Chapter 3
Mason Christopher White
Cause of Death: Choking
Nora had learned how to perform the Heimlich maneuver by age eleven.
By age eleven and a half, she had practiced on three teddy bears, one Baby-Eats-a-Lot doll, and a coughing man at Pizza Hut who, it turns out, suffered from particularly vocal postnasal drip.
No one at Mason’s frat party had been quite so diligent, leaving him to choke on a bottle cap after he’d plucked it off with his teeth.
The case had come through one particularly rainy morning as Nora sipped on chamomile tea and nibbled at a bran muffin.
The muffin promptly hit the rim of the garbage can under Nora’s desk and landed with a bounce on a cushion of discarded tissues.
Choking cases always made her lose her appetite.
Along with learning the Heimlich maneuver, eleven-year-old Nora learned all of the potential complications that came along with it: the broken ribs and gastrointestinal hemorrhaging.
Not to mention the number of people who choked to death simply because they were so embarrassed to be choking at all that they left the company of others to asphyxiate without making a whole thing about it.
Choking, Nora had long-ago concluded, was something to be wholly avoided at any cost.
* * *
Civilization gave way to an endless gray sky and the endless gray roads beneath.
Neither Nora nor Charlie had spoken in over an hour.
Even Jessica held her tongue from her cage in the back seat.
Nora’s grip on the steering wheel had loosened, her knuckles steadily regaining their color with each passing mile.
The farther they’d fled from her branch of S.C.Y.T.H.E.
, the easier she breathed. Not that they were out of the woods.
They wouldn’t be that until she had the mental presence to formulate a real plan.
S.C.Y.T.H.E.’s national headquarters would eventually hear about the girl who’d stolen a case file, and a soul who wasn’t a soul yet.
As long as she was in the country, she had a target on her back, and so did Charlie.
Something gave a gurgling roar in the passenger seat. Nora shot a look at Charlie, who gave his soft middle a gentle pat.
“She’s hungry.”
Nora cocked a brow.
“Senorita Munch Munch,” Charlie clarified, indicating his stomach with another pat. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about the senorita.”
“Weirdly enough, Charlie, I had,” Nora said with an eye roll. “And I’d stop listening to the senorita if I were you. All that processed junk you eat is going to put you in an early grave.”
“I thought that was supposed to be choking’s job.” Charlie’s stomach growled again. “You summoned her with all that processed food talk, you know.”
Nora just shook her head. “And that’s another thing. Choking to death, Charlie, really? You know who chokes? Babies choke. And little kids who don’t chew their food properly. And toddlers who suck the plastic eyeballs off their teddy bears. And then you, apparently. It’s embarrassing.”
“Sorry for not dying cooler, sis. We can’t all be Mom and Dad, I guess.”
His words hit Nora like a piano falling out a window in a cartoon.
She could practically see the little yellow birds flying in a halo around her head from the impact.
Their mom and dad had died in an accident of some sort.
That was all Nora and Charlie were ever told, in order to spare them the trauma of visualizing the details.
What it did instead was leave a void that Nora had spent her life trying to fill by studying death.
She could tell you exactly how many people a year died from being struck by lightning (twenty-four thousand), which bodies of water carried the most dangerous predators and bacteria (anything in Florida), and the safest time to cross the street (two p.m. on a Tuesday).
But she couldn’t tell you how her parents died, and that, more than any accident could, had always killed her.
“Fuck you,” she said.
“Fuck you,” Jessica agreed.
Charlie’s stomach rumbled again, and Nora decided even the senorita was on her side.
“Sorry.” Charlie put his hands up, his face soft with genuine remorse. “Sorry. I think I’m hangry. I’m not used to going this long without at least a little snacky snack.”
Nora sighed. It was true; Charlie never deprived himself of anything he wanted.
Not the last slice of pizza, not the boy Nora had mooned over their entire junior year of high school, and certainly not a snacky snack.
Charlie lived to enjoy living. It wasn’t something Nora understood, and it certainly caused her a fair amount of frustration over the years.
But that was Charlie, and it had been since the death of their parents.
Bubbie always used to say he was a lost soul, but since Nora had started her job and seen real lost souls, she decided he was just kind of an ass.
