Chapter 6
Arthur Phan
Cause of Death: Car Accident
Most days, Nora wished she didn’t have to drive.
She was three minutes late to work that day after spending half an hour stuck in the kind of unmoving traffic that made you wonder if you would ever use the gas pedal again.
It wasn’t until she got into her little office that she understood what had caused the gridlock.
A five-car pileup sat across her desk in the form of Arthur’s file.
She’d tapped her pen to her chin, eyeing the accident through a narrowed gaze.
These were always among her least favorite cases.
Delicate sacks of meat versus thousands of pounds of metal.
The battle wasn’t even, and yet most people unwittingly fought it on a daily basis.
In Arthur’s case, it ended in more pieces than a body generally liked to be in.
Nora moved his file to the top of the pile.
First of the day to die meant first of the day to sort.
Today was his lucky day, but only because it had been his unluckiest day possible first.
* * *
The road was filled with untold horrors.
It always had been. Why anybody thought cars were a reasonable option forever confused Nora, who had agreed to take a driving test only when Bubbie became too frail to get herself to doctor appointments towards the end of her life.
Charlie got his license almost the moment he was eligible, their November birthday leaving him the last in his friend group without that ticket to freedom.
As soon as he had it, Nora rarely saw him.
It marked the beginning of the end of their childhood closeness in many ways, which, though she would never admit it, was yet another reason Nora didn’t much care for the concept of driving.
It had cost her her brother once, and now there was a very real chance it would take him from her again, only this time more permanently.
Nora kept her eyes on the road, her hands at ten and two, and her foot primed to slam on the brake at any given moment. The gray of the day had deepened into a velvety black that stood uninterrupted by city lights as they traveled aimlessly down the rural highway.
The thought currently torturing her, the one that had fought its way to the front of a very long line of thoughts waiting to do the same, was, How?
How had S.C.Y.T.H.E. found them? She’d feared they were coming, but most of what she feared, which was rather a lot, didn’t actually happen.
They must have tracked her down somehow.
But she couldn’t imagine them accessing something as civilian as her phone location.
That would require the higher-ups to bring organizations from outside of the company into the fold, and that simply wasn’t done.
Then it hit her.
“Charlie,” she said, keeping her eyes sharp for any potential dangers around them. “Go into my purse for me.”
Charlie reached down and pulled the little black bag from where it sat at his feet.
“I need you to get my name badge out.”
One of the perks of being a S.C.Y.T.H.E.
employee came in the form of a little metal rectangle engraved with your name and the emblem of the company.
Beyond the aesthetic appeal, which was minimal, came the ability to blend seamlessly into the background the moment you pinned on the badge.
They were mostly used by Collections Agents, who needed the near invisibility out in the field.
The awkwardness of being found hovering over a body while making a collection in the days before the badges was still cringed about by some of the more senior staff.
But every employee was issued a badge for emergency situations.
Knowing exactly how the badges worked was definitely above Nora’s pay grade, but some said it was Death’s way of doing a favor for those doing a favor for Death.
Regardless, it did things Nora couldn’t explain, and she couldn’t help but wonder if keeping track of her was one of them.
Charlie wrestled Nora’s badge from the tentacles of a power cord and popped it on her lap.
She let her eyes slip from the road just long enough to run across it.
It looked like it always had, the silver tarnished at the edges and around the letters of Nora’s name after nearly two and a half years of life in her purse.
But the logo, the scythe and arrow that usually sat black and cold against the silver metal, was glowing red.
“Shit,” Nora shouted. “Shit, shit, fucking shit!”
“Fucking shit,” Jessica agreed from the back seat.
Nora rolled her window down and hurled the badge into the darkness. Wind whipped into the car, sending tendrils of her thin, ponytailed hair loose around her cheeks. She closed the window and forced her now-trembling hands back to ten and two.
“So, uh,” said Charlie. “That was weird.”
“They were tracking us,” Nora said. “They know which direction we’ve gone.”
“But they’re not tracking us now?” said Charlie.
“No,” said Nora. “I mean, I don’t think so.”
“Cool. So we can go anywhere then, and they can’t find us, right?”
“I guess. But we have nowhere to go, Charlie.” Nora’s adrenaline was ramped up to “bear attack” mode.
Which, to be fair, was only a few levels higher than where it usually sat, roughly between “pop quiz” and “we need to talk,” but still.
The thundering of her heart was deafening.
“We can’t go to either of our homes, they’ll look for us there.
And for all I know there’s a S.C.Y.T.H.E.
-wide alert with my info, telling agents across the country to keep an eye out for us. ”
“Okay, so we leave the country.”
