Endgame Fiction: Ghost Girl

Contributor: Katherine Journeay

Submission: Ghost Girl

LARP system: Endgame

Character name: Helen Byrne

Years LARPing: 23 (officially more than half her life)

This from the fiction of Katherine Journeay-- Helen Byrne IG from the Endgame universe. IG and OoG, Katherine/Helen is a prolific poet, whose work has been used for various purposes (including innovative modules). Helen Byrne, a combat medic "trained" in an undercover government program, is a fascinating character. Katherine plays her well, and adds a depth to Endgame that is irreplaceable; this piece, titled "Ghost Girl", is not poetry, but instead a fictive account of Helen's travels in Endgame's post-apocalyptic, sci-fi universe.



There was a light dusting of snow on the leaves, on the not quite bare branches and sprinkled, candy sugar like, on the ground. Helen’s breath made elaborate curlicues in the air as she struggled to get out of her sleeping bag. Bits of icy snow fell off its hood.

The fire had turned to ashes. She poked at it vigorously with a stick, but most of the wood had been consumed, so it responded only with feeble tongues of flame. She looked around for Tom; he always took dawn watch. It’s just what he did.

She found him, leaning against a tree, silhouetted against the pale light, pipe wrench slung across his shoulders. He was in a pair of tattered camo pants, a leather jacket and a knit hat jammed down over his silvering black hair. The wire rims of his round glasses caught the firelight and winked away. His jaw was strong, stubborn. He held an un- gloved hand up to his face, & blew quietly on it. Although she knows he heard her move he never stopped looking away from their tiny camp for danger, never stopped looking for both trouble and hope.

“We eating now or later?” she asked.

At first he didn’t answer, which was fine, Helen was used to his taciturn moods.

He hadn’t always been like that. When they served in Desert Storm together his dry wit had kept the men at their outpost doubled over with laughter. It was one of the Of course, there was not much to laugh about anymore.

She stretched her neck and back, waiting. Her vertebra made loud popping sounds in the morning air. Still he didn’t turn around, answer her or lift his gaze from what lay beyond. Finally, as the fire sunk back down to embers, she reached for some twigs to add to the flame.

“Leave it,” he snapped.

She flinched, but then shrugged and put the twigs down. No breakfast then, Tom wanted to get on the road. She pulled her legs from her bag and shoved them into her shoes, not bothering with the laces just yet. She strapped her fanny pack on around her waist and spun it so the pouch with Trinity Ambulance logo was in the front, picked up her dagger and headed toward the bushes that they had been using as a latrine. She nudged the third bundled form around the fire as she passed with her foot. The bundle made a grunting noise.

“Pathfinder Duane,” she said, “Rise and shine.”

There was a spluttering sound, though muffled, and then the bundle thrashed wildly, shedding blankets, coats, sweaters and a shiny silver Mylar emergency blanket before revealing a wild eyed bald man with a hooked nose squinting against the pale light. Helen noted that Thomas had flicked an eye back to the source of the commotion but then had returned to scanning the forest around them. Pathfinder Duane fished around on the ground by his pack, pulled out a pair of horn rimmed glasses and stuck them on his nose. Leaves stuck out from the hinges at crazy angles. “What? What? Dawn already? Are we off then? Should we go? Is it time? Is breakfast ready?” She sighed, “No. Tom would like to get moving. We can stop and eat breakfast later.”

“Later,” Duane muttered, but started packing up his sleeping roll, “Later? Isn’t so much time for later any more. Why put off breakfast when there may not be a later? That’s what I want to know. No need to die on an empty belly, that’s what I say. No need to go to hell hungry.”

Helen ignored him and went to do her business in the bushes. As she was buckling her belt she noted that she could now pull the tongue to yet another new hole. She noted bitterly that there were two things wrong with what Duane said. 1) They were always hungry. 2) They were already in Hell. Helen went back to her roll, bundled it up and then took care of Tom’s pack. She passed out some apples to the men that were just beginning to get soft and stamped out the fire. While Duane was fiddling with his equipment, indulging in a near continuous monologue and Tom still peered into the woods, she took five minutes to herself to pray.

