The Death Clock

a short story by
J. Rock

Smashwords Edition


This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2010 by J. Rock

All art/graphics by J. Rock

Contact the author: dinosauria@hotmail.ca

Discover other titles by J. Rock at Smashwords.com:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/33638

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The Death Clock


Andie didn’t know what to make of the numbers.
She started seeing them when she got on the bus that morning. At first she thought they were merely part of a flashing advertisement, or neon sign, glimpsed out of the corner of her eye like a strobe as the bus moved. But the flashing persisted, so she looked up from the paperback she was reading. She sat on a bench style seat that paralleled the aisle, and a man sat across from her. He was perusing the paper, holding it up so that just the top of his balding head was visible, like an extra halo above an already existing ring of grey. The numbers floated there, like the red digital display on an alarm clock, counting down: 10:6:11:13:24:17. The last set of integers ticked down to zero, then started over at sixty, while the 24 reduced to a 23. It was a countdown, clearly, but to what, Andie couldn’t guess. She looked up and down the deserted aisle but there was no one else on the bus other than the driver, who was hidden from her view by a divider. She considered moving to get a better look at the driver, but had a better idea. She turned around and looked out the window. 
The wintry, early morning streets of Toronto were not deserted, but they weren’t bustling either; too cold, for bustling. There were people though, and they all had numbers. Andie shook her head in disbelief, squeezing her eyes shut and snapping them back open. The numbers remained, hovering above every head she saw, all making their slow backward ticks. She stuffed the paperback into her purse with one hand, and looked down at the paper cup of Tim Horton’s coffee she held in her other. What the hell is in this stuff? She peeled back the flimsy plastic lid and examined the chestnut liquid, which appeared as any other double-double she had ordered in her life. She brought the cup to her nose, brushing a strand of vanilla streaked, cherry coloured hair out of the way and inhaled, smelling coffee and steam, but nothing more. She took a careful sip and it tasted fine.
That rules that out.
Andie had never had much of an imagination, despite her love for good imaginative fiction, TV shows, and movies. She preferred to let others do the imagining for her. And so the meaning of the numbers, which might have dawned more easily on an imaginative person, did not dawn on Andie Lee Vibert right away. In many ways, she was just too dense; when most people saw a countdown, they associated it with a ticking time bomb, or the like. For Andie, it took something more deliberate for her to get it.
The bus approached downtown at little better than a crawl among the early commuters and thickening crowds. Up ahead, between the steel incisors of high rises and skyscrapers, the tell tale flashing lights of emergency vehicles portended some commotion or other. Andie leaned close to the window to get a better look, nearly pressing her face to the glass. A cluster of people–and their numbers–formed a ragged circle around half a dozen police officers and a pair of paramedics, the grouping so thick that the numbers were difficult to distinguish. Just as the bus rolled by, someone was lifted onto a stretcher, clothes stained red at the torso. The crowd parted to make room, separating the injured man’s numbers from the cluster–and those numbers seemed to scream before Andie’s eyes: 00:00:00:00:05...04...03...02...01...
And that was when she knew what the numbers meant.
She slid lifelessly back into her seat as a tear squeezed from the corner of one cobalt eye, realizing with despair that this was the second life she had seen end in the last 24 hours. The other person who had died–a woman–had died last night, and under ordinary circumstances Andie couldn’t have cared less about her. But the circumstances had been anything but ordinary; the woman had saved her life. She didn’t even know why she was going in to work today. She had gotten home late last night from the police station and so was zombie tired today. Now she really wished she had stayed home. Seeing another death made her realize she had been in shock up until now and, coupled with the events of the previous evening–and the numbers–everything crashed home. Guilt wracked her chest in great gripping iron claws. That woman was dead because of her. It had been an accident, and the police had assured her of it, but she thought she was tougher than this. She thought she could bite through steel if she had to. She took three deep, calming, and deliberate breaths.
There were more people on the bus now; in fact it was almost full, everyone fearfully discussing the shooting victim they just saw. Andie hadn’t even noticed them get on. She looked and saw her stop coming up. She shouldered her purse and stood, wiping tears from her face with a gloved hand. The bus stopped and she headed to work.
When she got to the office everyone was staring at her, but she had expected it. Last night’s incident had been all over the news, after all.
