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

  And now I feel useful and I like it. So, I like to encourage her on her project just to be sure she stays busy and I can stay useful. I nudge her with my elbow and nod toward the computer again.

  “I don’t know. Unless someone can actually test this, it’s useless. And all I have is this computer. There’s no linkup. I’ve not caught even a sniff of an internet connection since the lake. But…” She trails off, biting at her lip and looking at the screen.

  “But?” I prod.

  “I think I might have something here,” she says. The way she says it—that hint of triumph hiding inside the uncertainty—draws my full attention. Her eyes lift to mine again, her brows twitching upward and an undeniable light shining in her eyes. That light is one I haven’t seen since all of this started.

  Now, I’m interested.

  “Wait, what? Really? As in, something that can fix this?”

  The victorious hint is snuffed out, just like that. With an uncertain shake of her head, she says, “It’s going to be hard to fix everything, but this,” she pauses and pokes her finger at an undecipherable line of code on the screen, “is a start. It’s manual, not remote, but it could work.”

  “Can we do it?” I ask.

  What I mean is can we—her and me—do this from within the relative safety of this complex of warehouses? It’s an idyll filled with never-to-be-sold office furniture, mountains of floral sachets, and Indian, Latin, and Chinese food meant for the international grocery stores. On the downside, it’s without power like everywhere else, and we only have a few scavenged bits of portable solar to create electricity with, the kind meant to charge portable electronics while camping or during outages. That’s enough for her computer and my music player, but not much more.

  “No, baby. I need nanites to do this. But, this code could work on a whole host of digesting nanite types. There should be plenty at any location where nanite treatment was done.” She looks back down at her code on the screen and adds, “There might be billions—heck, trillions—of them in storage, just waiting for someone to load a program.”

  I think of the military hospital, with an entire wing dedicated to nanite treatment. I think of the long hallways of isolation rooms where those being treated stayed while their nanites did their work. I think of the rooms filled with techno-magical equipment used to program, check, and then deliver nanites to the masses that surged through the doors every day.

  “It’s a long way, but we could get there,” I offer tentatively.

  She knows where I mean, because she turns the tablet over, making its screen go dark, and swivels on the floor to face me. Her hands grip mine hard, not so hard that it goes into painful territory, but close.

  “No. That’s more than eighty miles and there are only two of us. I have no way to save this data on anything other than this drive. Aside from the significant factor that if we don’t make it, this drive will be lost forever, I have no intention of losing you—a far more significant factor that I have to consider. You’re the most important person in this world to me and a trip like that would be almost guaranteed to fail with only two people and so many deaders and their ugly half-dead cousins between us and the base.”

  She licks her lips and her eyes dart around like she’s expecting a bunch of deaders to show up at the door. Sometimes, she gets like that. It happens less now that we’ve been safe here for a while, with all the deaders cleared from inside the fence, but it still happens.

  With a deep breath, she calms herself. Her eyes are clear and focused when she opens them again. She says, “No, we’ll wait for the military to start expanding its territory again. Or for anyone official at all to show up in this area. We’ll hand it off when it’s safe to do that. The risks are too great that it will never make it there otherwise. And, anyway, I’m not entirely sure about it yet. I need to work on it more.”

  I nod, but say nothing. She wouldn’t be so firm about saying we shouldn’t go if she was sure that we shouldn’t do exactly that. When she’s positive about a course of action, she just says it and that’s that. It’s only when my mom isn’t sure that she gets like this, almost like she’s trying to convince herself of the right path to take.

  It was the same when the trickle of in-betweeners around the lake turned into a stream, then a flood, and we had to leave. And again when the law offices we were holed up in became untenable because all the nearby resources ran out. Both times she was emphatic about going or staying until we really did need to go, and then she was calm and quiet.

  Her fingers dance along the back of the tablet, like she’s already busy tapping out code trapped in her brain. I know she wants to get back to work. And I’d like to go and look at the food. She reassures herself by working on her nanite program. I do it by counting packets of saffron rice. We all have our crutches these days.

