by A. Giacomi
I scream to alert Cam before her fingers tighten further around my neck. “She’s hungry, dammit. Pull me out!” I manage to get out before Eve squeezes.
He doesn’t hesitate to grab my waist and pull me out of Eve’s grasp. He then slams the door in Eve’s face before she can exit the vehicle and locks the doors with the remote hanging from the car keys. She thrashes at the windows like an insane person as Cam and I watch in horror.
“Cam, we need to find her some food. That or…maybe you want to offer up an arm, a leg…” I’m hyperventilating at this point, and Cam asks me to sit and try to calm my breaths. I then see him bolt off into the woods that surround the factory.
Cam is back before I can blink, or maybe the time has passed quickly because I am sufereing from shock. Everything around me pauses except the sound of pounding fists against the glass behind me. I think she might break through at one point, but perhaps she is too weak or the windows of the Jeep are too strong. Either way, I am glad Eve has stayed put.
Cam is holding a rather large rabbit when he returns. I’m not sure it will be enough, but we have to try something.
“Cam, how are we going to feed her the damn bunny?” My question is answered when he jumps on top of the vehicle and points to the sunroof.
That is a much safer way to deliver the meal. If we open the doors, she might try to eat one of us instead. I’m sure humans taste better. Cam presses a button on the remote, and the sunroof slides open slowly. Eve immediately shoves her arms through the opening, trying to reach for anything that might resemble food, and when her hands meet the rabbit, she pulls it into the car violently and begins attacking it. Blood splatters against the window in front of me, obstructing my view of the massacre. I am grateful for a bit of mystery.
Cam hops down and holds me close to him. His embrace is warm and welcoming. He kisses my forehead, and I close my eyes to take in a stolen moment of happiness. As I glance back at the car, I notice two viciously red eyes staring back at me. She has wiped the blood from the window and is simply staring at Cam and me like she wants to murder us both.
I tap Cam on the shoulder. “Umm, Cam…Cam…” When he finally hears the panic in my voice, he ends the embrace and turns to look. Eve’s body shakes with anger. “You don’t think…she’s jealous? Do you, Cam?” Perhaps now was the worst possible time for a hug. If she is hungry and now angry, I’m sure we are next.
Cam and I back away from the vehicle as Eve begins to use her head to smash through the glass. Small cracks form, along with a rather large gash on her head. We should most likely run, but instead, we watch Eve bash her head into the glass until it all completely shatters. She pours herself out of the window and onto the ground. Her eyes remain on us as she growls. The wound on her forehead is already healing—I suppose her strength is returning—but she still doesn’t seem to be returning to her more human state.
Cam approaches her. When I try to hold him back, he slaps my arms away. “Let me talk to her, Alex. Maybe she can still understand us.”
Eve and Cam are now face to face. Cam uses soothing words like, “Shhh,” and, “It’s okay,” to try and calm her down. Eve surprisingly responds to those, just as if she is an animal. I suppose that makes Cam the zombie whisperer. His next move shocks me; he slowly loses all the space between himself and Eve and embraces her. She doesn’t react. Instead, she begins to change. The veins in her face lighten until they are gone, and then Eve goes limp in Cam’s arms. She is unconscious again, still weak from whatever battle has been won here.
Cam places her back in the car carefully. It is time to drive off before the authorities find us. I don’t feel up to being questioned by them, especially since I have no idea how to explain any of this. Within moments, we are on the road back home. We decide my house will be safest for now. I suppose we could take Eve to her parents’ house, but I can’t be sure if she wants to be seen yet, so we simply decide to stash her at my house until further notice.
When we arrive, Cam sneaks Eve around back, and I enter the house through the front just in case I need to distract my mother and my sister from the slightly living girl who is being lugged into the house by Cam. Luckily it is night, and the house seems quiet. Once I deem the coast clear, I head upstairs as well. Cam is in the guest room and already has Eve laying on the bed, resting comfortably.
“Cam, what do we do when she wakes up? What if she’s still hungry?”
We both shrug. It’s not like we can lure a human here and allow it to be murdered, and our consciences will never forgive us. We simply hope Eve will wake up satiated.
