The In-Betweener (Between Life and Death Book 1) Read online

  I look at the dark corner and see the shadows of the chain link even from where I am. It’s one of the reasons we chose to stay here after we had to leave the lawyer’s office where we hid out for a while. Aside from the fact that there was a warehouse of food that had barely been touched—these distribution hubs aren’t usually so close to towns and this was a smaller one—it had more bonuses than I can count. There were the wide views, the flat landscape, the lack of traffic or reasons for traffic, the fence—and then that chain link-surrounded room. A sort of safe room for us if we needed it.

  If the place ever did get overrun, we had a floor-to-ceiling box of sturdy chain link that we could lock ourselves into and still shoot out of. Once a holding section for the smaller, higher value goods like anti-aging creams and perfume, we emptied it and filled it with food and necessities for a long stay. At first, we slept in there every night, finally feeling like there was enough between us and the deaders to sleep deeply. Now, we prefer the office for its metal-meshed window just outside the door.

  That room has another benefit. You can lock someone inside it. Someone sick who might die.

  “Please, no,” I plead.

  It’s a step too far, locking her up. It’s like an admission that I’ll be alone and she’s going to become one of them. She’s more than likely infected. She’s fought too many of them, bathed in too much of their fluids, for her not to be. If she dies…well.

  “Yes,” she repeats, and tries to get to her feet.

  *****

  Inside the cage—behind the warehoused rows of boxed-up Asian sauces, bags of tortilla flour, and packaged Indian food—she seems to feel better. Maybe because from her point of view, she’s got one less worry if the worst happens. When I bring her another fresh pot of water, she rallies enough to talk to me.

  “I think this is dysentery,” she says. “Classic, huh?” She almost laughs. Almost.

  “What can I do for it?” I ask.

  “Honestly, without a computer and the internet, I wouldn’t know. Maybe antibiotics?”

  “Where?” I ask.

  She clutches her stomach as another cramp takes her on. When she looks up, a fresh coat of shiny sweat bathes her face in the light of the lantern. I can see that she’s trying to decide if she should tell me something or if it would be safer just to let the disease take its course.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll go looking on my own. You can’t leave me here alone!” I say, my voice rising at the end. It’s manipulative, I know, but leaving me alone is what she fears more than death, I think. She’s my mom.

  “Vet hospital down the road might have some,” she says. For her to actually say that means she’s feeling bad enough that she’s willing to endure risk to me to make it go away. That, or my little jab worked on her maternal instincts and she’d rather I at least have a destination in mind.

  “You said to stay away from hospitals,” I say.

  She shakes her head and says, “Not now so much and not one for animals. It might be looted and not have anything anyway. I’ve been meaning to go there and check it, but time sort of slipped away from me. This area has been empty so far, so it should be safe. Just don’t let anyone see you. People are worse than deaders.”

  Words seem to fail her then as the cramps rise in intensity. She starts panting she’s in such pain. I’ve never seen a person lose this much of themselves. When I was sick, I remember seeing my mother’s alarm during the bad period when chemo was taking its toll on me.

  Now our positions are reversed. She’s wasting away. I’m not sure if it’s dehydration, but she’s shrinking into herself. I’ve got to get her set up with water for drinking, buckets of water for washing herself, and some of the broth from the endless cans of it in the warehouse.

  And then, I’m guessing I’m going on a trip.

  Today - Company

  Veronica is her name, the same Veronica who wrote the note with her young-girl loops and circles. She’s been inside the little closet for three days with a toddler, a little boy. This must be the Jon from her note and he’s adorable. He’s far too quiet for a kid as little as he is, and he doesn’t smile, but I suppose that’s understandable. Given his age, he must have been only a tiny baby when the world went to hades, if he was even born before it happened.

  When Veronica comes out, leading Jon by the hand, her face crumples at the sight of the apartment. She cries fresh tears into the tracks on her dirty face when she spots the towel-covered lump on the bed.

  “Penny,” she whispers.

