Under Zenith Read online

  When his back was safely turned I made a face at the back of his head, but decided not to verbally retaliate.

  “How loosely are we using the term ‘invent’ for this task?” I asked.

  “Well seeing as how you ‘invented’ a bow and arrow… which has definitely already been invented, I’d say the term is ill used in this context.”

  “Perfect,” I said with a smile.

  I didn’t know what I could possibly invent to get me up to the safe house, but I was sure I could build some sort of pulley system, or rock climber-esque mechanism. That wasn’t beyond reason.

  “I’d ask if you have any ideas, but I know you can’t help me,” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “Except for five minutes ago when you did help me.”

  “Mhm.”

  Apparently that was all I’d get out of him on that subject, though he wasn’t getting off that easily. I’d be revisiting Hayden’s little deviation from the rules once we’d completed this task.

  Until the snow came.

  Stupid rules.

  “See you up there then?” he asked, not waiting for me to respond.

  Before I could turn my head to look at him he was gone. If there was one thing to be said about Hayden, it was that he didn’t overstay his welcome.

  I sighed deeply before returning to the task at hand. Somehow I had to figure out how to get to the top of a cliff…made of garbage…by inventing something. I still couldn’t see what any of these tasks had to do with getting to heaven, but I wasn’t about to fail them and find out where I’d go instead.

  The pile of garbage loomed ominously before me, but I refused to be intimidated. All I needed was something to toss me up there.

  Maybe a catapult of some sort?

  With this potentially bad idea in mind, I began searching the area for anything I could possibly use. It didn’t take long to find the appropriate materials in the piles of garbage and before long, I was actually starting to construct a crude catapult.

  Most of the materials had to be tied together rather than welded or nailed, but the ties seemed to be doing their job so I couldn’t be too picky on that front.

  “Something tells me you’re executing a poorly thought out plan right now,” Hayden said, making me jump once more.

  “Would you stop doing that?” I shouted.

  My nerves were already shot from the task today without Hayden suddenly appearing in front of me, unannounced.

  “Stop doing what? Offering my friendly advice?”

  “It’s fine if you want to stay here, and it’s fine if you want to leave, but don’t pop in and out like that. It’s freaking me out,” I told him.

  “What are you even doing with that stuff?” he asked, kicking the pile of garbage that immediately fell apart.

  “You just ruined my catapult!”

  “Catapult?” he repeated skeptically. “You were going to try to launch yourself up to the safe house?”

  “Maybe,” I answered defensively.

  Hayden broke out in uncontrollable laughter at my response, instantly garnering a dirty look from me.

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! Why didn’t you just try to build an airplane out of a shoelace?”

  Hayden continued to laugh while I continued to stare at him in annoyance. I swear he hadn’t left all that long ago. Apparently it didn’t take long for him to get bored with waiting for me.

  “I hate you so much,” I told him, beginning my search once more for something that could help me scale a rusty trash mountain.

  “Sticks and stones,” he countered.

  “What about this?” I asked him, holding up a bright orange, wound up length of extension cord. “Think this could hold my weight?”

  Hayden assessed the cord apprehensively, and then looked me up and down, making me suddenly self-conscious.

  “I wouldn’t be willing to bet your life on it.”

  “That was almost sweet of you,” I told him with a little wink, tying the end of the cord to a desk lamp I’d found.

  “Grappling hook?” he guessed.

  I lifted my shoulder at him then turned to face the pile of trash in front of me. One of these days, when I wasn’t fighting my way through bizarre tasks, I’d have time to go back and reflect on what in the world had sparked this particular landscape in my memory. Then I’d work on having it permanently extracted.

  “Do you really think you have the arm strength to launch that lamp up to the house?” he asked me.

  “I don’t need to get it all the way to the house,” I replied.

  Jutting out of the mountain of junk was something that looked like a metal bed frame. I wasn’t sure how sturdy it was, but I had hopes that it would be able to support me as I pulled myself up using the makeshift grappling hook.

  “It’s a pretty far climb,” Hayden pointed out. “Do you really want to put so much faith in something that likely won’t hold you?”

  There he went; sort of caring again.

  It would have been sweet if I’d thought it was motivated by something other than his own selfish desire to get someone to their Destination and clear his previously failing record. Hayden’s desire to get me through this, no matter what the motivation, was still very useful, so I didn’t let myself feel hurt over the ‘why’ of the situation.

  “I guess we’ll find out if it works huh?” I asked, pulling my good arm back behind me and using all of my strength to throw the lamp over my head toward the bed frame.

  Luckily for me, it overshot the target quite a bit and came falling back down toward me after curving over the metal pole of the frame.

  “Even better!” I exclaimed, grabbing the lamp and wrapping the other end of the cord around it, creating a makeshift pulley system.

  “Lucky throw,” Hayden said from on top of the pile near the safe house.

  He was such a show off.

  “Be there in a second,” I called confidently.

  I gave the cord a firm tug to test out its strength. When it didn’t budge I jumped up and took hold of it, letting my entire weight rest on it just a foot or two off the ground. The bed frame let out a low metallic groan, but yet again, the cord didn’t budge and I took that as proof enough that I would be fine using this to climb.

