Chapter 7
1851 Words
7
They walked onward past rows and rows of concrete columns and fancy vehicles. Jack stopped them at a particular black sedan. He guided her to the front passenger seat and opened the door. Jack swept his arm toward the interior. “Ladies first.”
Nena couldn’t hide a smile as she slipped into the leather seat. Jack shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side where Peter and he faced off. Peter had his hand on the door handle and an arched brow above his eyes. “You wish to drive?”
Jack shrugged. “Why not?”
“You do not know how to drive.”
Jack shrugged. “There’s a first time for everything.” Peter’s face fell. Jack slid up beside him and lowered his voice. “Come on, Pete, just this once.” Peter sighed, but stepped back away from the door. Jack grinned and patted him on the shoulder. “You won’t regret it.”
Peter watched him slip behind the driver’s seat and pursed his lips. “I hope not.”
Peter took a spot in the back seat and Jack started the car. The engine roared to life and Jack backed them out in spurts and jumps. Nena grasped the handle above the door and her wide eyes flickered to the driver.
Jack smiled at her as he drove forward with only a few hiccups. “I’ve been a little spoiled with Pete driving me around, but I’ll-” he stepped a little too hard on the brakes and the car came to a jerky halt. He sheepishly grinned. “It’s been a long partnership.”
Jack navigated the car around one corner and to the entrance with its two drop-down gates and small booth. He gave a wave to a shadowy figure in the dark booth. The right-hand gate rose and they drove out into a dark night.
The garage and a tall manufacturing building attached to it were surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. They drove down a paved driveway, but either side of them was covered with gray gravel. There was another booth with a gate, but they also were allowed through that exit without a fuss.
A large sign stood to their right as they left the compound. Nena turned in her seat and looked back at the large neon sign. There was an image of a red pepper with the words ‘Devil’s Delight’ in flashy text.
She arched an eyebrow and glanced at Jack. “The agency is a pepper factory?”
“Yeah. They’re advertised as hotter than hell,” he told her.
She rolled her eyes and sat properly in her seat. “That’s just awful.”
“Not in the advertising business?” he wondered.
She shook her head. “Not even close.”
“So what did you do before you were lucky enough to fall in with me?” Jack asked her.
Nena rolled her eyes. “I was around people with almost as much ego as you.”
He flashed her a grin. “I doubt that. I’m an original.”
“You’re something. . .” she muttered.
“But all kidding aside, what did you do?” he persisted.
She sank down in her chair and shrugged. “Not much. Cleaned a hospital for a living and hung out with my only friend and my dad.”
“A normal life. . .” he mused as he turned onto one of the city’s busier streets. The roads were lit with streetlights and crowded with vehicles.
Nena glanced out the window. The flashing lights of the city and the noise, once nuisances, were now welcomed to her. She pressed her palm against the window. The glass should have been cold, but she hardly felt any temperature.
She glanced at her driving companion. “What’s it mean to be Death Touched?”
Jack pursed his lips and kept his eyes on the road as he replied. “You mean all the little catches Scratch didn’t tell you? You remember how he told you Death was who we’re up against?” She nodded. “Well, he’s generally a loner type of guy. Probably too grim to be much fun, if you’ll pardon the pun. Anyway, in the past we’ve found people who he’s touched, or in other words given a little bit of himself to them.”
“To keep them alive?” she guessed.
He pursed his lips and his grip on the steering wheel tightened. “No. When he touches someone it’s only a matter of time before they die.”
The color drained from her face. “Then. . .Then that means-?”
Jack’s eyes flickered to her. “To be honest, I don’t know. He’s never saved anyone from himself before, at least not that we know of. It kind of goes against his nature, if you see what I mean.”
She looked at her lap in which lay her pale hands. Her voice was barely a whisper. “This will hurt but for a short time. . .”
Jack arched an eyebrow. “Come again?”
She shook herself and raised her gaze to him. “That’s something he said to me right before he touched my forehead. There was a lot of pain and then-and then-” she turned her gaze downward again and shook her head, “-then I don’t remember anything else until Doc was leaning over me.”
“So that’s how the bastard does it. . .” Jack mumbled as he clenched his teeth.
“But what did he do to me?” Nena questioned him as she held up her ghostly hands. “What’s going to happen to me now? What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re supposed to keep on living.”
Nena looked to him and frowned. “How am I supposed to do that when I’m dead?”
A crooked smile slipped onto his lips as he kept his eyes on the road. “You’re still you, right? Keep on being you. Nobody’ll know the difference and nobody around the Agency will care.” Jack glanced through the rear view mirror and noticed Peter arch an eyebrow. “Well, almost nobody.”