***
The next morning, I wake up with a kink in my neck. I fell asleep in a chair. I meant to go to bed, but I suppose I watched Eve so long that I eventually was too tired to care where I slept. Cam sleeps on the floor, and when I glance up to the bed, I find the sheets thrown open and the bed empty. I bolt to a standing position and kick Cam in the ribs. “Sorry for the nasty wake-up call, Cam, but we seem to have a problem,” I say as I point to the empty bed.
When Cam sees that Eve is gone, he leaps to his feet and almost throws himself out the window. “I guess she jumped out, Al,” he says as he peeks out the open window. “Where could she have gone?” he asks me.
But unfortunately, I have no answer. She could be anywhere. I just hope that wherever she is, she is being very discreet about being back in town. Everyone here went to her funeral, for God’s sake! I can imagine a few of the seniors in town dropping dead from fright.
Cam and I decide to go downstairs and have some breakfast. My mother is already down in the kitchen with some toast hanging from her mouth as she runs around retrieving items she’ll need for work. Guess she is running late again. As for Janna, she has a quick breakfast and heads off to school; she has a few weeks left until school is out for summer. I am glad to have the house to ourselves. After the sort of evening Cam and I had, talking is the last thing we want to do.
We hope that Eve will return within the hour; otherwise, we will start driving around town in search of her. I slurped up the last spoonful of cereal just as the doorbell rings. Cam and I glance at each other. Neither one of us wants to answer. He points to me and shakes his head. “Coward!” I say with a groan as I march towards the door. When I throw the door open, there stands Eve. She looks like Eve, all except the fiery red eyes and her entire mouth being stained with blood. It looks like she’s just been in a spaghetti-eating contest.
She simply says, “Hi,” and then walks into the house. What else are you supposed to say after nearly two years of not seeing one another? I have been pretending that she is dead for so long that it is almost strange to see her standing in my living room.
When Eve spots Cam, she freezes. I suppose this is going to be one of those awkward moments. She never said goodbye to him, and now the drama that we left behind will have to be revisited. I believe they call it closure.
Cam stares at her without words. He simply looks wounded. I can tell he wants to embrace her, but he’s either afraid he’ll break, or his pride holds him back. Eve looks to the floor bashfully. “Cam, I’m sorry. I’ve been sorry for a really long time…”
She is about to pour her heart out, but Cam interrupts. “Sorry? I don’t want it. It doesn’t matter. You left. I got over it.” Cam throws his arms into the air in a fed-up sort of way and then heads out into the backyard to cool down.
Eve stands there shaking. “I didn’t,” she whispers softly after him and clutches at her chest, almost as if Cupid has shot her multiple times out of spite.
I walk over to Eve and guide her upstairs. She needs to clean the blood off of her. It will be one thing if people bump into someone who looks vaguely familiar, but it will be completely another thing if they bump into some familiar face wearing about a gallon of blood.
I hand Eve a dark towel that she can ruin, and she thanks me, clutching my hand as she takes the tow
el. “Truly, Alex, thank you. I know I don’t deserve any kindness. I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. I promise.”
I feel like slapping her right there. “Where do you think you’re going to go? It’s clear that you’re on the run! Stay, Eve. Don’t be stupid. We can hide you. We can keep you safe.”
She shakes her head repeatedly. “No, it’s too dangerous. I’ll explain later. I’m here until my mother passes, and then I need to leave. They’ll be looking for me, and they will kill anyone who stands in their way.” With that, she shuts the bathroom door and shuts me out of the conversation. I still have so much to ask her, but it will have to wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CAM
As I sit in the backyard gloomily, I think of the last time I was happy with Eve. We had a moment in time when we were more than friends and definitely more than strangers, but this is how I feel about her now. I don’t know this Eve. She isn’t my Eve. She is some foreign alien that I can’t go back to loving or considering a friend. Most likely, she will be gone again soon, and I won’t need to worry about fixing what is broken between us.
I try not to think of her, and she enters my mind anyway. It drives me crazy how my mind doesn’t have my best interests at heart.
