Halting the Reaper (The Stasis Stories #4) Read online

  Halting the Reaper

  The Stasis Stories

  #4

  Laurence E Dahners

  Copyright 2020

  Laurence E Dahners

  Kindle Edition

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Author’s Note

  This is the fourth book of the Stasis Stories.

  Though this book can “stand alone” it’ll be much easier to understand if read as part of the series including:

  A Pause in Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #1)

  The Thunder of Engines (The Stasis Stories #2) and

  Radiation Hazard (The Stasis Stories #3)

  I’ve minimized the repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the earlier books in order to provide a better reading experience for those who are reading the series.

  Other Books and Series

  by Laurence E Dahners

  Series

  The Ell Donsaii series

  The Vaz series

  The Bonesetter series

  The Blindspot series

  The Proton Field series

  The Hyllis family series

  Single books (not in series)

  The Transmuter’s Daughter

  Six Bits

  Shy Kids Can Make Friends Too

  For the most up to date information go to:

  Laurence E Dahners website

  Or the Amazon Author page

  Table of Contents

  Other Books and Series

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Epilogue

  Author’s Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books and Series

  Prologue

  Kaem Seba in Middle School

  Kaem walked down the hall toward the classroom, lost in his own troubles. Bullied by the boys, ignored by the girls, he got along well with his teachers.

  Getting along with teachers got him bullied even more.

  Up ahead, Rob Sanders, once a nemesis of Kaem’s, burst out of a classroom and plastered himself against a wall as if frightened.

  Since Kaem had used his dad’s one-punch strategy on Rob several years ago, Rob hadn’t been that much of a problem for Kaem, but he always kept a wary eye on the boy. For a moment, he wondered what’d alarmed Sanders, then realized Sanders was acting. He wasn’t really terrified; it was part of one of his horrible jokes or tricks.

  Nick Helmer, one of Rob’s friends, called out, “What’s happening?”

  Rob, still acting fearful, said, “Making room for Dirty Dezzy to get by without contaminating me.”

  As Nick plastered himself to the other side of the doorway, Kaem watched in dismay. He thought, You guys are such assholes. Somebody ought to stand up to you, make you stop doing stuff like this.

  Timid Dez Lanis came out the door, eyes on the floor, trying to pretend she didn’t notice the two boys. Or what they were saying. Or the stares of the others, Kaem among them.

  Kaem noticed the stain on Dezzy’s blouse. Her disheveled blonde hair. Her frayed shoes, one with a split sole. He knew Dezzy often had an odor and assumed her family must be poor. Poorer even than we are. Her clothes looked secondhand. And why the odor? Too poor to afford… what exactly? He wondered. Soap, hot water? Can’t afford the laundromat?

  Probably the laundromat, he decided. I should do something to help, he thought. Say hi. Walk with her. Act like I’m not afraid of her germs or whatever it is that Rob’s pretending to be terrified of.

  But in the end, Kaem found himself paralyzed. Worried that his own low social status would fall even further if he befriended the girl. Afraid that, even though she had no other friends, she’d reject him for being black, or sickly, or a teacher’s pet. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d found that those of the lowest social status were the ones most likely to put him down—perhaps as a way to feel better about themselves.

  As Dezzy walked past, her eyes—full of unspilled tears—rose to look into Kaem’s.

  He felt like she’d just looked into his soul. She gave him a tiny nod as if to say, “I understand why you can’t help.”

  Do something! he raged at himself. Say something!

  Instead, he watched her go by, realizing at the last moment that he was standing far enough from her path that it looked as if he was avoiding her germs the same way the others were.

  As the years went by, it was an event Kaem would often look back on with regret.

  ***

  When Dez got home from school, her mother was still asleep. Dez quietly went in and borrowed her mom’s phone and charger. Out in the kitchen, she plugged in the phone and started using it to do her homework, hurrying to get it done before her mother got up.

  To Dez’s great relief, she’d finished her homework and submitted it to her teachers’ inboxes before her mother woke.

  Unusually, her mother wasn’t in a bad mood this particular afternoon. She even cooked dinner instead of sending Dez for takeout. They had a pleasant meal. Dez’s mother wasn’t particularly good in the kitchen, but she cooked so seldom that Dez looked forward to it.

  It didn’t last. As they ate, Dez’s mom was already starting to get edgy and irritable.

  When Dez got up from the table, her mother frowned, “What the hell happened to your shirt?”

  Quietly, Dez said, “One of the boys threw a spoonful of spaghetti at me.”

  “What an asshole. Is that his idea of flirting?”

  Dez shook her head. “He’s just mean.”

  “What’s his name? I’ll call his mom.”

  Dez’s eyes widened. Her mom was likely to call when she was in a terrible mood and make a complete hash of things. “No!” Dez said, a little more abruptly than she’d intended. She followed that up with a calmer, “I’d rather deal with it myself.”

  Her mom stared at her a minute, then said, “Okay. But if he gives you any more trouble, you let me know, right?”

