whores for years.

Wincing in pre-regret, he picked up the phone and answered on the last ring.

“Yeah?” he barked. Maybe if he sounded grouchy whoever it was would hang up. He stared at his sandwich.

“Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid you’d gotten a new number.”

The voice was a little accented, and very familiar. It still took Dr. Castro a few seconds to recall it.

“Chandran?”

“Ah, you remember me!”

“Barely,” Dr. Castro said with a laugh. “Man, we haven’t talked in…two decades?”

“Something like that.”

Dr. Castro knew the Chandran Padhi he was picturing couldn’t possibly be the same man on the other side of the phone. The Chandran he remembered was twenty years younger, short and a little stout, with jet black hair and a wicked grin he pulled every time he made a bad joke. Even though the voice he was talking with wasn’t a young man’s voice Dr. Castro still couldn’t shake the image. And Chandran probably had the same dated image of him.

The tricks time pulls.

“Let me think. You were going…you were going to Baltimore after graduation, right?”

“Yes, I did. I’m in Miami, though, now. Very tacky city, but I like the heat.”

“More your style. I remember you hated the snow.”

“And I still do. Awful stuff. If I wanted to be cold all the time I would rent out a walk-in freezer.”

He laughed, much the same as Dr. Castro remembered. Not exactly, though. There was a sort of hollow air to it, almost like it was all for show.

“Are you still in Seattle?”

Dr. Castro blew air. “You were right. I hated it. Too many people, and too many of them pricks.”

“Exactly like I told you. Where are you now?”

“You’ll never believe this. I decided big city hospitals weren’t for me. I found an ER doc listing in this mountain town in the middle of nowhere Colorado. Thirty-four beds, Chandran. Thirty-four!”

The sigh of relief that came over the phone made Dr. Castro’s head tilt. It was an odd reaction. He realized then that the entire conversation had had an odd quality about it. For what he thought was simply a catch-up call, his old buddy Chandran seemed to have a focus. His questions had been a little direct. And there was something about his voice he didn’t like. More stern than he remembered. Older, of course, but maybe that scratchy quality he thought was from age…wasn’t.

“I’m starting to get the feeling this isn’t a social call,” Dr. Castro said, the good humor gone.

“It is not.” The mask had dropped, and Dr. Castro sensed he was no longer talking to his old school-mate Chandran, but was now talking to Dr. Padhi.

“I’m calling everyone I can remember,” he said. “You’re the…I’ve lost count. Dozenth call. At least. What have you seen on the news concerning a flu?”

“I try not to watch that stuff. Rots your brain,” Dr. Castro said. He took off his glasses and rubbed at his face. “I’ve caught bits here and there in patient rooms, though. Some new strain sweeping the country. Usual stuff. Old people, young people, immunocompromised people, blah blah blah. Get a vaccine if you haven’t. The usual.”

Dr. Castro froze. He sat up straight in the chair and rested his free hand on the desk. One by one, in slow cadence, he tapped the desk with each finger.

“You wouldn’t be calling me for stuff you already know, though, huh?”

“No, Nick, I wouldn’t. The things I am about to say I have already said a lot today. It mostly hasn’t been received well. I seem to remember you were mostly rational in school, so I hope that you remember that, while I like to make jokes, I certainly never did pranks.”

Despite himself, Dr. Castro nodded. He couldn’t remember Dr. Padhi pranking anyone back in the day. It wasn’t his style.

“They’re keeping this out of the news. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s less conspiratorial than that. Maybe the media simply doesn’t care right now. They will soon.”

“What-”

“My hospital is completely overrun. Every bed is full. Every stretcher is full. We’ve shut down all but the most urgent surgeries and procedures and put patients in the operating theaters and the pre and post op rooms.”

Dr. Castro almost asked with what then remembered Dr. Padhi’s first question.

“You’re talking about this flu like it’s a pandemic.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

Dr. Castro stared at the shelves against the opposite wall of his office. Books. Novels he reread on his breaks from time to time. Medical books he hadn’t touched since he’d moved in. A wobbly ceramic ash tray Ryan had made for him when she was a kid even though he’d never smoked. A picture of him and Ryan and Nancy at the Santa Monica Pier, taken a year or so before Nancy passed. Another picture of Ryan’s high school graduation. Normal stuff. Normal stuff in a normal world.

“Miami isn’t the only place this is happening,” Dr. Padhi said.

“It’s the flu,” Dr. Castro said. It was the only thing he could think to say.

He could almost hear Dr. Padhi shaking his head on the other side of the line. “We always knew this could happen. Influenza isn’t made for humans. From what I hear, this particular strain in birds is mild.”

“You wouldn’t call if this was mild in humans.”

A pause, filled with a sound that could have been a throat working. “No one who has been admitted to this hospital with this flu has walked out alive.”

“No one?” He could feel himself blinking. “Cytokine storm?”

“Of course. Others are simply losing lung capacity faster than we can keep up with. Plenty of dehydration cases. And then others…it becomes too much for the human body to bear. Something always gives out.”

Dr. Castro shook his head. “If hospitals were filled with dying people I would have heard about it before this. I’d be seeing it on every station!”

“You will. Soon. This will not stay contained to hospitals. Listen, I have to make more calls, but there’s two more things you need to know. One: this looks like a normal flu course at first. The patient looks like they’re recovering. And then the flu gets worse and the patient is dead within a day, two at most. Two, and this is the biggest problem: the incubation period.”

“Fast?” Dr. Castro guessed.

“No. Slow. Slow as a shit river. Over a week between infection and presenting symptoms, from what we can tell. Worse, these people are infectious the entire time. They’re shedding virus like a sloppy dog for a week and they don’t know it.”

“Flu isn’t terribly contagious-”

“This one is. I don’t know the numbers, we’ve been in contact with the CDC but they’re being their usual chatty selves. I overheard one on the phone. ‘This r-naught is impossible.’”

“Impossible? They actually used the word ‘impossible?’”

“Yes. Yes, they did.”

“Chandran,” Dr. Castro asked. He became aware that he hadn’t moved an inch for several minutes and forced himself to lean forward onto his desk. “Why are you calling?”

A tired, awkward laugh. “This is it, friend. I’m glad to hear you are in a quiet, mountain town. Perhaps you have time to stock up your house. Hide.”

“’It?’ What’s ‘it?’ What are you talking about?”

“I have to go, Nick. I have a few other calls to make.” Dr. Padhi sneezed three times. “Be wary of anyone presenting with flu. Hell, maybe walk out of the hospital and don’t look back.”

Dr. Castro had his mouth open to ask a question, but the line had already gone dead. He considered calling back. Didn’t.

Pushed some things around on his desk.

Turned on the television in the corner. Flipped from ESPN to the news. A conflict in Southeast Asia he’d never heard of was getting worse. The ticker on the bottom was talking about stocks.

Flipped to another news station. Two talking heads were arguing about abortion. The ticker on the bottom was talking about stocks.

Turned off the television.

Picked up the desk phone. Dialed down to the ER.

“ER Charge.”

“Ellen, do we have any flu cases?”

“Flu? Ehhhhh…no. No one diagnosed.”

“No one diagnosed? Has someone been tested?”

“Hold on.” A muffled sound like she was putting the phone to her chest. “Missy! Missy! Your patient in bay 6, she get a PCR panel?”

A gap of no sound, presumably as Missy answered.

“PCR, no results yet.”

“Let me know about that,” Dr. Castro said. “And if anyone else comes in with flu-like symptoms. You said that patient was in Bay 6?”

After the positive response he hung up the phone. Stared as his desk. He knew he should go see the patient. Or maybe tell everyone to isolate her and stay away. But if she was as contagious as Chandran said, did it matter? They’d already been exposed. Everyone had been exposed.

He sat there, feeling normal. Everything was normal. It was a sunny day. The lights were on. The air was rushing through his office like normal. People called to each other outside his office.

Everything felt normal. It couldn’t really be the end of it all.

Next

Hazel in Juniper, A Week Later

Previous

Hazel could fool herself no longer.

She was sick.

She had excused herself all yesterday. She was winded because the altitude. She was tired because she was pushing herself too hard. She had that swimmy feeling in her head because…the altitude again, yes, that had to be it. She wasn’t sick. Not on her vacation. You can’t be sick during a time of renewal!