She started with the Lords Prayer, went to an Our Lady and finished with something more personal:

“Dear Lord,

We are going to try to make it to Waterbury Vermont today. Please make our path smooth and our way safe. Also, lend me your fortitude to not give into temptation, And to sincerely keep looking for Laura with my whole heart. Because I know that finding her and Tom’s son would make him happy, And his happiness should be enough for me. Though if you could lay off the zombies today, I would really appreciate it. In the name of the Father, and the name of the Son, and the name of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

She crossed herself, kissed the tiny mother of pearl cross she wore and opened her eyes. Tom was gazing right at her, a faint smile on his face, as if he knew the subject of her prayers and was amused by it. Her heart thumped once. She dropped her gaze and went to shoulder her pack, and then picked up her med kit. “Ready,” she said softly.

“Right,” Tom said, “Let’s move out.” They moved briskly at first, to warm up muscles stiff from sleeping on the ground. The sun was bright, though the air was crisp, and quickly the snow around them melted away. It would not take them long to make the distance between where they were on the Paths now and Waterbury Duane cheerfully confided in them, no more than a couple of hours now, no more than a couple of hours. They had decided to stop short of their destination last night in order to not have to travel or arrive in Waterbury in the dark. These days all decent human folk only approached human settlements while it was light. It kept you from being mistaken for a zombie from watchmen with nervous trigger fingers. Better to show up in the morning light, hands away from weapons, with gifts and news from where you had been. That is how they had made it to Storrs without getting shot at. They had been looking for traces of Laura and Simon at the ruins of the UConn Campus and the dozen or so families that had holed up in the horse arena, but had come up empty handed. In exchange for Tom’s plumbing skills to fix the Arena’s leaking toilets their Pathfinder, Duane, had agreed to lead them to Waterbury. He had heard rumor of a fair-haired woman wandering into town off the paths with a little boy in tow. Tom had insisted on checking it out.

If Helen had an MRE for every rumor they heard about a woman and a child wandering into a town from the paths, well, she wouldn’t be starving anymore. A woman and a child miraculously rescued must be the most popular Post Fall urban legend Helen had heard so far. She knew that people needed hope, knew that they made up stories just to give themselves reasons to get up in the morning. She just wished that hope would not keep them both moving across New England in a chess board pattern of rumor checking, him out of devotion to his missing wife, her out of loyalty. It would be nice to find someplace to settle down for the winter. Maybe begin to build new life?

Helen buried that thought as soon as it surfaced. Since the Twinned Circle’s demonic ritual had shattered their world, opening up gateways for invader races to pour through and start using humanity as their playthings; no one could really claim to be building anything, let alone a quiet life.

Duane, leading and muttering, muttering and leading suddenly threw up his hand and stopped speaking. Tom and Helen froze.

There was a snapping sound as twigs were broken and then a low growling. That would have been creepy enough, but it came from both before and behind them.

“Groaners,” Tom warned and pulled out his pipe wrench.

Three zombies shuffled out of the woods ahead of them, and in what seemed to be a stupefying level of organization from the undead, two more cut them off from the path behind.

“Weeeeeelllll”, Duane, commented and pulled out his cudgel, “That’s going to delay getting to town. Too bad too, it’s not far ahead, not far at all. ‘Course that don’t do us no good, do it? Too far from town for someone to come help. Mind you stay on the paths, young miss, don’t want to have you stumble off and end up in Tuscon, or New York.” Helen planted her feet and pulled out her little dagger. They took their time about it, but the zombies shuffled closer.

“I hope you are as good with that thing as you are with your mouth,” Tom said to Duane and indicated the stick with the end of his wrench.

“Haven’t seen you swing that thing, except to fix a toilet,” Duane snapped back.

