Croak

  “Um—” Lex was thrown. “Hardly ever.”

  “See? It’s easy to ignore the injustices of the world. People do it every day. And that’s precisely what you’ll be doing here.”

  “Or else what? Memory wipe and exile?”

  “For lesser offenses, yeah. But for harming a nontarget . . .” He and Driggs exchanged somber glances. “Let’s just put it this way: the Grimsphere crime rate is virtually nil. Draw your own conclusions.”

  “But—”

  “Enough, Lex,” Uncle Mort said, gruffly taking his niece by the shoulders. “It comes down to this: violating the Terms is the fastest way to obliterate your career, life, and any happiness you ever hoped to achieve from either. You decide to attack a non-target, you better damn well be prepared to pay the consequences. Got it?”

  Lex’s shoulders fell. She nodded.

  “You’re done for the day. Go home, clear your head, and we’ll start fresh tomorrow,” he said, a stab of disappointment in his voice.

  But as Driggs and Lex got up to leave, her eye lingered for a half a second more on her uncle’s face, which she could have sworn bore the unmistakable expression of someone extending a dare.

  ***

  “This is bullshit,” Lex said, stomping down the street. “Letting murderers and rapists off the hook because of some idiotic rule. Letting them go on killing for your own entertainment.”

  “Jesus, Lex. It’s not like that.”

  “But it would be so easy to stop them! I’d recognize that guy’s face again in a second; all we’d have to do is find out where it happened, track him down, and bam—no more dead kids!”

  “There’s always going to be dead kids, Lex,” Driggs said in a softer tone. “And there’s always going to be unspeakable crimes. Who are you to decide who gets punished and who doesn’t?”

  Lex screwed up her face. Back at school, she didn’t even need an excuse to lash out at people—and now she was expected to withhold her wrath in the presence of actual criminals?

  Things were so complicated here. If only she could talk to her sister, Cordy would fix everything. And Mom would bake her two dozen cookies. Hell, even Dad would know what to say to make all of this feel right, instead of so, so wrong.

  “This sucks,” she said in a small voice.

  Driggs made a couple of awkward movements as they walked, as if he were trying to touch her in a reassuring way, but eventually he gave up. “It gets easier,” he said in a sympathetic voice. “I promise.”

  Lex remained silent.

  “Hey,” he said, brightening. “I know what’ll cheer you up.”

  He would say nothing more until they got to the house. Once inside, he led her into the living room and sat her down at a small table, its bulky contents covered by a drop cloth. “Why don’t you play with this for a little while?” he said, removing the cover.

  Lex’s heart stopped mid-beat. “There is a God,” she whispered, staring at the ancient computer. She clawed at Driggs’s shirt. “Internet?”

  “Ow. Yes.” He turned it on. “But I don’t know how great the connection is. We hardly ever use it.”

  “What is wrong with you people?” she grumbled, pounding at the keys. “How can you not care about what’s happening in the world?”

  He gave her a sad look. “Wait until you’ve seen as many blood-soaked teddy bears as I have. The world is highly overrated.” He grabbed a box of Oreos from the top of the refrigerator and headed to his room. Minutes later, a crash of drumming erupted from within.

  Lex watched him go, then signed into her email account. Her heart sank into a puddle of guilt as she studied the screen. Eleven messages, all from Cordy.

  hey dingus,

  where ARE you? does uncle mort live in the stone age or something? or maybe he locked you up in his dungeon basement. how many other bodies are down there?

  michael thorley came into the store today. i was too busy staring at his eyes to listen to his order so when he said he wanted extra nuts, i started laughing uncontrollably for some reason, until he just sort of left without taking anything. so yeah. i’ll pretty much never be able to go to school again.

  write back, idiot.

  cordy

  p.s. mom found the mountain of dirty laundry you left in the closet. she is not pleased.

  Lex couldn’t type fast enough. She poured her heart out—from Uncle Mort and the town to Juniors and the Afterlife. She told her about the way she felt when she Killed, about the painful shocks. She described the situation with the girl in the woods in graphic detail, followed by a desperate plea for advice. And she closed with the very true statement that she missed Cordy more than anything in the known galaxy, including television.