Even when she had woken up this morning, she had still denied it. And she hadn’t been better. Not in the slightest. Her shortness of breath had become full chest congestion and her occasional sneeze had turned into completely trapped sinuses. She refused to take her temperature but she knew she had a fever. Her face was flushed but her inner arms were freezing and that was never a good sign.

But Hazel simply wasn’t having it. She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t. And she had a full day planned. The Pioneer’s Museum in the morning, a big lunch at the Valley View Restaurant, and then some last minute ice skating in the afternoon. As she brushed her hair and ignored the slight sheen of sweat that popped out on her forehead, she looked at herself in the mirror and told herself the same thing she always told herself when things didn’t go quite right.

You can do this. Power through.

She’d powered through her last divorce, she could power through…whatever this was…and have a good fucking day.

On her way to the Pioneer’s Museum she stopped into the General Store on Main Street. The usual people were there. Millie, the owner, behind the counter waved to her as she came in. Her son must have been working today because her granddaughter Nicola was sitting at a little table near the wall coloring. The sheriff was sipping coffee out of a travel mug and flipping through magazines. A handful of tourists were stocking up on groceries. Hazel sneezed three times and managed to stop a fourth in the time it took her to get her coffee, a water bottle, and a box of Vitamin C powder.

In the car she dumped the powder into the bottle and shook it. A lot. Way too much. In the end, she realizing she was channeling all of her frustration and rage at (not) being sick on her renewal trip. She shook it harder, then popped the cap and chugged the entire thing. The trip across town to the Pioneer’s Museum was punctuated by belching.

Everything seemed a little better in the Museum. It was a three room house and a couple of barns. In the summer there would be teenagers dressed in recreations of pioneer garb and a petting zoo out back, but they were still in school. She’d missed them by a couple of weeks. The teenagers were stuck in their classes and the animals were in the barns. In fact, besides the proprietor and a family with a couple of kids the place was empty. Hazel always wondered how this place managed to stay open. The kids screaming could be heard from every room. The parents apologized but Hazel barely heard.

As she walked from room to room, staring at the same washtub and sewing machine and wagon wheels she had seen countless times before, she concentrated on being healthy. She stared at the harpsichord for seven entire minutes, fighting the coughing fit that was trying to escape her throat. Only when she had tamed it down to a tickle did she move on to the wardrobe. In the kitchen area she began shivering, and panic rose in her throat until she realized someone had left the back door open.

As she was leaving another family with a couple of kids pulled in. They were yelling about seeing the animals. Hazel didn’t have the heart – or the energy – to tell them they weren’t out yet.

She went to the Valley View restaurant and sat at a window seat and ordered the biggest meal on the menu, plus an appetizer, plus a desert, and an entire bottle of wine to boot. She had no appetite. None at all, even though all she’d had for breakfast was that coffee and vitamin c water. In fact, as she entered the restaurant the smells that wafted from the kitchen almost turned her stomach. But that was unacceptable. Today was the day she was supposed to eat at Valley View and that was what she was going to do.

Hazel sat at her window seat for two hours, carefully force feeding herself every bite on every plate. Valley View was a popular restaurant with both the tourists and the locals, because of the good food and their Quick-Lunch Promise which would get you in and out in half an hour. Sixty people came and went as Hazel ate, giving her occasional glances as she coughed and sneezed and sniffled over her food. She didn’t notice. She was on a mission.

Every bite. Savor it.

She left a cash tip and went back to the Lodge.

In the middle of the afternoon she finally admitted some small defeat. Ice skating was one of her favorite things to do in Juniper. She’d already been on the lake three times, each time for hours. Gently skating in circles, breathing out puffs of condensation, and watching the sun sink lower and lower toward the slopes was one of the best things for getting her mind right.

Usually. Today all she could think about was her breathing. The cold air hurt. She was wheezing within minutes. Her ears and nose were freezing but she was sweating bullets under her layers. After forcing herself upright for thirty minutes she realized if she didn’t stop, she was going to collapse on the ice. Ryan would skate over and she’d have to be revived and they’d probably send her to the medical center. Embarrassing.

“Done already?” Ryan asked as she skated past the instructor and her kids.

“Having some GI distress,” Hazel lied. It was the first thing that came to mind.

Once in her room she turned the shower on full heat and let loose the torrent of coughs that had plagued her since she had gotten on the ice. Dry at first, and then as the steam from the shower worked down her throat huge gobs of green phlegm started coming up.

No wonder I couldn’t breathe. Is green a good color?

She couldn’t remember. Hazel got in the shower and stood there for twenty minutes before she remembered she was in a hotel, not home, and the hot water would probably never run out.

After the shower she felt better. The tightness in her chest was gone and for the first time all day she could breathe through her nose.

“A cold,” she said to herself. “That’s all it was. Probably picked it up traveling.”

Hazel did not remember the man on the plane.

It was still light outside. Ryan was still on the ice with her students, now having a free skate. She could go back out. Skate for another hour or so. The thought of it made her body physically droop and she was in bed before she realized it.

A nap and I’ll have this cold licked.

Hazel was an excellent napper, always out for twenty-five minutes before waking up naturally, so she didn’t set an alarm.

It was dark when she woke up. Groggy wasn’t the right word. She felt like every cell in her body was misplaced a few micrometers in one direction or another. Her right eye was watery and her left eye felt caked shut. The mucous she had worked to get out of her lungs had been replaced, and every breath was accompanied by a high whistle and a low, ugly rattle. When she managed to sit up she held her phone in front of her. Finally she dropped the phone on the bed to read the time. Her hands were shaking so hard the numbers had only jittered in front of her.

Three hours she had slept. Nothing was fixed. Everything was worse.

Dry. So dry.

Hazel tried to step out of bed to get water. One foot on the floor and her body fell the rest of the way. How had she become so weak so fast? She crawled across the carpet to the bathroom, getting rug burn all over her knees.

How will I explain that to Darren?

But she didn’t have to.

Remember?

For a second, she hadn’t. The divorce had never happened, and she had expected to see Darren walk in any minute.

The tap water was cool against her throat. It hit her stomach like a bomb and she burbled it back up like a baby.

Maybe if I just sit for a second.

Some time later, she didn’t know how long, she realized she had been sitting on the floor under the sink, leaning back against the wall, every muscle aching like she had run a marathon.

But I didn’t run. I only crawled.

Hazel could fool herself no longer.

Crawling to the desk, coughing and sneezing the entire way, she thought about curling up on the floor once she reached the chair.

No. You can do this. Power through.

As soon as she pulled herself up the world tried to swim away. Gripping the chair with one hand and the desk with the other she kept herself in place through sheer force of will and waited for the room to stop spinning and for her vision to come back. Wheezing, she found the phone and managed to hit the zero button.

“Front desk,” Hank said on the other side.

“Hank.” Her voice was so weak. “I need an ambulance.”

Next

Hazel Brings a Gift to Juniper

The pains of traveling – the aching head, the sour stomach, the stiff legs – had started to dissipate as soon as she exited the highway, and now, five miles later, Hazel was feeling fresh as a dew covered posey. The road turned in front of her, following the valley, and in an instant she could see it all. Juniper laid out in front of her, and the Lodge rising above.

It was exactly as she had remembered it. Well, almost exactly. There was now some ugly architectural disaster parked halfway up the northern slope. But besides that, the town was as she had left it. She purposely took a detour to go around town and come through the middle, down Main Street. She wanted to see the candy and ice cream shop she had gone to as a child. The general store. When she saw the dollar movie theater was still operating she made an embarrassing noise.

Hazel had been coming to Juniper with her family her entire life. Other families went to the ocean when it was hot, but her father had hated the sand and her mother was afraid of the ocean. Lakes were better, they agreed, and every summer they had spent two weeks at the lodge. Since growing up she had come back here when her life had gotten rough, which mostly meant when she got divorced. This trip to Juniper marked her fourth marriage down the crapper.

The Lodge, like her, was a little older and a little more worn. But also like her (she liked to think) it still had all the same charms. It was a wooden building, lovingly repainted red every summer. The driveway looped in front of the main building. Two wings went off in opposite directions flanking the lake, sixteen rooms on either side. Hazel parked and left most of her bags in the trunk of her rental. There was only about a half hour of daylight left, and Hazel wanted to spend that time sitting at the bar and watching the lake through the tall windows. She’d get her bags later.