Helen guessed Duane must also be a little nervous. He only used one sentence.

Tom hefted the wrench and slapped it into a gloved palm, “Oh Darlene and I do just fine. Don’t we Darlene? I got the front three, you just keep an eye on the back and make sure they stay put until I’m done with mine. Ready Helen?”

“Ready,” she muttered.

Seamlessly Tom and Helen took two large steps forward. He swung the pipe wrench up and connected with the closest one’s head. There was a crunching sound, but it didn’t immediately fall over. With the return strike he actually ripped the head off it.

It fell, jerking spasmodically. Helen parried a clawing hand on his weak side with her dagger.

“Jesus!!” Duane shouted.

Helen jerked her head around. One of the zombies that had been shuffling toward them but well out of range had started to run at them. Helen felt her jaw drop. Since when did zombies run?

“Sprinter, behind us,” she shouted.

Tom grunted, “You stay, I’ll turn,” he replied, “Step back one. On my mark…now!”

Tom spun in place to back up Duane, leaving Helen to face the two in the front by herself, and then the two of them, as a unit, took a step back.

Helen clenched her jaw and began to parry for all she was worth. At least these two zombies were adult men. The women and children ones always made Tom get quiet for hours afterward. They clawed toward her, drooling and slavering, their jaws working, trying to bite her. One was armed with an actual baseball bat, but his swipes at her were pretty feeble. She could hear Tom grunting with exertion, and Duane’s wheezing, but dared not turn around to watch. She had her hands full enough.

There was a sharp cry from behind and someone stumbled into her, throwing Helen off balance. Helen pitched forward, right inside the arc of the baseball bat, inside the zombie’s range. Her shoulder connected with it’s midriff and she felt it’s rotting flesh ooze over her skin. The smell made her gag. Helen forced down panic. If she had a cut on her skin and the muck got inside… Neither zombie reacted at first, neither could figure out what had just happen. Helen pulled her dagger up, and buried it to the hilt in it’s stomach, then she pulled it out as it started to slide backward off the blade, whirled in place and stabbed it upward through the jaw of the second zombie who was still looking for her where she had been standing before. Both zombies crumpled, in slow motion, to the ground.

Helen turned to help Duane and Thomas, and her heart stopped. All five zombies were down, although the one Helen had hit in the chest was still twitching, but so were Duane and Thomas. They lay a short distance apart from each other Helen’s EMT and battlefield training kicked in and she started making an assessment of their condition as she fell to her knees between them. Duane was struggling to breathe around a puncture wound in his chest. Possible collapsed lung. Thomas had a gash in his scalp and a rapidly swelling bruise. Helen could see the gleam of bone through the tear in the skin. He wasn’t breathing.

As Helen moved to start CPR on Tom, fumbling in her pouch for her one remaining epinephrine syringe, Duane gave a rattling gasp and also stopped breathing.

Helen, suddenly frozen at the speed of events, held the solitary syringe in her hand and looked between the two men. She shoved aside the panic that threatened to overwhelm her and try to think rationally about the choice of two dying men and one epinephrine syringe.

On the one hand, there was no choice at all. Thomas was… well he was Thomas. He was her reason for living. The reason she was alive at all. She owed him a blood oath, if nothing else.

But she was on the paths, Duane was the pathfinder. If she were to save Thomas and allow Duane to die, then the two of them would be lost on the paths forever. One wrong step and they could end up in New York, Zombie Central, or in the blasted out crater of LA.

But it was Thomas.

Thomas who searched with a single minded will for Laura and Simon. Thomas who seemed not to care if she lived or died, provided that she kept him alive so he could find his family. Thomas, who did not see how she took care of him, how she crushed down her own needs to keep him going. Thomas who had avenged the death of her mother in the first few days of the calamity. Thomas who had saved her in the desert of Iraq.
Her duty was to Thomas; her duty and more. And it was his duty to chase a woman and a child, who were almost certainly dead, or zombified, or worse; a pair of ghosts that he was not going to be able to find, let alone save.

