And underneath twenty feet of deflated mascot, Dustin groaned, shoved a giant webbed foot off his face, and said:
“I hate that fucking duck.”
CHAPTER 4
The stopwatch read 0:00.
Greg stared at it. Tapped it. Shook it.
Still 0:00.
The window was closed. The collection period had ended. And Dustin was sitting up under a pile of deflated duck, very much alive, swatting away the hands of crew members trying to help him.
“I'm fine,” Dustin was saying. “I'mfine. Get off me. Someone get this thing off me.”
Greg panicked. Internally. Or maybe not so internally.
Was hevibratingagain?
Probably.
But this didn't make sense! The files were never wrong. In his entire internship, across hundreds of observed collections, he had never once seen a file be wrong. Death was precise. Death was scheduled. Death was?—
Currently shoving a giant vinyl wing off his legs and telling someone to stop asking if he needed an ambulance.
Greg took a step forward. Then stopped.
What was he supposed to do? Introduce himself?Hi,you were supposed to die thirty seconds ago, would you mind terribly trying again?
He flipped to the second page of the folder. There had to be something. A note. An amendment. A secondary cause of death listed for situations where the primary cause inexplicably failed to…
Nothing. Just the standard paperwork. Name, date, time, location. All of it was correct, and also useless.
Dustin was on his feet now, brushing dust off his jumpsuit. Someone had finally dragged the bulk of the duck away from him. He rolled his shoulders, testing for damage, and came up with nothing but a scowl.
“I want that thing gone,” he said, pointing at the crumpled mascot. “I don't care what the contract says. I don't care about brand visibility. Get it out of here before I set it on fire.”
“Dustin, we need you to let the medical team check you over.”
“I just fell two thousand feet on purpose. A plastic duck isn't going to be what takes me out.”
Greg flinched.
Itshouldhave taken him out.
He watched Dustin wave off the medic, refuse a stretcher, and walk toward the catering tent under his own power.
The crew was already laughing about it, talking about how this was “the best blooper reel footage we've ever gotten.” They were tossing around ideas about how they could spin this for social media.
And Greg just stood there, invisible, clipboard in hand, watching his first assignment walk away.
What was he supposed to tell Morrith?
Greg followed Dustin toward the catering tent.
He wasn't sure why. The collection had failed. He should go back to HQ, file a report, and let someone more experienced figure out what went wrong. That was protocol.
But he couldn't stop staring at Dustin. At the way he moved—loose, easy, like he hadn't almost just died. Like almost dying was just a normal Tuesday for him.