  “Yes, Mom,” Dez said meekly.

  “Did you wash it right away?”

  “Yes, Mom,” Dez said.

  She thought about how she’d scrubbed the lower front of her shirt at the sink in the school bathroom, then been horrified to realize that the water had turned her white blouse transparent. In an attempt to dry it more quickly so she could get to class she’d rubbed it with a paper towel. That had left little bits of brown paper towel all over it.

  In tears, Dez had been picking off bits of paper when Shelly Wills came in the bathroom. For a moment Dez feared further shaming at the hands of the tall, beautiful volleyball player. But Shelley took one glance, walked over, smacked the on button on the hand dryer, and said, “Belly up to this. Once your blouse is dry, you’ll be able to brush off the bits of towel.”

  Dez had done so, wondering why she hadn’t thought of the dryer herself. She’d turned to say thanks, but Shelly had already entered one of the stalls. She called thanks anyway but Shelly didn’t answer. Because she didn’t want to talk while she’s on the toilet? Or because she didn’t want to get caught talking to Dirty Dezzy?

  Back in the present, Dez’s mom said, “Well, get in there and wash it some more. Use soap, but don’t go crazy.” Her mom scrimped on little things like soap and pantry supplies while wasting money on takeout and pricey things like their big TV.

  She’d bought the TV when she’d gotten a big payday from the se
cret job she never talked about. There were a lot of other things Dez would rather have had than a TV. Saving the money for a rainy day would’ve been best, so they wouldn’t have to go hungry when times were tight. But Dez knew her mother couldn’t save money. So, the TV was better than nothing.

  Dez always used as much soap as she thought she could get away with, but it never seemed enough to get the smell of her body out of her clothes. She often wondered whether she needed more soap, or whether dish detergent just wasn’t designed to get odor out of clothes.

  She knew better than to ask if she could buy laundry detergent. Her mother thought the cheap dish soap worked fine for everything, but Dez wondered whether it might be the cause of her broken, frizzy, tangled, flyaway hair.

  After she finished washing the shirt in the bathroom sink, she checked her other clothes and decided to wash two of her other three blouses in the same sink full of soapy water. She hung all three blouses up on wire hangers over the bathtub. Only then did she decide to take advantage of her mother’s better-than-usual mood to see if she could take their list to the grocery store and pick up a few things.

  Her mom was putting on her makeup and the good mood had faded. “We don’t need groceries!” she’d barked. “I’ve got to go in to work early.” She slammed out the door a few minutes later.

  ***

  Dez woke in the middle of the night to a banging on their door. Did Mom lock herself out or something? she wondered groggily. She got out of bed, put on a pair of jeans to go with the t-shirt she wore to bed, and stumbled her way out to the apartment door.

  The banging came again and someone said, “Open up. Police.”

  Police?! Dez wondered. Is Mom in trouble? “I’m coming,” she croaked. She cleared her throat and said it again, louder.

  She heard a man’s voice hiss, “Shit! Sounds like a kid!” She didn’t think he’d expected her to be able to hear him.

  Dez stood on her tiptoes and looked out the peephole. There were two uniformed policemen. She turned the bolt, opened the door, and peered out at the two men. She couldn’t tell if they looked sympathetic or dismayed.

  One of the men took a knee. “Hey, kid, you alone in there?”

  Her mom had told Dez to never admit to being alone, but she didn’t think she should lie to the police either. She nodded.

  “Is this Marie Lanis’s home?”

  Dez nodded again.

  “She’s your mom?”

  Dez cleared her throat. “Yes.”

  “Do you and your mom have any relatives here in town?”

  Dez shook her head.

  The man turned back to his partner and said, “Social work.” The other man turned away, talking quietly to what looked like a heavy-duty phone.

  Dread clamping her heart, Dez asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “Um, your mom’s had a problem. We’re gonna have a lady come stay with you until everything’s worked out.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “The lady’ll explain it all to you when she gets here.”

  “What kind of problem?!” Dez asked, hysteria creeping into her voice.

  “The lady—”

  “What’s happened to my mom?!” Dez screamed.

  She kept screaming. People started coming out of the neighboring apartments. Mrs. Jacobsen, who’d occasionally babysat Dez when she was younger, came over and hugged her until her cries settled to a whimper.

  When the social worker arrived, she talked to Dezzy a bit, then said, “I have something terrible to tell you.”

  Dezzy felt her tears welling up, “My mom’s dead, isn’t she?”

  The social worker nodded; her eyes empathetic.

  “Was she murdered?” Dez asked, thinking of her mother’s mysterious job.

  The social worker bit her lip a moment, then nodded again.

  Dezzy’s thoughts spiraled out of control. Even Dezzy thought her mother acted immaturely, but she was all Dezzy had. Unbidden, her mind turned to a conversation they’d had after Dez had heard about some other kids’ big families, Dezzy had asked her mom how many relatives they had.

  “None, babe.” Her mother had said, “It’s you and me against the world.”