The Grand Room of the Lodge was rearranged a little, but nothing that soured Hazel’s mood like that house up the slope had. The oversized fireplace was still in the center of the room, the flames putting off heat she could feel as soon as she stepped inside. They had moved the check-in desk closer to the front door, replacing the old desk with a little counter that sold packaged food and drinks. Beyond the fireplace was the Holly Creek Bar and Grill, table scattered around until they reached the windows. In the far corner was the bar, several televisions showing different basketball games.

Hazel breathed deep, and found perhaps the only thing on the planet that could soothe her soul no matter what situation she was in: the smell of the fire, the must of the old carpet and wallpaper, and the damp of the snow. A smell that had followed her back through childhood and could erase thirty years of bad memories. She wasn’t a fifty-something multiple-divorcee with a couple of kids who hated her and a few former step-kids who tolerated her. She was ten, it was summer vacation, and her parents were going to take her out on the swan paddle boats.

The man behind the counter smiled at her as she walked up, revealing a few gaps.

“Welcome to the Lodge on Juniper Lake. Did you have a reservation?”

The old beige computer and clunky monitor had been replaced with a flatscreen. The man with the gap-toothed smile was impressively fast with the keyboard, considering he was pecking away with only two fingers. The reflection of the monitor on his face changed as her reservation was brought up, and somehow his smile got even bigger.

“Yes, Miss Augustine! You’re one of our lifers. You know, even when you walked in I thought I recognized you. Didn’t say nothing, in case I was wrong.”

“It’s been a while,” she said, trying to hide how pleased she was. “But I always love coming back here.”

“And we love having you! In fact, let’s get you out of that single room and into a suite.”

Hazel waved a hand. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t have to do anything,” the man agreed. “But I want to.”

She didn’t put up any more of a fight. It was, in fact, exactly what she was hoping would happen.

“How was your travel?” the man asked as he poked at the keyboard to make the transfer happen.

“As good as it ever could be,” Hazel said. “Flights were on time, there wasn’t a big line at the rental car place…actually, come to think of it, I think the worst part of the whole day was the man sitting across the aisle from me on the last flight.”

He’d left Hazel’s mind, the way minor annoyances do when they finally stop, but now that she was thinking of him again she was mad all over.

“You shouldn’t be allowed to fly when you’re sick.”

And he hadn’t just been sick. He’d been sick. There hadn’t been a single full minute without him coughing, hacking, sneezing, wheezing, snorting, or sniffling. Absolutely nonstop. And he’d looked like death warmed over. Pale, bags under his eyes, even a light sheen of sweat over his forehead. He shouldn’t have been flying. He shouldn’t have been anywhere besides the ER, probably.

“Thank goodness I had my vitamin C powder.”

Hazel had once again forgotten about the sick man by the time she reached her upgraded room. The view of the lake from the private deck was enough to make her forget about everything, even her latest disaster of a marriage. Well, the bottle of wine she ordered from the bar would help.

If it hadn’t been Hazel, it would have been someone else. The hotel had two other check-ins that day, and more scheduled for every day that week. Besides, Juniper was no island. The high school had teams that went to other towns to play. Some commuted down the highway for work. Everyone had family to visit. It was always going to come to Juniper.

Hazel being the local patient zero was pure luck.

Next

An Extraterrestrial Visit

If someone was banging on the door, trying to get the President out of Toilet Time, then the whole god damned world had better have been on fire.

“I swear to fucking God, Jim-” the President said as he flung open the door, hoping Jim could smell everything he had interrupted.

“Sir, aliens just landed on the White House lawn!” Jim said, his voice cracking for the first time in forty years.

The President stared at Jim. Jim stared back. The President weighed the options. It was improbable if not impossible that intelligent life had found its way to the planet, especially without those nerds out in the Nevada wasteland picking up on it. On the other hand…he’d interrupted Toilet Time.

The President let out a single chuff. “No way.”

But there it was, parked directly in front of the house. A space ship. Not exactly a saucer. Not exactly…not a saucer. And it was silver, sure, but a beat to shit silver. Pockmarked. Like a truck that had been through a hail storm. One of its landing…feet…or whatever was sitting directly in Bev’s marigolds. She was going to hate that.

“I guess that call with the Finnish PM is going to have to be rescheduled.”

Marty was already tapping away on his phone. “And why should I say we’ve rescheduled?”

“Tell her to turn on the fucking news.”

The aliens who climbed out were humanoid, mostly. There were a lot of eyes. And they were a couple feet taller. And the smell…well, if they asked why his eyes were watering, he would simply tell them it was a human tradition upon meeting new people.

“You are the Leader of this World,” one of them said. The President was thinking of that one as Newman because something about their basic shape reminded him of his senior year English teacher.

“Well, I mean…I want to say yes,” The President said. They were still standing on the lawn, as the aliens had refused to come inside. He was sure someone was hearing the conversation, if not the press then some intelligence group or another. Washington was lousy with them.

“You can speak for the World?” the other one asked. The President was thinking of this one as Jimmy for absolutely no reason he could figure out.

“Again…I want to say yes…look, why don’t you tell me what you fellas are looking for? Maybe it is something I can handle on my own.”

“Ah. Good,” Jimmy said, trying for pleasant and hitting robotic instead. “We demand the total surrender and evacuation of this entire planet. We are taking it for-”

Jimmy didn’t get much further because The President was doing that embarrassing laugh, the one that sounded like a cross between a horse whinny and a clown car horn, that his press secretary kept telling him to stop doing because those fuckers in the opposition kept playing clips of the one time he had done it at his inauguration and calling him the R word. But, like, come on…

“This sound…we have learned,” Newman said. “This is the sound humans make when they find something… ‘funny.’”

The alien was just about yelling to be heard over The President’s laughter. Even some of his staff had started to giggle, although they were doing a better job of keeping it in.

“This is not a joke!” Jimmy said. “We are taking the planet!”

“Okay, okay, wait…phew, okay, hold on, Jesus Christ, ahhh, my sides, my face…I haven’t laughed that hard in…man, it’s been a while. Okay, I’m good. I’m good,” he said again to Marty.

“Here’s the deal,” The President said to the aliens, who looked pissed off even with inhuman faces. “I can’t officially give you shit.”

“You are the Leader of the World.”

“Wrong,” The President yelled, hoping all the ratfucks heard it and wouldn’t accuse him of trying to be the President of Earth. Again. “I am…in no way…the Leader of the Whole Fucking Planet.”

“Sir, language,” Marty muttered in an arch tone, still tapping away at his phone.

“Does that really matter right now?” The President muttered back, gesturing at the guests.

“This will be recorded into history books,” came back in a sing song.

“Ah, fuck.”

“What is this low discussion?” Jimmy said. “You are plotting in front of us.”

“No, no, calm down. Listen, okay? I am not the Leader of the World. I am the President of the United States of America, which is only a part of the world. Like, a small part, honestly. What’s our landmass percentage again?”

“We have seen your cinema movies,” Newman said. “They make it clear that you are the Leader of the Free World. World.”

“Yeah, we’re big pissers,” The President said with a hand wave. “Uh, I mean…yes, we have a large, uh, standing…on the world stage…and the movie…stage…Marty, help me out.”

“One point eight six seven percent,” Marty said.

“What?”

“You asked for the US’s percentage of world landmass.”

The President sighed and stared into the empty spot between the two aliens. He looked at Newman and tried to make a see what I have to deal with? face. This wasn’t a face in their race, apparently.

“You will order the evacuation of the planet-”

“No, I will not, because I can’t. Am I not explaining this properly? Let me break it down. A, we don’t have that kind of technology. B, even if I did, I can’t tell the whole planet to jump ship. I’m not in charge of the whole planet. Other countries have their own leaders, okay? We would have to talk about this.”

The two aliens stared at him for so long without moving that The President began to wonder if they had died.

“How?”

“Huh?”

“How,” Jimmy started again, “Can a planet have more than one leader?”

The President shrugged. “I don’t know, but we’ve got…I mean, it depends on the definition, but there’s probably close to two hundred heads of state.”

“You do not have a world government? At this stage in your evolution?”

“…no…”

And then the aliens…well, The President wasn’t familiar with their physiology or anything, but it sure did sound like they were laughing at him.

“Are you laughing?” he asked.

“No,” Newman said, clearly laughing.

“Hey! I don’t come to your planet and shit all over your species! All while trying to take the damn thing over.”

“You are failing to take care of it.”

