HE WATCHES FROM the trailer porch as she, and her children, start walking. Her husband holds the car keys up and laughs. She begins walking toward the trailer park entrance on the highway. He calls Jessie back inside and shuts the door. He looks out the window and watches the blood red sun sinking over the highway. He turns off the television and turns on the radio. Bluegra.s.s chimes on the AM station.
He hears the neighbor"s door again. He peers through the window and sees her husband stumble drunkenly into their car. As her husband peels out of the driveway, music echoes in the trailer. Picking up his keys, he goes out to the truck.
He climbs behind the wheel and the monster roars to life. Twilight paints the sky; he drives off in the direction of the car. He can see the lights swerving across both lanes of empty highway. The bluegra.s.s plays and the highway sings. He accelerates and turns on his lights.
He catches up to the car and follows until there are no houses, traffic, or witnesses. He flashes his hi-beams on-and-off until the car"s brake lights illuminate, and he pulls over on the shoulder. He stops behind the car and waits with his brights on. After several minutes, her husband gets out and walks toward the truck with a baseball bat in his hand. He swears, swinging the bat threateningly.
The man gets within five feet of the raging truck, he slowly depresses the accelerator until the engine howls with power. The front-end begins to vibrate and the man stops, takes the bat, winds up, and prepares to smash the headlights.
"C"mon, a.s.shole!" Her husband yells, "Get out of the d.a.m.n truck!"
He stomps the brake to the floor, slams the truck into drive, lets up on the brake, and unleashes the pent up energy of the beast. Propelled by the engine, the truck pops violently forward and smashes into the man, sending the bat flying across the highway. The truck burns rubber as it wastes him, grinding him into the pavement.
He is barely able to control the truck, but brings it to a stop. He U-turns and looks at the lifeless form on the broken black top. He cautiously glides to a stop near his victim, gets out of the truck, and walks toward the pulp spread across the highway. He"s amazed at how much mess the victim made. He pulls out the latex gloves and fishes for the wallet from the man"s b.l.o.o.d.y pants. This time, he takes the money along with the license.
He returns to the truck, then drives off in search of his neighbor and her children. He drives for nearly an hour, just listening to the radio and thinking of her. He remembers the sweet white linen dried in the sun.
Finally, in the distance, he sees her walking on the shoulder of the road. Her oldest boy clings to hera"he was like that little boy once. On the radio, a bluegra.s.s song with mandolins plays, and the highway starts to sing. He catches up to them, and opens the pa.s.senger door.
"It"s dangerous out here; you shouldn"t be walking alone."
She smiles. "I don"t know about that. It"s pretty dangerous back there. I can"t let anything happen to my kids."
"Get in. I"ll take you to my place."
Reluctantly, she tells the boy to climb in. "What about my husband?"
He looks at her. "What about him?"
She closes the door and quietly they drive back to his trailer. She looks at her empty driveway as they pull in. He sees concern in her face.
"He"s gone. I saw him pull out just after you left. That"s when I came to get you," he says smiling.
She"s moved by his kindness. "You didn"t have to do that."
She softly touches him, "Thank you."
They go into the trailer and the boy plays with Jessie. She holds the baby close; he"s asleep. "Would you like to see him? He"s so precious when he sleeps." She unwraps the infant"s head.
Nervously, he pulls the blanket away to get a better view. "He"s beautiful." He remembers his own brother, and a sense of justice comes over him. "He is just beautiful."
"Nothing is more precious than a sleeping baby." She gently kisses the infant. "I"ve gotta thank you for bein" so kind." Alicia leans close and kisses him. "I wish there was more men like you in the world."
Dad Brings a Deader Homeby Yvonne Navarro Yvonne Navarro is the author of "AfterAge," "deadrush," and the novelizations of both "Species" movies. Her work has appeared in a number of publications including "The Scream Factory," "Grue," "Gauntlet," and "Palace Corbie" among several others. Her novels have also been nominees for Bram Stoker Awards for superior achievement in a novel, and has had several appearances in the "Years Best" anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling. She currently resides in Northern Illinois.
"WHAT ARE YOU doing?You can"t bring that dead piece ofs.h.i.t in here!"
Joe"s father ignored him and gave the deader a little push through the front door. "Go on in," he ordered, as if it could actually hear him. Then, "Sit down, please." In sync with his voice, the older man"s fingers worked hesitantly on the fingerpads of a small remote box.
Joe stared at the deader angrily. The thing moved easily enough, but a little sluggishlya"as if the microprocessor"s commands weren"t being transmitted fast enough. Maybe that"s what happened when they zinged back an eight-year-old. It looked ridiculous, sitting on his mother"s paisley-print couch like some kind of over-sized doll. Probably an older model, he thought derisively. But still expensivea"
"Where"d the money come from? Huh? Where"d you get the money to pay for it?" he demanded.
