And for the second time in my life, I died.

(INTERLUDE ONE).

DONNER.

Donner's body lay naked in a part of the Bronx that had been a no-man's land even before the Shift. Here, block after desolate block was filled with the shells of burnt-out buildings and the carcasses of autos. No one lived here, the police didn't patrol here. So his body, wedged between a crumbling wall and a fence, went unnoticed.

By people, that is. Almost immediately, houseflies, blue bottle and blowflies swarmed it. The insects pasted eggs in the still-moist corners of his eyes and mouth. Rove and hister beetles gorged themselves on his wounds. Ants and wasps added themselves to the opportunistic menagerie, making his form seem to crawl and writhe.

The build-up of lactic acid stiffened the muscles in rigor mortis. Donner's pancreas, packed with digestive enzymes, began digesting itself. Neighborhood cats made swift work of his eyes and tongue.

During the second and third days, Donner's skin became green and blistered from the internal chemical reactions. The unfettered bacteria in his gut produced huge quantities of methane, hydrogen sulfide, and other gasses. He bloated. Frothy fluids ran from his mouth and anus. His putrefaction was characterized by a horrible, skunk-like smell.

By day four, the developing fly larvae broke through the abdominal cavity, releasing the gasses. The body deflated back to something approximating its original girth. The stench and the clouds of flies went unnoticed. No one around.

By day five, the maggots had formed into packs and were swarming through the chest and abdomen like troops in a conquered city. Over the course of the next few days, the body appeared to liquefy as fluids and semisolid tissues flowed into the dirt. By day seven, his remains were already in an advanced stage of decay. Most soft tissue had disappeared. The smell had faded into a lingering ammonia odor. New species like the cheese and corpse fly were now attracted as the drier corpse provided a different kind of meal.

The maggots, having harvested all they could, began leaving en masse. Their departure was so abrupt, so violent, that it dragged the body two feet through the grass. The beetles, lying in wait, fed on them.

A week and a half after Donner's death, his odor had shifted to something a lot like wet fur and old leather.

Having left nothing for scavengers of any kind, the corpse settled in for the final stage of decomposition, a slow molder that would take four or five weeks. If uninterrupted, in a month there would be nothing left but hair, bits of skin, bleached bones, and teeth.

PART TWO:.

THE UNDERNEATH.

I said to Life, I would hear Death speak.

And Life raised her voice a little higher and said, You hear him now.

-Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam.

(INTERLUDE TWO).

BRIAN.

Brian Trask was fifteen and wondering if he was going crazy.

Could kids go nuts? Somehow he'd thought true insanity was reserved for adults. Sure, there was Samantha Bowen's famous meltdown in Locker Room B, when she'd smashed Liz Franklin's head against the coach's office window until there were bright smears of blood on it. According to Coach, Samantha would get better, even though she'd be home-schooled. Did that mean crazy? The girls said Samantha sure looked bonkers when she attacked Liz, her eyes bugged out, her hands turned into claws.

The incident's lunch-time postmortem only confused Brian more. Over mystery meat and apple crisp, Shaun Gretske declared he'd talked to Samantha and that she was only "hormonal." Then Bill Loogman (called "Loogey," but never to his face, since at fourteen he could bench press 220 pounds) wrinkled his mug in a scholarly way and opined that proved she was crazy.

"What do you mean?" Brian asked.

"Insane people never think they are."

"Are what?"

"Crazy!"

"Says who?"

"My Dad. He says if you're worried you're going crazy, that means you're okay."

"Is your Dad worried he's going crazy?"

Loogey darkened. "Hell, no!"

Shaun grinned. "So that means he's crazy!"

Loogey introduced apple crisp into Shaun by way of his nostrils, ending the conversation.

So now, sitting in his bedroom on a cool fall evening, Brian was no closer to figuring things out than before. He thought about checking out psych sites on the Conch. But the Conch was sentient. While it wasn't supposed to monitor what you surfed, the idea of anything getting back to Brian's parents made his fingers freeze over his smartscreen. Damn it! It made him wish for "the good old days," when the Conch was just millions of individual websites that nobody monitored. Brian could hardly imagine that lovely anarchy. But that wasn't now. No, the very last thing he could allow was for these sudden doubts about his sanity to get back to his folks.

Because his parents were at the root of his dilemma.

Brian shut off the desk light, plunging the room into darkness. Sitting like that was comforting. He could lie on his bed and look out the window at the shimmer of electric rain through the Blister and pretend that he was just a floating mind, free of all worry. Or a hunter on the Blasted Heath, tracking runaways with the green crosshairs of his plasma rifle. It didn't always help. Sometimes it did nothing to diffuse the dread. And more recently, the surges of rage that overtook him.

