Spree (YA Paranormal) (19 page)

“I gave them what they deserved!” Zipper shouted. He looked right into the eyes of the soccer players pressing closer to him as he said: “They killed you! They made you a drunk!”

I touched Zipper’s face in an attempt at compassion.

“
I
made the decision to try alcohol,” I said. “
I
made the choice to get behind the wheel. I may not have chosen to be an alcoholic, but
I
chose to ignore my disease and look what happened.”

Zipper looked uncertain.

“What I did was my fault and no one else’s,” I told him. “What you did was your fault too.”

Zipper began to cry.

“I care about you, Zipper,” I said, “but I care about them too. I won’t let you kill any more of them.”

“Fay?” Zipper asked.

He was such a helpless little boy. The full magnitude of what he did was beginning to seize him. He sobbed, still holding his assault rifle, but still fearful.

The soccer team was stumbling over bodies, but picking up momentum.

“Feels awful, doesn’t it?” I asked Zipper. “I know how that feels. I feel it every moment after taking Steph’s mom away from her, after crippling Aliya, after contributing to the death of Cindy. But they made their choices that night, too, Zipper, just as you made your choice now. Just as you have to make a choice this very second.”

Zipper’s light showed the faint glow of understanding.

The very second what was left of the soccer team got near him, Zipper pointed his gun at them. His eyes grew opaque, unreadable. He muttered only, “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry that I was ever born.”

He then aimed the gun point blank at his own skull and shot.

The soccer players tackled Zipper, but it was too late. His lifeless body went down without a fight.

I released Steph, who stood there, aware of what I’d said and done, but uncertain of how to feel.

“She protected me,” she whispered to herself. “
She
, of all people, protected
me
.”

Before Steph lost the feel of my soul entirely, I sent her one last message.

“Alex loves you,” I told her. “Just as I love him. Be the girlfriend to him that I never was. Don’t mess it up.”

“Fay?” a ghostly voice called. “Your head? Where is your beautiful head?”

It was Zipper, in his new form. He looked like he was a shadow engulfed in fire.

“Gone,” I said. “Decapitated.”

The Flow crackled in anticipation of more souls. Crazy T lunged to take Zipper, to take as many souls as he could down with him, but the darkness of his deeds was too much. Crazy T got his wish. The Flow sucked him in, screaming as he was, and swallowed him straight to hell, along with nearly every Taker that raised a ghostly hand in the fight. Even the Keepers were sucked in, though their vortex led to a far better place. I saw Belinda stand next to me for a moment. The Flow called to her.

“Belinda?” Zipper asked. “From elementary school?”

Belinda nodded and then turned to me.

“I wanted to say goodbye the right way this time,” Belinda said to me. “The way we should’ve in the hospital when we were young.”

I hugged her. A part of her golden light, if just for a moment, filled me.

“Thank you,” I said.

Belinda’s glow diminished ever so slightly.

“We lost many,” Belinda said. “I wish I’d done better.”

“The bombs didn’t all detonate because of you,” I said.

“And because of my sisters and brothers,” she said. “We all played a role, even you. And I promise you: our energy will keep the bombs from exploding when the bomb squads clear them out.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Belinda smiled. Her radiance returned to a blinding white light.

“Off to heaven?” I asked her.

“I can only hope.”

“I’m never going, am I?” I asked.

“That remains to be seen,” she said. “Takers don’t all go to hell. They aren’t all evil. Just the leaders like Crazy T who can’t let go, who twist others to their will.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Good,” Belinda said. “You’re their leader now, you know that? The most powerful Taker still left. You lived a rotten life. Live a better afterlife.”

“I will.”

I looked around; it wasn’t just Zipper gravitating towards me. The souls of other students, some soccer players, who died without fully embracing the light, hovered near me too.

“Can they see heaven—through your eyes?” I asked. “Can they see it just once so that they know?”

“Everyone sees heaven differently,” Belinda told me. “But I have a feeling many of them will see it one day, when their work here is done.”

Belinda turned to my fellow Takers and to me. “Just never forget the light inside you,” she said, “no matter how dark it gets around you.”