“Jesus And, are you alright?” Jessica asked as soon as Andie was off the elevator.
Andie faked a smile. “Fine,” she said, brushing by the nail thin woman. She didn’t look at Jessica’s numbers. She didn’t look at anybody’s.
“Okay, just let me know if you need anything, alright?”
Andie nodded but she was already past Jessica, bee-lining for her office, avoiding human contact. She could feel the weight of every eye in the place pushing down on her with accusation. She could almost hear them calling her...“pusher”.
Stop it. It was an accident.  I’m not a pusher. Besides, they don’t know the details. Just what the news said. All they know was that I witnessed a woman die; not that the woman had saved my life first and I repaid it by–
“Miss Vibert, can I see you in my office?”
Andie whirled, only five steps from her office door. Jack Boughton, her boss, was leaning out the door of his own, cold sympathy painting his normally warm, stubbled face.
“Yeah, sure Jack,” Andie replied cheerfully, “just let me throw my coat off.”
“For sure,” Jack smiled and slid back, closing the door. He always kept his office door closed.
Andie pulled a key ring from her pocket and went to the door with the stencilled aluminum plaque that read “Andrea Lee Vibert – Acquisitions”, fumbled the key into the lock, finally getting it open, and slipped inside. She loped around her desk, dropping her purse, letting her coat slip easily to the floor, and collapsed into the chair. She began to bawl. How could she face these people today? Her co-workers; she didn’t want to know how long any of them had to live. Not the ones she liked anyway. And what could she possibly do with the information? The iron claws gripped at her chest again. What if one of them had only days to live? Could she tell them? It was only then that she became aware that she was crying so heavily. Her makeup must be smeared all to hell. Crap. She reached into her purse and found the little compact with the mirror. She flipped it open and the icy globes of her irises filled the tiny reflective frame, puffy and red around the edges, black and goopy where her makeup ran.
She started to wipe away the runoff when she stopped dead, and cursed. She really did have little imagination. She had never once thought to check her own numbers. Stupid. Andie angled the compact, expecting the worst, expecting a death sentence. Above the reflected crest of her red hair, sure enough, numbers floated, but these ones were attached to the wall, ticking away the hours on a clock face. She sighed audibly. She didn’t know if she was relieved or not. Why didn’t she have numbers? Before she could cry anymore about it, she finished fixing her makeup and left her office for Boughton’s. Seeing Jack would make her feel better; it always did. She knocked but did not wait for a response, slipping in and shutting the door. Jack sat behind his brick of an oak desk, clacking away at the keyboard of his notebook.
He looked up at her but, uncharacteristically, didn’t smile. “What are you doing here Andie?” Andie didn’t answer; not at first. She was too busy staring at his numbers: 40: 11: 30: 07: 56: 33. She didn’t know whether she was happy or horrified: Jack was going to live another forty years. But should she tell him about it?
“Are you okay?” Jack said more softly. His green eyes conveyed sympathy from between hanging strands of shaggy black hair. Most people were taken aback by that hair. He may be a respectable businessman during the week but, as Andie knew personally, on the weekends he played bass in a metal band called Snowglobe. His hair was a testament to that, along with the many tattoos he sported beneath his neatly pressed suit. Andie knew those personally too.
“Fine,” she said, before bursting into tears again. Jack’s face seemed to melt and he got up and went to her, embracing her.
“You’re obviously not fine,” he said, and was about to say something else but she tore it from his lips with a kiss. He pushed her away. “You need to stop that. I’ve told you to stop.”
“And I’ve told you I’ll tell,” she snapped back, grinning devilishly. Jack’s face was a contorted mixture of rage and shame, and Andie loved it. She laughed. “C’mon, you know I’m joking. Just make sure I get the raise you promised me, that’s all,” and she laughed again.
Jack scowled. “This isn’t funny.”
“It never is,” she said and smiled nervously. She didn’t like to use their adultery against him, and didn’t know why she did now. She did love him, after all. Maybe it was just a coping mechanism. He scoffed and turned to go back to his desk but she grabbed his hand, suddenly struck by inspiration. She turned his hand palm up and traced the lines she found there, avoiding his wedding band like a landmine.
“See this line here?” Jack’s eyebrows lifted. “It means you’re going to have a long, full life. I’d say you’re probably gonna live another...forty years, give or take.” She eyed him meaningfully.
“Since when are you a palm reader?” he quipped. “Are you sure you’re alright? The news said–”
“Since when has the news gotten anything right?” She burst into tears again. Well, at least she had tried to tell him about the numbers, in a way. Jack helped her down into a chair, taking another beside her.
“So then tell me,” he said.
She did.


