Croak (8 page)

They were silent for a moment. Lex looked up at the ghostly branches of the tree. “This can’t be real,” she muttered to herself.

Zara looked at her. “Doesn’t get much realer.”

“But seriously. We really have the power to whack people?”

Zara let out an exasperated huff, as if she’d been over this countless times before. “We’re not hit men, Lex. We don’t
cause
death. We’re just there to pick up the pieces.”

“Huh?”

“Okay, a guy’s head is chopped off. He’s dead, right? But his soul isn’t. Our job is to remove that live soul from the dead body. In the space of a yoctosecond—that’s one septillionth of a second—after death, we jump in through the ether to within an arm’s length of the target, Kill and Cull, then leave.”

“Then why is the term ‘Killer,’ if the targets are already dead?”

Zara looked almost surprised at the question. “Gammas are our entire
lives.
Everything that’s happened to us, everyone we’ve met, every feeling we’ve ever felt. A body—even a physically dead one—is technically still alive if the soul is inside. So what a Killer really does is remove the very last part of what makes a person human. If that’s not Killing, I don’t know what is.” She eyed Lex. “Souls live on without their bodies. But bodies without souls are nothing but compost.”

With that, Zara settled into a patient stance and looked at her fingernails, her silver hair blinding in the sunlight. Lex, on the other hand, felt strongly that she should start screaming. The very curious part of her brain that Uncle Mort had talked about had swelled and expanded so pervasively that Lex feared she’d have to bore a hole in her skull to relieve the pressure.

Zara turned to her. “Are you having fun?”

Lex was thrown. “Am I supposed to?”

“I don’t know,” said Zara with a quizzical stare. “But I bet you’ll do really well here. You’re . . . different.”

Lex narrowed her eyes. “Different how?”

“Ready, kiddo?” Uncle Mort interrupted as he approached. “You’re good to go. You’ll do a short shift of five targets with Zara, and then tomorrow we’ll set you up with your new partner.”

“Zara’s not my partner?”

“Nope, she’s a sub, just here today to help with training,” he said as Zara removed a Cuff from her own pocket and put it on. “Now, under most circumstances, threesomes aren’t allowed, but I’ll be jumping in for the first target to observe your work. Pay no attention to me, just concentrate on what you’re doing. Zara will call for help if you run into any problems.” He tapped his Cuff. “Cooperate with her, follow her lead, and never lose focus. But most important of all,” he said, his voice lowering, “you must believe with every fiber of your being that these people’s lives have come to a close. Trust that you’re doing the right thing by touching them, because you are—no matter what.”

Lex gulped. “What happens if I don’t?”

“Then their souls will be trapped in their bodies forever. Believe me, you do not want to be the one responsible for obliterating someone’s right to an everlasting afterlife.” He leaned in almost threateningly. “But that’s not going to happen, is it? You have a job to do now, Lex, and you sure as shit are going to do it. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, but—” Her mouth felt like a desert. What was wrong with her? Back home, Tyrannosaurus Lex would have had no problem with dishing out this sort of destruction. She would have jumped into the ether in an instant, breezing past these two without a care in the world and maybe even giving them concussions on the way.

But Lex knew how hollow that badass part of her really was. All those little outbursts of violence—they seemed so empty and meaningless now that she faced a task of such profound importance. Nothing had prepared her for this.

Lex gazed up at her uncle, the weight and reality of the situation finally sinking in. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

He nodded warmly, sensing the change in her. “I think you can.”

Lex licked her lips, looked around at her small circle of compatriots, and tightened her grip on the scythe. Inhaling deeply, she raised it above her head and sliced it down through the air just as Zara had instructed.

Her body immediately tensed. She hadn’t expected to meet resistance—in the middle of thin air? Still, she kept tearing, remembering to cut the scythe at an angle toward the bottom, until a rip in the fabric of space eerily appeared before her—a defined yet wavy line, like the blurred wetness rising from a highway in the scorching sun.

“Slide in,” Uncle Mort said.

Lex eyed the breach. Unsure, she leaned closer and closer until the laws of gravity imploded once more. A whirlwind of invigoration washed over her like a monsoon, drenching every atom of her body.

