Recovering (2 page)

 
“You think you can take me?” I squint
at the soup cans that hang from the branches in the woods behind our house. Each
wears a little hat of snow. Today I picture them as seedy western outlaws sporting
crusty cowboy hats and grinning at me with mouths full of rotting teeth.

 I grip my Beretta,
which I found buried in the couch cushions in the living room. The outlaw
leader guffaws, underestimating me. A lethal mistake as many other soup cans
have discovered.

 “You ain’t
got the guts!” he sneers. “I thinks yer yellah.” His posse laughs with him.

 “That the
best insult you got?” I reply and take a long drag of the blunt in my left
hand. I hold in the smoke, hoping it will soak in and help douse the ache in my
ribs. Dr. Lee says I fractured two and cracked one, all on the right side. Nothing
to be done about them except keep them taped up and let time do its work. After
three months I’m thinking time called into the office with a big
sayonara
and went to live on a commune in Minnesota.

 When my
lungs begin to burn, I exhale and shoot. Each recoil slams up my arm, throwing
the shots wild and echoing in my tender ribs. I empty the clip. The last bullet
nicks the can, and it swings drunkenly on its string.

Only a flesh
wound. The outlaw shakes his head is disappointment.

 “Fuck me,” I
mutter. Give me a pink dress and call me Sally. Time was, I could put a bullet
through every can out here. From the deepest fiber of my soul, I knew how to
shoot, how to absorb the recoil, how to get that bullet where it needed to go.

 The ache in
my arms and shoulders is like a heartbeat. More ammo. I need more ammo, more
practice, and I should probably dredge up some earplugs. I turn around and see
Maya leaning against the back door.

 Of bloody
course she came home just in time to see my little display of complete ineptitude.
And she’s looking at me with that face again, her big blue-gray eyes all sad
and feely.

 “Hey,” I mutter
as I exhale another lungful.

 “Hey,” she
says back.

 I don’t know
why, but it always surprises me how small my sister is. As she stands up
proper, she can’t be taller than 5’3 or weigh a drop over 120. But that
Munchkinitis doesn’t mean she’s not an ass kicker of epic proportions. Girl
could probably put her fist through a car door and then pick it up and throw it
at you.

 Just a few
of the bennies of getting infected and turned into a hybrid angel.

 Fate gave
Maya a pretty shit deal on that front. Up until six months ago she was a normal
human college student, posting weird Facebook updates that were part
philosophy, part sarcasm, going to class, and not partying nearly enough. She
had a boyfriend. She had a life. And because I was too slow, she lost it all,
even her humanity. I think if I did a good deed every single hour of every
single day for the rest of my pathetic life, I still wouldn’t be able to make
up for that epic fail. For letting down the only sister I have left.

Maya’s abilities
are damn cool, but they didn’t exactly come free of charge. I can’t help but
glance at her gloved hands. The hunger is something she has to constantly
control, and the energy sucking thing…I hate thinking about that. Thank the
Lord that she’s not a full angel. Otherwise I’m not sure if we would be able to
help her keep the hunger under control.

 I realize
that no one’s said anything for a full minute. The cold digs through all the
layers of my clothes and injects ice into my bones. And Maya won’t get that
look off her face.

 “You’re
doing it again,” I tell her and hit the safety on my gun automatically, even
though the clip is empty.

 “Doing what?”

“Looking at
me like that.”

“No I’m not,”
she huffs. “Like what?”

I almost
laugh. She looks so much like Tarren when she frowns, the way her eyes crinkle
and her mouth gets tight.

 I shrug. “I
don’t know, like you want to put me in a bubble and feed me chicken soup all
day long.”

 That frown
sets a little deeper, and she reaches up to tuck some strands of reddish brown
hair behind her ear. It’s getting long, the ends touching her shoulders.

 “How have
you been eating?” she asks.

 Yep, here we
go with the nanny routine. I walk past her into the house to get out of the
cold. I need to play nice. I know that. Maya cares. That’s a good thing.

 “So, how
were the strip clubs?” I ask as I drop carefully onto the couch. My ribs don’t
take too kindly to the movement, but I manage not to wince like a sissy.

 “Dirty,
depressing,” Maya says. I don’t know if she’s talking about the strip clubs or
the house as her eyes take a tour of the room and her nose wrinkles up in
displeasure.