TWO
“I don’t know, but tell him he’s got until five tomorrow to finish it, or he’s fired,” Andie was saying into her phone as she trounced down Yonge Street. “Yeah, I’m sure then he’ll get the message. Bye.” She ended the call, slipped her phone into her pocket and, for the first time since leaving the office tonight, really noticed where she was going. Another block and she would’ve completely missed the bus stop. She laughed and, after that phone call, it lightened her mood. She just hadn’t had any luck with the recruits she’d hired recently. She looked forward to relaxing on the bus ride home, and knocking off a few pages from her book. A nasty wind whipped errant snowflakes in the direction she was headed, as if leading her on.
She slipped into the empty bus shelter a few moments later and checked her watch. She had almost ten minutes to kill. She thought about pulling her book out when another person joined her in the shelter; a woman. She was old and fat, wearing a ratty neon green toque, an equally decrepit ski jacket, and scarf. Her hair was a curly gray and black nest, protruding from beneath the toque like twisted vines desperate for sunlight. Normally, a woman like this would have been beneath Andie’s notice, but not today; the damned woman was staring at her.
“Help you?” Andie said in her snobbiest tone.
The woman never held eye contact for more than a second, her eyes constantly darting to a point above Andie’s head. Self-consciously, Andie reached up and brushed at her toque, thinking that maybe there was something there that had the woman’s attention, but she felt nothing. The woman laughed.
“What’s your problem?” Andie snapped at her, still snobby.
“It’s not my problem,” the woman replied in a voice surprisingly angelic considering her gruff exterior. “In less than a minute, it’s yours.”
“What?” Andie asked, wondering if she had just been threatened, when she was sidetracked by a familiar buzzing in her pocket; her cell phone. The woman was still staring but Andie turned away, fumbling into her coat. She grasped the vibrating device easily enough, but as she pulled it out, her woollen gloved caught in the zipper, causing her hand to yank awkwardly. The phone tumbled out in front of her.
No!
She gasped and stumbled forward, attempting a recovery. The phone struck one outstretched hand and spun upward as she reached with the other, her fingers reaching, grasping, searching...that phone was her life...she caught it. Andie took a last uncomfortable step before stopping dead, amazed that she had done it, grinning from ear to ear. She barely had time to register where she had stumbled to...
“NO!” the crazy woman bellowed, and she grabbed Andie from behind, pulling her straight backward, attacking her while she was distracted. Andie screamed, going into self-defence mode. She twisted hard to the right, nearly reversing their positions; but the woman still held.
“Let me go you psycho!” she screamed, pushing back against her assailant hard, and the woman tore away, eyes wide with surprise, stumping into the street Andie had occupied seconds earlier. “What the hell is wrong with–” but before Andie could finish, a city bus filled her vision, wiping the woman away with a sickening crack, blood smearing the windshield. The bus stopped immediately. Andie gasped and darted around the head of the vehicle, expecting to find a corpse. Instead she saw the wide, staring grey eyes of the woman, darting back and forth, as if trying to get her bearings from the pool of blood she lay in on the pavement. When she saw Andie, her eyes stopped. Andie knelt down beside her as a crowd began to gather.
“I...did it,” the woman managed to choke out. Andie noticed she was still looking at a point above her head, never actually making eye contact.
Andie began to sob. “Did what? You just got yourself killed!”
The woman coughed up blood and said, “I...I saved you...but I was taken in return. I should have known.”
Andie felt sudden guilt, realizing the woman was right. She had saved her life. That bus would’ve hit her. A tear welled up in her eye. She tried to comfort the woman, holding her hand now. “You’re going to be fine. I hear the ambulance.” Andie looked in the direction of the coming siren.
When she looked back, the woman was dead.