  When she finished, Lex read back over what she had written.

  Her heart sank. “I can’t send this,” she told the screen.

  She couldn’t tell Cordy what Croak really was, not unless she wanted them both to end up with giant holes in their memories. But she couldn’t make anything up, either. Cordy would see right through her and start asking questions, which would only lead to more lying.

  Lex swallowed hard. There were no other options—she’d just have to ignore her. She went to click Discard, then changed her mind and hit Save. Maybe she’d think of something.

  Frustrated, she stood up and began pacing around the living room. She stopped short in front of the jellyfish tank as their graceful, eerie beauty caught her eye. The gelatinous blobs quivered and drifted through the water, their ghostlike tentacles stretching across the glass like paint strokes on a canvas. She shuddered, marveling at the visions they had the power to see, imagining a life that consisted of nothing but nightmarish revelations of death.

  It came to her in a flash, then disappeared just as quickly: a sudden urge to break the glass and set them free.

  12

  “Whoa,” Lex said a few days later as she and Driggs scythed into a dingy-looking bathroom. They looked at the target, a middle-aged woman in skintight leopard print leggings, slumped over a toilet. “There’s something you can’t un-see.”

  Driggs did not reply. He squinted at the woman, then wedged himself in next to the toilet and grabbed a hunk of her peroxide-blond hair.

  Lex recoiled. “Driggs, ew.”

  He ignored her and continued to lift the woman’s head. “I knew it! No injuries, no trauma, and voilà.” He angled the head at Lex.

  Two lifeless white orbs stared back at her.

  “So it wasn’t an anomaly,” she said.

  “Nope.”

  She pointed at the empty vodka bottle on the counter. “Think that has anything to do with it?”

  “Since when did alcohol miraculously evolve the ability to erase eyeballs?”

  The past few days had been interesting, to say the least. As Driggs had promised, the Juniors were quick to become friendly toward Lex again—though there was no denying the truth that she was different from them and always would be. As for Lex’s newfound Killing career, she continued to impress Uncle Mort with her speed, skills, and overall kickassery as a Grim—although she was still bitter about the clash over the girl in the woods. Violent deaths popped up at least once a day, and although thus far she had tried very hard to do as he instructed and control her vengeful impulses, the question of how long she could keep it up was never far from her mind. And the shocks that still racked her body with each Kill weren’t showing any signs of weakening, either. In fact, a red, bubbling blister was beginning to form on her finger where they had burned her raw.

  But none of these headaches were enough to squelch the overall sense of fulfillment that had taken root in Lex. Almost everything had gotten easier (again, just as Driggs had promised), and instead of feeling uncomfortable about being the one to pull the plug, Lex was now beginning to truly appreciate the responsibility with which she had been trusted. Being so close to people who had been alive only a yoctosecond ago—there was a sad, haunting beauty to it all.

  It couldn?
??t be denied any longer: Lex had fallen in love with Croak. She loved the people, she loved the town, she loved that she belonged, and she loved being a part of something significant. Lex had finally found her purpose in life, and it wasn’t, as previously thought, to drive her principal to early retirement.

  Still, each day held the promise of a new curveball. After the white-eyed woman, Lex and Driggs scythed out of the bathroom and into the whooshing ether. The roaring din soon ceased, as well as the whirl of incomprehensible images—

  But the weightlessness remained.

  Lex looked around shakily, seeing nothing but blue sky. Open and peaceful, it almost reminded her of the Afterlife. Until she looked down.

  At clouds.

  And birds.

  And finally, miles beneath her floating body, the ground.

  Lex sucked in a breath. Then she screamed. Then she swore very loudly. Seven hundred miles away, her mother unwittingly glanced at the money-filled jar in her kitchen for reasons she would never be able to ascertain.

  Driggs watched in amusement as Lex wriggled helplessly in the air, clawing at nothing. “Relax, spaz,” he said. “We’re not dealing with Wile E. Coyote physics here. If you haven’t fallen by now, you’re not going to. Turn around.”

