For the Dead Travel Fast

—-xxx—-

She hit up a total of five ATMs as she made her way across the borough, withdrawing the max two hundred dollars from both her own checking account and then Castle's, which had her name on it. (The marriage counselor had said does it hurt anything to have separate accounts? to which Castle had said yes my feelings. This had been the compromise, her name on everything. Grateful now for the marriage counseling, the absurdity of his feelings on the matter, grateful.)

She made her first phone call at the last ATM, in view of its camera, wanting a record of the fact that she was not under duress. She was using the burners she and Castle had bought yesterday (was it only just yesterday?). Alexis would not know it was her; she wouldn't answer an unknown call. Sure enough, Alexis's phone went to voice mail, and Kate, still on camera at the ATM, spoke the words she'd rehearsed in her head. Alexis, your father loves you, he'll come back to you as soon as it's safe. I don't know who else might be after us, what might be after us, so I'm hiding us. I'm sorry, for what it's worth. I'm so sorry it came to this.

More truth than she should spill on a recording. She hung up and fished out Castle's burner phone, realized there was a huge black-red blood stain on the lower half of her white shirt, peeking out from below her jacket. She couldn't bother with that; it was nine a.m. but it was also New York City. Anyone out here had their own blood to worry over.

She called Ryan next, because he was more likely to be busy with his kids, his family, than to have time to answer a burner. He had not been given Castle's burner phone number because she'd been Castle's contact person, because Ryan had her number for work-related matters. Because Kate, God help her, still felt untrusting even in the midst of friends.

Ryan did not answer. Kate turned to the ATM's fish-eye camera and mouthed I'm so sorry Espo, and took a deep breath to try her hand at acting. "Ryan, it's me. I'm taking Castle out of the city. It's—a graze. You'll find a dead man in our loft." Why couldn't she organize her thoughts? Why was this a jumbled nonsense? "Don't come after us. This has to be over. It's done." Bullshit.

The transition had only just begun.

Kate slid their now-contaminated burner phones, both turned off, into a bubble mailer she'd picked up when she'd bought the new iPhone. She sealed the mailer and addressed it with a black off-brand Sharpie. It would go to their apartment. That would take care of GPS tracking. She had not yet activated the new iPhone; she didn't want it pinging on a cell tower anywhere in the city.

She collected a few more supplies, making sure to be seen on surveillance camera and security footage; she even went back to their apartment building and got her Triumph motorcycle out of the storage locker, their helmets. She was not sure what her plan was just yet but she wanted options. She rode the bike out of the garage and returned to the single room down the block on Broome Street.

Kate brought up both helmets, her purchases, the neatly folded wads of twenties stuffed into various pockets, bags, places. She hadn't expected him to be awake, but the moment she stepped over the threshold, he was responsive. His eyes opened, the blue of those eyes leached, diminished, now a faint grey. She dropped all their supplies on the desk table and sank down to the bed, shedding the leather jacket, her shoes, letting herself finally lay against his side.

He made a noise in the back of his throat but didn't pull against the ropes. She checked anyway, her fingers snaking up to the cuff of his dress shirt, making certain the rope hadn't gotten to the sensitive skin of his wrist.

She lay down again, her own body weak, trembling; she had done what was necessary and now it was a matter of phase two.

It was disconcerting to lie beside him and not hear his heart beating, that slow and muffled thump which had lured her towards sleep so many nights. She had just knitted herself back into his life—into their life—and she often still spent the first hour every night just marveling at the solid and unwavering heart beneath her ear.

She needed a real plan. Supplies and a motorcycle, the SUV, cash. She needed a direction.

He was conscious in fits and starts now, and she had nowhere else to go. They could not show up in a hospital—suspicions hadn't died down since Josh had publicly and often retold the story of her dying on the table and his inability to save her and yet, miracle of miracles, she was alive. (Duh. Fish a bullet out of a heart, and that's what happened to her kind.)

Add to that the dead man on their apartment floor whom she had been forced to exsanguinate just to have the energy to survive three gunshot wounds herself. (She had thought it was only two; she had felt the damn things enter her body and slice hotly through flesh and organ, and then exit, and she had counted only two. She had been wrong. She had nearly died in the effort of saving him first, rather than herself, that piece of metal rattling around inside her. What did the flight attendants warn you in the onboard emergency protocol? First secure your own oxygen mask, then your unresponsive partner's. She should have taken it to heart.)

Lying beside him, his body beginning to shift from stone cold to clammy, almost damp, she thought about escaping to the Hamptons, but as alluring as poolside was, she knew that wouldn't be possible. Too many people would follow them there; it was too visible for what came next. And even that paled in comparison to the body blows of nostalgia and old memories which would assail him from every corner of his summer home. During a transition, she knew from experience it was best to get away, hole up where the old life couldn't touch you and make you hate, make you start to revile. Otherwise…

Bad shit happened to those who tried to cling to the Before. Before was fragile. Before was made for a humanity that was only guaranteed a limited number of turns around the sun.

After was for the strong. After was for truly living.

But of course, first you had to be dead to get there.

—-xxx—-