Nena stared down at her lap and bit her lower lip. “Could I. . .could I go see my dad? Just to tell him I’m-” Jack’s shaking head held her answer.
“Can’t do that. You’d get tempted to stay there and eventually there’d be some real awkward questions about why you don’t have a pulse or a heartbeat,” he pointed out.
Nena crossed her arms over her chest and slumped down in her seat. She turned her face away and toward her window. “So it’s because I’m dead.”
“Death Touched,” Peter spoke up.
Jack glared at him through the mirror. “You decide to speak up, and that’s the best you can do to console the young lady?”
“It is the truth.”
“Don’t mind him,” Jack assured her as he returned his gaze to the road. “He’s got such a dark personality that sometimes I think he was born during an eclipse.” A snort escaped Nena’s pursed lips. Jack’s eyes flickered to her and he grinned. “That’s what I want to hear. A little more life in this car and we might be able to throw a party.”
Nena gathered herself and cleared her throat before she swept her eyes over the plain interior. “Why are we driving in a car?”
“It gets great gas-mileage,” he told her.
She shook her head. “Not this car, a car. Don’t you guys have magical portals or something you can use?”
“We like to keep it simple,” he explained as he turned into a dark alley and parked the car. He opened his door, paused with one foot out of the vehicle, and glanced over his shoulder at her. “You’re not afraid of mice, are you?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Rats?”
Nina frowned. “No, but-”
“Mold?”
“Would you please tell me-”
“What about witches?”
She blinked at him. “Witches?”
He flashed her a grin. “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” He stepped outside.
Nina leaned over the divider between the seats and glanced through the door at him. “What about-” he slammed the door shut, “-witches.” Her eyes flickered to the pale man in the back seat. She gave him a shaky smile. “You wouldn’t happen to know what he’s talking about, would you?”
“I do.”
“And was he serious?”
“He was.”
Nina winced. “I was afraid you’d say-” A slam on the hood made her jump and whip her head toward the front.
Jack stood facing them with his hand on the hood and a frown on his lips. “Are you two coming?”
Nina’s face drooped and she looked back at Peter. “Is he always this pushy?”
“Often,” he replied as he slipped out.
Nina sighed and joined the two men in front of the car. Jack knelt down and lifted a manhole cover, revealing a ladder that led into foul-smelling darkness. She looked at him but pointed at the darkness. “We’re not going down there, are we?”
Jack was halfway in the hole as he grinned up at her. “Yep.”
“But-” Jack was gone, hidden by the blackness of the sewers. Nina bit her lower lip as she watched Peter climb down after him. “You can’t be serious!”
“We are, now come down here!” Jack’s echoing voice called to her.
Nina took a deep breath of mildly fresh air and reluctantly eased herself down the ladder. The slip rungs meant she hugged the ladder and the dampness soaked into the front of her clothes. “This has to be a nightmare. This has to be a nightmare,” she chanted as she sank into the darkness. “This has to be a-” She stretched her leg down for another rung yelped as her foot slipped. In her panic she lost her grip and fell backward into a pair of strong arms.
Jack grinned down at her. “I hope we don’t stop meeting like this.”
She frowned and pushed against his chest. “Let me go!”
Jack sighed. “As you wish.” He opened his arms and dropped her the few short feet to the damp ground.
Nina landed with a soft ‘oomph’ and a slight splash. She climbed to her feet and glared at Jack as he climbed up the ladder. “That’s not what I-” her eyes widened as he drew the manhole over the hole, blocking their main source of light. “What are you doing?”
“We wouldn’t want an ordinary person to follow us,” he told her as he hopped off the ladder and landed with a splash beside her. He gestured down the wide tunnel where Nina noticed a slight glow around a bend some fifty yards off. “Besides, we’re not too far from the Terminal.”
“The Terminal?” she asked him.
He offered her his arm and a grin. “You’ll see.”
She pursed her lips, but accepted his arm and let him lead her down the tunnel. Nina glanced at a passing intersecting tunnel and glimpsed floating sewage. She recoiled against Jack’s side and looked up at him. “Are all your outings this glamorous?”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at their quiet companion. “No, sometimes we go to some really filthy places, ones so bad Pete’s hair would stand on end.” Peter frowned, but said nothing.
“And zombies and witches are in this Terminal?’ she guessed.
He nodded. “Yep, and a couple other ghoulish kinds of people.”
She cringed. “So why are we going there again?”
The humor dropped from Jack’s face as he looked ahead. “The ones who keep the peace down here have had the same problems we have with the Death Shadows. There’s a rumor they caught a Corrupted and are keeping it hidden.”
Nena danced around a small puddle of questionable makeup. “Why would anyone want to hang around down-” They rounded the corner and into another world.
- Writer
