Ain't Talkin'

“So what happens now?”

“You ask like you already know the answer, and I’m betting you do.” Roche sighed.

“You get me to the Res because they’re the ones paying you?”

“Ding, ding, ding we have a winner.”

“You saw television as a boy?” Markus seemed more intrigued than slighted by the sharpness of Roche’s retort.

“Occasionally. Often enough I suppose. Old tapes. Leftovers from the old-world.”

“I should have liked to have seen them. You had a very interesting upbringing, Roche.”

“You don’t know nothing about where I was brought up.”

“No. I don’t. But I think I’m starting to narrow it down.” Markus rubbed his chin. The two of them, leading the horse, had been walking abreast through the white, Markus taking his cues from Roche. Their direction had subtlety changed over the course of their time in the ether, but only by the smallest of degrees on the compass. “Forty years in the white. Plus, as a reasonable guess you were in your twenties when you made the choice to enter the white, and then how long outside the ether since then, again?”

“Kid if you’re still bent on finding out how old I am it’s safe to say that even I don’t know exactly anymore.”

“One-hundred twenty at the least.”

“Maybe.”

“But then you could be as old as one-hundred sixty.”

“What’s that old saying?”

“One-hundred eighty!?”

“You’re only as old as you feel.” Roche stopped in his tracks. Fuck. There is was. Again.

Markus stopped and something in Roche’s face must have given him away, because the look Markus gave him said it all. “Roche. . .the fuck?”

He’d smelled it again. Here of all places. That lingering smell in a place that ought to have no scents or sights or feelings or emotions associated with anything sensory.

The white was the absence of all things. Yet that stinking campfire was still lit somewhere.

“Roche?” Markus looked up at Roche in his eyes beneath the brim of his hat. “Man, what the hell, you alright?”

“Tell me something, smartass.”

“Sure?” Markus’ face continued to reflect Roche’s. He was clearly frightened by the deeping lines in the walker’s skin.

“What does it mean when someone keeps smellin’ something that ain’t there?”

“Like what?”

“Fuckin’ whatever, dipshit! Does it matter? I keep smellin’ it and it sure as shit ain’t there. Same smell, over and over, won’t quit. What’s that mean to you?”

“Sounds medical. Look I bet the Res has people that’d know better. Doctors and surgeons and-” Markus’ voice caught in his throat. His eyes were watching over Roche’s shoulder.

There was something moving in the white.