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| Little Green Man photo by smlp.co.uk |
It had recently occurred to Death that as much as she might
want it to be the case, the pace of collections was likely to keep increasing
for the next twenty to thirty years.
Maybe even longer, unless the populations started declining, and she was
only responsible for 50% of that situation, were it to take place. The other half was up to the people who were
reproducing.
Technology, such as her phone, was making a lot of the
menial tasks more manageable, but the fact remained that killing people day in
and day out was a lot of work.
So she could only do so much to make her own job
easier. Otherwise, she’d just have to
ride it out and hope more people started dying right next to fast food
restaurants.
Which, in some parts of the world, actually seemed fairly
likely.
She’d caught a break, and had a solid ten minutes between
collections, so she was able to drop off the three souls who had been
accompanying her as she rushed from collection to collection, and had even been
able to stop and get some coffee in a gas station.
As she stood outside the gas station, drinking her coffee as
quickly as she could manage, she took another peek at her phone to see when and
where the next collection was.
“Well, shit,” Death muttered to herself. According to her notes, the next collection was
going to be in Cumberland, Wisconsin.
That’s where the Bump & Grind was, and Death had become quite a fan
of the little coffee shop.
Ares, the god of war, had turned her on to the place. He’d been in there several times when it was
still located in California, and said the coffee was good and that the owner
was a decent sort. Given Ares’s tendency
to get insulted and kill anyone who so much as looked at him funny, it was
extremely high praise.
At the moment, however, Death was in Middle-of-Nowhere,
Idaho. She was, actually, glad she’d
been able to find a gas station. Oh
well. Maybe she’d be able to hit the
Bump & Grind after the collection.
Two cups of coffee in one day?
That would be heaven.
Her phone beeped at her to let her know that she needed to
finish up her coffee break and get moving already. Death’s phone, incidentally, was also a
little irritated with how busy they had been recently. It’s not fun being the bearer of bad news
anyway, but that is particularly true when Death is overworked and
undercaffeinated. No one, not even a
phone, wants to be greeted with a muttered, “Shit.”
Death tossed her coffee cup, still half full, into the
trash, hopped on her motorcycle, and roared away to the next collection.
Mere seconds later, she rolled to a stop outside the dorms at
the University of Wisconsin. According
to her notes, she was there to collect Andrea Watson, who was twenty years
old. Andrea had some problems with her
heart’s valves, and none of her doctors had ever noticed.
***
Andi had not, in fact, gone to the medical center, even
though she told Rob she had. If she was
nuts, at least it wasn’t the hearing voices and walking around with no pants on
sort of nuts. Hearing a motorcycle at
random times wasn’t so bad, she just had to keep it to herself. And there was no reason for her to go to the
medical center and tell them she was hearing things just to find out that she
wasn’t nuts.
So, she’d decided that unless someone started answering her
when she was talking to herself, she wasn’t going to worry about it.
At least, that’s what she’d told herself until she heard a
motorcycle come roaring to a stop outside the dorms. It was the middle of February, and there was
no way that was a pickup truck out there.
She’d been on the way back to her room, but still on the ground floor of
the building, after one of her classes when she heard it, and had hustled over
to one of the windows that looked out on to the parking lot.
Not a motorcycle to be seen.
She was a little
worried she was going crazy.
Andi’s room was on the third floor, and she was looking
forward to getting there. She had two
hours until her next class, and she wanted nothing more than a nap. She and Rob had been up late the night before
discussing which of the conspiracy theories they’d heard might be real, which
were definitely fake, and which ones were created by the actual conspirators to
throw everyone else off their tracks.
The only thing they were certain of by the end of their
discussion was that there were no lizardmen living under Salt Lake City. However, that left a huge number of other
cities the lizardmen could very well be living under. Especially since everyone thought they were
under Salt Lake City, and therefore weren’t looking for them anywhere
else. Lizardmen are sneaky.
