I pulled into the strip mall parking lot, and my implant disengaged, bringing me out of autopilot. Probably for the best that my conscious mind hadn’t made the forty-minute drive. As I reengaged, so did the adrenaline, as if the surprising, alarming phone had just ended.

The awning over the door was green, faded to yellow. West Allis Conscious Shelter. The kind of place I had always ignored, as if that could save me from ending up here someday.

Deep breaths. When I heard Theo was in there, I knew I had to come. Even if I hadn’t heard from him in years.

Verne, the woman who called me, met me at the door and led me inside. The cinder-block corridor of plexiglass-fronted cells was unnervingly quiet, but each cell was occupied. In one, the patient walked repeatedly into a wall. In another, their fingers writhed in the air, typing at a keyboard perhaps. Another seemed to stir a pot that wasn’t there.

Maybe on a subconscious level, I thought coming to Theo’s aid this time would be like busting him out of jail after the protest, or holding his hand at the clinic. As if I could swoop in and make everything right. This series of tableaus dispelled that. I didn’t want to see him like this, but it was too late to back out now. If Verne had called me, it had to mean she hadn’t reached anyone else.

Theo was in the last cell on the right. He had a bowl cut, like I remembered. His facial hair had finally grown in. He wore a stained, scuffed suit that hung off bony shoulders.

“Holy…no…” I muttered under my breath at the sight.

“They were probably on autopilot for a few days before anyone found them,” Verne said.

“Him,” I said. “As of seven years ago, anyway.”

“I got some food and water into him, and a fuel pill for his implant.”

As we watched him through the plexiglass, Theo kept moving around the cell, in some elaborate pattern. Like a bee guiding its hive to a flower.

“He must be exhausted,” I said.

“I’ll give him a little sedative too. Just wanted you to get a good look first. The only way he gets out of this loop is if he can finish doing what he told his implant to do,” Verne said. “I take it you weren’t there when it happened?”

“No, I haven’t seen him in years.”

“But he had your number in his wallet.”

I blinked, surprised. “I guess so.”

“Alright then, tell me what he was into back then.” There was a glint in her eye. A drive.

“We used to hang out a lot in college,” I said.

“Uh huh,” Verne said, smirking. I blushed. How I felt was so obvious to her; had it been obvious to Theo? I’d always wondered.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “I met him before he was openly trans, and I had just parted ways with my Bible study group. We were both figuring out who we were going to be. I remember watching direct-to-video action movies, listening to Italian folk music, drinking soju together…” The memories were surprisingly hard to distill. “I don’t know what he’d be doing now. Certainly not this.”

“People often use autopilot to get through something they don’t exactly want to do,” Verne said. She laid a hand on my arm. “Keep pulling on that thread. I’ll be right back.”

She ducked into a supply closet, and I heard a clatter as she pulled boxes off the shelves. She brought out exercise equipment, video game floor pads, an oversized piano mat. One by one, we tried sliding these under Theo’s feet as he moved around the cell. Nothing fit; the props only made him stumble.

I could feel the pressure of exhaustion and frustration behind my eyes, and noticed the time, well past midnight already.

“No luck yet, but we’ll figure it out, you wait and see,” she said, but it sounded rehearsed, unsmiling.

On my way out, I walked back down the corridor of dimly lit cells, past all the other patients, and I tried not to take those words as an impossible promise.

Contrary to popular belief, killing people was not part of Death’s job description. In truth, he was more of a glorified chauffeur: a guide for the spirits of the dead on their journey to the next world. Once a soul became lost, whether sidetracked due to past regrets or a terrible sense of direction, Death would find them, armed with empty promises and a point in the right direction.

But every few years there would be a soul—a terribly stubborn soul—who’d refuse any suggestion to pass on. And not a single one of those souls had been half so frustrating as the Border collie from Boston.

It was the third time this month Death had come to the city to ferry the Border collie’s soul. His boss was beginning to lose patience. The big man Upstairs was strict and had no sympathy for late deliveries. Death was aware of how expendable he was, despite his many years of service. Should he do anything prove himself incapable, he’d be replaced as quick as his soul could be sent back to limbo. The very thought made him nauseous.

No. He was too good at his job to be sent back to that awful wasteland. He refused to be bested by some volatile canine.

The sun was blazing in the afternoon sky. It shone upon the gold-spotted leaves of autumn trees, which lined car-clustered roads. Death glared at the blue sky. With the sun came people, dawdling about and getting in his way. A sunny afternoon in Boston wasn’t an ideal setting for a forced capture, but Death would persevere.

