“You got a better idea?” Charlie said.
Another knock, this one even harder than the last. Nora suddenly couldn’t move. It felt like the questionable beige carpet had reached up its fibers and countless years of grime and was holdingfast to the soles of her shoes. She was trapped. By S.C.Y.T.H.E., by the drop beyond the window, by her own panic.
In a sudden whoosh of feathers, Jessica soared past Nora’s head and out the window. Nora’s heart lurched, her rooted feet suddenly free enough to carry her into a backward stumble. A floppy black item sailed after Jessica; Charlie’s duffel bag, flying by in a blur of nylon before landing with a crunch somewhere below.
Nora’s head whipped to the nearest bed, where Charlie hovered, his arms still outstretched from the throw. She couldn’t process anything that was happening. The world seemed as blurry as the duffel bag that had just whizzed through the window. Charlie was looking straight ahead now, in the direction his things had flown. Time stopped and then sped up as Charlie took off at a run, barreling towards Nora. She tracked him in a trance as he raced around the bed and over the windowsill. Before she had time to protest, time to think, he was over the ledge and in the air, gravity ushering him swiftly down with greedy hands.
Nora fell against the wall, dizzy, acutely aware of Death’s footsteps approaching as quickly as S.C.Y.T.H.E.’s enforcement agents. As quickly as Charlie was approaching the ground. The knocking grew louder, more urgent. Or was that Nora’s heartbeat? In seconds that felt like years, Charlie landed in a heap on the accumulation of dry leaves that lined the bottom of the pool. The leaves enveloped him, swallowed him for long enough that Nora was sure they would be his grave. Then, like a whale cresting in the ocean, he emerged, swimming his way to the surface of the leaves and offering an enthusiastic thumbs-up back at Nora.
The knocking sound at the door morphed into somethingangrier. Something blunter. As though someone was trying to kick it in. Nora forced her eyes away from the door and back towards her brother, who had made his way to the pool ladder and was climbing up, Jessica waiting patiently for him on the nearby diving board.
Nora was trapped. The only way out was in the clutches of the already-mysterious S.C.Y.T.H.E.’s most mysterious members and whatever mysterious horrors they had waiting for her. Or down, down, into a bed of leaves if she was very lucky, or a puddle of viscera on concrete if she wasn’t. She had spent her whole life avoiding risk, and now she had to actively choose between two.
A door hinge creaked and gave way, and so did Nora. Without allowing her brain the time to think things through, she snatched Charlie’s file from her bed and clambered shakily onto the windowsill. The ground seemed to retreat farther away with each fraction of a second she stared at it. The pool shrank to a fishbowl, the concrete suddenly all she could see. Charlie was a dot somewhere on that hard, bone-breaking ground.
She wouldn’t jump. She couldn’t jump. She knew this with everything that made her Nora June Bird.
As she shifted on the sill, bracing to climb down and face whatever would come next, her knee landed in the forgotten Moon Pie, its sugary frosting sliding beneath the fabric of her cargos. Her balance wavered, then gave way all together, and all at once and without any say in the matter, Nora was airborne. She thought she’d at least scream as she plummeted towards the earth, the ground rushing eagerly to meet her, but she didn’t have time. Before she could rally her vocal cords for a shriek, she was engulfed in a bed of leaves. The smell of decay rushed up her nostrils as she scrambled to her feet. Charlie was at the top of theladder with a hand extended as she emerged, still half in a daze. She let him haul her up the rest of the way and sank to her chocolaty knees on the concrete. Jessica hopped over to her and bit at the little finger of her right hand, the sensation forcing Nora back into her body.
Charlie grabbed his file from where it had landed poolside and helped Nora to her feet.
“Think we can get back in the car now?” he said.
Nora looked from Charlie to the file in his hand, head spinning.
“I’m not sure we have a choice.”
6
Case # 90587
Arthur Phan
Age: 41
Cause of Death: Car Accident
Most days, Nora wished she didn’t have to drive. She was three minutes late to work that day after spending half an hour stuck in the kind of unmoving traffic that made you wonder if you would ever use the gas pedal again. It wasn’t until she got into her little office that she understood what had caused the gridlock. A five-car pileup sat across her desk in the form of Arthur’s file. She’d tapped her pen to her chin, eyeing the accident through a narrowed gaze. These were always among her least favorite cases. Delicate sacks of meat versus thousands of pounds of metal. The battle wasn’t even, and yet most people unwittingly fought it on a daily basis. In Arthur’s case, it ended in more pieces than a body generally liked to be in. Nora moved his file to the top of the pile. First of the day to die meant first of the day to sort.Today was his lucky day, but only because it had been his unluckiest day possible first.
* * *
The road was filled with untold horrors. It always had been. Why anybody thought cars were a reasonable option forever confused Nora, who had agreed to take a driving test only when Bubbie became too frail to get herself to doctor appointments towards the end of her life. Charlie got his license almost the moment he was eligible, their November birthday leaving him the last in his friend group without that ticket to freedom. As soon as he had it, Nora rarely saw him. It marked the beginning of the end of their childhood closeness in many ways, which, though she would never admit it, was yet another reason Nora didn’t much care for the concept of driving. It had cost her her brother once, and now there was a very real chance it would take him from her again, only this time more permanently.
Nora kept her eyes on the road, her hands at ten and two, and her foot primed to slam on the brake at any given moment. The gray of the day had deepened into a velvety black that stood uninterrupted by city lights as they traveled aimlessly down the rural highway.
The thought currently torturing her, the one that had fought its way to the front of a very long line of thoughts waiting to do the same, was,How?How had S.C.Y.T.H.E. found them? She’d feared they were coming, but most of what she feared, which was rather a lot, didn’t actually happen. They must have tracked her down somehow. But she couldn’t imagine them accessing something as civilian as her phone location. That would require thehigher-ups to bring organizations from outside of the company into the fold, and that simply wasn’t done.
Then it hit her.
“Charlie,” she said, keeping her eyes sharp for any potential dangers around them. “Go into my purse for me.”
Charlie reached down and pulled the little black bag from where it sat at his feet.
“I need you to get my name badge out.”
One of the perks of being a S.C.Y.T.H.E. employee came in the form of a little metal rectangle engraved with your name and the emblem of the company. Beyond the aesthetic appeal, which was minimal, came the ability to blend seamlessly into the background the moment you pinned on the badge. They were mostly used by Collections Agents, who needed the near invisibility out in the field. The awkwardness of being found hovering over a body while making a collection in the days before the badges was still cringed about by some of the more senior staff. But every employee was issued a badge for emergency situations. Knowing exactly how the badges worked was definitely above Nora’s pay grade, but some said it was Death’s way of doing a favor for those doing a favor for Death. Regardless, it did things Nora couldn’t explain, and she couldn’t help but wonder if keeping track of her was one of them.
Charlie wrestled Nora’s badge from the tentacles of a power cord and popped it on her lap. She let her eyes slip from the road just long enough to run across it. It looked like it always had, the silver tarnished at the edges and around the letters of Nora’s name after nearly two and a half years of life in her purse. But the logo, the scythe and arrow that usually sat black and cold against the silver metal, was glowing red.
