11

Vic

The seamless wall of rock behind them should have eased the tension in Vic’s shoulders. The devils had no way to follow, but his stomach twisted at the desert stretching ahead of them. Endless, the sand reached the horizon, a gritty sea the color of ground-up bones.

The train tracks had vanished, leaving only the road as a guide.

“At least it’s night,” Vic said.

“Why does that matter?” Jodi asked.

“It would be too hot by day,” Mel said. Jodi tucked away her lighter. The red haze had thinned enough that here and there a star shone through, giving enough light to walk. It had to be a good sign that this side of the tunnel had something a little closer to a natural sky.

Jodi lingered in Vic’s shadow, as if she needed his protection. Vic didn’t complain, though he did not like her walking where he couldn’t see her.

Shapes prowled in the distance, moving back and forth atop the dunes. They weren’t clear, but they blotted the few stars from time to time. Rangy, four-legged, they circled.

“Wolves?” Vic asked, squinted. “Or coyotes?”

“More demons,” Mel said. “We must stay on the road.”

She marched ahead, confident, like she was ready to take on the landscape and make up for the time she’d lost.

“Hey,” Vic said. “Wait up.”

“Why?” Mel asked.

“You obviously know something.” He glanced back to make certain Jodi kept up and that the prowling things kept their distance.

They’d come closer. Skeletal, they were lined in spines and spikes. Vic could see the haze through the gaps in their ribs.

“It’s not like the devils talked to me,” Mel said. “They feed, drift away, and then others come to feed some more.”

“They ate your feelings,” Vic said. He remembered what he’d seen in their smoky forms, the faces and bits of people he knew, the parts of his memories that they’d consumed. “It changed them.”

“Yes,” Mel said. “We’re not meant to be here. The living. I remember that now. She told me not to come, but I had to. I couldn’t let him go alone.”

“Who?” Vic asked. “Who was he?”

But Mel shook her head and marched on.

At least it was the right direction.

The sand had covered the road in patches, like it went unused, leaving the impression of a winding serpent with concrete skin snaking over the desert. Vic avoided the dust.

To the north, over the mountains, a light emerged, the kind of glow you got with a distant city.

“What is that?” he asked Mel, catching up to her side and nodding.

“I don’t know,” she said, squinting. “I don’t think it was here before.”

Vic looked to Jodi, to get her thoughts.

She hadn’t gone far, only a few feet, but she’d left the road and stood ankle-deep in the bone dust.

The demons came for her, running across the sand. It shifted, rising to form shapes and figures, kids in a classroom, sitting at desks. Beyond them rose walls with drawings. Everything was colorless, but Vic could spy the construction paper pumpkins, cut out and colored for Halloween.

Some of the figures broke apart as the demons came, charging through them, aiming for Jodi.

“Help me,” Vic said to Mel. “We have to get her back on the road.”

Mel planted her foot and stretched out her hand. Vic took it. With a grimace, he stepped onto the sand.

Mel stretched. Vic stretched. The demons had nearly reached Jodi.

“Damn it, Jodi,” he said. “Snap out of it.”

She didn’t hear him. She stood frozen, as if entranced.

Vic managed to touch her shoulder. He just needed a few more inches. He stretched a bit more, caught her sleeve, and jerked her toward him. He managed to take her hand and pull her back. Breathing more from the rush of the adrenaline than exertion, Vic brought her back onto the path.

She blinked, coming awake. Behind her, the demons came on.

Mel turned and faced them down.

The lead demon loomed larger than a horse. The spikes and bones only enhanced the menace of its long teeth and claws. It tensed, ready to leap.

“No,” Mel said, her voice calm. “She is not for you. She is on the road again.”

The skeleton stared at her. No lights shone in the black pits of its eyes.

“Return to your duty,” Mel said.

The other demons turned and stalked back to the hills. The lead, the largest, lingered.

“Go,” she said firmly.

And it did.

Jodi shook in Vic’s arms.