  At least we’re still breathing.

  Today – Date with the Dead

  The buzz of the alarm clock is so alien that I wake up in a panic, grabbing for my crossbow and sliding into the corner of the room before I’m even truly awake. When I realize what it is, I laugh, congratulate myself on having a decent reaction time, and then shut it off.

  The first thing I want to do is see what might have happened at the fence during the night. If too many have gathered, then I’ll have a hard time getting out of the gate, and the gate is the only way out. The other gate has been blocked since shortly after my mother and I got here. She pulled a big truck up in front of the gate in a series of dangerously out-of-control jerks and it’s been sitting there ever since, tires flat and tanks long since drained of fuel.

  It takes only a little time to get ready and I fill up on cold rice—this time skipping the leftover canned tomatoes. All my gear is waiting for me, laid out in an orderly line and ready for me to go through my checklist one more time. I wrote a note before the last of the light died yesterday and as I leave the room, I use a precious bit of duct tape to affix it to the door of the office. It’s an invitation to anyone who might stumble onto this place to enjoy the sanctuary it provides, along with information on where they can find various necessities.

  I thought long and hard about whether or not to leave this note. It’s been a long time since anyone came by this place, so the chances of it happening while I’m gone—assuming I come back—are probably close to nil. But if I don’t return, I’d rather someone use it and not wonder if somebody more aggressive is planning on returning.

  There’s a second note in my pocket, this one with information on how to find this place. I won’t carry it, Sam will. I’m hoping that, if I don’t make it, Sam will be coherent enough to know to give this note to the kids he’s working so hard to protect. It’s the best I can do. In a way, I suppose it’s like my last will and testament, and for some reason I feel comforted by the idea of that.

  Before I pull the car out, I go to the edge of the buildings and take a peek at the front gate and fence. Sam is there, his mouth around a rail and a wide swath of red running from his mouth, over his neck, and probably soaking his shirt, though I can’t see that for sure from here. That’s one of the downsides of wanting metals. They tear up their mouths something fierce. It’s rare to see a deader with their teeth intact. More often, they have a mouth full of sharp and broken shards. Tongues suffer too, as does any other soft mouth tissue.

  On the gate there are still at least a dozen deaders. Some must have wandered off during the night, perhaps attracted by a disturbance somewhere else. A dozen is too many for me to open the gate safely. It opens inward and they’ll come right along with it, focusing on me the minute I get within range of whatever they can sense me with.

  I drive the car around the corner and don’t even bother to slow down, bumping up onto the grassy field and right up to the fence where Sam is still tied. At the sight of the car, he ceases his licking and goes in-betweener on me, following the car’s motion with predatory eyes and snapping jaws. A ripple of motion goes through the deaders at the gate at the
vibrations my car sends through the ground, but once I stop the car, they gradually go back to their rails.

  I sit in the car for a minute, watching Sam as he watches me, waiting to see if he’s too far gone or if he’s going to be able to get control of himself. He’s been out here a long time and he’s probably hungry. I’ve got a solution for that.

  Hopping out of the car, I grab the sack on the seat next to me and waste no time. Sam is making noises, frustrated and hungry ones, and I’ve got to stop him before I get more company. I toss a bird carcass his way, but it bounces off the rails. He couldn’t grab for it anyway with his hands tied, but it does what I wanted. It draws his attention. His nostrils flare and he jerks his head around like an animal scenting something very nice.

  I take out a second one, and this time, hold it in my hand until his eyes lock on it. Once I’ve got his full attention focused on my outstretched hand, I step close and hold it to the side, so that his eyes follow its progress. I reach out quickly and shove my snippers between his wrists, cut the zip tie, then toss the feathery carcass in a slow underhand throw over the fence.