“Yeah? So fucking what. That’s our problem to ignore. Only we get to kill each other, get it? You don’t get to come here and kill us.”

“Please,” Newman said, still making that laughing noise. “Confer with your…heads of state…”

“You know what, I’m going to! I’m going to get all of them on the phone at the same time! And I can already guarantee you no one is going to vote to give the planet to a couple of alien peckerwoods like you! The only thing we are going to vote on is whether we’re going to bust out the nukes.”

The aliens stopped laughing. “Your nuclear weapons?”

“Hell yeah, brother.”

Newman squared whatever counted as their shoulders. “We are already on your planet. You would not use those weapons to stop us on your own planet.”

“You’ve seen the ‘cinema movies’ haven’t you? We use those fucking things on our planet to kill each other. What makes you so special?”

The two aliens made some noises at each other, and without another word of stilted English turned and went back into their little ship thingy.

“Sir,” Marty said, as they watched the ship rise into the air. “A Russian representative is on the phone.”

The President took a big sigh. “Yeah. Of course he is.”

Talking to the Dead

Talking to the dead is generally frustrating and sometimes enough to drive you mad.

They don’t remember anything, see. Well, no, they do remember their lives. Of course they remember their lives. If they didn’t remember their lives I don’t think they’d hang around as much as they tend to do. They’d wander. Haunt whatever home or hotel or, I don’t know, Bed Bath and Beyond they managed to drift into. Never knowing why. Never knowing they weren’t supposed to be there. Just, boo! Towels in aisle twelve.

The dead remember their lives but they don’t remember their deaths and they don’t remember whatever comes after it and that’s why getting them to pass is so damn hard. It’s like talking to that blue fish from that one kids movie, the one with all the fish. You’ve got to tell them, over and over and over, and hope they see the sails before everything washes away again. And it will wash away again.

Met this ghost in a brownstone in Queens. He’d been dead seventy-two years. Died in his sleep, in his recliner, in the middle of the summer in the years before air conditioning was even a dream. Heart couldn’t take the heat. Old geezer. Skin and bones. I must have talked to him for hours. All night, yes, all night, the sun was coming up before anything finally stuck.

“You’re dead, Otto.”

“Funny joke, sonny.”

“No joke. You died. Too hot.”

“If I’m dead, how am I here talking to you?”

“You missed the Styx Express, I’m afraid. It’s okay. It happens all the time.

“Bah. You’re crazy.”

“You’re crazy. And dead. What year do you think it is?”

“Nineteen-”

“Wrong. You’re already wrong. And dead. You’re crazy, and wrong, and dead.”

“If I’m dead, how did I die?”

“I already told you.”

“Told me what?”

“How you died?”

“Bah. Dead? You’re crazy.”

And on. And on. And on.

Sometimes I think these ghosts pass on just to get away from me. Fine. That works, too. It’s results. One less drifter.

I worry, of course, of course I worry. What if it happens to me? But then I think, no, no way. It won’t happen to me because I know. Most of the ghosts I meet died without knowing they died. You ever wonder why cancer wards aren’t haunted? Because they see it coming. Don’t matter if they make their peace or not, they know it’s coming. They die, they remember they died, and then the boat comes and they know to get on the boat.

The problems are the ones who don’t see it coming. Because they were asleep, like good old Otto, or it was sudden. Once had to talk to a ghost all while staring at the giant exit wound where her left eye had been. She’d been shopping in a bad neighborhood. The bullet hadn’t even been for her. Death had not been on her radar, and had come for her from behind, so she wasn’t ready. She kept telling me she needed to find a dress for her mother’s second wedding. She was so excited about getting her hair and makeup done, and the whole time I’m trying to tell her she could get a discount on account of only having half a face left. Wouldn’t believe me, some people guess, but that’s not it. Couldn’t believe it. Literally couldn’t. Because she couldn’t remember, forever. Finally told her they did nails on the boat.

I worry, of course, of course I worry that it could happen to me. But it won’t because I know. I’ve known about death since I was a kid. First one, then the other, and then years with nothing and then three foster siblings in under a year. Death kept catching up with me until finally I saw the career opportunity. People pay boo-koo bucks to get their dead relatives out of their house. For the dead, of course, I have it on good authority that the other side of that boat ride is a pretty sweet deal, and for themselves, too. Imagine losing someone and being stuck with the undying, un-remembering spirit of them for eternity.

Crazy is catching, kids. Remember that.

Remember it all, or you might not remember anything. Remember death. You have to, or it’ll haunt you. You’ll haunt it. You won’t remember to go.

I worry, of course, of course I worry that it could happen to me, but it won’t because I’ve been waiting for it my whole life. I won’t miss it. I’ll be ready.

I’ll remember. I’ll know when it happens, I will, I have to, and I’ll remember after it happens, and I’ll get on that boat. I’ll go over. I won’t get stuck here, forgetting, forgetting, forgetting. Waiting. Waiting for someone to talk to.

Talking to the dead is generally frustrating and sometimes enough to drive you mad.

I Wish I Was Playing Zelda

This is going to be a quick one because now that I can finally play The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom I literally don’t want to do anything else including whatever it is I’m currently doing. If I still had a dating profile it would simply say Likes: Playing Zelda, Dislikes: Not Playing Zelda, there would be no photos of me because taking selfies is not playing Zelda, and I wouldn’t actually respond to any messages because my phone has been dead for three weeks because I haven’t charged it and don’t actually know where it is because fuck dude I’m god damned playing Zelda.

You may be asking, If you’re so obsessed with this game why are you only playing it now when it’s been available for weeks? And I’m going to answer you even though I don’t want to answer you and I think you know what I’d rather be doing (it’s playing Zelda, I want to be playing Zelda).

Last year Horizon Forbidden West came out and I played that for a few months and that’s the last time I’ve wanted to play a new video game release. After I finished playing Forbidden West, do you know what I did?

Do you know what I fucking did?

I played Zelda.

Specifically Breath of the Wild. I played it literally all summer. For the fourth summer in a row. My Switch recently informed me I have logged five hundred and sixty hours in Breath of the Wild. I didn’t even ask. It just flashed on the screen, followed by a reminder that humans are mortal with a finite amount of time. Which is fucking stupid because of course I know that, Nintendo, so what do you think I’d rather be doing right now? Contemplating my mortality or giving you seventy-three American dollars to play another Zelda?

Actually I don’t want to do either of those things. I want to play Zelda.

I finished Breath of the Wild – for the fourth time – and by “finish” I mean “did literally everything except defeat Ganon because fuck that guy and collect all the Korok seeds because nine hundred is secretly a very large number” – and then I didn’t play anything for a few months because I don’t really like video games in general, I hyperfixate on a very specific type of video game: large open worlds I can dick around in for hundreds of hours.

In January I decided to play the Director’s Cut of Death Stranding which is a very unique combination of “the most batshit movie-length cutscenes” and “Dicking Around: The Game,” like, I am quite literally delivering underwear to middle aged women via zipline and beating up the mentally ill with thermonuclear bombs all while pretending a White House representative in a permanent mask named Die Hardman isn’t trying to tell me for the eighteenth time why I have to get to across the country and save my idiot undead sister from a terrorist who is obsessed with her and Egypt and also me for some reason I never actually put together.

It’s high quality trash but it’s not Zelda.

Fuck, I wish I was playing Zelda.

I played Death Stranding for a hundred and fifty hours and that brings us to the clusterfuck of this spring when three games that I wanted to play all came out within weeks of each other.

One of them was Zelda, obviously, obviously one of them was Zelda. You know what, it doesn’t even matter what the other two games were. The only thing that matters is that, while I was excited for both of them, I wasn’t Zelda excited. I knew I would play both games to their fullest but once I started playing Zelda I would be locked in for the rest of the summer.

And actually, it does matter that one of the games was Jedi: Survivor because when Jedi: Fallen Order first came out it was a notoriously buggy piece of shit and I wanted this new game to get at least three patches before I even tried to download it.

I absolutely hate that we’ve entered this space where it’s acceptable for triple-A games to be released as buggy pieces of shit with the expectation that it’ll be patched in the first weeks but that is a conversation for an entirely other article I will write after I have played Zelda.