  Lex embarked upon the odd task of rotating herself in midair, paddling her limbs through the troposphere in a comical attempt to accomplish what Driggs was so irritatingly performing with ease. With one final push, she twisted far enough to witness the reason for their impromptu swim through the heavens.

  A colossal explosion loomed before them, suspended mid-blast in the center of the sky. The smoldering fuselage of the plane had cleaved into two pieces, the metal torn apart into long, jagged strips. Orange sparks arced out in every direction. A black cloud had begun to form, as well as clusters of smaller dots floating around the wreckage, which Lex recognized as bodies.

  A lot of bodies, she thought somberly.

  She twisted a little more until the scorched figure of a woman came into view. Lex held her breath, looked away, and gently touched the woman’s forehead. As the Gamma began to emerge, Lex gaped at the plane.

  “Hey!” she said as more deathflashes flickered in the distance. “Is that—”

  Driggs followed her gaze as he Culled. “Kloo and Ayjay, yeah.” He nodded toward a bunch of other Senior Grims dispersed throughout the havoc. “This is a multiple, so a lot of our people are on it.” He stuffed the Vessel into his pocket and raised his scythe. “In fact, we’ll probably have to—”

  They scythed through the ether, then ended up on the opposite side of the wreck.

  “—stay here for a couple of swipes.”

  They hit about five more targets at the site, all of whom had suffered injuries Lex never could have thought possible. With each swipe, a new nightmare: charred-black skin, severed limbs, errant viscera—

  And then it stopped.

  She had just torn her gaze from a brutally disemboweled flight attendant when she found herself back in the Field, under the Ghost Gum. The afternoon sun shone happily overhead.

  Lex swayed where she stood, gazing at the pale skin of the tree, her mind a wasteland. She couldn’t even begin to process the images she had just seen, the sensations she had just felt, the vomit she had almost discharged. Driggs watched her with an unreadable expression on his face. The eerie, naked branches of the tree rocked in the gentle breeze.

  “Hey,” he said tenderly after a moment, catching her troubled eyes. “You want a corn dog?”

  ***

  Corn dogs are rarely the solution to anything, but Lex was starving and shaken, and a hot, deep-fried meal is usually a fine remedy for both. And so she found herself at the Morgue, squished into the Junior booth between Ferbus and Ayjay, who were engaged in a healthy debate over how many sugar packets Ferbus could fit up his nose (five).

  “D-money,” said Ferbus through a noseful of sugar, “you make the stuff yet?”

  “No, I’ve been working. A concept you may be unfamiliar with,” Driggs said, dodging the french fry Ferbus threw. “I’ll do it after work.” He turned to Kloo. “We saw another weird death today, one of those white-eye things. How about you?”

  “No, not yet,” said Kloo. “I’m starting to think you’re making the whole thing up.”

  “He probably is.” Ferbus snickered. “Still think a Grim is doing it?”

  “Actually, I do,” said Driggs. Ferbus laughed harder, a mist of sugar spraying out of his nose.

  At the moment, Lex couldn’t have cared less about the white-eye deaths. The image of the plane crash and the woman’s charred remains was still pounding through her rattled head. Her stomach turned as she recalled the mutilated victims, the last moments of their lives a nightmare of—

  “We helped them,” Kloo whispered. Lex snapped out of her trance and stared at her, wondering how the girl knew what she had been thinking. Kloo gave her a warm smile. “Multiples, explosions, natural disasters—they don’t get any easier, but they’re not so bad if you keep in mind that you’re setting those targets free. No matter how much they suffer in those last few seconds, the end does arrive—and with it, relief. What comes next in the Afterlife is a blast, and you’re the one who brings them there.”

  “That’s . . . true.” She smiled at Kloo, a calm settling over her. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Kloo gave her an affectionate tap on the arm. “Any time, hon.”

  Now in slightly better spirits, Lex perked back up to what Driggs was saying.