 Right, I
haven’t exactly been Mr. Clean these past few weeks they’ve been gone.
Actually, I think I’ve been Mr. Clean’s evil duplicate from an alternate
universe. Just need the goatee.

 “Damn,” I
tell her, “God hates me. You have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for a mission
that involves strip clubs?” I think longingly of all the gyrating female flesh
that I missed.

“It was
gross,” Maya replies. “Most of them were total sinkholes.”

 Ah, my
favorite kind. The shittier the club, the more amenable the women. You’d be
amazed at how attentive an over-the-hill stripper can be when you treat her
nice. She’ll teach you things the
Kama Sutra
wouldn’t dare publish.

 “Now you’re
just rubbing it in,” I groan.

 Maya is
quiet. I follow her gaze to the small, brown pine tree that she dragged out of
the forest last month. She’d even strung up some lines of popcorn to try and
turn it into a Christmas tree.

 It was a
nice thought, but we haven’t done the Christmas thing ever since Mom got sick.
Tarren is against celebrating of any kind, and me, I don’t know. Mom died in
December. So did Tammy. After that all the fake cheer of Christmas carols
always seemed mocking. Plus, it’s not like we had anyone but each other to
share the holiday with, and Tarren has so little Christmas cheer that Ebenezer
Scrooge would consider him a buzzkill.

The tree is
sad as piss. All its needles are brown from the water I never gave it. Some
cling on, but most have found their way onto the carpet. I need to throw it
out. I’ve had this thought probably a hundred times. I can’t stand looking at
it, but here it still is. Alone. Abandoned. Shriveling.

 Which
reminds me… I stamp out my blunt on the coffee table mostly just to be an ass. “So,
I see that Tarren’s found another excuse not to be here,” I mention casually.

 Maya turns
to me the moment I open my mouth. The speed and grace of her movements sometime
remind me of a cat. It’s in these tiny ways, almost too fast for the eye to
see, that I realize again and again that she’s different. Something beyond
human.

 “He left.
He…just left,” she says and then launches into a bizarre story of a phone call,
a mysterious voice on the other end asking for Tarren by name, and Tarren’s
response, which was pretty much to take our medical kit and walk off into the
sunset on a secretive solo adventure.

I lean back
on the couch, careful with my ribs. Wow, Tarren lied about something and then
left. Color me shocked. And I haven’t even received a cheerful postcard from
him yet. What is the world coming to?

 Maya gnaws
on her lip, and I bring myself back to reality. She’s right. It’s weird.
Definitely weird. Tarren doesn’t know anybody. He doesn’t have friends except
for that piss ant Lo, and Dr. Lee, of course. Could he have found a girlfriend?
God, I hope so. A man just shouldn’t go dry for that long. It’s not right or
healthy. If I had his movie star looks you can bet your ass I’d put them to way
better use than Tarren ever does.

 I know the
girlfriend idea is wishful thinking. The scars. Tarren won’t even acknowledge
them, as if he could just think them out of existence. I swear he’d insist on
wearing long-sleeves and pants into hell rather than let anyone see the scars.
Trying to talk to him about them is about as pleasant and productive as walking
repeatedly into a brick wall.

And he took the
medical kit. Not exactly a bouquet of roses.

 Maya looks
at me in expectation, like this is some kind of Nancy Drew mystery that we can
solve together with a magnifying glass and some gumption. I turn off my worry
spout. Tarren can take care of himself, and if the situation were dangerous he
would have loaded up with weapons and ammo. I tell Maya as much.

 Maya starts
going on about tracking him down, but I put the kibosh on that.

 “Tarren
leaves. That’s what he does. Get used to it,” I tell her.

 Maya used to
be president of the Tarren-is-an-unfeeling-husk club, but lately it seems like
she’s given up her membership. With all the time she’s spending on the road
with him, I think Stockholm Syndrome is starting to set in.

 ”He’s just…”
she answers meekly.

 “What?” I
didn’t realize how pissed I was getting until this word snaps out of me. I
guess we’re doing this. “He’s what, Maya? Just Tarren? Yeah, I know.” Not like
I haven’t been living with the guy my entire life.  And now I’m thinking about
Mom and her cancer again.