Belinda waved, and just like that The Flow swallowed her into a haven of pure light.

“Goodbye, my friend,” I whispered.

“Where are we?” a dead soccer player asked.

His form was that of a dark, shapeless mist with bullets circling it.

I looked at Zipper, at the soccer player, at the kid just out for a night of fun.

“We’re where we need to be, somewhere between heaven, hell, and earth. We’re Takers.”

“What are those?”

“You’ll see.”

Just then ambulances and police cars arrived. I’d experienced this scene before. I walked with my fellow Takers, seizing any last lost souls among the number of bodies. I watched as the bodies were rounded up, as the wounded, like Alex, received their care. Tourniquets were everywhere, as was the blood. Stretchers moved countless kids to more ambulances than I’d ever seen gathered in a single place. The number of wounded was truly staggering.

In the midst of all of this, Aliya embraced Steph as she circled around.

“I’m sorry,” Aliya said. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know,” Steph said, hugging her back. “I can’t forgive you yet, but I’ll get there.”

Just then, Alex came up, newly bandaged, and held Steph. She held him back.

“It’s time for us to go,” I said to my new Takers.

“Go where?” Zipper asked.

“Spree.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where Takers take souls.”

“Why?”

“Judgment…and penance.”

Zipper cried. “There is no penance for me,” he said. “I deserve to go to hell.”

“Leave the judgment to Spree, but remember,” I said, facing all the new Takers, “you each get one wish. A Death Day wish. Choose wisely, especially if you think hell follows.”

“I choose for you to go to heaven,” Zipper told me.

None too surprisingly, the prayers of murderers weren’t that powerful. I was still there.

“It’s okay. I belong here,” I said.

“Why?”

“To clean up what I’ve done,” I said. “I hope you spend more time here than me. You need to learn how to be human again.”

“As a ghost?”

“How else?”

I hugged Aliya and stood with my friends until every last person was cleared from the field.

How dark the muddy field looked, all stained with blood.

As if it was a sign from God, we set our eyes on the field and disappeared.

Zipper’s Death Day wish sent us straight to Spree, straight home.

MONTHS LATER

Chapter 13

The Burgundy Hill High School Memorial game may not have been a sanctioned championship soccer match, but it showed that Burgundy Hill was, much like the game of soccer itself, resilient and full of character. The game was held well after the original game to accommodate the bomb squads. It’s sad that the term would ever have to be associated with schools, but it was. Classes weren’t even held until the school was thoroughly combed and every last bomb and piece of metal was cleaned out. It took weeks. Some parents still felt uncomfortable, and it’s rumored Burgundy Hill Prepatory Academy had a big spike in mid-year enrollment because of it.

“I can feel their pain,” Zipper said. “It burns me.”

His lasting ghostly form was that of a scarecrow in perpetual fire. Each day the weight of what he had done grew in the fires upon him.

“You haven’t felt nearly any of it yet,” I said. “But you will. Just as I’ll always feel the emptiness I created in Steph’s soul.”

I worried about Zipper, strange as he was. He grew darker by the day, twisted and distorted by the pain. He could feel the hatred of the community and that twisted him further.

I imagined in another few months he’d be gone, swallowed up by hell.

As he stood by me, though, I wanted him to see the moment of his defeat, the moment of Burgundy Hill’s triumph.

The crowning moment before the game was the dedication of the Tree of Life, as the Vo-Ag sponsors called it. It was the sapling of a giant elm planted that spring that would symbolize the connection with nature every lost life had. The entire school came out one day to see the commemorating of the tree and the game they never had a chance to see earlier on. It was the only year there wasn’t one state champion, and a year when both Burgundy Hill and Franklin Shore were honored with championship trophies. Still, both teams were rivals and athletes and wanted to know who the better team was. Even if it meant playing without some of their best players.