THREE
“I didn’t get home from the police station until one in the morning,” Andie said to Jack, finishing the story, her cheeks slick with tears. “And yes I’m exhausted but, I just...I couldn’t stay home, my mind keeps going back to it and...” A great shudder wracked her body as she burst into full remorse.
Jack gripped her tightly, pulling her in close. His numbers bathed them in a soft, Coke can red. “Take it easy,” he said slowly. “Look, I can understand why you’d feel that way, but it wasn’t your fault. That woman saved your life. She didn’t die for nothing.”
“Sarah,” Andie blabbered through the tears.
“What?”
“Her name was Sarah Levanen. The police told me.”
“Okay. Sarah Levanen didn’t die for nothing. She saved you, and I’m thankful for that. Aren’t you?”
Andie nodded. “Yeah. But I still wish I could take it back.” A thought occurred to her suddenly then, and it made her feel more whole and vital than she had all morning.
Maybe I can take it back...
Jack said, “Look, take the rest of the day off, okay? Go home. Call me later and we’ll talk some more, alright?”
Andie nodded. She had stopped crying. “Okay,” she said, and pulled away from him. “Thanks, Jack,” and she pecked him on the lips one last time. He said nothing as she left.
Andie slipped quickly into her office, grabbed her coat, and bolted for the elevator. Every eye was trained on her, secretly calling her “pusher”, but she kept her head down until the door slid closed. She had a plan to take it all back, make it right. When the door opened, revealing the lobby, she surveyed every set of numbers she saw. People moved purposely back and forth, but she didn’t see any zeros.
She was looking for zeros.
She exited the building into the prickling cold of January. People moved hurriedly, faces tucked inside their jackets and scarves in opposition to the temperature. She scanned every number she saw, many blended together by proximity, making them difficult to distinguish, but she thought that a set of zeros would stick out. She headed for downtown. She finally did see some zeros, but those people still had months yet to live. She wanted to find someone she could save today...
She saw him.
He was headed away from her, toward the subway. By the way he carried himself, she could tell he was young. He wore a heavy looking backpack that he was constantly shouldering to adjust the weight. All his numbers were zeros, except the last. The last numbers were counting down from sixty.
The guy had less than a minute to live.
Andie bolted after him, shoving anyone who got in her way, hearing only the curses they spewed in her wake. The guy started down the subway steps.
Thirty seconds.
She called out to him, but he kept going, oblivious.
Twenty seconds.
Andie reached the steps and dashed down.
Ten seconds.
She was almost on him, reaching out with gloved hands.
Five seconds.
She heard him yelp as his feet suddenly shot straight out in front of him, his body seeming to suspend in midair, like slow motion. She slipped her arms under his armpits and over his fat pack, bending her legs to cushion the blow. She fell back with him on top, her butt coming to rest on the cold concrete.
“Oh my god,” she heard him say. He turned to face her, manoeuvring his pack accordingly. “Jesus, you saved my life!” Andie was immediately caught up in the prettiest green eyes she had ever seen, complimented by a perfect, Chiclet filled smile.
“Wh-what happened?” she managed to stammer out.
He pointed to the step he was sitting on. Andie could see a thin, shiny coating of ice covering the riser. “I slipped. Dang, if it wasn’t for you, I might have gotten hurt and could sue the City for millions!” He laughed and she just stared. “It was a joke. Are you alright?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m just in shock, I guess.” She was staring at his numbers: they were a scrambled mess, blinking and flashing random integers. People were walking by and ogling.
He pushed up to his feet, extending a hand to her. “Here, let me help you.”