So here we are, a little more than a month after its release date and I finally started playing it and as a expected I don’t want to do anything else. Here’s why I like it: you can run around Hyrule and the adjacent kingdoms and collect mushrooms and apples and bugs. There’s puzzles. There’s scenery. There’s a big scary bad guy but he stays in the exact middle of the map and waits politely for you to be ready to fight him. Which I never am so I never do and it’s great. Zelda totally has control of that situation. Meanwhile, Link and I will be harassing the annoying lady who is weirdly obsessed with her stupid flowers.

Actually, that was the last Zelda. In this Zelda, Zelda is still the only actual thing standing between the bad guy and Hyrule, and Link and I are getting thrown around by a sentient stone monster because he’s sitting on top of an outfit we won’t even wear but need to have.

Breath of the Wild was truly Dicking Around: The Game, and somehow the freaks at Nintendo were like, “No, we have not reached maximum Dicking Around. There’s even more Dicking Around achievable.”

And fuck, dude, they were right. Even after only six hours my Dicking Around efficiency is through the roof. I gave a guy an apple! I’m going to be riding that high for the rest of the week.

Okay, that’s enough words. I’ve stocked up on enough Kid Cuisine and bourbon to get me to the end of August. Mid-October if I start skipping breakfast. I’ve cancelled all of my plans and commitments and will be ‘disappearing from the country’ the day before my sister’s wedding. I’m not even editing this thing.

I’m going to go play Zelda.

Spring Cleaning

I woke up earlier than I wanted to but for once it wasn’t because of the kids. They’re eight-ten-thirteen, old enough to be able to entertain themselves quietly for a few hours in the morning or at least they’re supposed to be. More often than not I get woken up before seven by something or other. Yelling at a video game or each other or one of their friends over the phone. That domain is exclusively Violet. Her and her friends are constantly screaming at each other like the world is ending and then acting like nothing happened. Don’t much understand teenage girls, even though I apparently was one for seven whole years.

Anyway, that morning it wasn’t the kids. Lonnie is the worm-catcher and he was already downstairs making up pancakes. He tells me Violet tried to call one of her friends but he told her off and instead she was furiously texting, her thumbs flying over the keyboard before she pressed send near-hard enough to break the damn thing, then she’d sit there staring at the screen and biting her thumbnail until the response came and was swiftly met with the type of scoff only teenage girls are capable of and more quick jabs at the screen.

These are the same girls she invited to the water park for her birthday and they all had a great time. Go figure.

The boys were being quiet, too. Alex had gotten hooked onto Kitchen Nightmares and suddenly decided he wanted to be a hard-boiled chef when he grew up so he was actually the one making the pancakes while Lonnie corrected him here and there. The cursing he kept to a minimum and under his breath so Lonnie let it go. Alex’s mouth had been getting him into trouble since pre-school and after six years we were just glad he’d stopped dropping the f and s bombs in front of the littler kids.

Billy was reading and anxiously looking at the clock. Some new video game had come out, one he’d already dedicated his summer vacation to, but he had a tendency to yell when things weren’t going his way, or when things were going his way, or simply when he was surprised, so Lonnie had told him no video game until I was up, and no waking me up just so he could get to the video game faster.

I know all this might make me sound like some delinquent mother, sleeping in while my poor put-upon husband does all the work, but it ain’t like that. True, Lonnie always wanted kids more than I do, but I love the little bastards just as much as he does. Once I wake up and get a half-gallon of coffee in me I take over so he can spend the rest of the morning in his shed making wood carvings to sell on Etsy, and then at night all five of us fight to survive each other. We make it work.

Actually, none of this has anything to do with anything. The point is, I woke up earlier than I wanted to that morning but not for the usual reasons. I woke up because I could smell the smoke.

It’s funny the things that are still hardwired into the human brain after three or four millennia of not really needing it anymore. Did you know the human eye can pick out more shades of green than any other color? We were monkeys in the forest, right? Had to be able to tell the difference between, say, a leafy stick and a snake.

And we can sleep through a lot of stuff. Televisions babbling on and on and on, the garbage truck picking up, Lonnie getting out of bed to stumble to the bathroom. But the other night some flying bug got into the bedroom and was buzzing up against the window, and the two of us were instantly awake. Instincts, I guess. Don’t want to get stung at night.

And don’t want to die in a fire, neither, so when I first smelled that smoke I was awake. I don’t wake up easy. Usually takes fifteen or twenty minutes to shake all the sleep off. But I swear that smoke entered my nose and I was up and off to the races. Standing next to the bed before I even knew why I was doing it. The smell was only getting stronger, but I couldn’t see nothing wrong. Everything in the bedroom was as it should be.

I raced out of the bedroom and stuck my head in every room, even the closets, and then I raced downstairs. Lonnie followed me around asking me what the matter was while I did the same down there, and then I turned on him.

“Don’t you smell that?”

He sniffed. He didn’t.

I sniffed. I didn’t.

The smell of smoke wasn’t down here. Then I started thinking, maybe I dreamed it. But I’d dreamed of smoke and fires before, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t really smell nothing in my dreams. I smelled smoke. It was there.

Then I remembered that the windows above the bed were open. And there were no windows downstairs open. I didn’t even tell Lonnie what I was thinking, just strode through the house in my nightgown, my family trailing behind me, and flung open the front door.

“Ah. Now I smell it,” Lonnie said, standing next to me.

The smoke was outside. You could barely see it hanging in the air, but boy howdy could you smell it. And it was getting stronger. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to figure out where it was coming from, because it was coming from directly across the street.

“That’s Mrs. Woods’ house!” Violet yelled, pointing, as though we all hadn’t seen the heavy black smoke billowing out of every single window.

“Ms. Woods, now,” I muttered.

“I’ll call 911,” Lonnie said, already back in the house.

“Is she still inside?” Billy asked, clinging to my leg.

“No,” I said, feeling strangely calm. Strange, because I had been woken up by an adrenaline dump and had spent the last five minutes thinking I was losing my mind and my heart was still racing. But even with the ticker tick-tick-ticking away, there was still this odd serene feeling covering me. And I knew Lorraine wasn’t inside getting burnt up into long-pork because she was sitting in a deck chair at the end of her driveway, right next to the mailbox.

“Stay here,” I said, and crossed the yard and the road to get to her.

“Good morning, Lorrie,” I said, bracing myself for what I would find.

Lorrie looked up at me and shaded her face with her hand. There were bags under her eyes. Those were red, too, she’d obviously been crying. And she was thinner, of course, we’d all noticed that last week. Apparently when her good-for-nothing cheater of a husband had fucked off he’d taken Lorrie’s appetite with him.

“Morning, Sam,” she said brightly. In fact, she was the happiest I’d seen her in months. As though Gary hadn’t run off with the mistress he’d had for a disgusting amount of time. As though her house wasn’t burning right in front of her. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m good. Had a summer cold but that finally cleared up.”

“Good, good! And Lonnie and the kids?”

“Hanging tough, I suppose. Say, Lorrie. I can’t help but notice your house is on fire.”

Lorrie looked at the house and I half expected her to jump up screaming, like she’d only just noticed. Or to say something like, well would you look at that? I guess it is?

Instead she sighed. “Yes. Well. It’s spring cleaning day.”

“Ah,” I said, like that explained it. I was already glad Lonnie was calling 911. Now I was gladder. Something had gone off in Lorrie’s brain, apparently.

“I’ve had this little ritual since I was a kid,” Lorrie said, staring at the flames now licking out the windows and up towards the roof. “Not a ‘kid’ kid. Nineteen. When I was living on my own. My mom always taught me to do spring cleaning, to get rid of the stuff in your life that’s holding you down. Otherwise, she said, every time you moved house you’d be dragging along a bunch of flotsam and jetsam that wasn’t doing anything but existing in your orbit.

“That same year my Aunt Becky died, and my God did I hate her. She was a mean, spiteful bitch who had spent her whole life bullying me.”

“Shoot,” I said, “An adult bullying a kid?”

Lorrie nodded with a peculiar expression, glad my tone indicated I believed her. I did. I’d had my own adult bullies as a weird little kid.

“It was always my weight. I was too chubby for her. If she saw me now she’d gush about how I finally look healthy, never mind I lost it all because every time I see so much as a piece of bread I want to puke. She died when I was nineteen of some heart defect she didn’t even know she had. I went to the funeral. They were giving out these little prayer cards with her face on it and I took one because you’re supposed to and I threw it in a drawer and I didn’t think of it again until I was spring cleaning and I…just…stared at it. At her. At her smug little smile, even in death she had this smug little smile. And it suddenly wasn’t enough that I was going to throw it away. Then it would still exist. In some landfill somewhere, sure, but it would still be there and I couldn’t take that. So I put it in a bowl, took it outside, and set it on fire. I cleansed the world of it.”

