Morning Is Dead by Andersen Prunty Read Free Book Online

looked at the monitor. It was odd that the beeping had stopped. She had never heard this happen. Usually it went from beeping to a flatline. This time there was no sound. She didn’t think that could be good. She stood up from the chair and looked at the monitor. There wasn’t a spiky line. There wasn’t a flat line. There wasn’t any line. The box with the “call nurse” button on it dangled off the bed. She could press the button. She was a nurse but she didn’t know what to do. Would Mirabel know what to do? Would the doctor on duty know what to do? Did she want Alvin to be revived if his heart had stopped beating?
    April’s heart pounded. She reached down to manually take his pulse at the wrist but it was covered in bandages. Everything was covered in bandages except for his closed eyes. She thought about pressing the side of his neck, where the pulse was usually strong.
    She didn’t.
    She looked down at him. Looking at him hurt something inside of her. He could be anyone. He was a mummy with tubes, like some monster from an old sci-fi movie.
    She imagined him wandering through the hospital, stiff like a mummy, wrapped in all that gauze, tubes snaking out from him like tentacles, waiting to latch on to someone else and suck the life from them.
    She shuddered.
    The monitor started up again.
    It startled her and she jumped and then she cried out and sat down and put her hands over her mouth to stifle a laugh.
    Mirabel’s hand was on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
    “Yeah… I’m… No, I’m not okay. I don’t think so, Mir.” She took a deep shaky breath. “The monitor stopped. It was the strangest thing.”
    “Did he go flat?”
    “No. It just stopped. There wasn’t anything there at all.”
    April stood up. “Would you have a cigarette?”
    “In my purse. It’s at the station. You know which one it is?”
    April nodded. “I just need to step out for a minute.”
    “I’ll stay here. I’ll watch him.”
    April left the hospital room.

Six
     
    He checked the rearview mirror to make sure none of the cops decided to pursue him. There wasn’t anything there. He turned around just in time to slam on the brakes.
    A man shuffled across the street. He looked old and homeless and didn’t move very quickly. A rade stalked along behind him. Alvin thought about running over it but he seemed frozen, unable to do anything. He sat in the idling car. The rade fell upon the man. The man screamed and slapped his thin arms out against the rade. Alvin was suddenly conscious of the blood running down his face, masking it. The rade’s victim looked right at the police car, into the police car, into Alvin. The man would never be able to identify Alvin. Was that why he just sat here and watched? He wanted to leave the scene. He wanted to drive past it and clip the rade, make him stop. The rade pinned the man’s arms on the ground over his head. The man gradually stopped struggling. The rade seemed to grow even brighter. It looked like the rade was naked but it didn’t have any sex to it. He remembered what Fuckpants had said about their needlelike fingertips. But Fuckpants had been mostly full of shit. Didn’t Ben mention the rades, too? Alvin was sure he did. He said they were some kind of refuse from the Point. Or had Fuckpants said that?
    Soon, the rade’s victim stopped struggling altogether.
    The rade stood up with dripping fingertips and wandered off into the night as if he was too full to move quickly.
    Alvin finally pulled the car forward. He looked at the man on the ground. Pinpricks of green glowed where the rade’s needles had penetrated him. As Alvin watched, the green began to spread. The man’s clothes were sizzling, smoke or steam rising up from the body. Alvin gunned the car. He couldn’t think of anything worse than watching this man who had been alive only moments before become something else, something that wasn’t even human.
    The fat officer still slept in the back seat. Alvin must have