He moved with the sharp efficiency that came with centuries of experience. Weaving through crowded sidewalks, he dodged sudden bouts of arm waving and fist shaking until he arrived at the glass doors of Dan’s Pizza Place.

The pizzeria must have been operating for decades, now. Its once bright red brick walls had browned through the years, and its sign above the entrance was chipped on the corners. The whole building itself looked tired and rundown compared to the rest of the street. Yet there must have been some hidden charm about the old pizzeria, because it was was the only place Death could find the Border collie.

The dog’s spirit was there again, and Death crept behind it along the shadows. By now, the dog had sensed something was following it. Good. Death would use its fear to his advantage. The dog quickened its pace and skittered behind the pizzeria.

Several school children ambled across the sidewalk, giggling and effectively blocking the entrance to the alley. Death swept behind the children to stand in their collective pool of shadows. He dissipated into nothingness. Then, in the safety of the alley and its darkness, his form emerged as if from dust.

A whine whistled in the air. Death turned his gaze to the Border collie, who dolefully scratched its paws against a chain-link fence, ears downturned. Death grinned. No fence or wall could trap a dead spirit, but if the dog didn’t realize it, all the better for him.

He lunged. The dog keeled back, freezing in alarm as Death wrapped his fingers into the scruff of its neck.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

Death flinched. He turned to the small voice before he could stop himself. In that brief second, the dog pulled itself out of its shock. It tugged free from Death’s hold, jumping up and over his shoulders, and Death fell face first into the pavement.

He pushed himself up from the ground just in time to see the dog sprinting out of the alley.

“No!” he shouted, stumbling to his feet. “For the love of—stop running!”

But the dog had already disappeared.

Death growled and whipped his head towards the voice. Beside a dumpster stood a young boy, whose large, dark eyes seemed at odds with his small face.

Death sighed. A large cloud moved across the sun, and the warmth that had once bathed the streets in autumn light vanished at once—a sure sign of the boss’s displeasure. As if the failed ferrying was really Death’s fault to begin with.

Rubbing his wrists, he ignored the kid’s stare as he left the alley, making a wide turn to avoid contact. The boy’s attention wasn’t completely unusual. Those who were nearing the end of their days could often see Death, and since he looked like a normal, mundane human being, there was usually no interaction and therefore no problem.

He pulled his schedule book from inside his jacket. Flipping it open, he looked through his upcoming appointments to squeeze in one more appointment with the blasted Border collie. While he penciled the adjustment, he realized the child’s footsteps were trailing him.

Nervousness bled into his gut. No mortal had ever tried to communicate with him, not since he had been hired. Then the overcast rolled past the sun, eliminating the shadows near Death, and everything became worse.

He was powerless.

“What are you doing?” the boy asked again, coming closer.

“Uh…” Death began, unused to conversing with humans. “I was…I was trying to catch a dog.”

The boy smiled. He was missing two bottom teeth. “Is it yours?”

“…No.”

“Oh. Are you a dog catcher or something?”

“No,” Death answered promptly. “I am not a dog catcher.”

Death stepped to the side and made to retreat into the shadows, but the boy stuck close to him like a toxic paste. It was too dangerous to try to dissipate with the boy so near.

“So if you’re not a dog catcher, why are you trying to catch a dog?” the boy continued, thumbs stuffed under the straps of his backpack.

Death sped up his steps, anxiously glancing between buildings for a chance to escape. Were humans always so chatty? “Because it is my job.” he replied.

“So you are a dog catcher.”

“No,” he repeated with frustration. “I am not a dog catcher.”

“Well then, what are you?”

Death thought for a moment. “I find lost things and…return them to where they belong.”

“Woah, that’s pretty cool. Do you have to go to a special school for that or something?”

“No,” he said, because what did that even mean? Death had to get out of there.

He glanced down at his watch. There was an old woman’s spirit roaming in Bangladesh that he needed to ferry in just twenty minutes.

Death faced the child square on. “I have an appointment.”

“Okay.”

Death thought that was a clear indication of their parting, but the boy was still standing there, smiling. “So now I must leave.”

“Aw, you gotta go now?”

Progress, at last. “Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll see you later then. You have to come back for the dog, right? Because you didn’t catch it yet.”

“I do.”

“When?”

“Thursday. 5 o’clock, EST.” Why was he still talking?

