I’d asked my mother once what happened to the hunters that came after us in Ohio. If we just let them go. I remember the darkness in her expression when she’d told me they would never trouble us again. I wonder if the missing resurrectionists are finally enough for Sarah to make the call for reinforcements, if that’s why she’s hesitating.
As I open my mouth to ask, there’s a click on the line, another call coming in on her end. “I’ve got to take this,” she says. “Don’t stay home. Keep your phone on you at all times. Do you understand me?”
“I will, I promise. You’ll call me when you know anything?”
“Absolutely. Stay safe. Remember, you’re trained to handle things when they go wrong. But be careful. You have your vial on you?” There’s a split second of dead air between us. “Of course you do. I love you, Allie.”
The words sound unnatural. They’re not something we say to each other often.
“I love you, too,” I say finally, but she doesn’t hear it. The silence on the line starts long before I can get the words out.
Back in my room, I slip into a pair of jeans and a tank top. After brushing my hair, I tie it up in a ponytail and then loop it through again to make a loose bun.
I never went through a rebellious phase. I don’t wear anything flashy or dye my hair. Learning you can raise the recently deceased teaches you pretty early on it’s better not to be noticed.
There are several other things I don’t want noticed about me. One is the knife strapped to my waist, hidden by my baggy top. The other is a blade above my left ankle, another on my right. On my wrist is a bracelet made of paracord that unravels into seven feet of rope. You never know when you might need to hogtie someone.
The only thing I won’t have anything to do with is guns. If I lose a knife in a fight, I know how to block against someone using it on me. At the very least, I can arc my body and minimize damage.
I can’t dodge bullets.
I tuck a twenty dollar bill in my pocket, grab my keys and head out into the sunshine. Once I latch the gate behind me and start down the street, my hands find their way to my back pockets. I don’t know where to go or what to do until Sarah calls. She’s half an hour’s drive away. If I need to get to her, I can always take the bus.
The sidewalks teem with tourists. I hook left on Credence Avenue and follow the winding sidewalk that parallels Merciback Stream. Potted flowers hang from tall iron hooks rising off the metal fencing that keeps people from getting too close to the edge. The benches are occupied by overweight middle-aged couples drinking Blood Slurpies—nothing more sinister than extremely overpriced cherry vodka slushies in collectible plastic cups—shaded by hundred-year-old trees.
I’m suspicious of everyone I pass. My eyes linger over each person, note how normal or out of place they look, gauge whether their I survived the Fissure’s Whipp Ghost Tour t-shirt is over the top acting or if they’re actually pathetic enough to wear it. Sweat runs from the bottom of my hairline, down my neck, slowly slides between my shoulder blades. I’m being paranoid, I know that, but I don’t care.
Twenty minutes later, I climb the steps to the library. Details like missing organs don’t go unreported. Brandon might not be the only dead resurrectionist and the deaths will have made the papers. I can’t do much, but I can research.
A blast of air-conditioning hits me in the face, chills my sweat-dampened skin. The librarian glances up from her desk and smiles. I return it as the wooden door thumps quietly shut behind me.
The place is mostly empty. A row of computers sits unoccupied, but I go first for a newspaper abandoned on a table, the sports section scattered across the chair beside it. I check the date to be sure it’s today’s paper and start scanning the headlines. The front page is world drama: an oil spill, a war raging between two far off countries. I read on, looking for deaths, murders, eviscerated bodies. One would think these sorts of things would claim a prominent spot. Instead, all I find about Ploy’s friend is a vague reference to a body found in an abandoned boxcar. There’s no mention his guts went AWOL.
This is going to be harder than I thought.
I start over, scouring until I hit the last page. Not even the obituaries hint at any strange deaths. In lieu of flowers, send information, I think bitterly. It’s time to widen my scope.
I saddle up to a computer carousel and sit. When I open my email, there’s a new one from Talia. It’s been a month since I’ve heard from her, and even then, only to congratulate me on the new apartment and promise we’d hang out. I’d wanted her to be my roommate. I hadn’t been prepared for her to say no and things had been weird ever since. My finger hovers over the mouse. I click the email.
My shoulders slump. It’s two paragraphs long, mundane catch up and a vague invite for coffee ‘sometime soon.’ I don’t know why it makes me sad. Still, she’s the closest thing to a best friend I have, so I tell her about the weird job last night and my aunt’s concerns. I leave out everything about Ploy. I end the email with ‘call me when you can’. Part of me half hopes my phone will ring, but after a few minutes, I go back to work.
Opening the search page, I realize I have no idea where to start. I figure it’s best to cover my bases. Fissure’s Whipp deaths, I type first. The results are a jumble of useless information, everything from old ghost stories to domestic violence. I clear the search bar and try again. Fissure’s Whipp body missing organs leads to urban legends about kidney thieves and then an article I almost think might be promising until I realize it’s some sort of conspiracy board. The article is hours old. Are the dead walking among us? the headline proclaims in bold letters.
I start reading, expecting some sort of zombie tie-in. Instead, it’s an interview with a woman who saw her grandson killed in an ATV accident. She describes seeing him impaled by a tree branch through the chest. I perk up, leaning closer to the screen. She claims the next day her son, the boy’s father, acted as if nothing more than a small collision had occurred. There’s no way he could have lived through what she saw, she’s quoted as saying. I scan the rest of the article, already knowing the boy was saved by a resurrectionist. There’s no other explanation, unless the woman’s insane, which, according to her family, she is. She says she won’t speak to them. That they’re harboring a demon.
“Idiot,” I murmur. As a whole, we try not to bring religion into what we can do. It’s genetics, not a gift from some benevolent god.
Oddly, the most accurate information consistently comes from the conspiracy blogs. Once or twice, they pop up featuring towns I’ve heard of in passing, where families with the blood have lived for decades and formed whispered reputations.
At some point, I wander over to a snack machine and shovel in the change I’d gotten from the librarian for my twenty dollars. A bag of stale animal crackers and a Coke later, I refocus. I click link after link. I devour obituaries, cross check accidents and violent ends. Nothing. My fingers pause on the keys.
I type in my own last name. I’m not sure why I do it. I know what will come up.
I type in the word ‘found’, the word ‘dead’.
Home Invasion Takes Tragic Toll
My parents stare at me from the screen, smiling faces from a photograph most likely now tucked away in my aunt’s basement. I never asked Sarah what she did with the contents of the rest of my house. I meant to, but at first it’d been too sad and then weeks led to months and months to years. Maybe she’s waiting for me to ask for them. She hadn’t mentioned anything when I’d moved into the apartment. All the furniture came from a series of thrift shop runs.