Other neighbors had woken up to the smoke, now, and were standing in their driveways or in the street, staring. Lonnie was in our drivewith the kids. He put his hands up and shook his head. There were no sirens in the distance, which really wasn’t surprising. We were the last little suburban cluster before the boonies well and truly began and the fire department was clear across town. We all knew the risks moving in.

I could see where all this was headed, now, but I wanted to hear Lorrie finish it.

“I’ve been burning stuff ever since.” Lorrie held up a hand. “For spring cleaning, mind you, I haven’t turned into a…a…whatchacallit….pyromania or whatever. But now when I do my spring cleaning, I have three piles. Donate. Trash. Burn. Usually small stuff. Usually enough to fit into the fire pit out back. I never told Gary. I’d wait until he was…well, apparently he was always with that woman…but I’d wait until he was gone and then I’d pour myself a stiff martini with lots of olives and watch all the things I couldn’t bear to be in the world anymore burn. Traffic tickets. Christmas cards from people who still thought we were family. Medical bills. Reminders of things I didn’t want to think about.”

I shifted my weight and looked behind me. The neighbors were staring at the house, yes, the flames shooting out of holes in the roof now, but they were also staring at us. At me. I’d gotten here first, so this was my mess to sort out. Only, I wasn’t sure what there was to sort out. Maybe crazy is catching, but Lorrie was starting to sound incredibly sane.

“He brought her here, didn’t she?” I asked.

“Drove her straight into the garage so no one would notice,” Lorrie said. “It was part of the ‘thrill,’ he told me. He told me all of this, can you believe it? He thought if he was honest about fucking this other woman in my living room, my kitchen, my bed, he would win me back. We can start to heal, Lorraine, he said. I wish I had said, heal from this, and then punched him in his face. Of course I didn’t. The lawyers were present.”

It was getting hard to stare at the house, too bright, too hot, but I did anyway. Tried to imagine Lonnie doing something so awful and coming up against a brick wall.

“Every room?”

“Every room worth a damn,” she said.

I sighed. “Lorrie, this ain’t right.”

“It’s my property, not even his name on the deed, and I think as long as I don’t go after insurance they can’t actually prosecute me for anything.”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

I turned again and called for Lonnie, who came scuttling across the street once he was sure the kids wouldn’t follow. I spoke loud enough for the other neighbors in the street to hear. Maybe Lorrie didn’t want people to know any more than they’d already did, but maybe she had given up that right when she had set her house on fire.

“That motherfucker Gary was a bigger piece of shit than we thought,” I said. “He brought that woman to the house, and Lorraine has decided she can’t live with it. Can you go back to the house and make us some drinks? Stiff martinis.”

“With lots of olives.”

“With lots of olives,” I repeated.

I thought I already loved my husband as much as I was physically capable of, but that day I found more space because he didn’t even question me. He didn’t even hesitate.

“I got those big green olives stuffed with bleu cheese, Lorrie, you want those?”

“Oh, I love those! Thank you!”

The fire department showed up after another twenty minutes and they probably thought we were all mad. The whole neighborhood was in the street at seven thirty in the morning, only a decently-sized front yard separating us from a house that wasn’t a house anymore so much as it was a charred pile of rubble, all of us with some sort of cocktail or libation in our hand. Chatting away like nothing was wrong.

Because, by then, nothing was. The house no longer existed, and it had taken Lorrie’s pain away with it. We took her to breakfast after, and she ordered the pancake platter and ate everything up.

Outside the Sundae Fundae

It was quarter to ten on a Saturday night and Shaun and Honey were sitting on cheap metal chairs with a metal table between them outside the Sundae Fundae Ice Cream Parlor. Honey was methodically working her way through a caramel sundae with rainbow sprinkles and extra nuts while Shaun casually people watched, looking for a potential meal. Usually the bar and club scene didn’t have the sort of people Shaun went after. There were levels of wrongdoing, you couldn’t just kill every mundane idiot who ran a red or flashed a fake ID or cheated on a boyfriend. Those weren’t the sort of transgressions that deserved death by exsanguination. Sometimes he got lucky, though. When you knew what you were looking for it was easy to tell the difference between, say, the guy grabbing his girlfriend a little too aggressively because he’s drunk and the guy grabbing his girlfriend a little too aggressively and that’s the absolute least of what he does to her. Sometimes he’d be able to pick a sociopath or a psychopath out of the crowd, some flat or unhinged look behind their eyes that lead to a whole pile of bullshit with only a little digging. Just a few months ago he’d pegged a serial killer looking for his next victim. Called himself ‘Dexter’ for a week despite the fact that Honey had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

All of that was going on vaguely in the back of his mind, and he was mostly scanning people out of habit. They had blood in the fridge back at the apartment and he was already looking at this piece of shit managing a Wendy’s and, he was pretty sure, forcing his teenage staff to do some stuff Wendy’s corporate would not have approved of. He wouldn’t be able to deal with that until the next night, anyway. Tonight, they had come out because Honey wanted ice cream.

“I don’t know why you aren’t understanding this,” Honey said.

“Because it doesn’t make any sense!”

“Of course it does. People don’t like lots of foods.”

“Not chocolate, though. Everyone likes chocolate.”

Honey licked her spoon as she shrugged. “Not me.”

“Because you’re allergic?”

“No! Because I don’t like it.”

“Any of it? None of it. You don’t like any chocolate at all. Milk chocolate?”

“Nope.”

“Dark chocolate?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, but that real dark chocolate that barely has anything in it?”

Honey shuddered. “Too bitter.”

“What…about milk chocolate?”

“You already asked that. It’s too sweet.”

“Chocolate cake?”

Honey sighed. “Why do you even care? You don’t even eat…”

She trailed off. Shaun would understand the meaning. Anyone overhearing wouldn’t.

“No, I don’t. But I’ve still eaten chocolate, if it’s good enough.”

If she had pearls, she would have been clutching them. “The cramps!”

“Last for days. Worth it, though.”

Honey squinted at him. “How am I the weird one here?”

Shaun didn’t answer. Honey wasn’t expecting him to. The conversation had started out real enough – and, seriously, Shaun was going to have further interrogate Honey later about this ridiculous stance against chocolate – but had quickly turned into a cover.

The sidewalk on the other side of the little fence that surrounded Sundae Fundae’s patio had been filled with people since they had gotten there, all hopping between the bars and clubs, and the group of four women he had seen approaching looked like all the rest. Barely dressed in trendy clothes, somehow maintaining balance and speed in violent heels, laughing and talking too loud like they were already drunk.

Except it was all an act. He had given Honey the signal – brushing at the side of his neck like he was scratching – and she picked them out immediately. Shaun knew how he always knew someone was a vampire. When you could hear heartbeats, the silence was deafening. Honey could pick them out almost as fast, though, and she could never exactly articulate how beyond, ‘when you’ve been around them most of your life, you know.’

Vampires. On the hunt.

One of them, in a silver mini dress and black curls down to the middle of her back, clocked him. Her eyes, dark and surrounded by bright pastels, darted between him and Honey and back again before she had raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow. A mini salute, of sorts, from one predator to another.

He’d given her the eyebrow raise back as they slithered through the crowds. If he had a nickel for every time another vampire had thought he was hunting Honey he’d have enough money to buy all the chocolate Honey was apparently never going to fucking eat.

They were gone, and Shaun had been about to ask what to do with them. Four against two. Eh, one and half and Honey would be the first one to say it. Fighting was out. There was always following them around and biteblocking them. Get between them and the victims. Honey was much better at that. It was only a temporary solution, though. It was clear this was how they operated. If they stopped them tonight, they’d just be out next weekend.

“What…about milk chocolate?”

“You already asked that,” Honey got out before Shaun gave her another signal. The ASL H, first two fingers out with the thumb hiding behind them. Because another group had been coming up the sidewalk, following the first.

Maybe Shaun did understand how Honey could always clock vampires, because he had the same innate sense for hunters. Something about the way they walked, their shoulders always up, stiff and scared. Or the way their clothes, always jeans and boots and a plain t shirt and some sort of leather jacket, hung off them, a little too loose. Or their eyes. Bouncing from person to person without really seeing them. Studying them, making a brief assessment, and moving on. There were three of them coming down the sidewalk and usually Shaun would feel nervous. But these three were barely paying attention to anything around them.