“I think that’s after school, so I can come help!” The boy grinned again.

Death started feeling nauseous again, but it had nothing to do with limbo.

“Oh, and I’m Colin. What’s your name?” the boy named Colin asked.

“That’s, uh, kind of private…” Death’s eyes shifted quickly, trying to find a suitable mortal name for a human male in Boston. “Martin…?” he murmured, reading off a nearby street sign.

“Your name’s Martin?” Colin inquired.

“Uh…yes, Martin it is, then.”

Martin. It didn’t have the same sweet ring to it as “Death”, but he supposed it was a suitable substitute. Death looked down at the strangely talkative boy and gave him a stiff nod before he sped off in search of the nearest shadow.

“Okay, bye Martin!” Colin shouted at his back.

Death didn’t know how to respond. Around the corner, he dove into the shadow of an ice cream stand.

On the other side of the train station just west of the city, the love of her life was buying a bouquet of flowers. She had never seen him before, but she knew that he was the love of her life. She knew it like she knew the sun rose in the East.

The love of her life finished the transaction at the florist and began walking to a platform, bouquet in hand. It struck her then that they were not going to be on the same train: he was going away from the city, and she was going to it. She walked towards him, first, and then ran, touching him on the shoulder as she caught up to him. He turned. His eyes were the darkest brown she had ever seen.

“You’re the love of my life,” she told him. His eyebrows raised, then lowered. She watched her statement click into place somewhere, and he smiled. It was the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Then you must be mine,” he said. He looked at the bouquet in his hands, and held it out towards her. “I knew I bought these for a reason.”

She took the flowers. They were pink roses.

“I got a discount on them because I work there. Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“Isn’t it strange to have a flower shop in a train station?” she said.

“Not at all.”

She looked at him. What a wonderful thing it was, she thought, to disagree, to love, to hold discount pink roses from the train station flower shop in her hands. In the distance, a train whistle sounded.

“You’re going away from the city,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Give me your number, so I can call you.”

And he wrote down his number on a scrap of paper in a thin and tilting hand. The train pulled in as he handed the paper to her, and she folded it and put it in her pocket so it would not blow away.

“Goodbye,” she called as he got on the train.

“Goodbye,” he called to her from the window. As the train pulled away he leaned out so he could see her, the love of his life, and his tie whipped in the wind.

She went back to the city on a train of her own. She did not have to walk far after exiting the train— her apartment was right next to the stop. From her top-floor window she could see the whole city lit up beneath her, and the golden dome of the station with the dark bodies of trains rushing in and out. When she got home the first thing she did was fill a vase with water and arrange the roses in it. The second thing she did was call the number in her pocket from a yellow corded phone hung on the wall. She sat at her little card table near the phone and stared at the roses as the phone rang.

“The number you dialed does not exist,” said a recording of voice after one aborted ring. She dialed again. Again: “The number you dialed does not exist.”

She hung up and left the room, returning a moment later with a copy of the yellow pages. She cracked open the book, ran her fingers down a page, and dialed again.

“Hello,” she said. “Is this the florist’s shop in the train station outside the city?”

“It is,” a man said.

“I was wondering if you had any information about an employee who works there Tuesdays and Thursdays. He has dark brown eyes and he bought roses from your shop just a few hours ago.”

She listened. She reached for the notepad and pen she kept on the table and wrote down a number.

“Thank you,” she said, and hung up. She dialed the number from the notepad.

“Hello,” she said. “Is this the train station outside the city?”

“Yes!” chirped a voice.

“I was given your number from an employee at the florist’s shop inside the station. I was wondering if you had any information about a specific passenger who got on the train leaving the city this afternoon.”

The voice receded into itself. “I don’t think we’re supposed to give out information on specific passengers.”

She waited. The voice spoke again, even meeker this time.

“If you were from the police we maybe could give you a list of names of the passengers.”

A pause, a moment too long.

“Are you? From the police?”

“No,” she said, realizing that even if she was, she had never asked his name and therefore the list would be of no use. “But he is the love of my life, if that counts for anything.”

She could hear papers shuffling on the other end, the stutter of a keyboard.

“The love— well, if— let me see if I can— I’m sorry, you said he worked at the flower shop? In the station?” she said.

“Yes.”

The typing sounds paused. There was the tap tap tap tap tap of someone deleting something, and then the typing started up again. Another pause.

“Do you remember the name of the flower shop?”

She told her. Another cycle of typing.