Brian's family lived in a condo on East 68th Street near the park. Brian loved this apartment, the building...in fact pretty much everything about his Manhattan life. His father was Robert Trask III, a partner at Smith, Croup, Trask and Ketterman, a prestigious boutique firm that catered to what was left of the city's old money. Once he told Brian that some of his clients could trace their ancestry back to the Old World. When he was younger Brian had thought his dad meant Brooklyn, where everything looked like it was falling apart.

But things hadn't fallen apart here. No sir, even after the Shift had turned the city on its ear, this building-this street, this part of town-had run like a well-oiled, well-moneyed, machine. Until recently.

Until recently, Brian had been whisked daily from his beautiful building by Carl the chauffeur to his prep school six blocks south. And picked up again after lacrosse and chess club practice. Carl, who had a thick German accent, always had a caramel for him. Once in traffic, a deranged reborn attacked the outside of the Rolls. Carl had gotten out and dealt with him. It was then that Brian realized Carl had been hired for impressive skills far beyond operating a limo.

Unlike most privileged teens his age, Brian knew how well-insulated he was. Last summer, his mother decided he should volunteer at the 81st Street Shelter, dishing out soup and such. A "character-building exercise." Brian's eyes popped from his head, a million summer dreams destroyed in a flash.

"With the whack-jobs and druggies?" he blurted.

His mother's face set in that thin way that only happened when he really stepped over the line. "Brian," she said, "You know how I grew up."

"Yeah," Brian said. He'd heard it a million times.

"There's nothing wrong with being poor. Most of the world is poor. But it's important you appreciate how special our situation is while it lasts."

So he ladled soup to smelly, scary men and helped them to their cots and filled out their paperwork and reminded himself to thank God every night for his blessings.

What a geek he'd been. Looking back, he could see that things had never been as exalted as they seemed. That their lives, like a great copper ball, had already begun to tarnish. Perhaps the fall of the Trasks was inevitable, but hindsight didn't matter, because you couldn't go back, and somewhere deep in his mind, a lurking patch of darkness was growing.

For you see, his father was a reborn.

It was this simple fact which marred his life, which pulled it from the story books and into the ugly world of Necropolis. It was this fact that finally and brutally became the most fundamental aspect of his existence.

His parents' socialite friends pretended the world hadn't changed, but Brian, born after the Dark Eighteen, knew the score. They could refuse to call New York Necropolis, talk wistfully of their Connecticut homes (which they couldn't visit), or profess a resolute belief that very soon things would be back to normal. Brian knew that was bullshit. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that life was growing bleaker.

When Brian was six months old, his father Robert died from a hidden heart defect. His mother spoke of nights of grief, wrestling with the sudden reality of raising her infant son alone.

Miraculously, Robert revived six months later. Surgeons repaired his aorta, and he returned to his family with joy.

At the time of his death, Robert had been thirty years old, and Marie, his wife, had been twenty-nine.

Robert and Marie had walked in human rights marches long before Robert's conversion, so when their beliefs about tolerance were put to the test they were not found lacking. Many spouses refused to accept their reborn partners back. They were not legally obligated to do so, since "'til death do us part" negated their marital contract in the eyes of both the church and the court. But Marie welcomed her husband's return without a hint of doubt. It was a reason for rejoicing and that was that.

Some of his parents' friends drifted politely away. Dad said they couldn't handle being beaten at squash by someone whose funeral they'd attended. Brian laughed. He could laugh, because many had stayed faithful. There were enough "mixed" marriages these days to make the Trasks unusual but not pariahs.

Robert's employers were also understanding. They put his name right back on the letterhead. Oh, he was reassigned from certain clients who were uncomfortable about being represented by "one of them," but there were plenty of debutantes with legal troubles who didn't care what color your eyes were as long as you could save their aerobicized asses.

To Brian, Dad was simply Dad. And since his parents seemed so well-adjusted about it, so was he. They even celebrated Robert's revival day, like a second birthday!

When Brian was five, Robert was twenty-six and Marie was thirty-four. When Brian was ten, Marie was thirty-nine and Robert was twenty-one. But now, it was another five years later. Marie was forty-four. Brian was fifteen. And Robert, his father, was sixteen.

Sixteen. Next year, Brian would be older than his father. How could even the most loving heart ignore the chasm widening by every passing minute?

When he was twelve, Marie took Brian on an outing, just the two of them. They went to the Museum of Natural History, then to his favorite rib joint, the Blue Phoenix. He was allowed to order a double portion of those slabs of barbecued delight. And then, during dessert, his mother explained how things were going to get harder in the not-too distant future.

"You're old enough to understand now, kiddo. It's important you start thinking about it." Brian saw the fear behind her smile. It gave him a chill that had nothing to do with the orange sherbet in his mouth. "We're going to be challenged in tough ways, unique ways, by Daddy's youthing."

