The sun broke free of the city wreckage. Caleb closed his eyes and welcomed its warmth. He breathed deep and free. A sense of clarity had come over his mind and it calmed his body.

  I didn’t want to become a killer. I couldn’t turn into a soldier, hungry for blood. But a savior? A healer? That I can do.

  Caleb and Kayleigh firmly shut the Squish Burger door behind them.

  “So, you’re a healer then.”

  “We’re healers now, you mean.”

  “Yeah.” She kicked at the pebbles in the restaurant’s parking lot. “I like that for us.”

  “Us?”

  Her cheeks blushed red. “Yeah. You, me… Dave and Oliver.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see how Dave stomps them all back to life. Real Lennie in Of Mice and Men vibes.”

  She snorted. “Hah! Sorry about that.”

  “No worries.”

  She squinted out into the morning sun. “So, are you going to try and heal that guy?”

  A lone skeleton shambled onto the parking lot. The lower jaw bounced in its head as it walked, like a faulty suspension system in a car.

  Caleb looked around. “I mean, I guess. He said everyone, right?”

  “Anything in your inventory that will cure… and I’m going to check my notes here… having no organs or eyes or muscles or skin?”

  Fuck. She’s right.

  “Look, when you put it like that it sounds like I’ve been put into an impossible situation.”

  “It sounds to me like you’ve been put into an impossible situation.”

  Caleb retreated into his inventory. His cursor danced over the options:

  HUMAN BLOOD

  SMALL BANDAGE

  MEDIUM BANDAGE

  LARGE BANDAGE

  HERB POULTICE

  SMALL HEALTH SPRAY

  MEDIUM HEALTH SPRAY

  LARGE HEALTH SPRAY

  REGEN SPRAY

  Here we go. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  The Regen Spray was a heavy aluminium canister, about 750ml, with a long and thin applicator nozzle.

  Reminds me of Dad’s old car lube cans. Not that they ever worked when he needed them, but that’s what you get when you leave something to rot in the garage for a couple years.

  The canister itself was white, with a simple single-colour green stencil. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn’t mass market.

  Dr. Belker doesn’t really care too much for packaging design, but then again it’s not like he’s selling these things. Which is crazy, because if it does what I think it’s going to, it’s going to revolutionize health care. Could you inhale this stuff and cure a dementia-addled brain?

  “Gah!”

  Kayleigh’s scream reverberated through the menu. Caleb quickly snapped back to reality.

  The skeleton bore down on Kayleigh, pushing her into the pebbled parking lot.

  “Caleb! Help meeee-” she screeched as the chattering bag of bones closed its mouth around her ear. “-Help meeeeeee!”

  “Get off her,” Caleb shoulder-barged the skeleton, sending it careening to the floor. It fell apart like a set of wooden blocks.

  “Crap. Sorry.” Caleb threw himself after the break-apart skeleton to try and save it, but its bony fingers slipped through his.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Kayleigh.

  “Yeah. He wasn’t really attacking me. It was like the scarers in a haunted house. He just kinda jumped and pawed at me.”

  Bones crackled, and the fallen pieces of the skeleton circled its ribcage like a bone vortex. Each piece magnetically attached to its partner until the skeleton rose up in its full and spindly glory.

  “Oh, good. You put yourself back together. Take… this?’

  Caleb held the Regen Spray out and sprayed the skeleton in the face. Its jaw worked overtime, as if it were trying to drink the neon green mist that ejected from the aerosol can. Small green crosses rose from the mist like smoke from a fire.

  “Smells good,” Kayleigh commented. “Like a hospital room, y’know.”

  She’s right. Ugh. I haven’t been in hospital since Dad’s problems. But then again, I always was a pretty cautious kid. I had to be, so they didn’t think I was a danger to anyone after what happened to mom.

  Caleb blinked through the mist. Ropes of muscle layered themselves atop the skeleton’s chattering face, weaving its way across the bare skull and covering it. Blood pumped around the muscle, blotting it and soaking through just in time for the first layer of skin to keep it contained. The wet tightening of skin on muscle replaced the bone-on-bone racket and soon the restored man was screaming.

  It wasn’t a harrowed, pain-filled scream, but more a triumphant gasp of disbelief.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  It’s working.

  Eyeballs inflated inside the man’s empty sockets, its pupils dilated and he blinked with life.

  Kayleigh stepped back, her mouth agape. She covered it with a hand as the naked man touched his own face in disbelief.

  “I’m… I’m back. I’m alive! I can see! I can feel!” He took a deep breath. “I can smell!”

  The naked man grabbed Caleb by both shoulders and shook him wildly. “Thank you! You’re a miracle worker. Who are you?”

  “I guess you can call me the Healer. But the name’s Caleb. Nice to meet you.”

  The man shook Caleb’s hand violently. “A thousand thank yous!” he looked down. “Uh, sorry for the lack of clothes. My name’s Provo.”

  “Oh, like the city in Utah.” Kayleigh said.

  The man raised an eyebrow. “What’s Utah?”

  “Oh, never mind.” she replied. “I forgot we’re not all from the same place.”

  Caleb smiled, desperate to keep his eyeline higher than Provo’s shoulders. “No problem. There are some clothes stores on this road. I don’t think they’d mind if you took a few things to save your own modesty.”

  “Come, come.” Provo said as he headed towards the nearest store. “I must know how you saved us.”

  “Well, just you at the moment, I’m afraid.” Caleb said. “But we’ll get to you all eventually. What happened here?”

  The man shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. First, we heard an explosion. The Belker laboratory that overlooks Ravenswood went up in flames.”

  “I know.”

  “We were there.” Kayleigh said.