The back door slides open, and a fresh-faced Eve exits to join me in the yard. There is no denying that she is beautiful with her long dark hair and perfect lips. I turn away from her so that her allure will have no effect on me.
“Cam, we need to talk,” she says as she places her hand on my shoulder.
I peel her hand off of me and kindly ask her to not touch me. She agrees and has a seat beside me.
“Look, Cam. I didn’t want to leave you or Alex. I wanted to stay, but if I had stayed, you would have had this kind of trouble on your doorstep every single day. There would not be a moment where you wouldn’t have to look over your shoulder. I just wanted you to live.”
Those words choke me. I know she was being selfless in a way, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
“What if I wanted trouble, huh? You never asked me!” I say, scowling.
“There was no time to ask you, Cam. I made a split decision. It seemed right at the time.”
I shrug; there is nothing left to say about it. The time has passed; the damage has been done. The more I revisit it, the more I wish I can just wipe my memory.
“Eve, forget it. It’s fine. We have bigger things to talk about…your mom…” I stop my mouth when I see the look on Eve’s face as I make mention of her mother. Her face contorts in a way that is familiar and fragile. The Eve before the Azrael Virus, the woman I fell in love with. I suppose the virus hasn’t hardened her so completely; that was my assumption, and it was wrong.
“She’s why you came back then?” I ask gently.
Eve nods her head, the contorted expression lingering on her face. I can tell she has much she wants to say, but words are like daggers at this point. My stupidity gets the best of me, and I grab her and embrace her. There is nothing romantic about it, but with some luck, perhaps a friendship is still on the table.
Alex clears her throat behind us. I didn’t even hear the door slide open a second time. She watches our embrace longingly. I pray that she is over me. I at least want to keep one friend by the end of this nightmare. I let go of Eve abruptly in order to end this awkward moment, but Eve gives me a look, and I know she is onto us. I don’t want to have to explain to her that Alex and I were a “thing” for a brief moment in time. I’m not sure if she’ll be happy about it, or perhaps she will try to encourage it, which I also don’t want.
We all sit outside, utilizing Alex’s beautiful patio set. Us sitting together again, the trio reunited, feels strange instead of exciting. I suppose it has been so long that we have somehow become strangers. I am slightly surprised to feel a bit distant from Alex. She has been around this whole time, but it is if I haven’t truly “seen” her before just now. I guess I have been too busy feeling sorry for myself.
Alex decides to break the silence first. “Eve, what’s going on? Can you quickly bring us up to speed?”
Eve nods. “Yes, of course. Well, I have been spending my days with CSIS as an agent, and it turns out that they have been collecting pieces of red rocks right under my nose the entire time. Now rocks, not a big deal…but we’re talking about The Eye of Ra. They want to put it back together, and from what Agent Williams told me, they want to use the rock to make everyone like me. In order for their plan to go forward, they need the entire rock and some of my blood. Then the rock would have the power to control others, and they could stop crimes. He said it was for the greater good, but I call BS. There is something more that I haven’t figured out yet. I’ll never forget him saying that the good will feast on the evil. He sounded like a madman. I suppose he would be the one deciding who was good or evil? He’s not exactly a good judge of character. He’s a zombie! Zombies don’t discriminate! They eat good, bad, any race or gender, young, old and so on and so on…what he’s saying is impossible. Everyone is at risk, and there would be no peace!”
The name Agent Williams leaves a sour taste in my mouth. That bastard tasered me and convinced Eve to leave. I blame him for some of my pain but Eve for most of it.
“Eve, he sure does sound like psychopath…and you’ve been working alongside him all this time and didn’t notice?” I say as I grit my teeth.
Eve scowls at me as if I have personally offended her. “No, I didn’t know! He wasn’t like that at first. He was kind…well, kinder…then he got bitten, and things changed really quickly. It’s like the Azrael Virus took over his entire mind.”
I want to yell at her for being stupid enough to believe that. Instead, I retort in a backhanded way, “But what if he was always that way? Maybe he was more desperate to achieve his goals now that he couldn’t go back to the way he was?”