 I don’t want
to be in this conversation anymore, so I get up and head for the stairs. I
don’t want Maya feeling sorry for Tarren. He and Tammy left back then too, when
Mom was sick. The mission. Always the damn mission, but that was just a
pathetic excuse. They were afraid of Mom, of all that pain and sickness. And I
was just peachy with it? Like watching Mom die wasn’t as lovely as having my
soul peeled away with a rusted spoon? I tell this to Maya as I walk up the
stairs. And yeah, those stairs suck ass, but I don’t stop, and I sure as hell
don’t lean on the bannister, not while Maya’s watching.

 I tell Maya
about how I took care of Mom, how I called Tarren and Tammy when I knew she was
dying. How they didn’t make it back in time. I don’t tell Maya how Mom got so
small it seemed like she was just evaporating right in front of my eyes. How all
that strength, all that power that had infused her entire being just faded
away. It was a good lesson. Anyone can be weak. Anyone can break no matter how
strong they pretend to be on the outside.

 I get to the
top of the stairs, and honestly, I’m pretty much out of strength. I need to go
lights out for a few hours, stop thinking about the brother who can’t stand to
look at me.

 “He’d run
into a burning building for any one of us,” I say, knowing that Maya can hear
me with her super ears. “Hell, he’d do it for a complete stranger, but that
doesn’t make him brave.”

 Pretty damn
good. Didn’t even practice it. I slam my bedroom door for emphasis, and it’s
all I can do to get to the bed before the exhaustion knocks me out like a
cartoon mallet.

 
The forced shut down does me good.
When I wake up from my extended nap, I find Sir Hopsalot settled next to my
hip. His nose trembles, and he looks at me with wide, knowing eyes. I reach out
and stroke my rabbit’s soft gray fur. It only takes three strokes before he’s
making a happy chewing noise with his back teeth.

 Sir Hopsalot
is the best. Period. Sure, as sidekicks go, he can’t do much heavy lifting and
tends to hide under the bed in response to loud noises, but I’d choose him over
a Robin or Speedy any day.

 As I pet Sir
Hopsalot, I decide that I’m going on the next mission. I don’t give two shits
what Maya and Tarren say. I can withstand Maya’s big weepy eyes. Tarren will spew
out all this logic about how I’m a liability and angels will descend upon me
like a wounded baby deer. Just words. I’ve been pissing Tarren off since the
day I was born. No reason to stop now.  

 So my
hand-to-hand combat is a little rusty, and I can’t exactly sprint across a
whole city anymore. No biggie. I can still do plenty, like play lookout, take
sniper duty, or flash my pretty smile as angel bait. I’m great at angel bait. Course,
I can’t really start humming the theme music if we don’t have a mission.

 “Got to find
some angels,” I tell Sir Hopsalot.

 When I sit
up, he jumps down from the bed and hops into the big hay bin in the corner of
my room. He starts munching his heart out on hay. Little guy loves the stuff. I
tried it once and honestly wasn’t too impressed. Slap me down a juicy steak and
a couple shots of whiskey over hay any day.

I flip open
Starbuck, and my beautiful girl hums in greeting as I put in her password. She
may not look like much on the outside, but below the hood, I’ve upgraded my
laptop with the latest cache, a processing speed so high it might break the
sound barrier, and enough memory to make tomorrow’s gamer drool. Oh, and the
hard drive is practically big enough to park a school bus. In other words
Starbuck is the shit, which is a good thing since finding angels is pretty much
the most important part of the mission, not that you’d get Tarren to admit that
even if you pulled out all his fingernails under torture. It’s all cool to go
stalking the night for justice and take the kill shot, but day-saving doesn’t
happen without solid detective work first, and that’s what I do.

Starbuck and
I get to work. I’ve got Google alerts set up to send me obituaries from all
across the country. They filter into my database, and my algorithm runs through
them, prying secrets from the dead. The equation is simple, if people under 50 in
close proximity to one another start dropping dead of heart attacks, they get
flagged. Then it’s all about finding a pattern, looking for dark fingerprints
across the maps. If the police report mentions a crazy low body temp at time of
death, then I win the bad guy lottery. Classic signs of an angel attack. Heart
gives out from the stress of the energy drain and body heat gets zapped away. 

Problem.

The angels
don’t want to come out and play today. I follow body after body and come up
with nothing but a lot of natural causes or trails that are stretched and
faint. Hardly enough to go galloping after, guns brandished. After an hour, my
brain starts to hurt and my thoughts keep wandering away like bored kittens. I
have to tear my eyes from the screen, breathe, and then go about collecting all
those damn kittens again. This is bad. I’ve always been a little ADHD…okay,
maybe more than a little, but my brain and I have been a good team. I should be
able to go hiking through the internet for hours, but now sixty minutes seems
to have eaten through my entire supply of concentration. Another shiny present
from the Head Injury Express.