They only had eyes for the four women who had already passed.

Shaun turned to watch them stalk down the sidewalk.

“Well, this should be fun,” Honey said.

Get Out of Osonetto

Get out of Osonetto.

It was the first step. It was also the hardest.

The rest of the journey was hard enough, and some bits were going to be nigh impossible. Billy would have to get through the surrounding towns, some of them as densely populated with righteous, monarchist busy-bodies as Osonetto. He’d have to keep a low profile and not get spotted. Getting spotted meant getting dragged back to Osonetto, probably in a cagecar.

Then the towns would thin out, and the busybodies would be replaced with farmers who might pull a gun if you even thought of asking for a meal and a bed, and the occasional highwayman who would take what was on you whether you were breathing or bleeding.

Then even that would thin out, and the farmland would turn into the barrens, the vast and blowing nothingness that filled the middle of the world. It would only be him out there, hunting food and water with nothing more than what the couple of books he’d managed to snitch from the Eighth Street Library would tell him. A few people lived in the barrens, dotting the emptiness like ticks on a deer’s back. Billy still wasn’t sure if he should track them down or avoid them.

And then…unknown. No one in Osonetto had ever been beyond the barrens because, officially, there was nothing there.

Lies upon lies, like the rest of the city. But Billy hadn’t found anyone to talk to him so he didn’t know what he was walking into.

Whatever it was, it couldn’t be as dangerous as this first step.

Get out of Osonetto.

Billy had learned to survive Osonetto by hiding just enough to make it seem like he wasn’t. He knew the walking routes of the uniformed police. Knew how to pick out the secret police, no matter how clever they thought they were being. Most importantly, knew how sidle on by without being noticed. It was all in the shoulders and the eyes. No slinking, no stalking, and for the love of God, no turning around. Never turn around. Never act like you had something to hide, especially if you did.

There was no hiding at the border. Everyone needed a reason, an interview, papers. The chancellors said it was to keep the city safe from those bastards down in Coloko, and maybe that made sense for the people coming in. But the procedure was the same for people going out. Catching spies, they said. But Billy had heard enough stories to know if there were spies in Coloko, they weren’t going in and out of the city the official way. Sitting there in the waiting room, he wished he had known one of these spies personally.

I’ve practiced and rehearsed, and I know every verse.

He chanted it in his head, trying to calm down. There were stories, rumors, that the inspectors here could count your heartrate just looking at you. Patently false, he was sure.

Mostly sure.

They let twenty people into the Transition Room at a time

(the name of the room was a sick enough joke that Billy’s nerves kept clinging to it, trying to get him to make the sort of watery chuckle that would get him brought to a private room very fast)

And had them all sit while three agents made their rounds. The rest of the room was exactly the sort of people you’d expect to be seeing leaving the city. Farmers going back to their crops and animals. Families taking their children back to their small towns now that the schools had gone on break. The fine people high enough up on the chain to have a summer place to escape to when the heat in Osonetto became too much. Not rich enough for that summer place to be on the beach of course. Those people didn’t have to go through Transition Rooms. Those people got into their little silver verts and flew over the city walls without a single, miserable officer shoving their oily face in theirs and breathing onion and garlic all over them and demanding to know exactly what they were going out of the city for and for how long.

Deep breath.

I’ve practiced and rehearsed…

There was one woman who had stood out, but Billy didn’t see her anymore. She was by herself, and she was pregnant. Billy didn’t think it would have been harder for anyone else to get through than for himself, but unless she had proof she was meeting her husband somewhere- doubtful – then she had been taken away already.

“Papers.”

Billy struggled to keep from jumping. He hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been looking for the woman. He shouldn’t have been thinking about her, he should have been thinking about himself.

I know every verse.

Get out of Osonetto.

Billy managed to keep his hand from shaking as he offered up his papers, but only by making his movements stiff and jerking. The officer who had stepped up to him – an exhausted, grizzled man with the sort of dead-behind-the-eyes look that told Billy he’d turn his own mother in if she tried to leave without a good reason – showed no sign of noticing.

But Billy was sure he had.

“Name?” he asked, once his papers were open to the front.

“Billy…uh, William Cortland.”

Show a little nerves, Izzy had told him. Everyone is nervous talking to the heat, it would be weird if you were totally confident.

What was the right amount of nervous, though? Was he there? Or was he beyond it?

“Birthdate?”

Billy told him, and then before he could have time to think the officer asked him what year he had left school. It was a trap. People who lied about their age couldn’t do the math fast enough to figure out what year they would have been sixteen. This wasn’t what Billy had been afraid of. He wasn’t lying about his age like some did, to get out of mandatory service.

As a matter of fact, Billy wasn’t lying about anything.

Of course, the officer wouldn’t see it like that.

“Reason for leaving Osonetto?”

“Job offer. The factories in Zenith. The offer is right there.”

That part was real, too. The man didn’t have to know Billy had no intention of going anywhere near Zenith.

The officer studied the job offer. He’d find it impeccable. If he wanted to follow up, he would call and find out it was real. This was it. One way or another, it was over. He’d gotten through.

“Take off your hat.”

The officer wasn’t studying the offer anymore.

The officer was studying Billy.

“Citizens are required to take off facial coverings and hat when conversing with any government official,” the officer rattled off, his voice nails out of a pneumatic tube.

Billy knew this was the law. He also knew officers only chose to enforce it when they were suspicious of something.

Trying hard not to swallow, Billy took his hat off. Wide brimmed. To keep the sun

(eyes)

Off his face.

And now an officer was staring straight into it, and Billy was beginning to lose his cool.

What was the officer seeing? Was his face too round? His cheeks too soft? Too smooth? A few of the other men in the room were clean shaven, why couldn’t Billy be? Was he looking at his hands, small and thin-fingered? Or at his throat, at the place where a little bob should be and wasn’t?

Do not react. Sit calmly. Fidget – a little. Only a little. No, that’s too much. He’s squinting. Maybe he really can hear my pulse going up.

“Sir.”

It was the only word Billy needed to know he was ruined. The word was said the same way the man might smell a fart.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

The hardest part was getting out of Osonetto. At least now, the dream was dead. He didn’t have to think of it anymore. He-

“Sorry, sorry, sorry I’m late!”

She was sitting next to him, her side pressing into his, and clinging onto his hands before Billy could even register the words she had been saying. The woman. The pregnant woman they had taken. But they hadn’t. Because she was here.

“You were in there for a long time,” the officer said, glaring at her. Billy still wasn’t sure what was going on but he was relieved to have the man’s eyes off him.

“The stalls in that bathroom are small, and I am not,” the woman said. “And anyway, peeing when you’re pregnant isn’t such a simple thing. There are dribbles, and-”

“Papers,” the officer said, interrupting her.

Exactly how she wanted him to. Who is this woman?

“Este Cortland,” she said, followed quickly by her birthdate.

The officer looked between the two. “You two are together?”

The woman patted Billy’s thigh. “Married a year now,” she said, her voice beaming with pride.

What is happening.

“So glad he got this new job before the baby came,” she said, patting her stomach. “Could you imagine having to sit in here with a newborn attached to the hip?”

She laughed like the two of them, her and the officer, had a little joke between them. And, bright light from above, the impossible happened.

The officer broke a smile.

A little one. Just in the corner of his mouth. But it was there, all the same.

He looked at the papers again.

Looked at Billy again.

Really looked.

At Billy’s face. At his throat. At his hands.

Hands that were still covered by Este’s hands.

The officer looked at Este’s pregnant belly, and then at Billy again.

Slowly he handed the papers back, giving both to Billy.

If they had really been married, Billy would have been holding both the entire time. Either the officer had completely forgotten, or he was over this exchange. The other officers had finished the rest. Once they were done, they could leave the city.

“Mr. and Mrs. Cortland,” the officer said. “Enjoy Zenith.”

Then the doors were opened and they were out. Out of the room. Out of Osonetto. Out of the hardest part.

He’d done it. He’d gotten through.

Este wrapped her arms around his, the way a married couple might, and smiled up at him.

“Perhaps we should find a place to talk?”

You Can Turn the Lights Back on

TW: attempted suicide

Christine woke up with the mother of all hangovers and instantly wished she was dead. Which felt familiar, for some reason she was scrambling to make sense of.