  “—And odds are, it’ll happen again.” He leaned in to the group. “So here’s the plan. Kloo and Ayjay, triple-check all of your targets. Look for white eyes. And if you can’t figure out the cause of death, try to remember all the little details of the situation. Sofi, let’s take a look at the logs, see if the Smacks turn up anything weird. Elysia, Ferbus—watch for anything strange going on in the Afterlife. And Zara, take any extra Field shifts that you can. Got it?” Everyone nodded. “Oh, and you know the drill—don’t tell any Seniors.”

  “Why not?” Lex asked.

  Sheepish looks abounded. “We got in big trouble last year for doing this sort of thing,” Elysia said.

  “Huh?”

  “The suicides,” Ayjay said between bites.

  “There were a bunch of kids at a high school in Connecticut who started hanging themselves,” Kloo said. “All alone in their bedrooms, one by one, every few days or so.”

  “Hey, I remember that,” Lex said. “It was on the news.”

  “Right,” Ferbus said, “but no one could figure out why they were doing it. We thought that if we poked around their rooms a little, we could figure out what was going on. But someone ratted us out.” He shot a scornful glance at Zara.

  “I’ve told you a hundred times, it was for our own protection,” she said, pursing her lips. “And if you want my opinion, I don’t think it’s right to keep quiet about this either. Mort would want to know.”

  “I don’t want your opinion.” Ferbus made a face at her. “Quit being such a teacher’s pet, Bizarra.”

  “Shut up, Fungus.”

  “You’re a fungus!”

  “Anyway,” Elysia said, “we got in a ton of trouble.”

  “Why?” asked Lex. “You weren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “Grims aren’t allowed to get personally involved, remember?” Zara gave her a pointed look. “Under any circumstances.”

  Lex let her gaze drift out the window. “So I’ve heard,” she murmured.

  “Turns out it was all a virginity pact gone wrong, or something lame like that,” said Elysia. “But Norwood got real mad at us for even investigating in the first place.”

  “Hey!” a loud voice blared through the diner.

  “Great,” Driggs groaned. “You’ve summoned the beasts.”

  Norwood and Heloise marched toward the Junior table, their thin nostrils flaring. “You. Mongrel.” Heloise pointed at Lex. “I just completed the first-week review of your
logs. Why did you leave in the middle of your shift the other day?”

  Lex inhaled sharply. The girl in the woods—now everyone would know what Lex had almost done.

  She ventured a glance at Zara, who was staring straight back. Not with a look of contempt, but rather one of mild interest, as if Lex had something large and possibly hilarious stuck in her teeth.

  “Calm down, Hellspawn,” Driggs said to Heloise. “It was no big deal. Why don’t you go back to the hub? I’m sure there are other, more important people who need to be yelled at.”

  Norwood put his hands on the table and loomed over Driggs. “Listen, you little pissant,” he said icily. “One day—and I pray that it’s not far off—this deluded arrogance of yours is gonna get you into a lot more trouble than your ignorant excuse for a brain could ever imagine. All of you.” He motioned to the table. “Nothing but goddamned punks. Mort sees potential in you? All I see is a swarm of reckless imbeciles who shouldn’t be trusted with a toothbrush, let alone the responsibility of harvesting the dead. If it were up to me—”

  “But it’s not up to you,” Driggs pointed out.

  Heloise briskly grabbed her husband before anyone could throw a punch, which is undoubtedly what would have happened next if she hadn’t intervened. Norwood straightened up, his lip still curled in a malevolent sneer. “Degenerates,” he muttered.

  Driggs eyed them as they left. “That’s why we’re doing this,” he told everyone. “To prove to those asshats that we’re not as useless as they think we are. So keep your mouths shut.”

  The rest of the Juniors nodded, even Zara. Seemingly uninterested in the source of Norwood’s accusations, they soon finished lunch without another word about it. Lex exhaled, relieved.

  “So I’ll see you . . .” Driggs said, giving a queer, suggestive nod to the crowd as they walked out of the diner, “tonight?”

  Ayjay grinned, forming his hand into the shape of a gun. “Definitely.”