Eventually the chaos screeched to a bizarrely silent halt. Frozen in front of her was a middle-aged man on a gurney, his chest cracked open and exposed in all of its shiny, disgusting glory. Lex peered through the smudged air at the sterile white walls, the kind that could only belong to an operating room. A team of doctors and nurses surrounded the man, their faces locked into expressions of worry and determination. One surgeon had cupped his hands around the patient’s heart to massage it back to life.

His efforts had obviously been fruitless. “Do it!” Zara said to Lex. “It’s safe, go ahead!”

Lex swallowed, the image of the glistening heart searing itself into her memory. She’d never seen anything so terrifyingly real.

Wincing, she held up her hand, slowly extended her finger, and touched it to the man’s shoulder.

A jolt shot through her body with the sheer force and brilliance of an exploding supernova.

Lex gasped.

This wasn’t like the ether.

The ether was giddy and fun, but this—whatever it was—this was
excruciating.

Both body and mind were racked with an electrical current the likes of which Lex had never experienced—an almost otherworldly sensation pulsing up and down her twitching nerves, tearing into the very depths of her—

“Lex?” Uncle Mort said.

She blinked hard as the surge subsided. She threw a desperate glance at her uncle, who for some reason looked impressed rather than concerned. Zara’s expression, on the other hand, was the strangest conglomeration of awe, horror, surprise, jealousy, anger, and the slightest hint of—was it curiosity?

But it passed just as quickly as it had surfaced, her face melting back into a look of concentration as she finished Culling the glowing Gamma and placed it in the Vessel. “Scythe, now,” Zara instructed.

Lex could barely breathe. “Wait—I can’t—”

“Come on.” Zara grabbed Lex’s hand as they simultaneously scythed back into the ether—

—and out just as fast, this time without Uncle Mort. They now stood in an alley. A homeless person of indeterminable gender lay slumped on the ground.

“Go,” Zara said.

“But it burns,” Lex gasped.

This time Zara’s face gave away nothing. “Come on, hurry up.”

Lex shot her a pained, pleading look, but she knew now that it wouldn’t get her anywhere. She had a job to do, and she sure as shit was going to do it. So she closed her eyes, held out her finger, and entered the world of pain once more.

Once Zara finished Culling and they had scythed to the mangled wreckage of a car accident, Lex didn’t even bother to glance at the blood splattered across the broken windshield before jabbing her finger into the driver’s arm. Anything to get it over with as soon as possible. Upon their arrival at a hospital, she barely noticed the sobbing family members alongside the cancer patient’s bed as she extended her touch. And when they landed in a posh living room where a young man lay splayed out across a couch, it wasn’t until after she had rapped him on the noggin that she registered the gleaming red bullet hole in his chest. And the startled look on his face. And the—

“Good job,” Zara said in a voice that sounded less than sincere. “Let’s head back.”

Zara prepared to scythe, but Lex had not joined her. She was staring at the door to the kitchen.

A figure was standing there, watching them.

And aiming a gun.

“Who is that?” Lex asked.

Zara looked up. “Who?”

“That woman over there—she’s watching us!”

“No she’s not, no one can see us. Come on, scythe upward—that’ll always automatically return you back to Croak.”

“But she has a gun!”

“It doesn’t matter! She’s frozen in time, she can’t shoot it.”

Lex felt a stab of relief, one that quickly melted into dread. “She murdered him.”

“Let’s go, Lex.”

Lex’s hands suddenly grew very hot. “But we can’t just let her get away with it!” she protested, lunging toward the woman. Something had taken hold of her. It was similar to the inexplicable rage she felt all the time, but—no, it was so much more than that—

“Lex!”

Without missing a beat, Zara grabbed her arm, slashed the silver blade up through the air, and yanked her back into the ether.

***

Whereas Zara landed back in the Field with a graceful hop, Lex crashed to the ground like a newborn giraffe. She was about to begin yelling, and maybe even punching, but Uncle Mort started in before she could ball her hand into a fist.

“Damn, Lex!” he said as she jumped to her feet, his face beaming with pride. “That was the smoothest first Kill I’ve ever seen! How do you feel?”