  I nod, thinking that I’m glad I covered it up. There are no flies in here, which is amazing to me, but the sight is bad enough, even without the head showing.

  “You’ve been in there the whole time?” I ask. “Why didn’t you come out and leave the apartment?” I bend and look into the dark little room. Someone pulled the duct away and there is, at most, six feet of space next to the air conditioning equipment. A door on the other side of the closet-like room has been nailed shut from the inside. There’s a nearly empty jug of water, a bucket that smells bad and a small nest of blankets tucked in the open space. It’s one of those machinery spaces you see in apartments sometimes, places where the management can get to do maintenance, but the tenants don’t have access to. Except, of course, if you’re smart like these guys were and tear out the duct. Whoever set this up meant it to be a hiding place of last resort.

  When I turn around and get to my feet, she’s examining me, more than a little wary of strangers. Which is exactly as it should be.

  Veronica averts her eyes when I catch her looking and says, “Sam had the keys to all the other places somewhere, but I don’t know where and I was afraid to go outside. I…I was just afraid.”

  “You wrote the note. How did you get Sam to take it to me?” I ask as I lead her and the boy into the smelly, but unbloodied, bathroom. I’m genuinely curious about this. If there is some way to keep in-betweeners at least somewhat tame, as Sam is, then I want to know about it.

  At the mention of Sam’s name, her face crumples again and I pat her back as she cries. She’s been through something horrific and I have patience. My other PhD.

  After she and the little boy drink their fill from a bucket of water, she quickly strips Jon down and washes him from another bucket on the counter, this one containing grayish-looking water. He’s filthy and he’s had more than one accident in his pants by the look of things. She seems better while she’s doing this bit of domestic business, like maybe doing practical things can distract her from all the rest. Still, she doesn’t speak for a moment.

  The water must be cold, because Jon gives out a single peep of distress when she touches him with the cloth, but he lapses back into silence almost immediately.

  “Sam told us about you. He watched you for a while, tried to decide if it might be safe to contact you. The food in this area is running out. We needed to find someplace where the kids can get some fresh air and sun,” she says matter-of-factly. She waves her cloth-filled hand over Jon’s pale torso and I see what she means. He’s as white as I’ve ever seen any human, yet he has dark hair and brown eyes.

  I nod and say nothing.

  She darts a look up at me from under her brow but looks away when she meets my eyes. “He told us about you. Before he…uh…changed, I mean.”

  “Of course,” I answer. “Why didn’t you contact me?”

  “Sam was going to, but then…” The words trail off. She doesn’t have to explain.

  “But how did you get him to come to me afterwards?” Referring to his demise with the bland “afterwards” seems safer to me, less likely to cause more tears and delay.

  She’s finished washing the boy, who stands naked and shivering on the counter, perfectly uncomplaining. It’s summer outside but inside this bathroom, with the only window facing north, it’s cooler and the water has taken all his heat away. He’s skinny. Very skinny. She’s right—they do need food, and badly.

  Inside my pocket is a pac
ket of candy. There are pallets of the stuff at the warehouse and these fruity gels are fortified with vitamins. I pull out the package and open it. The smell is almost lost in the fecal stench, but those two smell it and both of their heads whip around. I look to Veronica for permission and she nods, so I hand one of the jellied candies to Jon. He snatches it from my fingers and puts it into his mouth so fast he reminds me of a wild animal.

  I hold the package out to Veronica. I can see she’s tempted, but she says, “No. Jon needs it.” Then she pauses, looking at the brightly colored plastic bag, and asks, “Do you have more? I mean, where you live?”

  I nod and say, “Enough for all of us.”

  Eleven Months Ago - I’ll Stay With You

  I can hear her shuffling around inside the cage, but I can’t see her anymore. That’s good because I don’t think I can bear much more of that. She has nothing in there. Nothing to eat and nothing to rebuild herself with. She’s not just rotting, she’s desiccating.