Mel gave a little nod and turned back to them.

“What are you?” Vic asked her. “You’re not a Reaper.”

Surely he would have sensed it if she had been.

“No,” she said.

“What was that?” Jodi asked, interrupting. “What did I see?”

“A dream,” Mel said. “The desert takes the dreams the dead will never see.”

“What were you dreaming?” Vic asked.

“It’s stupid,” Jodi said.

“A teacher? Is that what you wanted to be?”

“Yeah,” Jodi said, looking away. “But it’s too late now, right?”

“We should go,” Mel said.

She started walking again. They followed.

It was the right direction. Vic’s sense of Adam felt a little stronger. It might be his imagination, or his hope playing tricks on him, but it was all they had except the road.

Vic peered into the black sun. The red haze looked more like strings, or blood vessels, like the image from his last eye exam, when the doctor had shown him a close-up of his retina.

“What about you?” Jodi asked Vic. “What did you want to be?”

“A chef,” Vic said, surprised to hear himself being honest. He liked cooking. He liked making people happy when they ate what he’d made.

“Why did you say it’s too late?” Vic asked.

“I don’t know. Mom said I wasn’t smart enough, that I was too stupid. And now I’m too old, aren’t I?”

Vic kept walking, but it had sort of been the same for him. His mom had wanted him to do more with his life. She loved him, but told him repeatedly how often new restaurants failed. He’d wanted to cook like his dad, but he’d packed the dream away, telling himself he’d outgrown it, that it wasn’t practical.

Now, looking back, it was quite the leap, from dreaming of being a chef to becoming a cop. He’d wanted to make a difference, to do something real.

This place was meant to take their dreams, but Vic wasn’t dead. He had a future. He could make new dreams.

“What about you?” Jodi asked Mel.

“A singer,” she said with a smile. “I wanted to be a singer on the radio.”

“Yeah?” Vic asked. “What kind of music?”

“I—I can’t remember.”

She looked so sad.

She’d survived here, but not lived. It wasn’t the same thing, not if this place cost you so much, not if a hundred years of it would grind down everything about you that made you, well . . . you.

Vic tried to remember old music, things that might help her.

He hummed something, one of the songs his father had loved, something by José José. Vic couldn’t remember the name.

Mel looked at him.

“Not that one huh?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “More like . . .”

Mel hummed a little, a bit of an old tune.

“I think I know that one,” Vic said, trying to hum along.

They repeated it together, adding notes, filling in the hole, trying to make a tune.

Jodi scowled but didn’t interrupt.

“Summertime . . .” Mel sang.

“Yeah,” Vic said. “Ella Fitzgerald.”

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“Maybe after your time, but you do know the song?”

Mel smiled. “Yeah.”

Vic didn’t add that it was the sort of thing his grandmother had listened to.

Together they picked out words and notes, reassembling the song and along with a bit of Mel’s memory. She knew more of it than Vic did.

Jodi eyed the sand and the distant but still circling demons.

Nothing about this place was tempting or beautiful. Red, black, and mostly gray—everything looked like someone had drawn it with the last of the crayons, the last of their feelings. It was depressing, to say the least.

“What kind of teacher?” Vic asked Jodi, trying to draw her attention back toward them.

“Huh?”

“Elementary? High school? Art?”

“Whatever,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now.”

She scattered a mound of dust with a kick.

Vic opened his mouth and closed it again. It wasn’t his job to give Jodi a pep talk. He didn’t even like her, but he’d tucked his own dream away, decided to become a cop and do something that he thought would have more meaning to other people.

He’d limited himself, cut off a piece to hopefully make the world a better place.

Now, feeling it flutter away, Vic could see a road that never branched, running into a single direction. He’d make detective someday, maybe, then rank up or stay there until he burned out, retired, or got shot again.

Was he really helping anyone? Could he really help anyone?

The longer he walked, the more he felt the weight of it. For the dead it had to be freeing. They got to let go. Their journey would end at the sea.