Alex Weiland, a big man accustomed to slinging sides of beef in a meat-packing plant, couldn"t meet his son"s eyes. Joe felt heat rush to his face.
"You used part of my college fund, didn"t you?" He slammed his fist down on the back of the couch. The deader never flinched.
"Come on, Bernie. I"ll show you to your room," Alex said. He pushed a b.u.t.ton and the deader stood obediently.
Joe"s jaw dropped and he stared at his father with horrified eyes. "Bernie?" he whispered. "You named himBernie? " His knees bent and he dropped onto the couch. "Oh, Jesus."
Alex turned to Joe, his eyes pleading. "You have to understand. Your motherneeds thisa"just for awhile, until she gets her head straight. Then we"ll sell him and get our money back. Okay?"
"No," Joe said woodenly. "You"re wrong. She doesn"t need some corpse walking around trying to replace my brother. You"re even going to put him in the same room, aren"t you?" Alex didn"t answer and Joe raised his face, unashamed at the tears he felt slipping down his cheeks. "Bernie can"t bereplaced , dad. He"s nothing but smashed pieces nowa"the monorail made sure of that. And thisthing doesn"t evenlook like him."
His father turned away; the deader followed.
"He can"tbeBernie!"Joe howled.
He was alone in the living room.
JOE WATCHED HIS mother watch the deader. She didn"t seem surprised, so he guessed this was something she and his father had discussed, a family thing to which he had not been privya"like so many others since Bernie"s death six weeks ago. Cathy Weiland was quiet during the meal, cutting her food, putting it in her mouth for a few token chews before swallowing it, then washing it down with a generous swallow of wine. The meal, Joe felt positive, was wonderful; as things were, he couldn"t taste anything and the efforts of his mother to make his favorite meala"Swiss steaka"were wasted.
Speaking of waste, he saw with disgust that she had placed a full plate of food in front of the deadera"he would not,could not call it by his brother"s namea"who, of course, didn"t eat. After dinner maybe his father would take the thing out to the shed and give it an injection or something to replace the nutrients in its system. Had it come with an instruction book?
In the meantime, it just sat there, staring at nothing.
The deader had brown hair that curled a little at the ends and bloodless, rubbery-looking skin. His mother had removed the sonar gla.s.ses to reveal the deader"s dark, empty blue eyes; a tiny spear of pain went through Joe as he realized the deaderdid slightly resemble his brother.
He eyed it resentfully. It didn"t move mucha"none of them did. Unlike living people, deaders only moved when the microprocessor or remote control told them to. A living child would have fidgeted, scratched at his neck, swung his legs under the too-tall chair. Joe wondered who it had beena"where had it lived, what had killed it? Were there people out there somewhere that had loved this little boy like he and his parents had loved Bernie? If so, why had they allowed this to happen? Or did they even realize their son"s body was sitting at a dining room table in front of a congealing supper with a family of strangers? The kids at school had often speculated on a black market for bodies; maybe the unknown couple slept soundly with the false belief that the boy"s body was safely buried in a neighborhood cemetery.
Joe pout his fork down and pushed his chair back. "I can"t eat with that thing at the table."
His mother looked away from the deader for the first time. Her eyes slid down Joe like brittle shards of blue ice.
"You are not excused," she said.
Joe glanced at his father"s hard face and hesitated, then settled back onto his chair and stared at his plate. He could hear the clink of his parents" utensils as they continued the meal, the tick of the old-fashioned wall clock behind him as it worked away the seconds.
"It"s not going to work, mom," he finally said in a low voice. He felt like crying again. "This thing can"t even speak. Bernie wasalive . He used to t-talk about th-thingsa""
"Shut up," his mother said.
"a"going on at s-school," Joe continued. He struggled to get the words out around the salty lump of grief in his throat. "He always l-laughed."
"Shutup , I said! Didn"t you hear me?" Cathy"s voice was strident.
He tried to be quiet, he really did, but the words found their way out on their own.
"Bernie would have hated this."
His mother"s dinner plate hit him in the forehead, grinding cold meat and gravy into his eyes and brows before it fell to the floor and shattered.
"I DON"T WANT to see another scene like the one at dinner."
Joe sat on the edge of his bed, feeling the water mattress rock gently beneath his legs. The purpling bruise above his right eyebrow throbbed, the eye partially closed from swelling. He couldn"t believe this was happening. His father gazed at him sternly from the doorway, like some kind of demiG.o.d ready to mete out justice.
"I bought the deader because your mother and I agreed that it would temporarily fill the void left by Bernie"s death, maybe give her a chance to adjust to his being gone. I told you that when I brought him home."