  He reflexively turns to follow the path of the bird, then scrambles for it when it hits the ground with a pitiful thud. He sits down on the ground and tears into it. It’s a pretty bird, some sort of dove, I think. Gray with black and white, and even a hint of soft pink, it also has a rounded head and gentle eyes. It’s one of my favorite kinds. Their strange cooing sounds sad and beautiful and it comforts me when things get bad. My sack is heavy with their bodies. They had no fear of me, seeming only confused when my arrows started to bring them down from the roof at dusk. I feel a tear slip down my face and wipe it away impatiently.

  When he’s done, his face is covered with the remains of the bird, feathers stuck to him like he’s trying to be funny. They flutter when his head whips around toward me again. I toss over another, then another, and we keep on like this while the sun rises in the sky and he fills whatever strange need the in-betweeners have that requires so much fresh, raw flesh.

  After about a dozen birds, he stops eating suddenly. He’s still sitting splay-legged on the ground, his head bent over the last bird I sent over the fence. He lowers his hands, now more feathery gore than anything else, and seems to be looking at them. I wonder for a moment if some new stage of in-betweener behavior is about to start when he looks up at me. In his eyes are disbelief, disgust, and pain, directed not at me, but at himself. I’m sure of that.

  To be an in-betweener has got to be horrible. It’s something I’ve thought about. If I think it’s going to happen to me and there’s no hope, I’m pretty sure my decision will be to blow my head entirely off with a double-barreled shotgun blast to the head. It might not work, but obliterating the head is the one way I know of to ensure the deaders and in-betweeners truly die. And I won’t have to worry about noise at that point.

  But to be an in-betweener and understand what you are must be the worst possible fate of all. And I think that's exactly what has happened to Sam.

  He drops the bird and wipes his hands down his face. It’s awkward and looks more like a slap, but he manages to wipe off a good bit of the mess. Then he drags his hands across the ground, wiping them as well. When he regains his feet, I have to admit that he does look healthier under all the dirt and bloody bits. His color is better—where I can see it—and his face almost seems plumper, like a dehydrated person after drinking their fill.

  “Are you with me, Sam?”

  He starts at my voice, but doesn’t rush the fence or anything like that. He grunts a little, like he’s testing his voice, then says, “Go.”

  It’s the clearest word I’ve heard him say. Maybe it’s the birds, but he seems very lucid. I hope he’s up for the rest of what I need him to do.

  “I can’t get the gate open with them there. Can you help me get rid of them?” I ask, pointing to the gate and the deaders congregated there.

  He bounces on his knees a little, but also nods his head, so I’m even more convinced he’s thinking clearly after his feast of birds. It seems the letter from Veronica about feeding was right about more than just keeping him a little tamer.

  I wait to see what he’ll do next. I don’t have to wait long. He looks at the deaders, then at me, then he shrugs. I take the shrug to mean he’s looking for some instruction on how to accomplish what I want. The way he tossed that deader into the car was great, but there aren’t enough empty cars along the street for him to do that with all of the deaders. I open the hatch of my car and pull out a rope I’ve already prepared. I was thinking I would have to do this myself, at best maybe using him to distract the deaders, but if he can stay like he is right now, I may have a better idea.

  He’s watching me, so I toss one of the loops over my head and tighten it a little around my neck. Then I motion as if I’m putting the next loop around another neck. “Do you understand?”

  “Ya,” he says and holds out his hands.

  Once he has the rope, he doesn’t hesitate. He walks right up to the deaders, pulls one off the fence, and cinches the first loop around the thing’s neck. There are a few extra loops, but I’m okay with extra. When he’s done, he has eleven fairly docile deaders lined up and roped. It’s more difficult to get him to understand that the final loop on the end needs to go over one of the spikes at the top of the fence away from the gate, but we eventually get it worked out. There’s one moment of worry on my part when he climbs onto the brick base and reaches for the top finials, but he seems to be much more capable of control this morning. It’s a good data point, even if I do have to kill him again later.

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

  People aren’t safe.

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

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

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

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

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

  “Sam! Stay with me!” I snap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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