His tummy gave another pathetic plea.
An ass who also happened to be the only family she had left.
The sign for a rest stop blurred as they cruised past. Nora clocked it and checked the time. They could afford a five-minute diversion. Plus, Nora really had to pee.
“I’ll get you a smoothie,” she said, and pulled off the highway.
Just past the turnoff sat two rest stops on opposite sides of an otherwise empty road.
Nora pulled into the lot of a squat little building with a faded sign reading “Nutrition-2-Go” in a font that wasn’t quite, but was definitely a longtime friend of, Comic Sans.
She parked the car directly out front, leaving the motor running to stave off the chill of the day, and swung off her seat belt.
“You stay here,” she said. “Don’t move. And for the love of god, do. Not. Eat. Anything. I’ll just be a sec.”
Charlie stared at the sign through doubtful eyes. “This place looks like it specializes in kale-flavored spinach.”
“Bird food,” Jessica added.
“Yeah, probably, but look.” Nora jabbed a finger towards the sun-bleached poster in the window displaying an assortment of green smoothies. “Those can’t be choked on, so they won’t kill you.”
“No, but they might make me want to kill myself,” Charlie muttered.
Nora’s bladder gave a twinge. “Give me two minutes, all right? Got any flavor requests? It looks like they’ve got avocado with peach and something called Magic-kale Spell.”
“Whichever one looks least like Linda Blair regurgitated it, please.”
Nora nodded and hustled out of the car, the warmth of the mechanically heated air quickly replaced by a sharp late-autumn chill, which somehow made her have to pee even more.
She waddled through the door, a weathered bell above it ushering her in with a defeated sigh, and placed an order for two Divine Detox smoothies.
It was getting close to lunchtime, and Nora could use some brain power to figure out the twins’ next steps.
She shuffled to the bathroom as the blender started whirling and sat down, basking in the first moment of calm she’d experienced all morning.
She’d take some relief wherever she could get it at this point.
Nora collected the smoothies in their cardboard holder, sneaking a sip from one of them and wincing as the tart, pulpy sludge settled on her tongue. She shouldered open the door and took a step towards the car before stopping abruptly. Her breath caught as she quickly scanned the lot. It was empty.
“Charlie?” she called into the nothingness around her.
Without thinking she let the smoothies drop from her hands, desperately patting down her cargo pants and jacket in search of her phone, a puddle of green forming around her sneakers.
Nothing. Her pockets were empty save for hand sanitizer and a stick of aspartame-free gum.
She unzipped her purse and rifled through.
No phone. She must have left it in the car.
The car that was gone. Could S.C.Y.T.H.E.
have caught up with them already? Her stomach sank to her knees at the thought.
But what else could possibly have taken her car, and her brother, away?
That was actually not a difficult question for Nora to answer.
She knew Death, and by extension, in her own way, she knew life.
And everything that threatened it. She could have forgotten to put the car in park somehow and left it to roll away.
There could have been a carjacker in the area.
But the lot was flat and there didn’t appear to be anyone around for miles.
Nothing made sense. Which seemed very fitting for the day.
Nora’s panic flared. Her spindly legs took off at a run before her brain could catch up with them.
In a blink, she was at the edge of the parking lot, staring out at a horizon bordered by fields and the odd dot of a farmhouse.
She checked her watch. Eleven fifty-five.
Five minutes until Charlie Bird was going to die.
Was this how it happened? When you stopped someone from dying the way they’re supposed to, did they simply disappear?
“Charlie,” she shouted again, doubling over, a desperate sob lodging in her throat. “Charlie!”
“Yeah?” Charlie’s voice called back.
Nora stood upright, stifled the sob, and tracked the sound of the voice to its scruffy source across the street at the opposite rest stop, just outside a Wendy’s.
“You fucking asshole,” Nora shouted. She looked both ways and bolted across the empty street and through the Wendy’s parking lot, where her car was safely parked, landing a punch on her brother’s bare arm just as he took a scoop of the Frosty in his hand.
“Hey,” he whined, a lump of icy chocolate slipping from his spoon to land in a heap on the pavement.