There were no memories. Not yet. Her brain was rising out of the soup of booze and drugs she had apparently put it in the night before.

I haven’t partied like this since college. What the fuck was I thinking?

These thoughts were translated by her mouth as, “Gahh. Guhhh. Huh. Huhhhh? Ggggll.” She hadn’t really meant to be making any noises at all, but she lived alone so whatever.

Someone’s birthday? Holiday? What month is it? What year is it?

The last year. It’s the last one.

Christine pushed herself up off the bed with arms made of unset pudding and squinted into the morning light. What the fuck was that? “The last year?” It had come to her unbidden, nothing more than synapses firing off when triggered. Habit. But she couldn’t remember why.

The last year?

Her eyes had slowly been getting used to the bright, stabbing sun, and she was able to open her eyes a little. Through the fence of eyelashes she could see her bedside table, mere inches away. She was in her bed, but crooked. Almost sideways. She wiggled her feet and discovered they were hanging off the bed on the other side. No socks. Her toes were ice.

The table in front of her was a mess. A clock in the back told her it was almost noon. A cell phone was charging. There was a bottle of red wine, empty, and a glass of water, still full. No lipstick smudges. Odd. If she had been out last night on a bender she would have dolled herself up.

Before she could figure out that little clue, another one. Trash, sitting next to the glass. Not just trash. An empty bottle. Not just an empty bottle.

An empty pill bottle.

She reached an arm around and yelped. Her muscles were stiff. Cold. She slept in this position. All night. Never even rolled over. The simple act of lifting her arm where it lay on the bed next to her and reaching above her head and caused muscle pulls in three…no, four separate places.

What the fuck did I take?

The label was facing away from her, and when she felt ready to try again she gently lifted her arm and slowly raised it above her shoulder. With cold, trembling fingers she pinched the bottle and rotated it in little, shuffling movements.

Alprazolam. Otherwise known as Xanax.

A foggy memory of a faceless pharmacists at a generic pharmacy from some amount of years ago.

“Start with half and see what that does to you. If you can tolerate it, you can take a full tablet. Find a quiet place to take it, it’ll take about half an hour to kick in. And I know a lot of medications say don’t take with alcohol, but this is a very serious recommendation with Xanax. Not only can it result in over-sedation, where your heart could stop or you could stop breathing, but, to be perfectly frank, it can do some shit to your brain you won’t be ready for. Do not mix Xanax with alcohol, period.”

Christine’s eyes darted from the empty bottle of pills to the empty bottle of wine.

“Maybe there was only one left?” she mumbled into her comforter.

As soon as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. She had, in the past, mixed alcohol and Xanax, by mistake. Mostly by mistake. And while, yes, she had woken up after and heard some wild stories about herself, she hadn’t woken up feeling like she shouldn’t.

I should be dead.

A violent shiver rolled across Christine’s body, shaking her hard enough to make her stomach want to empty out.

A glance to the floor below her told her she already had. Several times. There were layers. Some were dry. Some…weren’t…

Her stomach did empty, big, groaning, scraping retches that brought up nothing more than burning bile and that old stomach acid taste. She was empty. Had been empty for some time. And still her guts and brain worked against themselves and Christine burped up nothing and nothing and nothing until finally she was able to lie back down, exhausted and shaking.

I should be dead.

It had shown up in her mind the same way the last year had. Out of nowhere, but with enough conviction to make her eyes water. I should be dead wasn’t an assumption, or an opinion, or a thought based on the evidence that she had finished her bottle of prescription depressants and swallowed them with an entire bottle of depressants.

I should be dead was a fact.

Was I suicidal?

With fluttering relief she realized she could reject the thought outright. It didn’t feel right in her mind. It was a hat that didn’t fit, too small, too large, didn’t matter, the brim wasn’t working. Christine had had her issues, but she had never wanted to simply end it.

But she should be dead. That was still a fact. That wasn’t changing.

Her phone on the table vibrated itself a half inch to the left and Christine screamed.

In her mind she screamed, anyway. In real life it was nothing more than a gasp.

It buzzed again. And again. Not a phone call. A relentless series of text messages. Merely the thought of trying to focus her eyes to read tiny text was enough for a migraine to put pressure on the inside of her forehead. Let the texts come. She would read them as soon as she figured out what the fuck was happening.

The buzzing stopped.

The buzzing started again. This time faster. A call.

Oh. I think I can take one of those.

She pawed at the phone, almost knocking it off the table and directly into the pile of sick. Her fingers were still shaking slightly but she managed to get the phone to the bed in front of her just as it stopped vibrating.

Christine waited.

Ten seconds later it went off again.

MARIE it said, over the picture of a smiling woman. A woman she knew. Sister? Friend?

Friend.

Best friend.

Oh, God, she had known Marie for years, literal decades, and it had taken close to fifteen seconds for Christine to remember her.

She poked at the screen with a nearly-numb finger until she stumbled across the green button.

“hhhhhhhhh,” she breathed.

“Oh, my God, you’re alive!” And then Marie was sobbing heavily into the other end of the line.

“Baghhhh….barrrgggghhhh…barely,” she managed to spit out.

“I’m already walking over,” Marie said through hiccups. “The roads are a mess. Everything is a mess. I’ll be there in half an hour. Do you need anything?”

“I…I…I think I might have…I think I…damaged my brain…”

“I’ve got all the hangover stuff,” Marie said. “Hopefully we can fix what we can fix without a doctor because I think they’re going to be in high demand for a while.”

Talking was good. Hearing another voice was better. The fog was lifting faster. Not ‘fast’ by any means, but at least making thoughts didn’t hurt anymore.

“Marie, what happened? Why did I…the pills…the wine…why?”

“Ah, jeez, you don’t remember? No, I guess, maybe you wouldn’t. Did you take the whole bottle? And the whole bottle of wine? You said you would. You said you’d chug it.”

“Don’t remember. Thinking…memories…hard.”

“The asteroid, Christine. Do you remember the asteroid?”

She remembered what an asteroid was. Sort of. Space rock. Flying through space. Just sort of wandering, doing it’s own thing, skipping through time, until…

“Wait,” Christine said. She forced herself into a sitting position, ignoring the way every single muscle in her body screamed at the same time. “Wait…wait…wait…”

“I’m waiting,” Marie said. And then, “Get off me! I don’t give a shit, I don’t want to kiss you! Fuckers. Everyone down here thinks they can do whatever they want now. I’d hate to mace a fucker,” and here she was screaming at someone close to her, “the day we didn’t die.”

Like the violent explosion that apparently didn’t happen, Christine’s memories all unfolded in front of her at once. The asteroid. It was supposed to hit last night. They had known for months. Seen it coming. Too big. Too fast. Tried to blow it up. Everything missed. It was coming. They could see it in the sky. It was coming. Last night was supposed to be the end. Christine couldn’t face it. No one had blamed her. She had taken the pills, taken the booze, figuring drifting off to sleep was better than whatever sort of death an asteroid hit would bring.

3:28 am. That was when it was supposed to hit. 3:28 am, and it was now 12:02 pm.

“What happened?”

“It missed! They calculated wrong or something! Oh, it was so fucking close. You could see it coming all day yesterday, and then it was like it…stalled out. It didn’t, it just looked like that. Because it was going past it. It was closer than the moon Christine. I think it fucked with the tides? I don’t know, cities on the coast are sort of fucked. But only sort of! Christine! It missed us!”

And then Marie was howling, and through the phone Christine could hear the others around her joining in. Humans. Modern humans. Howling at the sky.

“It’s still up there, but it’s leaving! Look, I’m about ten minutes away, okay? We’ll make sure you didn’t do any permanent damage and then we’ll celebrate with, I don’t know, oyster crackers and water. Is your door unlocked?”

“Uhhhh…”

“Go find out. I’m almost there.”

The last year.

I should be dead.

A little more awake now, she could the sounds from the street a couple stories below. Cheering. Singing. Music, so much music.

Not only had a giant fuck-off asteroid come a hair’s width away from destroying the planet, Christine had taken a lethal dose of pills and swill and come out the other side. No telling what the damage was, but damaged was better than dead. If she thought about it, really thought about it, it made her feel like there was a purpose. Like she had a purpose.

Whatever it was, she could figure it out later when her head wasn’t pounding and her stomach wasn’t trying to boot out her intestines.