Page 33 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“That’s not how they think, and you know it.”

“I suppose I do.” Alice sighed heavily. “It’s all just means to an end to them.”

“I have no idea what that’s like,” said Jane, not looking at her.

“Jane—Janey.” Alice reached over and wrapped her hand around Jane’s wrist, gently, holding her fast. “You know you’re not just a means to an end. I was a terrible mother, but you’re still my daughter, and I love you. I will always love you. You can be as nasty to me as you like, it won’t change my loving you.”

“Then why did you leave?”

“My father—your grandfather—loved my mother more than anything in the world. He loved her so much it pulled all the oxygen out of the room, until there wasn’t room for anything but loving her. And when she died, it was like she took all that pulled-away oxygen with her, like she left him suffocating in an empty room. He got so scared that I’d vanish just like she did that he nearly smothered me to death. I loved him and I hated him and I didn’t feel like I could live my own life until he was dead. I never wanted to be him, ever, and then, when Thomas disappeared...it was like he took all the air with him. I couldn’t breathe.”

Jane looked at her silently, eyes wide and grave.

“If I’d stayed, if I’d done the smart thing and turned my back on the possibility of finding him again, I would have done to you and your brother what my father did to me. Love is a weapon, and when you turn it against yourself, you can love someone to death. Running was the only way I protected you from the worst monster in the room. Me.” Alice paused to swallow, hard. “I knew there would be consequences. I guess I just thought...I don’t know how much I was capable of thinking.”

Above us, Annie had opened the seam and Sam was passing children to her on the pole, one by one, letting her nudge them out into the sunlight. Their parents were watching anxiously, but none of them had asked to go with their kids. They understood the fragility of this possible escape.

Alice nodded toward them. “Look. See how willing they are to let their kids go if it might save them? Maybe they’re right and maybe they’re wrong, maybe sending the kids away just leaves them more defenseless, but they have to try.” She sighed. “I had to try.”

One little boy started crying, grabbing for his mother’s hands as Sam hoisted him and passed him up to Annie. She was clinging to the pole through the sheer strength of her legs, and I thought Verity would have been impressed if she could see her baby sister. Not that Annie would have believed that. Sometimes I’m glad that I was an only child whose family life only got complicated when people died. It seems a lot more straightforward than the politics of belonging to a large family.

“Are you armed?” Alice asked, looking at Jane again.

Jane swallowed as she nodded, producing a small handgun from under her shirt. Alice frowned, and passed Jane one of her pistols.

“This was your grandmother’s,” she said. “My mama never missed a shot she meant to take, and today, neither will you. There’s only twenty of them. That’s five each. That’s almost unfair.”

“Spoken like a woman whose luck has always been on her side,” I said, wryly, as Sam boosted the last child up to Annie. She started to climb down the pole. He leapt up to grab it just above her, and used his tail to pull her close as he kissed her. She kissed him back, neither of them seeming to care how many people might be watching. When he finally let go, she slid the rest of the way to the floor, and he vanished through the hole in the tent roof, not a word having passed between them.

“Is Sarah coming?” I asked, as Annie approached our little cluster.

“My phone can’t get through, so I’ve been shouting in my head, and I don’t know whether I heard her or my own imagination, but for right now, let’s assume she’s on her way. We just don’t know how long she’ll be.” Her hands lit up again, blazing bright. “We ready to do this?”

“No,” said Jane, with an uncomfortable laugh. “But I’m not seeing where we have a lot of choice. If that boy out there didn’t want to take you home like a midway prize, they’d already be shooting us until we stopped twitching.”

“Good thing for us I’m irresistible,” she said. She turned to the nearest carnie and hissed, “Get everyone into the middle of the tent and lay down flat on the ground. We want to minimize target area.”

The carnies began to do as she said. The rustling sounds this created were loud enough that someone outside must have heard it; an unfamiliar voice shouted something.

Sounding almost bored, Leonard said, “Very well, then. Fire.”

The guns began going off, and everyone else hit the ground in a ragged series of thumps, Jane hissing as she fell. I stayed where I was, bullets whizzing harmlessly through my intangible torso, and scowled at the tent entrance. “Is this always how you handle rejection?” I shouted. “You could be a little less bang bang and a little more sweet talk and chocolates.”

The gunfire continued. I looked down at Annie, flat on the ground. “I don’t think Leo’s feeling chatty,” I said.

“Can you go check outside?”

“On it.” I blinked out, reappearing once again by the side of the highway. Apparently that was just my default here. But this time, I didn’t reappear alone.

Sarah turned to look at me, expression serene. I jumped.

“Whoa! Fuck! Sarah, we’re going tobellyou.”

“I like bells, and I’m too far away for you to have heard a bell anyway,” she said. “Annie called, I came. Was I not supposed to?”

I didn’t really have an argument for that—or an answer. I looked back toward the tent.

It was still surrounded, the Covenant agents closing in as they fired, slowly tightening their ring around the structure. Soon enough, they’d be right on top of it and could do whatever they were planning next. To be honest, I was sort of hoping they were planning to go with arson. Annie could stop the fire if they did that. Burning your enemies to death is a lot harder when one of them can politely ask the flames to go away and stop being a problem.

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