Her rage briefly subsided at this generous outpouring of praise, though her hands still felt abnormally warm and tingly. “I feel . . .” She was at a loss for words. What exactly should she be feeling? Guilt over the lives she had just ended? Lingering pain from the brutal shocks? Rage over the woman who had gotten away? Or—and she suspected this was the most appropriate option—shame over the fact that she was apparently so good at it all?

“Conflicted,” she finally said.

“I knew it from the start, you’re a natural.” He patted her on the back. “How did you do on the others?”

“Actually—”

“Fine,” Zara said.

Lex’s jaw dropped. She started to object, but the look Zara shot her could have silenced a pack of screech monkeys.

“Overdose, car wreck, cancer, GSW,” Zara rattled off. “Great job, all around.”

They were interrupted by Uncle Mort’s Cuff. “That’ll be Norwood. Hang on a sec,” he said, walking away to yell at his wrist.

Zara looked at Lex. “You’re welcome.”

“Are you out of your mind? We just let a murderer off the hook for no reason!”

“We have plenty of reason,” Zara said under her breath. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you could have gotten into? I just saved your ass back there! Just stick to the plan from now on, okay?”

Lex opened her mouth to tell Zara exactly where she’d like to stick such a plan, but Uncle Mort had finished his call, so she was forced to let it go. But she continued to glare at Zara, who now had a smug look on her face.

“Getting late,” Uncle Mort said. “You ready to head home?”

“Already?” Lex glanced up in disbelief at the darkening sky. Hadn’t she eaten breakfast only a little while ago?

“I told you time flies.” He turned to face Zara. “Thanks for your help, Zar.”

“No problem. And good luck tomorrow,” she told Lex. “You’ll need it.”

“Why?”

“Oh, no reason,” she said as she walked back toward town. “Your partner is just an acquired taste, that’s all.”

Lex snorted. “Who around here isn’t?”

***

The second she entered the kitchen, Lex realized she was famished. “I’m about to gnaw my arm off,” she said to Uncle Mort. “What’s for dinner?”

“Dinner?” He seemed confused. “I already gave you breakfast.”

“Well, on most planets, guardians feed their kids three meals a day.”

“That seems excessive.”

“What are your feelings on frozen pizza?” a third voice asked.

The boy from that morning stood idly in the doorframe, once again wearing that maddening smirk. “Mort doesn’t really believe in cooking,” he said, swinging into the room. He opened the freezer door and nimbly transferred a pie from the box to the microwave. “He calls it a waste of time and sulfuric acid.”

Lex attempted to disguise the mangled expression of intrigue and annoyance that had involuntarily appeared on her face. “And you would know because you’re his . . .”

“Pool boy.”

“There is no pool!” She turned to Uncle Mort, the ire rising once again. “What is he
doing
here?”

Uncle Mort heaved an overdramatic shrug. “What are any of us doing here, really?” he said, waving his hands philosophically.

“Jesus. You’re both evil.”

“That’s no way to talk about your uncle,” her uncle said.

“Or your partner,” Driggs added.

“What?” Lex squawked, a whole new stew of emotions bubbling over. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed the salt shaker and hurled it at him, followed by the pepper. “
You’re
my partner?”

Driggs caught both items and began to juggle. “Yes, he is,” said Uncle Mort. “And in case you’ve forgotten, you still have a full week of training left—training that I can easily cancel and turn into a one-way ticket back home if you keep acting like a troglodyte.” Lex frowned, but lowered the sugar bowl she had readied. “So you two better find a way to get along. Now hug it out.”

“No way.” She eyed Driggs. “I’m not hugging that.”

“Oh yes you are.” Uncle Mort was enjoying this little show. “Befriend or else.”

She had no choice. Careful to avoid Driggs’s gaze, Lex reluctantly entered into the frosty embrace.

“You have no intention of befriending, do you?” Driggs whispered.

“I’d rather take a bath with a toaster.”

Oblivious to their murmurs, Uncle Mort gave a satisfied nod as they withdrew. Driggs, a mischievous look in his blue eye, removed the half-cooked pizza from the microwave, sliced it into two sloppy halves, and gestured for Lex to follow him. “We’re gonna go do some trust falls, okay, Mort?” he said, disappearing with the plates out the door.

“Yeah, okay,” Uncle Mort muttered as they went outside. “Go bond.”

Lex watched Driggs clamber up a ladder with their dinner. “Climb,” he said.