"What do you mean?"

"Think of it this way. You wouldn't give up on your dad because he was sick, would you? You'd still love him, wouldn't you, even if he wasn't able to act like Dad anymore?"

"Of course I would!"

"Eventually he'll be younger than you. Have you thought about that? He'll be less like your Daddy than your little brother."

"I'll take care of him, Mom, I promise."

Tears shone in his mother's eyes. "That's my son." Then she clutched him so tight that he finally had to tell her she was kind of hurting him.

She'd tried to warn him. It was going to hurt, she'd said. That was like telling someone about to go over Niagara Falls that they were going to get wet.

The pain began in a million different ways. Some were expected, some subtle, but most were bright and shocking in their attacks on his peace of mind.

Sundays after dinner, his parents used to dance in the living room to Tony Bennett. They'd twirl and sway, wistful smiles on their pusses. Brian rolled his eyes at these displays, but deep down, he adored them. He loved that they held hands at the movies, he loved the way she'd put her feet in his lap while they read on the couch, or the kisses they stole from each other in the hall when they thought he wasn't around. It made him feel safe and warm.

They didn't do those things anymore. They still said "I love you," but it was mechanical now, as though the magic that energized their bond had been replaced by rote ritual. Mom now seemed skittish about touching his father.

Bright pain.

Recently he came across his father crying in the bathroom. Robert was at the sink, a razor in his hand. The tears slewed through down the shaving cream, creating runnels of clean cheek. Brian froze, his need to pee forgotten. Dad looked at him with red-rimmed eyes.

"Guess my mornings just got quicker," he said, toweling the foam from his face and swiping the razor into the trash.

Only a week before, Dad had notice peach fuzz on Brian's upper lip, and with much fanfare taught him the manly art of shaving. Something he himself would never do again.

Bright, bright pain.

Brian was astonished to discover how much he depended on the way people in his life looked. He knew you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. But the strong cheekbones and rugged jaw he'd traced his fingers across so many times had been replaced by baby chub. His dad's muscles had thinned. He was now officially scrawny, a beanpole. It wouldn't be too long, they warned him, before his voice would change.

Brian violently reacted to that. That baritone voice was the author of a million secure "goodnights" as he drifted to sleep, a million reassurances when he skinned his knees or ran afoul of a bully, a million stern but loving rebukes when he made a selfish choice. He didn't want that voice to change. Oh, God, he didn't want anything else to change!

Blinding, tearing pain.

His father was finally laid off by the firm and went on reborn assistance. It wasn't his fault, they said guiltily. We just can't have a teenager as a partner. You understand. Robert understood. He and Marie had saved as much as they could for this day, and she was now working at the Saks perfume counter, but their lifestyle was rapidly devolving. There were arguments about money, about Brian, about everything. "I'm still the same inside!" he heard his Dad exclaim in a strangled voice. And a portentous silence afterwards.

Brian stayed mostly in his room, and his parents seemed content to let him. They were always exhausted now. They'd started to function in quiet, individual units, going about their business and avoiding each other as much as possible.

Two months ago he came home to his mother pulling clothes from shopping bags. Excitement rattled through him. He ran to the table in near-delirium, grabbing a yellow button-down shirt, still in its cellophane, and a gorgeous pair of burgundy chinos.

"Wow!" he said, already thinking about how he could match these new treasures to the outfits he already had.

His mother looked at him with sunken eyes. "These are for your father," she whispered. "His clothes don't fit anymore."

Too much pain. Too much.

Brian ran to his parent's room and went a little crazy then. He couldn't remember exactly what he'd been doing, but whatever it was, his mother caught him in her arms and tried to restrain him. Brian pulled away and slapped her, an act so startling that she fell back onto the bed and burst into tears.

Now, a week later, somewhere dimly he knew he should feel remorse, but he didn't. All that was there in his chest was a leaden sort of... loathing. For both of them.

He hated them. Perversely enough, the hate felt good. It was his. The rational part of his mind balked. It wasn't Dad's fault. He hadn't done this on purpose. He and Mom had done everything possible to turn this tragedy into something they could survive. But they wouldn't survive it nevertheless, and Brian found himself dreading the horrors each new day would bring. He couldn't look at his father anymore without bile filling his mouth, couldn't gaze at that kid's face and white hair without wanting to beat his head against the floor until it broke, just like Liz Franklin.

The furies shook him daily now, a physical thing, and he held himself in his room until they abated. They swarmed him like flies, blotting out his air, getting into his mouth, buzzing his ears. Was this insanity? He didn't know. But the pain was constant and shattering in its intensity.

Everything else disappeared in its glare, like sun reflecting off a snow bank.

27.