She reached up and took it. “Thanks.”
“No, thank you. I’m Jason by the way.”
“Andie,” she replied, and blushed, her stomach all butterflies. His numbers were still crazy.
“Thank you, Andie,” he said, and he kissed her hand. She blushed harder.
He let go of her hand and pulled back the sleeve of his coat, revealing an expensive looking watch. “Crap, the train’ll be here in two minutes. You catching it too? The nine o’clock?”
“Uh, yeah,” Andie said, not really sure why, other than she wanted to stay with him.
“Great,” he said, “let’s go. We can get to know each other on the train.” Her heart thudded. They descended the steps to the platform and took up a spot together at the edge, waiting. He looked at her again and smiled, shouldering his bag once more, awkwardly.
“What the heck you got in there, a cinderblock?” Andie asked, regaining some of her composure.
Jason laughed. “Ha, I wish I could tell you. It’s kind of a secret.”
“A secret?” She laughed. “Secrets are no way to start off a friendship.” She grinned at him.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. You tell me a secret, and maybe I’ll tell you mine.”
Andie was taken aback. She didn’t know why but, even though they had just met, she trusted him. His numbers were still scrambled. She looked about the station and she gasped: the numbers of every other person in the station were scrambled as well. Did this have something to do with saving his life?
“My name,” she said finally.
“What?”
“My secret is my name. It’s not really Andie. Andie’s just a nickname, and everybody thinks it’s short for Andrea, but it’s not.”
He was grinning. “So what is it then?”
She locked eyes with him. “Andromeda,” she said. Jason burst out laughing and she hit him playfully. “Hey, I told you that in confidence!”
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I have to say, you’re the prettiest Andromeda that I’ve ever met.” She hit him again as the train pulled up.
They boarded and he stepped next to the bench nearest the door. He quickly took off his pack and set it down on the seat, but remained standing.
“God it feels good to get that off,” he said. “Have a seat, I just need to stretch.” Andie nodded and sat next to his pack. She never took her eyes off him. The rest of the passengers finished boarding, theirs numbers still as messed up as ever. Jason finished stretching and Andie made room for him to sit next to her.
But that is not what happened.
As the door of the train began to slide closed, Jason deftly slipped between them, back out onto the platform. Andie huffed in confusion, standing up as the doors locked shut and the train began to move. She looked out at him, and he was standing there, staring back at her. He mouthed one word to her, and she knew it clearly: “Sorry.” She looked at his numbers and they had finally settled.
He would live another thirty-two years.
Her heart hammered in her chest as she whipped around to look at the other passengers on the train. Their numbers had all settled too, and they were all the same.
They would reach zero in less than two minutes.
Andie looked down at the backpack Jason had left on the seat.


FOUR
Jason left the station, smiling broadly, feeling good.
He had done it.
Just seconds before a blast wave shook downtown Toronto, a beautiful woman walked by and he stared after her.
She reminded him of Andie. Andromeda.
He continued to stare after the attractive woman. Something red, above her head, caught his eye...


About the Author
J. Rock lives and works in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. He enjoys reading, writing, camping, fishing, biking, snowboarding, and just being outdoors. He is also an avid music fan, being a guitar/bass player, and is learning the drums. He has written one full novel, also available for free on Smashwords called Dinosauria (see link below).

Contact J. Rock at: dinosauria@hotmail.ca

Discover other titles by J. Rock at Smashwords.com:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/33638