  The corrugated metal and pallet structure I’ve constructed around her cage blocks the view, but not the sounds. I come here and listen every day, waiting for the day when her grunts and warbles go silent, waiting for the day she goes full-on deader and I can be sure she’s really gone. Now, listening is a torment because I wonder how much of my mother is trapped inside that brain, a brain so cooked by fever that when she died she had no idea who I was.

  But she wasn’t gone long at all. Just two minutes of silence and then I heard her suck in a breath, deep and ragged. That’s not long. People came back from that before the nanites were updated and lived normal lives as far as I know. The brains of the veggie-people were deprived of blood and oxygen for much longer. But the fever in her brain had been at a low simmer for days before she finally, mercifully, died.

  I sigh and, in response, a loud, rattling bang comes from the cage. Her snarls aren’t particularly loud, but they are mean and hungry. She’s getting more desperate, but I don’t think it’s really her inside that body. I think that’s her nanites working on her instincts for food. I think, but I don’t know.

  “I love you, Mom,” I whisper, so quietly it’s more breath than words, and listen to the banging that travels back to me.

  Today - Sam

  With Jon dressed again in halfway-clean clothes taken from a clothesline strung across the bathroom, Veronica has nothing to occupy her eyes and hands, so she turns to me.

  “Are you really going to take us with you?” she asks.

  “I am. But we should go soon in case anyone saw me driving around earlier,” I answer, squeezing past her to the bathroom window so I can peek out and look for movement. There’s none. There’s only this beautiful day with its high, clear, and blue sky.

  She pulls down a few more pieces of miniature clothing from the line and says, “What should I bring?”

  “Clothes,” I answer quickly. “That’s pretty much the only thing I don’t have a lot of. I hope you like foreign food.”

  “Huh?” she asks, confused.

  “Forget it. I’m just nervous and talking stupid,” I answer and wave my stupidity away. These two are starving. They’ll like anything. I have no idea how to talk to people anymore. Plus, I’m more than nervous. I’m terrified.

  While she pulls things off the clothesline strung across the bathroom, I think about the rest of the apartment and what is likely covering anything not in a drawer or closet. When she reaches for the bathroom door, I put my hand on her wrist and say, “No. Just tell me where stuff is and I’ll get it. And a bag for it.”

  Her hand falls from the knob and she nods. After she tells me what to look for, I go back out into the slaughterhouse that is their home and put what I can find—what is packable and not covered in gore—into a big backpack and return, helping her to hoist it onto her back. I find the baby carrier where she said it would be and bring that back as well. Jon is really too big for it, but she stuffs him into it all the same. He protests as his thighs get pinched by the too-narrow openings, but once inside, he goes silent again.

  With Jon balanced on her front and the backpack on her back, her load isn’t too heavy for her to carry. I need my hands free, ready to use weapons. We’ve been in here a while and the car is parked right outside like a big, flashing red light announcing our location to anyone who saw me driving earlier.

  “Cover his eyes while we go. Just keep your eyes straight ahead. Okay?”

  Veronica nods, swallows loudly, and slips her hand over Jon’s face. He doesn’t squirm or try to pull her hand away, which is inexpressibly sad, but also useful. We walk through the bedroom and into the large main room. It’s a long way to walk through so much carnage, particularly when that includes bits and pieces of people she may have loved.

  I don’t pause. I just grab her elbow, say, “Close your eyes if you want,” and pull her behind me. She stops suddenly, yanking me backward. I know she must have looked and is now seeing what I’d hoped she wouldn’t.

  Veronica is staring at the head under the dining table, her mouth open and her hand shaking over Jon’s eyes. I should have covered it when I left the bathroom to grab the clothes. I reach out and push her fingers back together so that Jon won’t see, hissing, “Get a grip! He can’t see this!”

  Her eyes dart to my face and then back to the head. She can’t stop looking. I grab a blood-soaked blanket off the couch and toss it under the table so that it covers the head. The other head, thank goodness, is on the other side of the couch where she can’t see it.

  “Piper,” she whispers.

