Death 07 - For the Love of Death Read Free Page A

are.
     
    *
     
    Gramps stands out on the stoop, a small red ember blazing like a third eye inside his cupped hands.
    A puff of smoke drifts into the air, and I grin.
    Gramps is not responsible about the environment.
    He’s so responsible about his family. The important crap.
    “ Pax.” Gramps peeks over his bent fingers.
    He doesn’t say more but moves into the garage. Like I didn’t just put the telekinetic whammy on the good doctor earlier today. I blink, my night-seeing eyelid retracting.
    My vision dims, becoming soft and inefficient like a normal person’s in the dark. Gramps will have the old florescent bulbs juiced up in the garage in no time.
    Light swamps the drive pad, and my second eyelid retreats further.
    I’m not dumb enough to use it in artificial or natural light.
    That went bye-bye along with successful potty training. The night vision lids retreat automatically now.
    The Camaro that used to be Dad’s sits up on blocks, the spoiler primered and ready for a junkyard replacement. Kinda unlikely. But there’s always Kent Refuse. Gramps has some luck there.
    I run a hand down the crunched spoiler. I’d heard the story a million times, but sometimes repetition is comforting.
    “That goddamned bear,” Gramps mutters, the cig’s ash five  centimeters and burning.
    It’d make a damned mess on Gramps’ perfectly epoxied floor.
    He flicks the ash into a Folger’s tin coffee can set on his tool slide-out. It’s so rusty the G is missing from the logo.
    I know from experience fine beach rock from the lake sits halfway deep in the thing.
    My gaze travels to the water.
    It won’t be long before they take the water for the dam. Right now, it’s a dark mass, a monster that never rises.
    Faceless and nameless.
    “So?” Gramps moves around to toe the creeper out from under the blocks. “Let’s change the oil on the old girl.”
    Fossil fuel. Weird.
    Gramps is grandfathered. Whenever someone of authority tries to tag his ass with another tree-hugger law, he flips them the card.
    Or the bird , as he calls it and cackles.
    He has an actual card with a large, stamped holographic world-logo of exemptions. Gramps gets cigarettes, fossil fuel, an acre of lawn, toilets that flush five gallons of water per use, and all the guns he likes. As with other pre-1970s, the government has made allowances. There’s a high rate of non-compliance in that age sector.
    Gramps has taught me to change out an engine on a car no one drives. Sure, he can drive it on the auto-only roads. But they're such a small loop anymore, it's not worth it.
    Gramps jerks his jaw at the creeper and I lie back, shoving off with my heels and get underneath the oil pan.
    The car is simple. My life is complicated.
    Tension releases, bleeding out with the dirty oil. I drain it.
    Gramps talks while I work.
    “ Let's talk about Gram.”
    God, no.
    “I’m mad, Gramps. I’m mad about her… going.”
    “Me too.”
    Surprised, I hook my heels against the concrete and inch myself out. Finally, his face comes into focus. Hard, not handsome, he peers at me from behind a shroud of smoke. He’s still regenerating. A face that should be craggy and lined is looking around sixty. It’s the newest technology, but it doesn’t work on everyone. Whoever finds out why will make a trillion bucks.
    “You are?”
    Gramps nods, taking a deep inhale. He’s already had one lung transplant.
    The surgery is killer, but med scientists grow replacement parts for us all. Life expectancy is now one hundred twenty-five without regeneration.
    There’s not enough precedence since regeneration began to estimate life expectancy for those who go through the process.
    “I’m so mad at Caleb I could spit.”
    I sit straight up and blink.
    Those hard eyes meet mine, and they’re shiny.
    I stare at my great-grandpa, who I know has never cried in his long life, and wonder what is so bad he would break form now.
    Apparently, his only child’s oncoming death.
    “I want my