  The arm strength required to pull myself up to the safe house would be a bit of a problem, but I figured if I could simply rely on the adrenaline of a possible fall, I might be able to pull it off. Besides, the climb wouldn’t be a very long one. I only had to exert myself for a short amount of time.

  The dirty fog in the air seemed to cling to my skin as I pulled myself hand over hand up the extension cord. I held myself in a horizontal position as my feet walked up the vertical wall of trash as if it were a sidewalk. I could feel the grime in the air settle over my sweaty forehead and I couldn’t wait for the cycle to reset so I could be clean again.

  I could only hope the next task would be in a pretty area like the ones before this.

  “I’m quite impressed,” Hayden called, now only a few feet away from me as I continued on my upward climb.

  “You should be,” I said breathlessly, my arms shaking with the effort of keeping me upright.

  I didn’t dare look back to see how far I’d come or I knew I’d panic and let go of the ‘rope’. Not something I really wanted to do right at that moment.

  By the time I reached the end of my rope, both literally and figuratively, I was ready to collapse into a heap. I pulled myself up over the ledge of rusty metal and lay on the ground outside of the safe house for a good few minutes, trying to catch my breath as Hayden stood over me with a smug smile on his face. I wasn’t sure what he was so happy about, but it was annoying me to no end.

  “Tired?” he asked happily.

  So that was it? He was happy that I was showing my weakness once more? He just loved any reason to point out any of my shortcomings, which I was quickly learning were numerous.

  If nothing else, dying h
ad definitely shown me how out of shape I was.

  “It’s easy for you to poke fun at me. You just pop up here without any effort,” I said, finally getting to my feet and steadying my breathing. “I wish I could watch you complete these tasks while I just stood back and laughed.”

  “Maybe one day,” he said.

  “Don’t get my hopes up if you can’t follow through,” I responded, walking toward the safe house and away from my impossibly frustrating Guide.

  Chapter 15

  The safe house was slightly different from the others in its décor, though the general layout of the room stayed exactly the same. The small room had one bed as usual, though it looked like a hospital bed. Instead of cupboards there were filing cabinets, the rocking chair was metal, and our ‘fireplace’ was a space heater.

  “Cozy,” I said sarcastically, shuffling my feet over the linoleum floor.

  “You created it,” Hayden countered once more.

  I couldn’t argue with him there, no matter how bizarre I thought it was that I had decided to pull a junkyard from my memory over anything else I could have possibly used.

  “Why this?” I asked him, nodding up to the flickering fluorescent light overhead.

  “I know you think I can read your mind, but you’re going to have to be a bit more specific for me.”

  “Of all the memories I’ve acquired over the years, why did we end up in a junkyard?” I asked, trying to be ‘more specific’ to discourage any more snide remarks from my Guide.

  Hayden shrugged; something he did often.

  “We needed something that made sense as an ingenuity task and this worked I guess,” he explained, taking his normal spot in the metal rocking chair while I sat on the paper covered hospital bed.

  Not exactly comfortable.

  “Oh we needed it?” I asked, wondering who the ‘we’ was in this situation. Maybe his super-secret boss? “Who is we?”

  Hayden shrugged.

  “Would you stop doing that?” I asked in frustration.

  “You say that an awful lot.”

  “And you do a lot of frustrating things. You see how this works?”

  “The snow can’t come soon enough,” he stated grumpily.

  “All I was saying, is that this task was bizarre,” I told him, trying to make peace. “The other tasks I can understand. They were pretty and kind of heavenly looking. But this junkyard was out of place. This whole situation is like a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to be. One minute it’s sci-fi, the next it’s horror, and then it’s like a bad romantic comedy where I’m stuck with someone who looks like you, but is a total jerk.”

  “Looks like me?” he asked, very plainly puzzled.

  I was immediately kicking myself for saying that since the last thing Hayden needed, was the knowledge that he was kind of ridiculously attractive. Up until this point, I had learned that he was otherwise unaware of this fact. And even now, he seemed to not understand what I had said so I ran with it.

  “Yeah…because you look like someone who would be nice,” I improvised. Very badly might I add.

  “It’s the accent isn’t it?” he asked with a sigh. “I think it’s Hugh Grant’s fault. You American girls think anyone with an English accent is a well-spoken gentleman who’s going to sweep you off your feet.”

  “Technically, you did sweep me off my feet,” I began with a grin. “And right over a cliff.”

  “Details,” Hayden replied, waving the issue away with his hand, though I could see a hint of a smile under those stubbly cheeks of his. “Let me see your arm.”

  I was thrown off by the sudden change in topic, but obliged as he walked over to me to examine my cut.

  “You’ve certainly been more helpful lately,” I accused.

  “We’re getting closer to the end. I figured if you’ve made it this far, you might actually get to your Destination.”

  “Which will look good to your mystery boss.”

  “Yep,” he replied simply, his eyes roaming over my arm expertly.