“No. No way. You do not get to be the indignant one here. What the fuck were you thinking? I told you to stay put. Do you have any idea the kind of danger you’re in?”
“You can’t choke on a Frosty,” Charlie said, tapping his forehead proudly with the handle of his red plastic spoon.
“This isn’t about a stupid Frosty, Charlie,” said Nora.
“This is about…look, the people I work for? They’re not going to be too thrilled that I have your file, much less you.
I don’t know what they’re capable of, but I know they’re not just going to be okay with this situation.
So we need to be careful, and smart, and stick together. Got it?”
“Yeah, right, got it.” Charlie scooped another spoonful, but before he could get it into his mouth, Nora grabbed his arm and dragged him back to the car.
Once again in the warmth and security of the little black Honda Civic, Nora let herself breathe.
They were on the road again, and Charlie was too busy with his Frosty to annoy her.
This was as close to contentment as she could ask for under the circumstances.
She checked the time. Noon had come and gone with a buffer of eleven minutes, and Charlie was still alive.
She almost allowed herself a smile. They’d done it.
Charlie wouldn’t die today. Except…one thing nibbled at the corner of her brain like a mouse on a cracker.
“Charlie,” she said. “Grab the file.”
Charlie smeared a dab of chocolate from his cheek onto the sleeve of his T-shirt and leaned forward, popping open the glove compartment. He pulled the file free and looked expectantly at his sister, awaiting instruction.
“What’s up?”
“Cause of death,” said Nora. “What does it say?”
“Choking,” Charlie said without looking at the page. “It’s the reason you’ve got me on a liquid diet, remember?”
“Can you just read it, please?”
Charlie chugged a sip of melted Frosty and put the cup into the cup holder, shifting his position as if he were about to crack open War and Peace. He cleared his throat and skimmed down the page with his finger.
“Cause of death,” he said, scanning. “Cause of death. Ah. Oh.”
“ ‘Oh’? What ‘oh’?”
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
“What ‘oh,’ Charlie?” Nora demanded, a familiar rush of adrenaline coursing through her.
“You’re not gonna like this.”
“Charlie.”
“ ‘Cause of death: car accident, ’ ” Charlie read.
Nora slammed on the brakes.
“As for example,” Charlie said in a shout, a protective arm flung across the Frosty.
“Heavens,” Jessica squawked from the back seat.
Nora fell back into herself, realizing in horror what she had done.
There were no other cars on this rural stretch of highway, but even still, if a car accident was Charlie’s new cause of death, she couldn’t be too careful.
Hell, even under regular circumstances, there was no such thing.
An error like this wasn’t in her usual repertoire.
An error like this could cost Charlie his life. She drove on.
“Sorry. Jesus. Sorry.”
“No harm done,” Charlie said.
“Not yet, anyway,” Nora said. “The time,” she added, frantic. “What’s the collection time?”
“Uhhhhhhh,” Charlie read back over his file. “There isn’t one.”
“What?”
“Yeah, it just says ‘Collection time,’ and then it’s blank.”
“Okay.” Nora sucked in a shuddering breath. “Okay. What’s the location? I need to know where to avoid driving.”
“Highway 286.”
“Where on Highway 286, Charlie?”
But Charlie just shrugged. “That’s all it says.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Again. Why doesn’t anything make any sense?
” Nora steadied herself with a deep breath.
“All right. Well. We broke Death, I guess. So, what do we do now? We get off the road is what we do now. We get off the road and go somewhere safe. A safe house. But not a house. So what? A motel, maybe. There’s got to be a motel somewhere around here. ”
“Do you do this a lot?” Charlie asked.
“Do what?”
“Have entire conversations with yourself.”
Nora’s mind traveled back to her little apartment and all the lively debates about what to have for dinner or which movie to curl up with that took place therein.
To her teens and the crushes she talked herself into or out of.
To her hermit’s cave of an office at S.C.Y.T.H.E.
, where all her most complex decisions were puzzled out with only her desk and a dusty filing cabinet there to hear.
To the days and years after her parents died, when she would tell herself that this kind of thing happened, but that it would never, ever happen to someone she loved again.
“No.”
“Huh,” said Charlie. “So, you muttered something about a motel?”