She wanted to shout that at him right then. They are gone! Laura is dead! You are dragging us all over this country chasing phantoms! And I am right here. God damn you, right here.

She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck with one hand, to be touching him when she did it. Then, she pulled back the plunger on the epinephrine syringe and with a cry of despair she rammed it into Duane’s chest, right past the third intercostal, straight into his heart. He gasped and drew breath as his heart started beating again.
She bent over Thomas’ body and started to cry. Her hands felt cold, colder than Thomas’ rapidly cooling skin. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. If there was any power in me at all I would imbue you with my own life. I would imbue you to dead…

But Helen had no power.


Dear Lord,
Please. Please don’t let Thomas die. Take my life and give it to him.
I am your servant in this, as in all things.
Amen.

Duane began to cough and choke, and Helen began to work on him around her tears, but always, always maintaining a connection to Thomas’ body, skin on colder, much colder, skin. Duane’s eyes flew open. They rolled wildly, as if still checking for opponents, before they settled on Helen’s face. The terror in them softened, and he reached up to touch a tear. She tried not to flinch , “I’ve seen plenty of strange things in my life, strange things,” he rasped, “but I’ve never seen a woman cry over my wretched corpse. Mighty strange, I think. Mighty strange.” And then he closed his eyes and fell into a light sleep. When Duane was quiet, and stable, she picked Thomas up in her arms and began to rock back and forth. Back and forth.

There was a confusing series of images that made no sense to Helen. There was darkness, and a blinding light, a man in a white coat and lots of shouting. Someone tried to pull Thomas out of her hands but she held on the whole time this was happening, her hands were so cold that thought she must be getting frostbite.

Helen woke up. She knew she was awake and no longer dreaming because the wool blanket she was lying on was scratchy against her skin. All the sheets in Helen’s dreams were soft from her mother’s dryer. She sat up.

“Woah there,” came a male voice she did not recognize, “Careful, Ghost Girl.”
Helen’s head whipped in the direction of the sound. An older man with a bushy white moustache wearing an apron and a bloodstained set of Wellingtons, was hurrying across a darkened room toward her. No. Not a room. A lantern with a wick spilled a feeble light around a darkened stable, the hay on the floor glowing an enchanted gold.

As the man got closer she scooted backward, away from him, nostrils flaring, and eyes wide. He immediately stopped, and lifted his hands in the air to show he was unarmed, “I’m not gonna hurt you, Helen. I’ve been taking care of you for the last 3 days while you have been raving.” Helen’s anxiety level spiked. He knew her. And then, 3 days? She had lost 3 days? Her hands started to shake.
Seeing that, he crouched carefully down on his haunches, and watched her out of the corner of his eye, the way one would a cat, without the challenge inherent in a direct gaze, “My name is Jonsie.” He said, “I’m what passes for a doctor here in Waterbury.”

Helen’s heart started to slow down somewhat, “So we made it.”

“Oh yes, you made it, in quite a dramatic fashion.” When Helen raised an eyebrow, Jonsie explained, “Well hell, you showed up on our doorstep fireman carrying that one fellah, Thomas, and half supporting Pathfinder Duane, who wasn’t walking or breathing so good, but was awake enough to find the path to get the three of you out of there. You’re a thin girl, but you’re strong and stubborn when you want to be. It took us
twenty minutes to get you to let go of your buddy. Good thing too, I guess.” He squinted at her, “You don’t remember this?” She shook her head, mumbled no. “Both men should have died. You got quite the skill for doctoring, it seems to me.”

Helen lowered her head, eyes burning, “I’m not a doctor. I’m an EMT. An EMT with an empty med kit.”

“Well,” he said laconically, “Fortunately for your friend, I know a bit of CPR.”
Helen looked up at him, confused, “Did Duane arrest again?”

“No, not for Duane. For Thomas.”