"What she needs to do is accept that Bernie isdead , not replace him with someone else who"s just as dead," Joe snapped. He got up and went to the mirror, touching his fingers gingerly to his cheek. He thought he could still smell mashed potatoes on his skin. "Look what"s happening already. She"s never done anything like this beforea""
"That"s because you don"t know when to keep your mouth shut," Alex interrupted. "There are certain thingsyou"re going to have to accept. One is that Bernie"s death has changed your mothera"it"s changed all of us. Another is that the deader stays until she says it"s okay to get rid of him."
"Bulls.h.i.t!" Joe flared. "I"m not living in this house with that corpse walking around like some kind of voiceless movie monster." He threw open his closet and jerked out his sports bag. "When he"s gone, I"ll come back." He tossed it on the bed and opened a drawer.
A ripping sound made him turn and he saw with a jolt that his father"s large hands had torn the carryall nearly in half. "You"re not going anywhere," Alex said. His dark brows were pinched. "You"ll stay in this d.a.m.ned house until you finish schoola""
"I"m almost eighteen, remember?" Joe cut in. "I can do what I want!"
"Don"t f.u.c.k with me, Joseph!"Alex bellowed.
Joe felt his face blanch; he"d never seen his father so angry and feara"a new experience for hima"made his breath shorten. The older man lowered his voice and shuddered as he forced himself back under control.
"You just watch your manners and stay puta"and mind you, I"m not asking, I"mordering . Humor your mother and hopefully this will all blow over in a month or so."
His dad slammed the door behind him and Joe"s racing heart slowed a little. He sank back on the bed covers and cradled his aching face in his hands.
"d.a.m.n you, Bernie,"he whispered miserably."Why"d you have to fall off that monorail platform?
IT WAS CREEPY, the way it was just there all the time, moving only when you made it. Joe could never think of it as Berniea"just.i.t ; after the first few days his mother gave up trying to get Joe to call the deader by name, and on that his father didn"t push him. Every fourth word out of his mother"s mouth seemed to be Bernie, but Joe noted that while his father didn"t avoid the deader, Alex called it by his dead son"s name as seldom as possible.
It wasn"t long before Joe decided that the deader must not be functioning correctly. He"d thought for sure it would be programmed for lifelike behavior, basic tasksa"but this dumbs.h.i.t would stand for days unless you told it to sit. Shouldn"t the microprocessor kick in after a certain amount of time and get the thing off its feet? And he"d obviously been wrong when he"d a.s.sumed they were equipped with some kind of homing device; this one didn"t seem to realize it should stay with the family. Maybe that was nothing but a rumor he"d picked up, but how did you control a deader that wouldn"t stay put? From dealing with his dad, Joe figured the really effective instructions were the ones given in a yelling voice with the threat of force. But you couldn"t teach something that was deaf, felt nothing, and looked at you without comprehensiona"if it really saw you at all.
Home life turned out to be only one of his problems. The Sat.u.r.day after his dad brought the deader home, the family ran into a guy at the grocery with whom Joe had never gotten along.
"Hey, Joey! Cool," sneered Hank Beckert in his tw.a.n.gy voice. Beckert was an a.s.shole with a block of concrete for a heart; Joe ignored him and kept walking. "A deader in the family." Hank laughed nastily. "Matches your brother."
Both his mother and father gaped at the boy in amazement, unable to believe the cruel words. Joe"s vision glazed sudden red and he lunged at the older teen, who quickly danced around a woman and her grocery-laden cart; the woman glared at them both.
"You sonofab.i.t.c.h!" Joe yelled. "Get over here!"
"Better watch your new brother, buddy-boy," Hank said merrily. "Little boy"s lost!"
Joe spun and saw the deader plodding mindlessly down the aisle. His father was pushing the STOP b.u.t.ton on the remote, but the deader kept going. Joe turned back but Hank had disappeared.
"Bernie!" his mother was calling, "Come back!" She started to run after him but Alex stopped her and jerked his head at Joe. Reluctantly, Joe trotted down the aisle and reached for the deader.
It was the first time he"d touched it. His fingers wrapped around the deader"s wrist and encountered cold, dry flesha"there was no warm blood in these veins, no sir. He yanked his hand back instinctively and glanced swiftly towards his father; the look on Alex"s face made him grind his teeth and take the deader by the arm.
"Come on, deader," he hissed, avoiding the eyes of the people staring at them. "Back to the group." His fingers tightened viciously for a second, then he realized how futile that wasa"deaders didn"t feel pain. Shame filled him as he led the docile deader back to his parents; the poor kid whose body this had been had been given no choice in the matter. Joe was suddenly certain that no one would want to be like thisa"life force gone, nothing but a tool being used by somebody else. A malfunctioning one at that, he thought sadly.
