J Duncan - Deadworld

Jackie wiped at her eyes. “Sam! Three more. Please.” The last came out a bit choked, and she pressed her lips together, forcing the surging tide behind her burning eyeballs at bay.

He poured one shot and set the bottle down. “You let me know when you need a ride home.”

She nodded. “Thanks.” Oh, by the way, Sam, some vampire killed Laurel last night. Can you believe it? She couldn’t, did not want to, but had woken up to Laurel’s absence. It had been no freakish nightmare. How am I going to do it, Laur? How will I do this without you? It seemed such an inane and yet impossible question. The hollow sensation on her right side, where Laurel had always walked when they went anywhere together, felt like a vacuous hole where she had been torn away from her flesh. Part of her was missing now, taken away along with Laurel.

How did people do this? Jackie wondered with despair. How did they move on when half their soul had been ripped away? Her impulse was to just lay her head down on the bar and weep, but Jackie refused to make a spectacle of herself. A little more alcohol, and she would not remember any of tonight regardless, at which point she knew she could just let everything out. Sam would call her a cab. He could just pitch her into the river, for all it mattered.

“Rough day?”

Jackie’s blurred vision sharpened on the man who sat down on the stool next to her. Navy suit, red tie, little hint of shadow across his cheeks, and a handsome wave of reddish brown hair kept just longer than business norm. “And you care because?”

He shrugged and smiled, blue eyes glancing down at the array of shot glasses and near-empty tequila bottle. “I didn’t say I cared. I just asked if you were having a rough day.”

Jackie eyed him, far too gone to judge if he was as good-looking as the dozen shots made him appear, but he hit the right note regardless. Oblivion. The guy could fuck her right into oblivion. Just the cure for a soul suffering too much awareness. “Someone died.”

Sam put a beer in front of the man, giving her a quizzical look, but she ignored him. The man put down a five, which Sam quickly swiped up, and the man’s mouth quirked up in one corner. “People die every day. You’d be dead of alcohol poisoning if that was your modus operandi.”

Hmmm, not a bad thought, really. Worse ways to go. “Sometimes it’s just the wrong one.”

He nodded, a sage expression on his face, and sipped his beer. “Yeah, always wrong for someone, and for them…” He raised his beer. “To better days. My name’s Scott, by the way.”

Better days. Jackie could not see how that might be possible any longer. “Jack. Most folks just call me Jack.” She downed another shot, hardly even feeling its warmth anymore.

“Nice to meet you, Jack. Are you in mourning? I’m sorry to intrude, if that’s the case.”

She thought about it for a moment, her sloggy brain taking longer than it should to formulate opinions on much of anything. “Nope. Just lamenting life in general. I needed cheering up, so I walked down here to bother Sam.”

“Ah, I see. Well, Sam here does look like the cheerful type.”

“Be careful with her,” Sam quipped. “She bites.”

“Most encouraging news I’ve had all day.” Scott smiled and turned back to Jackie. “Do you bite, Jack?”

“Only if provoked.” The words came out slightly slurred. That last shot had been the tipping point. She poured another, knowing from habit how this downward slide would progress.

“And what, may I ask, provokes a woman like yourself?”

“Smart-ass guys in suits, for one.”

Scott laughed. “Your lucky day. Fortunately, my ass is quite intelligent, and the suit’s Armani, for what it’s worth.”

She snorted. “Nothing. You always take advantage of drunken women, Scott?”

He eyed her for a moment, and Jackie knew he was thinking for just a second if she was being serious or flip, but the tequila should have given that one away without any thought at all. “Every chance I can get. Twice on Sundays.”

Yeah, he would do just fine. Jackie smiled at his lame humor and downed one more shot before getting off the stool. “Guess it’s your lucky day-” she started and then tripped over the leg of the stool before Mr. Suit could catch her. “Well. Shit. Pay the man, Scottie, and walk me home. I need something cute to lean on.”

He put a fifty on the bar and took Jackie’s arm. “Mom always said my MBA would come in handy.”

“Oh, a funny man! My mother was too stupid to even spell MBA.” She leaned against him and managed something halfway between laughter and tears. She just wanted him to hurry and up and get her home-fill that empty pit that had swallowed a dozen shots of tequila and still left her feeling hollow. The mortar that kept her bricks in place had liquefied, drained away on a steel table in an abandoned warehouse, and one by one the bricks were tumbling down into the hole.

Walking home on the arm of another handsome, unknown man, Jackie smiled grimly at the thought of one more broken promise.

“Here,” Shelby said, handing Nick one of his handrolled cigarettes. “Take it, damnit. I know you want one.”

He let out a huff and took it from her, plucking a match from the container sitting on the counter. With a quick pop of his thumbnail, it crackled to life, and Nick took a long drag on the harsh, sweet tobacco. He watched Shelby light one for herself, something he had not seen her do in years, and then take a long draught off her third beer. She rarely had more than two drinks, but it had little apparent effect on her as she paced around the kitchen and out to the living room to stare through the huge panes of glass at the steady rain that buried Illinois in a sea of gloom.

“And fucking eat something, would you?” She pointed at the burger he had made but had not touched. Hers had been gone in two minutes. “This ‘woe is me’ thing is pissing me off.”

Nick picked up the burger and took a bite, and admittedly it tasted damn good. His stomach had been rumbling since the previous night but he had not had the inclination to eat. Not to mention, Shelby was probably right. Maybe there was a little punishment going on. “Sorry. This thing has me in a poor mood.”

She took another deep drag on the cigarette and then put it out, blowing a long stream of blue smoke out toward Nick’s face. “Yeah, it has me worried, too, but I was out there all night trying to find the prick while you moped around out here and brooded on the possibilities. You know, Nick,” she began with a shake of her head and paced off toward the windows again, “there was a time when the little people got stepped on, you stepped up and made it your business to mete out a little justice. I loved that about you. You stood up for what was right, even if it meant risking your life.”

Her words stung. “I still do, Shel. You know that.”

“Then what are you doing, babe?” She spun around, sloshing beer out onto the floor. “Drake is out there killing people, and you’re acting like you can’t really do anything about it.”

“Can I? Can you?” he added, pointing a finger. “Even with blood, do you honestly think you have a chance against him now?” Frustration, anger, impotence-all began roiling over inside Nick. “If we both had blood, would it make any difference at all? You saw the same thing I did, Shel. Drake opened a doorway and just stepped right through to the other side. We can’t defend against that. If he’s got that much control over it, he could probably just open a door here and take us out while we slept.”

“Why hasn’t he then? Huh? Why?” She stomped across the room at him and stabbed a finger hard into his chest. “You just want an excuse not to fail yet again, knowing that if you blow it this time, you die. You’re taking the coward’s way out, Nicholas.”