  “You don’t have any brothers or sisters?”

  Marie shook her head.

  “What about your parents?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “Dad’s family?”

  “He was an orphan.”

  “No cousins either?”

  Marie shook her head. “It’s just you and me against the world. We’re it, kid. Get used to it.”

  Dezzy blinked to clear the past from her present, then looked up at the social worker, “I’m an orphan?”

  The social worker shook her head. “Technically yes. But we’ll contact your extended family. Do you know if any of them might be able to take you in?”

  Dezzy shook her head and wiped at her eyes, “I don’t have any other family.”

  “Um, our information is that you do. Why do you think you don’t?”

  “Mom said she didn’t have brothers or sisters, and her parents were dead.”

  The social worker looked surprised, then said, “We’ll have to see.”

  Mrs. Jacobsen offered to let Dezzy stay with her overnight so she could stay with someone she knew. After getting all the particulars and Dezzy’s agreement, the social worker said it’d be okay. Even though she didn’t think she’d be able to, after a small glass of warm milk, Dezzy fell asleep on Mrs. Jacobsen’s couch.

  ~~~

  Dezzy woke on a foldout bed in Mrs. Jacobsen’s second bedroom. The horror of the night before crashed down around her. But then she noticed the sound of conversation from the front room. After a quick run to the bathroom, she followed the voices out front.

  Timidly, she stuck her head around the corner. Moments later, she cried, “Mom!” and ran across the room to leap on her mother.

  Her mother tightly hugged her back.

  Arms around her mother’s neck, she exclaimed, “There was a mistake, right? It wasn’t you!”

  Her mother just squeezed her tighter.

  Dez reveled in the warmest hug her mother had ever given her. Then she began to worry that her mother hadn’t said anything. And she didn’t smell of cigarettes. And she was softer, not so bony. Dez slowly pulled back to stare into a face that looked like her mother’s but wasn’t. A face soaked with tears. Soft blonde hair, rather than her mother’s harsh platinum. A softer, kinder-seeming face that looked like her mother’s, but was somehow younger. A face more like Dez’s own, but older.

  Dez blinked blurry eyes, then choked out, “Who’re you?”

  “I’m your mom’s sister Rilee,” the woman replied. “Your aunt…” She blinked a couple of times, then murmured forlornly, “Dezzy, I’m so sorry about your mom. And I’m terribly sad to meet you this way. I-I’m, I’m sorry. I wish this hadn’t…” A long pause followed, then again, she said, “I’m just sorry about everything.”

  Dez pulled back a little further. “Mom said she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. And that her parents were dead.”

  Aunt Rilee nodded. “When she left us, she was really mad. She said we were all dead to her. I’m guessing that’s what she meant when she talked to you about us.”

  Why was Mom mad? Dezzy wondered, then asked.

  A multitude of expressions passed over Rilee’s face. She started to speak, then stopped. Then finally said, “She wanted money.”

  “And you wouldn’t give her any?”

  “We’d already given her a lot. Everyone in the family had given her money. Lots of friends too. And it all went to… to…”

  “Buy drugs?” Dez asked.

  Rilee nodded convulsively.

  “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have given her any money. How old was I?”

  “You weren’t born. We didn’t know you existed until, until…”

  “Last night?”

  Rilee nodded again, seemingly un
able to speak.

  Tentatively, Dez asked, “When you say, ‘we,’ who do you mean?”

  “Our parents, er, your grandparents. My brother, who’d be your uncle. Your cousins. Lots of other family.”

  With hope in her voice, Dez asked tremulously, “Is there someone who’d let me stay with them for a while?”

  “Me…” her aunt Rilee croaked out. “I’d love it if you came to live with me.”

  Dezzy threw her arms around her aunt’s neck. Though she was still grieving her mom, she was somehow happier than she ever remembered.

  It was years before Dezzy understood that her mother’s mood swings had been due to her meth addiction. That her “secret job” had been as a sex worker. And that Dezzy’s orphaned father, supposedly overseas on a secret assignment, was actually unknown.

  But, living with her aunt Rilee, Dezzy thrived. Clean—new, not secondhand—clothes, a nice haircut, shampoo, and steady, warm love made all the difference in the world.

  ***

  Saturday morning, Brad Medness went in to check on the micro plasma experiment he was running in the lab at the University of Maryland’s ISEAP (Institute for the Study of Electronics and Applied Physics). He’d been working for a couple of years to develop his system for heating tiny plasma systems to extreme temperatures. Some of the new high energy chirped-pulse lasers could generate extreme heating within the small volumes he worked in. Unfortunately, that heat dissipated so rapidly that he had to take his measurements of the plasmas’ properties on a picosecond or femtosecond basis.

  Though his grants were written with the more prosaic goal of understanding plasma physics, his dream was to induce small scale fusion.

  Unfortunately, today’s experiment didn’t bring him any closer to that goal.

  ~~~

  When he got home his wife looked up from her screen and said, “My news feed this morning had an article you’d be interested in.”