Vic wasn’t even thirty. He had decades ahead of him, if they got out of here.

Before this, before he’d fallen here, he’d been starting to imagine a life with Adam.

They’d said they loved each other, right before. Vic had meant it. Adam brought so much chaos into Vic’s life, but he brought magic and wonder too.

They’d done it all backward. Met, formed a deep connection via magic, and went from there. They hadn’t really even dated, hadn’t been given the chance.

Vic had dropped everything for Adam when Sue died, and Adam, despite the secrets he’d kept, which had felt like the worst of lies, had put his life on the line to save Vic when he’d been shot.

He knew who Adam was, but it was another single road with no branches.

Vic could see their future laid out before him, a key to his apartment, an invitation for Adam to move in. He could figure out more of the guy-on-guy thing. It was new to him, but he wanted to try it, to see where it all went when the lights went out.

That had been a revelation, and he’d processed it, but it also meant no more dating, not getting to explore what it all meant with other guys or girls.

And if they got married, Vic had always imagined that he’d get married in the church, that his family, as many of them who could, would come. It would be a massive party, full of joy.

Forever with Adam meant a lot of his family wouldn’t approve.

Jesse would be thrilled. Hell, he’d probably cry.

His mother supported her students and she liked Adam. Vic didn’t worry about her accepting them or their relationship, but his cousins, his aunts and uncles—a lot of them wouldn’t feel the same. They certainly wouldn’t come to the wedding if he married Adam.

It wouldn’t be what Vic had always imagined. He looked between Mel and Jodi. Based on their expressions, they were having their own struggles, seeing the paths they’d never take.

They didn’t need to leave the road or face the demons for it to worsen as they marched on.

Vic couldn’t stop his imagination, couldn’t stop picturing the branches, the possibilities, dying off.

Like the kids he’d have with a wife. He could brush that aside. He could have kids with a guy. There were surrogates, fosters, and adoption. Plenty of kids needed loving parents, but the harder Vic fought, the more the desert worked on him.

He imagined his father meeting his children, holding them, no matter who he had them with. That was something that could never happen now.

Vic clenched his jaw and fought back tears.

“Art,” Jodi said out of nowhere.

She had tears in her eyes.

“I wanted to teach art,” she choked out.

“Yeah?” Vic said.

“Yeah. With pipe cleaners and glitter. Glue. That kind of shit.”

“It’s not shit. Art was my brother’s favorite class.”

Jesse had also had dreams. He used to draw, was pretty good at it. Vic couldn’t remember when his bigger, hulking brother had put away his sketchbooks, but he had his own auto shop now, his own business. That had been the dream he’d picked.

Everyone had paths they hadn’t taken. That was life. You couldn’t do everything, read every book, pursue every career. You only got so much time.

No one gets forever.

The voice was so quiet, but he knew it.

“Sara?” Vic whispered. “Are you there?”

The Reaper had slept inside him since he’d fallen here. He’d lost his baton, his scythe, but he didn’t think he’d imagined it.

“Are you out there?” he whispered.

“Who are you talking to?” Jodi asked, sounding more like her usual self.

“No one,” Vic said, but Mel had stopped walking.

She stared at him.

“You know her, don’t you?” Vic asked.

She nibbled her lip. Beneath her hat she looked incredibly sad. Whatever dreams this place had dredged up hadn’t been kind to her.

All of it had to be hard. Anyone she’d left behind was probably long dead, thought she was too.

“Yes,” she said. “I know her. She told me not to come.”

“But you couldn’t let him go alone,” Vic said.

“No.” She looked ahead, to the road, and asked, “I don’t suppose that people live forever yet?”

“No,” Vic said. “Longer, better in many ways, but not forever.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“I’m sorry,” Vic said, working to keep up.

“You’re still coming with us, right? After all, you’ve got a lot of music to catch up on.”

“I’m still walking, aren’t I?” she asked.