Read Online Blood Zero Sky by J. Gates - Free Book Online Page B

tell me otherwise.
    That song . . . Even now, her voice still rings in my ears.
    The sound will stay with me, like a thorn in my heart, forever.
    ~~~
    In a smog-induced twilight filled with shifting smoke and screaming engines, I tumble through the wind. There, a glimpse—of a billowing white cloud, of the river as it springs to meet me, of one tiny blink of sunlight on the water’s darkened face—and now I’m skipping like a stone.
    Slapping, my limbs glance off the river’s surface over and over. I shut my eyes tight. Panic. I feel the crushing power of God all around me. And I will die. And this is the end.
    My knee hits me in the face. My arms feel torn from my body.
    The world is a blender set on puree.
    Floating, now, all I taste is the blood on my teeth. All I hear is the liquid murmur, that amplified silence, laced with the distant lament of a whale or sonar or my own submerged screams.
    Outer space, that’s where I am.
    Any minute now, God will whisper four small words and create the All, but for now there’s only me, drifting here, bodiless.
    This is better than life, somehow. Being without a body is good, carefree. I never liked life much, anyway. Too much buying hairstyling products and sitting in quiet, white-lit offices. Not enough . . . everything else.
    Somehow, instead of whispering for the unveiling of light, God belches a raucous yell.
    One eye opens. There’s that same cloud I saw on the way down—saw it between my own wildly flailing legs, I think. There’s a tattered-looking seagull, wings spread wide, relaxing against the sky. I wonder how he can live in this soiled, ruined place. He calls out, sounding the same as God did a minute before, but if there are any other birds around to hear him, I don’t see them. This guy might be the very last.
    Who would have even thought a wild animal could survive in the industrial arc, anyway?
    You’re drowning, my brain tells me casually, like it’s an offhand comment, and I realize I haven’t breathed in a long time. Most of my face is still submerged, and when I open my mouth to take a breath, I get a throat full of what tastes like fish-flavored bathwater tainted with bitter, burning chemicals. Drowning. I try to flutter my feet, to paddle with my arms, but I can’t feel my limbs at all.
    I finally get my head above water and take a breath. Instantly, sharp pain gouges my lungs. Every time I breathe too deeply, the agony almost causes me to black out.
    I am broken.
    There’s no way I can swim.
    Suddenly, the sound of a terrible concussion rends the world. I try to turn myself around to look, to see the source of the blast, but I can’t—it’s too difficult. All I can guess is that the chopper crashed. I crane my neck around, until in the distance I can see a column of black smoke solemnly ascending, mingling with the smoke of the factories then blending away.
    Now I’m sinking again. I’ve still only managed to open one eye. Sinking. All I see is green water. Even my shallow breaths are stolen from me. I descend, and all gets darker, colder.
    I’m sinking to hell, and it’s actually a relief. The suspense is finally over.

—Chapter ØØ5—
    Dad looks down at me from the deck of his sailboat, Green Back , and puffs a cigar, leaning lazily against a lanyard. He might be looking down at a floating jellyfish or a lost fishing lure instead of at his daughter, drowning.
    Me, I’m thrashing around, my scrawny arms beating ineffectually against the water, my little seven-year-old feet churning wildly, uselessly. I sputter, cough, weep.
    “You can swim,” my dad tells me matter-of-factly through cigar-clenching teeth. “All mammals are evolved from sea creatures, for God’s sake.”
    Somehow, this doesn’t comfort me. “I can’t—I can’t swim! Dad!”
    I had more to say than that, but a swell surges over my mouth, muting me, before receding and leaving me choking, coughing, terrified.
    “You can swim,” my dad assures me. “You’re a