  My cut didn’t really hurt too much anymore, but it didn’t look like it was getting any better either. The only thing that seemed to heal well in this place was Hayden.

  Curious, I grabbed his shoulder with my free hand and pulled him closer to where I sat on the hospital bed. I tugged the no longer torn neck of his shirt down to see that the injury he’d sustained in the last task was now completely healed.

  “What are you doing you crazy woman?” he asked, trying to shift out of my grasp.

  “You’re shoulder. It’s healed,” I said incredulously.

  I ran my thumb over the skin where his scar should have been, but there wasn’t so much as a mark there anymore.

  “Would you stop that,” he complained, pulling away from me and straightening the neck of his black shirt once more.

  “Why is it that you heal, but I don’t? We both reset at the beginning of each cycle right?” I asked.

  “I’m actually surprised you aren’t healing. I thought you would just as quickly as me,” he said, looking concerned. “Does your head still hurt?”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything because Hayden was, yet again, running his fingers through my hair to find the bump on my head. Not for the first time, our close proximity and the feeling of his fingers moving over my scalp made me wish he was a nice guy who was sweet and charming, rather than the horror he really was.

  “It’s getting a little better,” he said quietly.

  He had my face practically resting on his shoulder as he examined my head and I resisted the urge to actually lay my head there.

  “It feels a little better,” I agreed, my eyes closed and a daydream flittered in my mind of a sweet Hayden.

  Really, my afterlife would be kind of exciting if the company was a bit better. Sure Hayden was nice to look at, but being constantly berated by him was not quite pleasant, and it was kind of starting to feel like dangling a caramel apple in front of me that just happened to be rotten in the middle. It looked good, but I knew it would make me sick.

  “It’s not snow time already is it?” Hayden asked, pulling away from me and looking around.

  Apparently I’d sounded dazed and confused by our closeness. That was a bit embarrassing.

  “So you don’t remember what you do when the cycle ends?” I asked, wanting to focus on something other than my conflicted feelings about my Guide.

  “I already told you, I know I’m doing something between these tasks, but it’s all kind of a blur. When the snow falls, I go to leave and the next thing I know, I’m here at the start of a cycle, waiting for you.”

  “Hayden,” I began seriously as he took a step back so that we could have this conversation without him practically straddling me. “Do you really know what’s going on here?”

  “Yes, Isla. Everything’s fine,” he said in exasperation.

  “No, I mean it. Do you know what’s going to happen to me when I reach my Destination?”

  Hayden thought about this for a moment. I was sure I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear from him that we were all pretty much in the dark about what was going on. Since the last task, I’d begun to worry that maybe reaching my Destination wasn’t such a good thing. If Hayden didn’t even know what was in store for me, who was to say it was a good place I’d be going to?

  “I feel like I must have known at some point,” Hayden said, looking angry that he couldn’t remember the most basic motivation for himself as a Guide. “And I feel like I know when I’m not with you. But once the cycle restarts and I come to guide you I can’t remember.”

  “That’s not exactly encouraging,” I told him honestly.

  “I don’t know how many times I can repeat this to you, but I know it’s going to be fine…if you reach your Destination. I can’t give you a reason, but I know it’s bad to fail these tasks and it’s good for you to get to your Destination, and for now that’s going to have to be good enough for you.”

  It wasn’t
good enough for me, but I didn’t think saying that to Hayden would really help anything, so I kept my mouth shut. I was already putting my life (or my second life) in the hands of this complete maniac, but now I just had to trust that I was doing it for a good reason. We were the blind leading the blind.

  Hayden must have sensed my trepidation because instead of making fun of me, he came and sat next to me on the hospital bed. Not quite supportive, but not mean either.

  “Thank you for saving my life today,” I told him again, this time actually meeting his eyes.

  “I need to get the merchandise to its Destination safely,” he said simply, his eyes holding significant meaning that he wanted me to understand. He was not doing this because he cared about me. “I’m nothing more than a deliveryman.”

  “Understood,” I answered, giving him a little salute and trying not to look too offended.

  We were both silent for a while; me swinging my dangling feet, and Hayden silently brooding.

  “This task today reminded me of my brother Tuck,” I said after a long time.

  I was unable to handle the silence anymore and wondered why the snow seemed to be taking longer and longer to show up lately. All that did was give me more time to make small talk with a man who was not a fan of small talk.

  “You used to go to the junkyard with him all the time when you were younger because he fancied himself an inventor,” Hayden said in a monotone voice.

  “If you’re going to say it like that, why don’t you just let me tell the story?” I asked in annoyance.

  He had a knack for making my memories seem so mundane, no matter how brilliant they were in my mind. If he had access to my memories, why couldn’t he feel how special they were to me? Or maybe he could and that was why he tried to belittle them…because he was a mean person.

  “Anyway,” I said, looking over at Hayden pointedly and silently daring him to interrupt me again. He raised his hands in surrender and beckoned for me to continue. “Tuck thought he was an inventor because he’d seen some infomercial about submitting inventions to this company, so he’d always drag me to the junkyard with him while he built little things out of the scraps.”