Riser (Teen Horror/Science Fiction) (Book #1 in The Riser Saga) ((Volume 1)) Read Free

preventative shots that everyone got as a baby so no one would die from some horrible illness.
People who had money were legally allowed to start taking Age-pro at eighteen, but people like us trailer-park-low-income types, usually started taking it when we were thirty. That’s when the National Insurance kicked in and pretty much anyone could afford it. And let’s face it, even people who had no money managed to find a way to get their hands on Age-pro. Who would want to miss out on immortality?
Jason was gone before I could really appreciate the crooked little smile he always gave at the end of each report and was replaced with boring Carleton Gordan, news anchor for the last hundred years not looking a day over nineteen.
Carleton droned on in his monotone, annoying voice, “Overpopulation has reached an all time high, and the death rate has dropped to a record low. The government commented this morning about its terraforming project on Mars, but no other word or solution has been made…”
“Come on, eat your food before it gets cold.” Bruce pulled my attention away from the news.
“Sure, thanks, Bruce.” I sat down at the rusty Formica-topped kitchen table where my waiting eggs rested. The smell finally reached my nose and my stomach grumbled in response.
“You better hurry, sweetheart, that rich school of yours won’t tolerate tardiness from a trailer kid.” Mom came into the kitchen with her usual hostility toward the high school I went to. It was a private, richy-rich-school that we could never afford, but I worked at the ice-cream parlor off campus to pay the tuition that scholarships didn’t cover. She wanted me to go to the public school about ten miles away.
But I physically couldn’t. And I couldn’t tell her why.
The first time I realized that my control of dead things had a proximity limit was when I was on my way to my friend’s Aunt’s house twenty miles away.
About five miles out, I got a call from my mother, screaming that Bruce had just dropped to the floor, dead. I cried hysterically until my friend’s parents turned the car around. I concentrated as hard as I could until I could feel Bruce’s black hole and brought him back to life. It was just shy of four miles away from the trailer park.
I knew then that I could never go beyond a four-mile radius of my home, or Bruce would become a corpse again. Not only that, but in the few minutes that I let him die for a second time, his body began to decay, as if it knew the exact date when he died.
Think if I left and let him die for good? He’d be a skeleton within minutes.
Luckily, he’d only rotted a bit on his upper arm and leg, so no one seemed to notice. Gross!
But this is my life, my existence, making sure all the dead things I’ve brought back to life stay fresh so my loved ones aren’t in excruciating emotional pain from their losses.
When I found out that the public high school was outside my “safety zone” I looked for another school I could go to.
Only one was exactly three miles away, Geoffrey Turner High School .
A super elite, super expensive private school named after the Vice President of Population Control, which was pretty much the most powerful position in the world, even more than the President, since population was the world’s biggest concern today. He was the only man in the public eye who showed any sign of age. He was fifty when Fortski created Age-pro and Turner had been fifty ever since. I always tried to get a closer look at his wrinkles on the holo, but I think they did some kind of effect to hide most of them. He was a very distinguished man, always in a suit and tie, dark hair with flecks of white. His features were classic: straight nose, chiseled bone structure, strong chin.
Mom cringed every time I mentioned the fact that we had the same grey eyes. Even the shape was the same. In fact, she’d cringe every time I mentioned his name. She said it was because he was creepy to look at, being old and all, and