And today, Andi was certain that as much fun as that
discussion had been, she would have been better off if she’d just gone to bed
at a decent hour. Especially since both
of them thought conspiracy theories were bullshit, and that most things that
could be explained by a conspiracy theory could be better explained by
coincidence and stupidity.
On the other hand, talking about the nefarious plans of the
lizardmen is a lot of fun. So, to be
fair to herself, she had to admit that the choice between going to sleep and staying
up to discuss crazy theories presented something of a dilemma. She had yet to hear of anyone saying on their
death bed they wished they’d spent more time sleeping and less time talking
about a new world order brewing right under their feet.
Andi preferred taking the stairs over using the elevators in
her dorm. For one thing, it was usually
faster. And for another, the elevators
were dark, claustrophobic, and generally creepy. So if she could avoid them, she did. Besides, a little bit of extra exercise was a
good thing.
She walked past the elevators to the door for the stairwell,
and started climbing. She noticed she
was breathing unusually hard by the time she reached the third floor. It was probably just because she was so tired
already, she decided. A nap was going to
be great. She’d be sure to set an alarm
so she didn’t accidentally sleep past the start of her next class. It had happened before.
As she went down hall to her room, she noticed that, if
anything, her breathing was getting harder.
She wondered if she might be coming down with a cold too.
***
Death had started her stopwatch the second Andrea had
grabbed the handle for the door to the stairwell. She was a little surprised to recognize her
as the girl who had noticed her and talked to her briefly at the Bump and Grind
recently.
Of course Death encountered many people before their
appointments, but not very many of those people noticed her. Or if they did notice her, they didn’t talk
to her.
She followed Andrea up the stairs, and checked an item off the
list when Andrea stopped at the top of the stair for a moment to try and catch
her breath. A few seconds later, Andrea
starting walking again. It was obvious
she was exhausted.
One of the other women who lived on Andrea’s floor greeted
her as she walked by. She didn’t notice
Death, of course.
Andrea fumbled with the key for her room a little bit, got
the door open, and went inside. Death
followed. Her roommate was not present.
Death noticed Andrea’s Salvador Dali poster, and the odd
little skeletal sculptures, and raised an eyebrow. She took a better look at Andrea. Brown hair, glasses, jeans, muted green shirt,
cute shoes. She didn’t look like a goth,
or even particularly weird. Death would
have never guessed this was her room.
It was kind of cool, really.
Death checked off another item as Andrea set down her bag
and kicked off her shoes.
Andrea sat down on her bed, and dug out her phone. She had just started to set the alarm to wake
her in an hour’s time when she looked up, with a mild, confused expression on
her face, and then collapsed sideways on the bed.
Death could swear Andrea was staring directly at her for the
last few seconds of her life. Andrea
passed, and Death checked off the last item on her list and stopped her
stopwatch.
“How did you get in here?” Andrea asked Death. “I would have noticed you walking in behind
me. Were you hiding in here before I got
here?“
“I did walk in behind you, you just didn’t notice me. Most people don’t,” Death said. “Would you come with me, Andrea?”
“Andi, please.”
“OK, Andi, would you…” Death began to say, then her phone
beeped at her. “Son of a bitch,” she
muttered.
Death dug out her phone, and saw that she had five minutes
until the next collection.
“Hey, didn’t I see you at the Bump and Grind a while back,”
Andi said? “You had to leave before you
were even able to order your coffee. I
felt bad for you.”
Death was mildly touched.
People rarely noticed her, much less felt bad for her.
“Yes, I remember seeing you there,” Death said. “Look, I have to make another collection, so
I hope you don’t mind tagging along with me.
It seems like I keep getting a little busier every day. Do you mind?”
Andi looked a bit confused.
“Why would I mind? It’s not like I have anything pressing to attend to,
apparently.”
“Well, some folks get kinda cranky about it,” Death
said. “Anyway, let’s go.”
“Sure, where are we going?” Andi asked.
“Delaware.”
“Oh. Great.”