And what’s
with the angel no-show? Honestly, it’s become an all-you-can-eat bad guy buffet
these past couple of years. As their numbers grow, their discipline is going
down the toilet. In the good old days, the angels were careful with their
kills, made me work to find them. Nowadays, you’ve got Special Olympic rejects
running all over the place just leaving bodies in their wake like it ain’t no
thang.  

Course, I say
that, and look who has nothing to show so far.

 The universe
is mocking me.

 Well, the
universe doesn’t fucking know me very well, because I get knocked down on my
ass plenty, but so far I’ve always gotten back up. If the victims won’t lead me
to any angels, then I’ll find them a different way.

 I fall back
down on my bed, listen to Starbuck hum, and look to Keira Knightly for support.
Her eyes smolder from the poster above my bed, and she certainly gives me a lot
to think about…just not anything related to my cerebral territory.

Okay, change
of tactics.

I look out
the window and let my mind wander down a thousand unrelated alleys. I wonder
where the hell Tarren’s gone and why he doesn’t trust Maya and me with his
secrets. Does he think he could do anything that I wouldn’t forgive or understand?
Come on, we kill people. Not like I’ve got much moral high ground here.

 My thoughts swing
to Tammy. My sister loved the snow. That was her way. What everyone else hated,
she loved – spiders, snakes, the loudest, screamiest rock music. Everything
about her was loud. She could laugh so hard, especially if it was at your
expense, that you felt like the earth was shaking under your feet. But there was
no way of staying mad at her. I always thought she could charm the Grim Reaper
into giving her a second shot at life.

 I was wrong.

 Tammy would
have thought this gray, cold, ugly day was beautiful. She would have revved her
motorcycle and sped off to go find a blizzard to dance in.

 
Blizzard.
I sit up. Sir Hopsalot pauses in his hay gorge-fest for a moment and then
resumes his loud chewing.

 “Blizzards,”
I say to him and laugh. “Blizzards, blizzards, blizzards!”

The rest of
the day is a blur. Starbuck and I get epic together. The internet is our bitch
as we pull up news on major weather events and I lay out all the resulting
corpses for review. I’m onto something. I can feel it. Bad guys, come out, come
out wherever you are….

 Maya returns
with bags of groceries. I didn’t even notice her leave. Technically, according
to the rules of the All-Knowing-Tarren, she’s not supposed to go out on her own
without one of us chaperoning in case she goes all Godzilla on the innocents of
Farewell, Colorado. Tarren is paranoid as a meth addict when it comes to Maya.
I think if they made those child bungee leashes in adult sizes, he would strap
her in and never let her out.

 Tarren is
wrong about Maya. As wrong as anyone could be about anything. The sky will turn
red, Scooby will get tired of Scooby snacks, Tarren will get a sense of humor
before Maya hurts an innocent person. I see the scary cold need in her eyes
sometimes, but she can control it. She won’t go dark side. She just won’t.

 My sister
sets food besides me as I work, protein shakes, sandwiches, badly-cooked pasta.
I’m pissed that we’re back to the nanny routine, but I’m also hungrier than a
Hungry, Hungry Hippo. So I basically inhale the food, and somewhere along the
way, the plates disappear.

 She drags me
away from the computer that night, asking if I want to play some video games. I
pretend like I’ve played them all to death, but the truth is I can hardly beat
them anymore, even on the easy setting. My reflexes are shot, and after a few
levels, my concentration goes all wandering kittens again. Instead, we watch the
original
RoboCop
from my DVD collection. I don’t even think I make it
halfway through before I’m conked out for the night. Pathetic me.

 I wake up
the next morning with a pillow under my head and a blanket over my shoulders. Sweet
sister. Still no dreams. Maybe that’s a good thing. The house is silent, and it
must be early, because only a hint of light plays beneath the window blinds. I
sit up and wait for the aches and pains to start knocking, but I actually feel
good today. Or at least better. Probably what happens when I’m not left in
charge of feeding myself.