“Wait….” Helen’s mind blanked, “What are you talking about? Thomas is dead.”

The bushy eyebrows shot up, “You were out of it, weren’t you? No girl, you saved him. Kept his soul attached to his body long enough for me to get his heart started again.”

“WHAT?!!”

“Sure, girl, once he slept a night he was up, asking questions and fixing our plumbing the next day. You seemed to take it harder than he did.”

Helen began to tremble, “How… how is that possible?”

Jonsie looked down and chuckled, “Seems to me that you have a bit of the ghostwalker about you.”
She shook her head sharply, “I don’t.”

Jonsie clucked his tongue reassuringly, and then opened his palm. A dancing blue light hovered there. Helen tried to look away but her eyes fixated on the light. She didn’t want to breathe. Jonsie kept talking to her, low and gentle, “There’s no shame in that, girl. Picking up Invader Arts where you can. Might as well use it against them. They are trying to kill us all off. No shame in trying to kill them back a little.” A tear rolled down Helen’s cheek, but her eyes never left the dancing blue flame. “Besides,” Jonsie continued, “You saved your fellah from dying. Seems like a good skill. I don’t even know how to do that, but I do know if you are a ghostwalker, it can be done. Sure wouldn’t mind trading skills with you, if you could teach me how to do that.”

“He’s not my ‘fellah’,” Helen corrected automatically, and then after a moment, quietly, reverently, “I don’t have anything to teach you. I don’t know what I did. I didn’t want Thomas to die. I asked God for help. He must have answered.”

Jonsie made a sound like a guffaw, “You must ask better than me then. God hasn’t talked to anyone that I know of since the Invasion. The last folks who claimed to speak for Him got shown the other side of the town walls. You’re not one of them are you?”

Helen shook her head quickly. No need to court that kind of trouble. Survivor settlements were quirky about their religion these days, or more specifically, their fervent lack thereof. It was hard to believe in a God that allowed the world to be invaded by ghosts, zombies, and aliens. Sometimes she wondered why she kept praying herself.

“Besides,” Jonsie continued, clever eyes on her mother of pearl cross, “God helps those who help themselves. At least that’s what they used to say. Seems to me that figuring out what you did would be very helpful for you for the future. Could keep other people from dying.” Helen, who had an “absolutely not” poised on her tongue, felt the words crumble to ash. Jonsie, catching her indecision pressed his point, “We got so few of us left. What did WFRE say 6 months ago, that there may be down to 2 million people or less? Girl, you may not be a doctor but you are not ignorant. You know the human race needs a wider set of genetic material than that. We need to be making babies, not allowing ourselves to be slaughtered like cattle. You ever see what a limited genetic diversity did to cocker spaniels or pug dogs? It made them weak. It made them high strung, it made them ugly. Stupid. We can’t have that happen to humanity. Every person we loose diminishes us.”
Helen’s eyes finally flicked away from the hovering blue flame over his palm. He closed it. Jonsie knew he was winning, “You got a great gift and a great opportunity to help humanity. You have a duty to help others. You know how to stabilize people with both old technology and new. EMT and Ghostwalker? Why should anyone die under your hands?”

Helen flinched as if slapped. Her mother had said something like that. Eileen

Byrne’s spirit, rising gracefully from the pieces of her body, leveled a shaking, immaterial finger at Helen and called her a failure for being too late to keep her own mother from being murdered. Never too late for guilt though. Not if your only daughter can inexplicably walk with ghosts.

“What about you?” she shot back, “You have more medical skills than I do and

you know Ghostwalking. What are you doing hiding out in the backwoods of Vermont.”

“Who told you that?” He asked sharply.

“You did, you said you were a doctor.”

He snorted, “I said I passed for a doctor. Didn’t say I was one. I’m a large animal vet. I used to keep the cows of this state healthy enough to make ice cream.”

Helen opened her mouth, and then shut it. She turned her gaze instinctively toward the door. Thomas abruptly walked into the circle of the light that the lantern cast.

