Reaper (12 page)

Beneath the perfectly green lawn, Oz imagined
his body—his real body—yellowing and cracking, his skin melting off
his skeleton. He shuddered violently.

He creeped forward, careful to avoid a
six-by-four foot area directly in front of the cross. He didn’t
think that walking directly over his grave would do anything, but
he wouldn’t chance it. From the side, he inclined his head forward
and read what had been carved in the center of the cross:

Oswald Mitchell

Son and Friend

December 19, 1954—April 2,
1986

“Miles to go before I
sleep.”

Miles to go before I sleep.
Oz had no
doubt that Mark had been behind that line. The Frost poem had been
a favorite of Oz’s to recite, unprompted, and at the most obnoxious
times. When Oz had fallen in love with a poem or phrase or quote,
he incorporated it into every conversation, relevant or not,
because Oz was a know-it-all.
Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy
Evening
had been his most recent obsession at the end of his
life.

Grief dug into his chest.

His best friend was dead. Oz thought of Jamie
and the helplessness he’d seen on the boy’s face at Mark’s funeral.
He let that happen with a single paragraph. What about his own
parents? Had their fates been emotionlessly punched onto a page by
him? Would he have to be there to collect them when it all finally
played out?

No. It wasn’t right. Something
had
to
change.

* * *

Oz left the cemetery with an indifference to
everything except change: the how and the when of it. Mrs. Canes
and her daughter were gone and an SUV had taken its space. Oz
planted himself on the curb. Once he’d gathered his thoughts, he
would go see Jamie. They needed to talk.

The sun climbed further into the sky, and
when the pinks and purples had burned off, the road and sidewalk
steadily filled with people. Oz couldn’t help it; he didn’t see
them as people, but as the inevitably dead. He saw their mangled
bodies prostrated over the sidewalk, families grieving... Bard’s
mop of white hair rose above them.

Oz didn’t look up when the tips of the
reaper’s scraped combat boots stopped an inch from his thigh.

“You put your big boy pants on?” Bard scraped
his boot against the curb.

“Something like that.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic. Come with me.”

They walked with the sun at their backs, Bard
chain-smoking, Oz trying to decide how much it would hurt to burn
the earlier images from his eyes. They left the heart of the city
and crossed under an overpass, part of a highway still under
construction. Veering off the road, they tromped through tall grass
and poorly placed bushes until the ground became soggy and gave a
little when they stepped on it. When the squawk of seagulls and the
rush of water against metal met his hears, Oz realized they were
heading to the Port.

The foliage ended at a tall, barbed fence
which they followed until it met a stone arch. Underneath it was a
steel door, painted the same blue-grey as the arch. There was no
knob, only a deadbolt.

“Dead end,” Oz said.

Bard snorted. “This way.”

He led Oz past the arch, to another entrance
a few hundred feet from the first. This one had a doorknob, but
Bard didn’t try to open it. He waited beside it, with Oz on the
other side, until a man in an orange hard hat emerged. Bard stuck
his foot between the door and the frame.

“After you, Princess.”

The walls of the hallway were concrete, with
thick cables running along the ceiling. It was lit by small,
fluorescent lamps haphazardly hooked to the cable every few feet.
At the end of the hallway stood another door. This one opened
easily and when Oz stepped through, he found himself in a storage
area. Plastic wrapped knickknacks, boxes of post cards, and
miscellaneous sea creature flotsam were stacked along the
walls.

The shop itself was empty, except for Cora,
perusing the stuffed dolphins near the register, and a shop
employee, a teenage girl with mousy brown hair subdued under an
army of clips. She chipped away at her nail polish. Her name tag
read,
Butterfly
.

Oz didn’t have to ask to know that the others
were waiting outside. It’d be another big job. Another disaster.
How many people this time? They hadn’t even begun and Oz felt
drained.

“Hey, Bard,” Cora said. She nodded at Oz.

“How much time d’ya figure?” Bard asked.

Cora replaced the toy Orca she’d been
petting. “No idea. There are a couple of ships out there, so right
now everyone’s just trying to figure out which one it is.”