I blink and
realize something is different. I sit up and look around for honestly like a
full minute before I realize the fugly Christmas tree is gone. So are all the
empty beer bottles and dirty plates on the coffee table. My deluge of DVDs has
disappeared, probably stacked neatly in the entertainment center.

 In a word, the
house no longer needs a hazmat unit to come out and do a controlled demolition
for the safety of the community. Just one more benefit of a hybrid angel in the
family – she has a lot of energy and doesn’t need much sleep.

 For the
first time in a long time, the thought of a shower actually crosses my mind,
but I have more important work to do. I feed Sir Hopsalot and then pet Starbuck
as I boot her up. When she’s awake and ready to get ass kicking, I put her into
the port on my desk in the dining room where I’ve got three monitors lined up. I
already know what I’ve found, but now it’s time to track the fuckers, see if I
can pinpoint their next move. Sir Hopsalot jumps into my lap and settles over
my legs just as the front door opens.

 “I cleaned
all your clothes yesterday,” Maya says behind me. “When’s the last time you
changed?”

 I lean back
in my chair and glance at my sister. Her hair bounces in a short ponytail with
lots of little wisps sticking out. Maya’s got a touch of pink in both cheeks, which
means she’s probably just returned from bounding around the woods like a
gazelle on steroids.

 “What’s
today?” I ask her.

 Her mouth
turns down, the same way Tarren’s does. Stockholm all the way. “Did you eat
breakfast?”

Yep, here we
go. “Thanks for cleaning everything,” I tell her. It’s mostly sincere, but I
really want her to ditch the worry eyes. “Must have taken you all night.”

 Maya gives
me a look that says a lot of things I really don’t want to hear. She’s
disappointed, of course. A monkey could’a taken better care of this place than
me. I know that.  All she says out loud though is, “Then it’s a good thing that
I don’t need much sleep.”

 She looks up
at the collection of action figures on the shelf above my computer monitors. More
mouth turning down. More disappointed nose scrunch.

 I’m pretty
proud of the scene, actually. I’d found some Jonas brother action figures at a
garage sale in Fresno last year, and they’re currently being pounded into the
ground by Conan, while Rogue stomps green army men. Mr. Incredible has lost his
left arm, but he fights on against a tag-team of Chun Li and a Cylon.

Maya wants to
know what happened. I remember coming home after the whole coma episode to find
all my action figures standing together, no weapons, no missing limbs. I could
practically hear them singing
We Are The World
together. It was a nice
thought, something only Maya would have done.  

 “Peace never
lasts,” I tell her.

 “A shame,”
she says, and her voice is way too serious for a conversation about
over-muscled plastic dolls. “Have you eaten?”

 She’s like a
bloodhound. “Yeah. So, I think I’ve found some angel activity.”

 Maya is
already in the kitchen. I hear the fridge open.

 Damn her. “I
think you’re going to be really impressed,” I call after her. “This was some
good detective work on my part.”

“Noted,” she
calls back. I hear her opening the cabinets, pulling out dishes.

As she works,
I start setting up the big reveal. “So what’s the number one difficulty angels
face?” I ask.

After a
slight pause, Maya answers, “Controlling the hunger.”

“Okay,
there’s that,” I admit, “but since all angels pretty much fail ‘Not Killing
People 101,’ what I…”

“Oh really.”

Jesus! Maya
is just behind me. I didn’t even hear her footsteps. She lays a plate of food
beside me along with a protein shake. I make a face at it.

 “I mean in
general,” I tell her. “As a hybrid, you’re the exception of course.”

 “Of course.”

 I give her a
quick glance to make sure she’s not pissed. Maya’s face is still, but something
is going on with her eyes. Just for a moment, I get a sense of that other part
of her. The angel part. All hungry and animal. I turn quickly back to the
computer screen. This happens sometimes with her. It’s best to ignore it.

 “Getting
caught was the answer I was looking for,” I say and show her my lovely Google
maps filled with the shining brilliance of my detective work. She leans over to
look, and I can tell she’s impressed. After a little more back and forth, I
point to the map.

 “I noticed a
cluster of deaths in the Midwest. Missouri and Illinois this past week.”

 Maya puts a
hand on her hip and plays right along. “What does this have to do with getting
caught?”

 
Ding,
ding, ding, we have a winner!

“Weather,” I
announce proudly.

 “Weather?”

“
The Midwest is getting bent over and
spanked by the mother of all ice storms. There’s power outages, cancelled
schools, airport pandemonium.”