She would have known he was here even if she had not been facing that direction. She knew the feeling of his presence in any room she was in, even blindfolded. Or blind if it came down to that.

His face cracked into a smile, “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she mumbled.

Jonsie looked up, calculating the change in the temperature in the room, and stood up, slapping his hands against his knees, “Well, I’ll let the two of you get re-acquainted. I got patients to see. You think about what I said girl. Plenty of things we can teach each other.” Then he ambled toward the door, whistling innocently. Helen glared at his retreating back.

Thomas gave Jonsie a curious look as he went past, “What was that about?” he asked her.

“Nothing.”

“How are you feeling?”

She shrugged, “Fine.”

“I’m glad. I’ve been worried about you.”

Helen blinked, “… you were… worried about me?”

“Yeah. Of course I was. No one could figure out what was wrong with you. Jonsie said he thought it had something to do with this… ghost business. He’s more the expert than I am. Sure as I know, you’ve never been able to keep a spirit in a body like that before. It might be you gained a new ability and it just took a lot out of you.”

Helen looked away. They didn’t really talk about this, the ghost business. He knew about it. He was there when Helen’s mom rose from her own body, shouting accusations. He was there when the first mournful blue light began to spill from Helen’s hands. Hell, he had asked her to help them navigate by it after dark.

But they didn’t talk about it.

They certainly didn’t talk about it when it came upon her unawares, when she’d wake up too cold in August, or when she’d accidentally opened a gate to the underworld and then fumbled around trying to shut it again. She’d assumed he didn’t want to think about it. She certainly didn’t. His voice lowered, to be more private, intimate. Shivers went down her arms, “But I knew it probably wasn’t that, Helen. I know you too well.” Her heart started to thump. She was afraid to look up into his eyes.

He continued, “I knew you were beating yourself up because you had to choose Duane over me. And I knew that choice was making you not want to come back, tearing you up inside.” Helen didn’t think she would be able to breathe about the lump in her throat. He took her limp hand in his, gave it a squeeze, “But I want you to stop doing that. I need you to stop beating yourself up. You did the right thing.”

She did look up then, to check the truth of his words, “I did?”

“Absolutely. You did. And… I’m proud of you for making the choice you made.

It was the right one.”

“It was?” she felt confused, but she felt her heart lift at his praise.

“I don’t know that I could have made the same one under those circumstances. If I had seen you lying on the ground next to Duane with only one epi pen… I don’t know what I would have done. Gone crazy, I guess. If this experience has taught me something, it’s that… I need you. Now, more than ever.” Helen heard a rushing in her ears, and the tears started up behind her eyes. He needed her. He needed her. She opened her mouth to speak. His baritone continued, as if her need to speak was irrelevant, so badly did he need to say what he did, “If I ever fall like that again, I know you will get me back up. With you by my side, I will never have to stop looking for Laura and Simon.” And just like that, the rushing sound, the sense of lifting, vanished. The silence was absolute. Into that silence she was able to speak her disbelief, “…Laura?”

“Jonsie explained it to me while you were out. That Ghostwalkers really never die. They can live outside of time. They can keep anyone from leaving this earth. You can keep me going. You and your Ghostwalking skills, no matter how you may have gotten them, will help me find my wife. Of course I need you.” Thomas stood up. He clapped her a blow on her shoulder, mean to convey, she supposed, affection. Camaraderie. But not love, she knew. Not that. Not ever that, “You have been sleeping for 3 days. You should get some food. Jonsie said Martha in the kitchen would be happy to feed you. I’d like to take off in the morning. There’s a story on WRFE of an amnesiac, a woman, who came out of the woods in Coventry RI. We’re going to go check it out, first thing.”

Helen nodded dully, “Sure Thomas. Whatever you say.”

He smiled, thinly, all business again. “That’s my girl.”

Helen saw him walk away from her, lantern light gleaming against the silver in

his hair, leading the way back out, into the darkness.