Her eyes remained on Oz. “You ok?”

“Sure,” he said without meeting her gaze.

She stared at him a beat longer. “Ok.”

The sleigh bells above the shop door jingled
the entrance of another reaper—he looked like he could’ve been a
wrestler in his life. Oz recognized him from the airport. He
instinctively looked to the girl behind to counter to see if she’d
noticed, but of course she hadn’t.

“We found it,” the reaper said, and turned on
his heel.

* * *

It was named
The Goddess of the Sea
and it was a giant. Two smoke stacks towered above a massive deck,
bedecked with colorful flags of its Mexican origin and company
brand. Passengers gathered around the gang plank, shifting
backpacks and shoulder bags. It was easy to pick out the
honeymooners, sick in new love, hand in hand wearing matching
Hawaiian garb. The great, steel doors opened and several primped
and pressed cruise line employees ushered the crowd up the red
carpeted ramp.

Bard nudged Oz’s shoulder and they followed
the crowd, with a quickly assembling crew of twenty or so reapers
falling in line behind them.

“We’re going on the ship?” Oz asked.

“I’ve heard the dinner buffets are decent,”
Bard said.

“Over water.”

“But this is a Mexican cruise and spicy food
always gave me the runs.”

“Please tell me there’s going to be a plague,
or an outbreak, or anything that does not involve the ship sinking
into the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Would you hurry up!” another reaper shouted.
“They’re shutting the doors and everyone else still needs to get
inside.”

The reapers shuffled in just as the doors
were closed and sealed.

Ushers escorted guests to their various
cabins and soon the entryway was empty.

Oz felt the floor hum through his shoes and a
groan erupted. The engines roared to life, propelling the ship from
the port. Soon, they would be in the Gulf. Oz hoped that after a
decade of being dead, he remembered how to swim.

* * *

The reapers set out on their own to explore
the ship, agreeing to meet up in the ballroom at dinner. While most
of them ventured downward to the recreation rooms and second class
passenger cabins, Oz hunted for the elevator that would bring him
to the top deck. He knew what was going to happen, and had no idea
how Bard and the others planned to escape the chaos when it did. He
needed air.

When Oz was little, his parents brought him
to a friend’s house for a summer party. The owners of the house had
left the sliding glass door leading to the pool unlocked and Oz had
been mesmerized by the floating dragon at the center of it. With
the adults all gathered in the kitchen over a bottle of white wine,
Oz decided to satisfy his curiosity. He was at the bottom of the
pool for a full minute before his parents discovered what’d
happened.

Oz would choose almost any other death before
drowning—that moment of pure agony before your lungs overpower your
brain and take in the water—that one petrifying inhale. Give him a
gunshot to the face any day.

He closed his eyes and held his breath until
the elevator doors opened inside a small glass enclosure on the
deck. The smell of salt water hit him like a wall. Oz kept his
distance from the side, but was able to see that they were well on
their way into the Gulf. The shoreline was a scribble against the
horizon.

A sprinkle of passengers loitered about the
deck. While the others unpacked their tacky shirts and flip flops
or sought out the bar to christen their vacation, the people on the
deck were the restless—the scared—suckered into a stupid cruise
because their loved ones thought it would be fun and blah,
bullshit, blah.

A triad of middle-school kids, two boys and
one girl, stood close to the bow, kicking a soccer ball between
them. Most likely sent away to give their parents a break from the
incessant “I’m bored” squawking. The game ended when the larger of
the boys kicked the ball a little too hard, sending it
overboard.

Jesus fuck, there are kids.
Please,
please let it be an outbreak. Bubonic plague. Flu. Bad tuna.
Anything.

He knew no amount of hoping would change
their fate. The ship was going to sink, and some of them—Oz had no
idea how many—would die. He thought of Jamie and all the things
that could happen to him while Oz was stuck on this floating
disaster. An accident. Illness.

Dread spread its icy fingers through his
body.