“Um. I think, um, we have no record of this flower shop in the station. Or any other flower shop in the station.”

“But he was buying flowers from it. Just earlier today. Are you sure it’s not just closed?”

She could practically hear the girl’s hands wringing. “Yes. I am pretty sure. To be closed it would need to— it would need to exist.”

She reached out and thumbed one of the rose petals. It was as cool and soft as skin.

“Well. Thank you for your time.”

She hung up without waiting for a response, and heaved the yellow pages to the U section. Dialed again. A man picked up on the other end before the first ring had finished.

“This is the railway union.”

“Hello. I was wondering if you could tell me the name of the conductor on the train to the city that left this afternoon. I want to know if he’s seen somebody.”

“Left from where?”

She told him the name of the town.

“No station in that town,” he said, like he was glad of it.

“I was just there earlier this afternoon. I took a train into the city from it.”

“Where’d you get off?”

She told him the name of the city.

“Only lines that go there are the North and East lines.”

“Then where did I meet the love of my life?”

“Never liked riddles,” he said, and hung up.

She leafed through the yellow pages. Then she picked up the phone and dialed. She stood and walked towards her window, leaning a shoulder against the frame as the phone rang. The golden dome of the train station was gone. In its place was a dark circle of empty space, like the hole where a tooth has fallen out. A long strip of land, clotted with dirt and wildflowers, had replaced the train tracks. She heard the phone pick up and spoke before the person on the other end had a chance.

“Is this the governor of the city?”

“You have the governor’s assistant,” a young man’s voice said. The pride he felt in his role— the governor’s assistant!— was audible.

“Well,” she said, staring at the empty strip of earth feeding deep into the sparkling city, “I was going to call to tell you that the railroad union missed a station. But that doesn’t appear to be an issue anymore. Thank you for your time.”

“Wait,” the governor’s assistant said. “Railroad union? I thought we ended— I thought that one dissolved decades ago. Is this a new development? Is there anything else you can tell us about it?”

“I don’t think so, I’m afraid,” she said absently. She looked out the window and wondered where the love of her life was at that very moment, whether he was making dinner or reading or even staring eastward out a window of his own, wondering the same thing as her. She realized that the governor’s assistant was still speaking, something about reelection and campaign promises and the profound value of small donations from citizens like you. She hung up, returned to her yellow pages, and dialed again. The phone rang seven times before somebody picked up.

June 1, 2025

I’m supposed to be on watch, vigilant against the metallic beasts that have murdered so many.

Instead, I’m looking at the flowers. The spindly tree across the street is an explosion of pink. Tulips, daisies, and what I’ve decided to call hydrangeas blossom in the tiny gardens along walks, against foundations, or in window boxes. My station in the corner of what was once my favorite coffee shop offers quite the view of the neighborhood. There’s an entrance to the highway three blocks away, around the corner. The town council’s convinced that if the machines come, it’ll be from that direction.

The most threatening thing I’ve seen in the last two weeks is an angry goose that’s decided he’s king of the nearby intersection. Anyone who’s dared come close has been run off with a honking, flapping, pecking tirade. We’ve all decided the throne is his until he dies of natural causes or chooses to abdicate.

Behind me, Martin snores in the coffee shop’s famous red leather couch. Before, I wrote so much good stuff in that thing. He’s taken his boots off and curled into its soft cushions, his face buried in the corner. Where’d he leave his gun? Ah, over by the window. Further away than it probably should be. Supposedly Martin served two tours in Afghanistan, but you’d never know it just by talking to the lazy bastard.

My rifle’s in my lap. I’ve used it to murder plenty of tin cans, but nothing more. It was this or farm duty. “In these trying times, we all must all band together and work for the common good of the town!” the mayor’s voice reminds me in my head. He’s right, but he doesn’t have to be such a dork about it.

If Martin can sleep, I can write. Hello, new journal. I’m Esme. Nice to meet you here at the end of the world.

---

June 3, 2025

We’re not sure where the machines came from. Maybe some poor soul out there on what’s left of the east coast knows, but that information didn’t reach California before the bastards hacked the power grid.

There are theories, of course, diverse and often batshit. The Marstons are convinced the machines are extraterrestrials here to wipe humanity off the planet and take our resources. Mary Kruger thinks they’re a DARPA project gone wrong. Martin bet me five dollars they’re the first wave of a Chinese invasion. Kelly blames Nancy Pelosi. Old Rod Wrentham’s been telling everyone the machines crawled out of the basement of a pizza parlor in a murderous quest to prove the superiority of their creator’s meatball subs, but I can tell from the glint in his eye and the way his theory keeps expanding that he’s just having fun with it.

