Richard Kadrey: Dead Set

“I swear I’m not a stupid woman, but these insurance people speak Martian or something.” Her mother shook her head and put the papers back in the envelope. “That’s why we have a lawyer now, so he can speak Martian to the insurance company’s Martians.”

“Just make him make them believe that Dad was real.”

“I know. That’s the idea.”

“I hate them,” said Zoe.

“So do I. Are you hungry?”

Zoe nodded.

“Why don’t you grab us some plates.”

They watched TV while they ate the now-lukewarm chicken. A chubby English archaeologist explained how in the Egyptian underworld the dead were judged by Thoth, who weighed their souls against a feather. If the soul weighed less than the feather, it went on to the Western Lands, sort of like the Egyptians’ heaven, he explained. “But if the soul weighed more than the feather,” he said, “a crocodile-headed beast devoured it and the soul would vanish from the universe forever.”

When they finished eating, Zoe took the leftovers and dishes into the little kitchen. Back in the living room she found her mother asleep on the couch. Zoe turned off the TV and went quietly to her room, closed the door, and undressed for bed.

Feeling so rotten all the time was exhausting, she thought. For a while after her father died the doctors gave her sleeping pills because she couldn’t close her eyes for days at a time. Now, except on those nights when the black dogs came, sleeping and dreaming were her favorite things in the world.

Zoe stood in the almond grove behind the old house, though this one wasn’t exactly like the real grove. It was better. The hills in the distance knifed high enough into the sky that they were topped by snow. Zoe’s house wasn’t there. None of the houses in the development were. In her dreams, the grove stood in the middle of a great green plain that stretched from horizon to horizon. The sky was the color of twilight and dotted with pale blue, trembling stars. Zoe always liked this time and this place because, although the light was fading, she could see everything, even in the darkest places.

Valentine, her dream brother, was waiting for her in the tree fort, throwing unshelled almonds down at her. Valentine had dark eyes and black, unruly hair that he was always pushing out of his eyes, just like her father used to do. Valentine wore the same dirty white T-shirt, ripped jeans, and sneakers he’d had on every night since she could remember.

She laughed and picked up the nuts as they landed at her feet, throwing them back at Valentine with one hand and shielding her face with her other. They ran around the treetops, through the wooden maze of planks and ropes, trapdoors, and stairs that made up their ever-growing fort, whooping and throwing almonds at each other. She felt lighter, almost like a kid, when she was with Valentine. She hadn’t always felt that way. Things changed after her father died. Dreams became the only place where she could blow off steam and feel free and happy.

When Zoe made it to the roof of the fort, Valentine was standing by the wooden railing, looking at the distant mountains.

“Something is walking through the snow,” he said, pointing. The mountains were hazy through a halo of fog. Zoe looked hard and thought she could see a tiny dot moving across one of the snowy peaks, leaving a trail of even, microscopic footprints.

“What is it, do you think?” she asked.

Valentine shook his head. “An animal, maybe. Maybe a person,” he said quietly.

“Could it be Dad?” Zoe asked.

“Why would it be him?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s there looking out for us.”

Valentine turned to her.

“Do you really feel like anyone is looking out for you?”

“Just you.”

He squatted down to pick up some dried leaves that he methodically held up and dropped over the side of the railing, one by one. “On the other hand, it would be nice if whoever’s walking on our mountain is someone we knew.”

“Assuming it’s a someone.”

“Yeah.”

Zoe had known Valentine for as long as she could remember. He’d always been a part of her dreams, but she’d stopped talking about him years before when she saw the looks she got from other children and their parents, and she realized that not everyone had a dream brother. She’d asked him once why she was the only person she knew who had a dream brother like him. Valentine had become very quiet and climbed high into the tree, too high for Zoe to reach, and he wouldn’t come down or talk for the rest of the night.

“Maybe it’s Mom up there,” said Zoe. “Spying on us.” She turned her back on the mountains and sat down, resting her back on the railing. She leaned back and looked up at the stars, willing herself to fall up into them. It didn’t work.

“Are you and Mom still not speaking?”

“We’re speaking,” said Zoe. “Just not about anything.”

“Just take-out chicken,” Valentine said. He dropped a leaf onto Zoe’s head. She batted it away.

“That’s about as deep as it gets with us right now.” Zoe turned around and let her legs dangle over the edge of the fort. The air felt good. “I feel so stupid. I’m lonely, but I don’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone.”

“What about your friends back at the old house?”

She got up, ignoring the question, and looked back up at the mountain. Zoe tried to find the dot moving through the snow but the fog had moved in and she couldn’t see a thing. “Sometimes I wish I could see you when I’m not asleep,” she said. “You’re the only one I can talk to.”

Valentine knelt down beside her. He looked around conspiratorially, and then lifted up his T-shirt. He was skinny, and his ribs stuck out under his ghost-white skin. Valentine put his hand over his heart and slid his fingers into his chest. When he pulled his hand out, he was holding a small tin compass. It looked like the kind of piece of junk you’d get in a box of kids’ cereal. Valentine put the compass in her hand.

“When you’re awake and you need me, you can look at that,” he said. “We can’t talk but you’ll always know where I am because the blue half of the hand will always point to me.”

Zoe shook the compass, half expecting it to break, and walked around the tree fort. Just as Valentine said, the blue hand always pointed to him.

Zoe went back and hugged her dream brother. “Thank you,” she said. Valentine hugged her back.

Later, they picked green, unripe almonds from the tree and threw them, in the special way that Valentine had taught her, straight into the sky. The almonds flew up and out of sight, every now and then hitting a star and sending it spinning.

When that got boring, Valentine turned to Zoe. “Why do we always stay up here?” he asked. “Why don’t we ever climb down?”

“It’s dangerous out there in the world,” said Zoe. “There are things down there.”

They looked over the edge of the fort. Below them something large and scaly, like one of the animal-headed gods she’d seen on TV, swam silently through the green grass as if it were water.

In the wild, the differences between scavengers and predators are simple,” said Mr. Danvers in class the next day. “A predator, say a wolf or a shark, will generally catch and kill its prey. What does that leave for the scavengers?”

A girl with short blue hair and black, kohled eyes said, “They find stuff to eat. Animals and things that are already dead.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Danvers, reaching for something on his bone shelf. He pulled down a jar the size of a two-liter soda bottle and turned back to the class.

“They’ll steal stuff, too,” said Zoe. It was the first time she’d spoken up in any of her classes. She liked that Mr. Danvers didn’t make you raise your hand if you knew the answer. “On this show I saw they said some predators, lions sometimes, would rather steal food from another animal than go and find it on their own.”