“Hilarious. Be reasonable, Charlie.”
“You’re telling me you don’t keep your passport on you at all times these days?”
“You’re telling me you actually packed yours?”
“Duh, you said we were going on a road trip. That usually means getting shit-faced in Tijuana at some point.”
“Where would we even go?”
“Tiju—”
“Not Tijuana, Charlie.”
Charlie shrugged and stuck a hand in the pocket of Nora’s coat, pulling out the photo of their father and his friends.
“In that case, Virgo Bay, Nova Scotia sounds pretty peachy right now,” he said. “Maybe these two wildcats are still there. Free room and board, plus a nice little change of scenery.”
An eighteen-wheeler entered Nora’s rearview mirror.
It was the only other vehicle they’d shared the highway with so far that evening.
Charlie was still talking, his voice animated, but Nora could no longer hear the words.
In the panic over her name badge, she’d temporarily forgotten about the threat to Charlie, but last she’d checked he was still fated to die in a car accident on the highway.
The truck drew up beside them on the right, and she allowed herself a peek inside the truck’s cab, as if the driver would be twirling a moustache like a villain in an old cartoon.
Instead he seemed like a perfectly average, three-dimensional man; white-haired, a round belly resting against the steering wheel.
But his eyes drifted closed for longer than a blink before jolting open again.
Nora looked around, eager to change lanes, but there were only the two. The truck kept pace, though it drifted occasionally, ever so slightly, over the line separating it from Nora’s car.
“Charlie,” Nora said, swerving a little towards the concrete barrier between highways as the truck crept towards them again.
Charlie followed his sister’s head tilt to the truck on the passenger side.
He looked back at Nora, eyebrows raised enough to crease his forehead with a look that said, “That guy?”
The swerving grew more aggressive with each passing mile, but Nora couldn’t seem to pass the truck.
Each time she sped up, the giant tires started to clip at her car’s paint.
After a few rounds of this, she noticed the swerving had developed a rhythm.
Every eight to ten seconds, the truck weaved into Nora’s lane, farther each time, before promptly righting itself again.
She dared a look through the passenger window, and through her mind’s eye the truck plowed through the lines and straight into the car, into the passenger side, into Charlie.
The last time it had made its way into their lane, the truck’s force had actually given Nora’s car a small push.
The next time could very well be the last. She counted to eight and slammed on the brakes just as the truck pummeled its way into their lane, straight through the barrier dividing the highway, and inexplicably emerged intact on the other side.
Nora ducked as the tail of the truck careened past them, narrowly missing the car’s bumper.
She dragged Charlie down into a huddle on his seat, and they remained crouched until the roar of the truck’s wheels faded into the distance.
Finally, Nora sat back upright, just in time to catch the truck weaving away in the opposite direction.
“Are you okay?” Nora rasped, mouth dry, eyes still fixated on the disappearing truck.
“Yeah, all good,” said Charlie. “You?”
Nora could only give a weak nod.
“Jessica, you all right back there, baby?” Charlie asked the bird in the back seat.
“Fuck,” Jessica squawked.
“That’s what I like to hear,” said Charlie. “So, Virgo Bay?”
Nora finally looked at him. “What?”
“Yeah, look. I can’t find Virgo Bay on my GPS, but it looks like we can get to Nova Scotia from this ferry, right, which is only like an hour and a half from here.
Then it’s a few hours on the boat and we’re there.
I figure we can bug some locals for directions once we get there.
I bet it’s some little fishing village no one’s ever heard of except the towns nearby. Bet the seafood is straight fire.”
Charlie’s voice and enthusiasm were unchanged by everything that had just occurred.
It was as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place, as if Nora hadn’t just had to figure out how to save his life.
His nonchalance was like ice water dumped onto Nora’s head.
“You realize we just almost died, right?” she said.
“You realize you just almost died, right? You saw how close we came. That truck nearly plowed into your side of the car like it did with the highway barrier. You were this close to being scattered into a bunch of different parts all over the road. Do you get that?”
“Yeah,” said Charlie. “That would’ve blown. But hey, I’m not. So thanks for that.”
Nora put the car back in drive and started forward again. “Jesus Christ. Does anything ever faze you?”
“Does anything ever not faze you?” Charlie countered.
Nora ignored him. “There’s a ferry close by?”
“Yep.”
“Does your cause of death still say ‘car accident’?”
Charlie reached behind him to where his file sat just beside Jessica’s cage. He gave it a quick scan.
“Yep.”
Nora took a sharp inhale.
“Okay,” she said resolutely. “We’re going to Virgo Bay.”