In the stands, on cell phones, I saw the latest on the Burgundy Hill Slayings. We now had our own Wikipedia page, complete with a picture of John “Zipper” Chatterly and most of the soccer players. I was an addendum on the page, the supposed motive for the trigger man. And it wasn’t just Wikipedia who gave us that dubious honor. It was countless Facebook walls, Twitter feeds, and additions to the long list of school shootings that websites updated by the year. The very web page Zipper studied only months ago now added him to the list.

I showed the Wiki page to Zipper.

“Can you believe I wanted this?” he asked. The page was covered with his supernatural blood. “Now, it only gives me pain.”

“For every soul who looks upon that page, your fire will burn brighter. So says the council of Spree.”

“Until it extinguishes me?” Zipper asked. “Until I just die?”

“Not this fire,” I told him. “It never completely burns itself out.”

I stood by Zipper, watching his punishment in what seemed a few moments, though it took place over weeks in the mortal world.

Cameras circled Burgundy Hill tenaciously. Reporters were everywhere, addressing everything from motive to the school’s safety issues, to bomb removal, to the recovery of the soccer team. There was even a rumor that a TV movie was in the works, one making heroes of the soccer team that fought to bring down a shooter. It was originally slated for widescreen release, but studio executives feared high schoolers would rather see made-up horror movies with ghosts and vampires. One screenplay even had me star as a ghost looking in on what my drunk driving accident had caused, but the script was deemed too insensitive to the Burgundy Hill disasters of the year and ultimately passed on.

“Tell me, before I go to hell,” Zipper said. “Will they ever make a movie of this?”

“A low budget one, and you’ll be portrayed as a monster.”

“If only I saw all this before, it could’ve been avoided,” Zipper said.

I looked sternly at him, speaking as his Taker: “Nothing would’ve changed your mind once I’d died.”

“But I was sick in the head.”

“You were sick in the soul; for that there is no cure…short of Jesus.”

The fire ignited again—some new view on the Wikipedia page perhaps, some new mention of his name.

I looked at Zipper and shook my head.

What saddened me was that this wasn’t the way any town wants to be remembered. I never wanted to be known as the drunk girl who got decapitated, and Burgundy Hill never wanted to be known as the center of a school shooting. Neither did Columbine. But here we both were, hot media stories until the next shooting happened and the next group of administrators, counselors, and teachers got grilled for not recognizing the warning signs. The truth is, until it happens, nobody really thinks the kid next to her, no matter how deranged, is going to bring in a gun and blow half the school away.

It’s unnatural, but it keeps happening, throughout time.

Our case did have one point of distinction, however, to forever grace our web pages. The press portrayed Zipper as a somewhat popular kid rather than the gun-toting loner I remembered him as. There were no trench coats, no bad home relationships. Even Zipper’s bullying at the hands of the soccer team went undiscovered. His blog, while cryptic, gave no insight. Ironically, Zipper actually lent his nickname to the type of school shooter who showed few signs, integrated well with others, and managed to avoid detection. Sort of like the Trench Coat Mafia, he became engrained into the pop culture of the moment. Then he was forgotten.

“Will anyone remember me as I was before the killing?” Zipper’s ghost asked me.

“I’ll try,” I told him. “But even I can never forget what you did, just as no one can forget what I did.”

I winced in a pain of my own.

The reason: my mother, too, made the news. The headline: “Mother of Drunk Driver Loses House.”

Aliya’s family’s lawsuit, like Steph’s family’s suit, went all the way to court. To pay the court-ordered amount, my mother sold the house. She told reporters: “It wasn’t a home anymore without Fay.”

But I knew she loved that house. I’d cost her that much, on top of giving her an empty home.

The community paper,
The Burgundy Hill Observer
, ran articles asking for financial and emotional support for all of the families of the victims, and my mother and her plight were printed with her blessing.

Still, no one feels sorry for the mother of a drunk driver when there were innocent kids gunned down. Some even blamed her for the way I turned out. But looking into the timeline, I knew I would’ve gotten behind that wheel no matter what. I was an alcoholic and unless I admitted it and asked for help, the story would’ve ended the same way—just later in life, after I had kids of my own.

For those of my friends whose story did end, and it was a long list, most became Keepers.