  “I’m sorry about her. Truly. But it’s over for her. She’s not in pain and she can’t feel that. She’s gone for good.”

  “My fault,” she says, softly. Her eyes get watery, but no tears fall. I think she needs sleep and food and water before her body is going to be fit for a truly good cry. Her lips are so chapped they’re almost white.

  I shake my head. “No, this isn’t your fault. This isn’t your doing any more than anything in this world is.”

  She looks at the blanket-covered lump and says, “Oh yes. Yes, it can be.” She says this with such certainty, in such a low and adult voice, that I get a chill.

  “We should go. You can tell me later. After we get there and you two get some food and rest, you can tell me everything,” I say and take her elbow again. At the door, I say, “And I’ve got Sam with me, so you can see him again.”

  At my words, she freezes in place like she’s just been transformed into one of the slender pillars holding up the ceiling in this big room.

  “Here?” she asks, her voice a fearful squeak.

  “Yes,” I confirm, confused. “He brought me the note.”

  “You didn’t kill him?”

  “No, why would I? He’s been helpful, in his own way. I thought…I thought you might like to see him again, so you could be sure I was one of the good guys.”

  Veronica shrinks back from me, glancing at the door behind me, at the unbolted locks. She looks like she’s about to take off for the torn-out air duct again and get back into her closet.

  “What? You want me to take him away first?” I ask, then look at Jon. “You don’t want Jon to see him like that. I get it. We can get past so that Jon won’t see. I promise.”

  She’s shaking her head and backing up. She’s about to step into a pile of stuff that was once inside someone else’s body, so I say, “Stop.” I glance down behind her, so she knows what I’m saying. She freezes again, blanching even more. She looks like she’s going to faint for a second, but it passes.

  “You don’t understand,” she begins. There’s a bitter sort of smile on her face that turns into an angry grimace. “Sam did this.”

  I look around the room, then think back to the blood on his hands and his shirt, the stains streaking his jeans a darker blue. “Oh, shit.”

  She nods at my words, then jerks her head toward the lump under the table. “Sam, when he died, was right by the door. It was an accident. I was on watch and
I heard noises. I didn’t know he’d gone out. I just saw a shape coming in the door and…”

  I can picture exactly what she’s saying. In this world, fear makes a person more likely to pull the trigger because those who don’t pull it fast enough probably aren’t capable of pulling a trigger at all. Those who can’t shoot without thinking too much about it are dead or walking around dead.

  “I can see that happening,” I say, truthfully.

  “I dragged him out of the door, super quickly, because…well…you know. When he came back, he was like the others, but after a while, he quieted down. Then he started trying to talk. You’ve heard him?” she asks.

  “I have. That’s how he got my attention. It’s why I didn’t kill him again.”

  “It took a few days to figure out that he could understand more than he could say and we shoved birds through the mail slot for him. That kept him calm.” She points with her eyes toward the glass door leading to their balcony. There are simple box traps all over it I hadn’t noticed before.

  “It was Jeremy who said we should try to send him for you. He’d been watching you for so long and we were just about ready to figure out how to meet you, maybe get some transportation somehow out to you, that he thought Sam might remember who you were. He did, so I wrote the note and put it through the slot. I couldn’t be sure he understood, but I saw him pick up the note. With him between the door to the stairs and us, there was no way we could leave anyway. And we had no food left at all by then, so we had nothing left to lose.”

  She stops and looks at the lump again.

  “What happened, Veronica?” I ask.

  “Piper was special. You know what I mean? Not as bad off as some, but she had difficulties.”

  I have no clue what she’s saying, so I shake my head.

  “Down’s syndrome. Not bad, but definitely there,” she finally says.

  “Ah, okay.” I have no idea what bearing that has on anything, but I don’t want her to stop now. If Sam did this, I’m going to have to make a decision really soon and I’d like to know why I’m making it. He just saved two lives…but he took three. Using the cold rules of survival-based calculations, he is on the losing side of my equation.