With more of a sympathetic eye, Joe tried to approach the problem logically in the following weeks, deciding that if he had to live with the deader he might as well make the best of it. With that in mind, he started making it do some of the things he"d wanted his little brother to do when he"d been alive.
Which just went to show, again, that it wasn"t Bernie.
Bernie would never have cleaned his room for him. He stopped after a couple of tries at sitting on his bed and working the control pad while the deader dusted and swept around him. It just seemed too obscenely easy.
His father installed a latch on the door and began locking the deader in Bernie"s room at night to keep it from wandering around the house. Lying on his stomach in the early morning darkness, Joe pulled the pillow over his head to try and block the sound of the deader"s feet shuffling back and forth in the room next to his. He couldn"t under-stand why his parents just didn"t get the thing fixed.
Or better yet, return it.
"HEY, JOEY. I hear you mom"s gone a little crazy and named that piece of fly flesh after your little brother. Looks like I wasn"t wrong, was I?" On his way home from school, Joe glanced over as Hank Beckert slowed his convertible to keep pace with Joe. "What"s the scoop, man?" Hank had a couple of bimbos in the front seat showing plenty of cleavage but obviously no brains; both looked stoned out of their heads.
"f.u.c.k off, Beckert," he said without slowing. "Don"t you have a job to go to?"
"Touchy, touchy!" The highly-polished car glided alongside the curb like a moist red worm. "But then I would be too if my mom was nurse-maiding someone else"s decomposing brat. Tell me, does she give it baths?" The girls giggled and Hank leered at Joe over their heads.
p.i.s.sed now, Joe kicked out at the fender but missed as Hank stomped the accelerator; above the fading thrum of the car"s engine he could hear Beckert"s laughter. He spat into the street and rubbed his eyes to clear some of the dust and exhaust away. s.h.i.thead needs an oil change, he thought sourly as he shifted his books.
He poked along, knowing he"d be late for dinner but not caring. Eating with the deader at the table had stopped bothering him, though he couldn"t understand why his mom had to call it Bernie. Nor could he forget the feel of the deader"s flesh under his fingers at the store a couple of weeks ago. What if the deader wasn"treally dead, just trapped in that body? He couldn"t get rid of the thought; it went hand-in-hand with the restless shambling coming from Bernie"s room every night. No matter how many times you remoted the deader to sit and stay, twenty minutes later it was up again.
What if a person"s soul, a.s.suming there was such a thing, didn"t get to leave the body if the body was mechanically returned to life? If you could even call a deader"s pitiful existencelife . Joe stopped in the park and sprawled on a bench, watching the people around him. Over the past two months he"d noticed that deaders were becoming more and more a part of everyday lifea"or had he just never seen it before?
His wandering gaze stopped on a couple across the walk and he watched them idly. The two were in their mid-thirties, with stylish clothes that said money and plenty of it; several rings glittered on the woman"s hand, a thick rope of woven gold encircled the man"s neck. Next to them, sitting silent and unmoving on the bench, was another girl, Joe"s age. She was pretty, with dark brown eyes and clean blonde hair fixed in bouncy curls that framed her pale face. Joe"s eyes traveled appreciatively down her shoulders and stopped on the swollen stomach; disappointed, he realized she was probably seven or eight months" pregnant. As he watched, the man reached over and pushed sonar gla.s.ses on the bridge of the girl"s nose, then his wife pulled a keypad from her handbag and punched in commands; the girl responded by rising from the bench, belly distended and graceless.
Joe was stunned. He"d heard about surrogate deaders on the newscast, but that was on the east coasta"not here, in a small town a hundred miles south of nowhere. As the trio strolled away, he con-sidered the concept, remembering Bernie as a newborn and his mother wrapping an old wind-up clock in a towel and putting it in the crib. When Joe, only ten at the time, had asked why, she"d explained that it gave the baby the comforting sound of his mother"s heartbeat. The idea of a deader surrogate was mind-boggling to Joe and he could think of a hundred technical questions, such as how did the deader maintain a warm enough body temperature and provide the fetus with oxygen? And was she given extra nutrients to support the child?
And what of the deader herselfa"did sheknow she carried a child? Surely not; if a deader couldn"t feel pain, how could it feel life? But what if a soul was stranded inside, watching but unable tofeel , wanting but never able toexperience?
But above all: what kind of a person would the baby turn out to be, after growing in the silent womb of a dead woman?
"WE"RE READY TO leave. Go get your brother," Cathy said.
"What?" Joe blinked at his mother and her face turned a sudden, obvious red. He looked at his father and was perversely gratified to see that for once even the old man looked shaken.
"I-I mean, go get Bernie."