  “Oh, wow.” Provo said. “Anyway, whatever he was doing in there got released into our atmosphere. A massive fog descended. The army swooped in, quick as anything, and told us all we had to evacuate the city. The fog seemed to hang in the air just above the high rises. But the second it hit those first floors…” Provo shook his head. “That’s when the screaming started. And the second the screaming started, the mist just plummeted onto us all. And that’s all I can remember really. I went blind. I went deaf. My skin got really tight and then I just couldn’t feel anything at all. But I could still think. That’s when I knew I was in hell.”

  “But you weren’t.”

  “Do you want to know what you actually looked like until we rescued you?”

  Provo shook his head. “Not really. But hit me anyway.”

  “You were a skeleton. A literal skeleton. Just a skeleton. Like some Jason and the Argonauts-type shit.”

  Provo scratched his shock of blonde hair. “Wow. I must admit, I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “I’m sure you’ll see soon enough.”

  They came to the wide glass doors of EXAMPLE: FOR MEN. Caleb pushed open the doors and they relented.

  “I guess nobody had time to close up shop.” Provo said. “I don’t blame them. It all happened so fast. One second, BAM! The next, the mist. Before I knew it, I had an armed soldier screaming in my face to get the hell outside. Anyway, this place isn’t really my style, so…”

  Provo searched Caleb’s face, but found no sympathy. “I guess it will have to do.”

  “Yes, it will.” Kayleigh said firmly. She exchanged a knowing look with Caleb that screamed please cover this man’s ass up.

  “I could probably do with a change too.” Caleb sniffed his armpits. “Oh, actually I don’t smell at all. Weird.”

  Kayleigh rubbed the underside of her breasts. “Yeah, I’m dry as a bone. I don’t think our bodies are functioning in the way they do at home. It’s kinda nice actually. We don’t get hungry, we don’t get tired, we don’t get ho-” she caught herself and laughed. “No urges of any kind.”

  “Yup.” Caleb nodded.

  Provo grabbed a pair of boxer shorts, some jeans and a t-shirt from the racks and pulled them on. “How do I look?” he said.

  “Less naked. So much better.”

  Kayleigh nodded. “Muuuuuuch better.”

  “Cool. So, what next?”

  Caleb thought for a few moments. “What is the population of this place?”

  Provo scratched behind his ear. “The whole of Squirrel City? It’s a couple million people, easy.”

  Kayleigh winced. “Caleb, how are we supposed to heal millions of skeletons?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t do it one-by-one, obviously. We’ll have to set off some kind of bomb.”

  “Bomb?” Provo perked up. “It’s funny you should say that. I work in demolitions for a local building development company.”

  “Oh, awesome.” Caleb said. “Everything’s looking up Caleb!’

  Kayleigh punched him in the chest. “We’re getting sidetracked. We need to get back to Dave.”

  “Who’s Dave?”

  “He’s our friend. He’s injured. He’s not like us.”

  “Oh, you mean a transhuman? Not many folks around here would call a slave bot a friend, but I’m pretty progressive.”

  Kayleigh got right up in Provo’s face. “A slave bot?!”

  “I said I’m progressive. I think they’re basically people.”

  “They’re not basically people. They are people. Just like me and just like you.”

  Provo stammered. “Some would say they’re better! But, and here’s the thing, no one gets good grades, stays out of trouble and ends up on the mechanisation line, you know?”

  “We don’t know.” Caleb said. “We’re not from here. We’re from a whole different world. We don’t have transhumans where we come from.”

  “Oh. Well, let’s just say it’s a way for everyone in society to participate and be constructive.”

  Caleb turned to Kayleigh. “Let’s just drop it for now. It’s clear this place is fucked up. We better watch him around Dave, though. If he says the wrong thing, Dave will turn him to mulch.”

  Kayleigh nodded. “If this guy doesn’t stop talking soon, I’m going to think twice about this whole mass healing plan.”

  They left the store. The orange morning had mellowed to a calming yellow. Star-speckled fog still hung in the sky, contaminated with traces of Dr. Belker’s spores. “Let’s go. Provo, stick close to me. The skeletons aren’t dangerous, but they’ll swarm ya, so keep your distance. If you spot something that isn’t a skeleton, sound the alarm fast.”

  “Got it.” Provo said. “No problem. I’m scared of literally everything.”

  They hurried down the middle of the street, steering clear of the bone piles at the bottom of each skyscraper.

  “Damn,” Provo said. “That could have easily been me.”

  “You certainly are lucky, Provo.” Caleb said. “Out of the millions and millions of possible skeletons in this city, we saved you.”

  “Thank you. And I do truly mean that. Don’t think for a second I’m not grateful.”

  “I don’t. I just don’t care for your opinions about the validity of our friend’s existence.”

  “Look, I said I was progressive. I’m nice to them! I always say please and thank you, and I make sure to donate money for repair kits whenever I get a few coins spare at the end of the month. It’s just that my budget’s been kinda stretched over the last couple months, what with the economy and all-”

  “It’s fine.” Caleb said. “I guess it’s the same story, no matter what universe you’re living in.”

  “Humans gonna human.” Kayleigh murmured.

  They exited the city and headed down the highway.

  “There they are,” Caleb said, his voice rich with relief. “Exactly where we left them.”

  Oliver and Dave were still slumped together behind the armored car.

  “Hey, guys!” Caleb waved.

  Oliver looked up.

  He doesn’t seem too happy to see us…

  Kayleigh felt it too.

  “Something’s not right.” she said.

  Caleb broke into a run. Oliver, almost imperceptibly, shook his head. He whispered a word that looked an awful lot like “no.”

  A thin stream of smoke rose up into the air from behind the armored car. Caleb followed it down and saw a burning ember through the car windows.

  Caleb looked down. A small red laser dot was trained on his chest.

  Johnson had them all dead to rights.