Bill’s idea seems the most plausible to me. “Remember that asshole tech billionaire who proclaimed on Twitter that he was going to build an AI that would save humanity from itself?” he said in between puffs of our last joint one night. “I think he tried and he fucked it up.”

Before the machines cut the power, they flooded the internet with pictures and videos of their attacks on our cities and towns back east. Bill told me it was pure carnage. Like they didn’t think we, as humans, mattered one bit. I’m glad I never saw it.

I look to my right, at the goose guarding his intersection, and I wonder if the machines are just looking for a place to call their own. In their own murderous way.

Fifteen years on the force, ten as the county sheriff, I thought I’ve seen the grisly worst. Mostly ranch accidents. Hooves and horns through skulls, barbed wire through most everything, I got a stomach lined with steel, a gag reflex that doesn’t gag. And here I am, bent over, OJ, eggs, biscuits and gravy on their way out.

Sarah, my deputy, she’s hurling, too. Side by side, buckled over, we’re retching, flinging spittle and digested food from the griddle off our hands. Looking like newbs is what we are, as if we’ve never seen death days after. But this gruesome display defies physics and my iron constitution.

This ain’t no accident.

The victim is a woman, blonde, in her twenties or thirties. She’s wearing urban-camouflaged fatigues, smattered with blood and her insides. Her face unrecognizable. Her body size and type indeterminable. She’s an amoeba of contorted body, crushed from a fall. From where? That’s what Sarah and I got to figure out.

Standing, I block the sweltering sun with my hand and look around. Not a building nor high ground in sight. Brown prairie grass and big Montana sky stretch to the horizons.

“Someone could have dumped her here, George.” Sarah swats at a magpie with her cowboy hat, her long black hair blowing in the wind. The magpie chatters and flutters a few feet away. The flies, too many to do anything about, feast.

“Naw.” I scan the ranch land, inhaling whiffs of fetid air. “No tire marks anywhere.”

“Could have done it by horse.”

“Could have, and a cumbersome transport that’d have been, but heck, look at that.” I point to where the woman’s parts lie scattered. “There’s a crater the size of a buffalo wallow, mostly dirt and such. She fell right here. I’m sure of that…only that.” I crane my neck up at the endless blue above, not a wisp of white anywhere. “An angel in God’s Country.”

Sarah packs a can of Copenhagen and pops a pinch in her mouth, never letting that badge or her condo fool anyone. She’s cowgirl, through and through. Raised on a ranch, her adopted ma and pa still live on that ranch. And get her on that ranch? She outrides, out-ropes, out-wrangles damn anybody. Fine deputy, too.

She spits black juice on the ground. “What’s an angel doing without wings?”

“Dying is what.” I shake my head. “Awful way to go. Tossed from a plane or helicopter, I reckon. Only thing makes sense.”

“You recognize them fatigues?” Sarah creeps to the body.

I follow, careful not to step where blood has sprayed. Grass crunches under each step. My nose is now used to the smell of decay, and I catch hints of the prairie with the wind, a dry, sweet smell, like coriander. The flute-like call of a western meadowlark warbles nearby. I crouch for a closer look, feeling all my forty years, and ignore the tickle of flies on my nose, then ear, then cheek, their buzz a grating constant of my job. “They’re for urban warfare. Anyone with a credit card can order them online. But look here.” I point to a small green flag with six yellow stars sewn onto her breast pocket. “You recognize that flag?”

“New to me,” Sarah says with a smirk I can’t place. I’m about to ask why the grin, then it vanishes as if it never before existed, like a rainbow after the air dries out. Her eyes are misty, a thousand yards away. It’s the look she gets when admiring a newborn foal.

“You all right there?” I snap a picture of the flag with my phone.

She sniffles and wipes her eyes. “Sometimes this job just gets to me. It burrows under my skin. Makes me want to shed it.” She swallows, gutting tobacco spit.

Her answer doesn’t sit right. It tastes off because of that subtle smile seconds before her tears swell.

“I know the feeling.” I look toward the heavens from where the woman fell. “You know where to next.”

Sarah stands and walks to our two ATVs, which we rode in on from an overgrown dirt road that’s not worthy of a name or map. “Airport.”