* * *

A nasally voice announced over a scratchy
speaker system that dinner would be served in the ballroom in
exactly one hour. Oz figured he’d better find the others. The
elevator was crowded with the few deck stragglers that hadn’t
started dressing for dinner, but Oz squeezed in behind the last of
them.

“So like I was saying,” a man directly next
to Oz said, “My wife’s got this thing for being first. All the
fucking time. She bribed the usher to let us onto the ship before
everyone else. Even this ship—I wanted to go to the Bahamas, but
since Claire heard somewhere that this ship was a prototype that
never went out before, she had to be on it. Sometimes I wonder if
she’s insane.”

“Sounds like it,” his friend said.

“I did some research on this thing...” and
then his voice dipped to a whisper when he realized the others in
the elevator were listening. “It passed the benchmark, but just by
the hair of the owner’s ass. Something about the size versus the
engine power. I don’t know. I’m no engineer. But, I figured they
wouldn’t let this thing go out on the water unless they knew it
wouldn’t sink. They wouldn’t, right?”

The friend shifted his weight from one foot
to the other. “Yeah, it’s gotta be safe. Why’d you agree to bring
her if you’re so worried?”

“You try arguing with Claire and see where
that gets you.”

Oz wasn’t an engineer, either, but he’d seen
a lot of movies. When the elevator doors opened, he had an idea but
didn’t know where to go to try it out. It wasn’t like they posted
signs along the corridors that read, “This way, Oz!” or “Directions
for keeping the ship afloat, five hundred feet!”

He walked, bent at the waist, with his ear
inclined toward the floor, listening for the groan of the engines
to grow louder. Scared of running into one of the other reapers on
the elevator, Oz descended the stairs to the lowest reachable level
and walked the narrow hallway toward the rear of the ship.

The engine room was protected by a riveted
steel door that could only be opened with a key card, passcode
combination. Oz waited. Why couldn’t this job come with something
useful like super-human strength? Or at least the ability to open a
damn door. Soon, the cabins on that level emptied as people piled
into the elevator for dinner.

No one went in or out of the engine room.
He’d have to figure out another way.

Oz navigated toward the middle deck where he
thought he remembered the sign for the ballroom when he heard the
urgent whisper of a person who thinks they’re being quiet.

“—
really shook him up. Fuckin’ pussy.”
A familiar male voice.

“Because seeing someone’s heart ripped out,
presumably for the first time, is something a person should accept
naturally, like finding out there’s no Santa Claus,” another male
voice.

“Fuck off.”

“He’ll comply. They all do.”

“Sometimes.” Was that guilt Oz detected?

“It’ll happen. Happily ever after.”

“Whatever, Cinderella. I’m not buying it.
They’ll need to come up here and take care of it themselves.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little
extreme?”

A beat of silence.

“Fine,” the second voice said, “Can we go eat
now?”

Oz didn’t wait to hear the response. He
sprinted up the nearest flight of stairs and didn’t stop until he
heard the clanging of metal chafing dishes.

Chapter
Thirteen

Oz wasn’t hungry and he wouldn’t have stayed
if he thought he wouldn’t be missed, but he knew that Bard would
notice. So would Cora. She’d taken to watching him with a tight,
motherly look on her face since that afternoon. Once everyone had
been admitted to the ballroom, and as the passengers and reapers
formed an eager line for the coconut shrimp and prime rib, Oz
retreated to the far-most corner of the dining area where he
positioned himself so that he could see everyone and everything. He
would not be surprised this time.

Bard and another reaper he recognized vaguely
stood at the back of the buffet line. They didn’t speak, but
hungrily eyed the platters of food. Oz didn’t see Cora until she
turned her back to the woman slicing a roast. They locked eyes, and
Cora made a beeline for his table, pausing just long enough to
snatch a glass of red wine from another table.

As she approached, Oz tried very hard to
remind himself that she was one of them: a murderer. The waves of
soft, touchable hair and the way she seemed to have complete
control over every sway of her hips and thighs did nothing to
change that, but they did a damn good job hiding it.