Eve nods but says nothing. She seems a bit lost in her thoughts for a moment but then continues her story. Eve tells us that the rock that she left me is actually the final piece that they need to accomplish their mission. She didn’t want anyone getting a hold of it, so she shoved it into some zombie’s mouth last night and then shoved the entire zombie in the oven. She hopes that the rock was destroyed, but she hasn’t had the opportunity to check. Eve wants to head back to the factory tonight to check for the red stone, but Alex and I vote against it. We are certain CSIS will be waiting, and if they take her back to their labs, there will be no one left to stop them, and they will have the blood they need to complete the plan. Eve agrees, and we drop the topic for now.
Next on the agenda is her mother. Eve wants to see her, but she is unsure how to go about it. Her parents believe she is dead, and now she will appear to them? They will think they are hallucinating. I linger on that word. “Hallucinating, hallucinating,” I repeat as I stare at Eve. Her eyes go wide as she realizes where my thought process has led me.
“You were there!” I snap. “You came to me when I OD’d! Why didn’t you tell me I wasn’t hallucinating? Do you know what that did to me?” I rise from my chair and kick it over. The shock on Eve’s face and her silence says it all, but when I look over at Alex wearing the same exact expression, I feel my insides rip apart. “You knew?” I ask gently at first, but when she doesn’t reply, I ask more forcefully, “You knew Al? Yes or no? Tell me, dammit! No more lies!”
Alex begins sobbing and nods. “I didn’t want you to know she left again. You were sick, and I just wanted to keep you safe. I didn’t think you could handle it.”
My blood boils as I look at these two women who are supposed to care about me. I never thought in a million years they would lie to me, hide things from me, but worst of all, they make me feel small, like a child that can’t handle the reality of things. Yes, I turned to alcohol and drugs, and yes it was stupid, but that is over now. Why am I still being treated like a basket case?
&nbs
p; I decide that leaving their presence will be the best thing for me. I need to calm down, and I can’t do that looking at their faces. Right now, looking at them makes me sick. I will do anything for either of them; the least they can do is trust me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EVE
After a few hours of feeling like complete shit, I decide it’s time to go and see my parents. I can’t fix what happened between Cam and me right now, perhaps never, but I have something more pressing to deal with, and it isn’t going to be easy. Alex told me that the doctors gave her three months, but by the looks of her, it could be any day now. She told me that she looks thin and weak, not at all like the last time she battled cancer and won. There are no more smiles, no fight left in her, just acceptance and grace.
Alex agrees to drive to their house and weave a fake fairytale of how I am still alive but working as a secret agent now. A lie based on the truth isn’t that terrible a lie, is it? I at least hope they believe it; I don’t want them to know that I am in danger or dead. The “D” word doesn’t need to be mentioned tonight. I will be looking death in the face tonight, and tonight he is my mother.
On the drive there, I think of some of my favourite moments with her. Shopping at the mall for my prom dress, going on a mother-daughter trip to New York City, and perhaps my favourite memories out of them all are when she took me to swimming lessons. She’s the one who got me into swimming and the entire reason why I became swim captain. I was afraid of swimming, afraid of the water. I suppose I looked at it as a type of boogie man that would swallow me up in one gulp. My mother taught me that fear was all in my head and that if I could ignore it for ten seconds at a time, then eventually I would conquer it completely. I’ll never forget doing my first underwater test. I was seven, and we had to hold our breath for as long as we could in order to advance to the next swimming level. I didn’t want to do it. I failed the first time and jumped out of the pool and ran into the change rooms. My mother came to retrieve me. She wasn’t mad or disappointed. She simply smiled, saying, “You can do this, kiddo. You’re the bossiest little seven year old I know, and if you can’t show that water who’s the boss, then no one else can!” She at least got a giggle out of me, and when I went to try again, she asked me to dunk myself and count to ten; she promised that every fear would fade away after that. When the swimming teacher blew her whistle, I did just that, dunked myself underwater and counted one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and then something odd happened. I enjoyed the sensation of being underwater. I looked around at all the legs in the pool and smiled. When I emerged from the water, everyone was clapping. Apparently, I stayed underwater for two whole minutes, longer than any of the other students. I remember grinning from ear to ear and the look on my mother’s face of pure pride. Not pride of ownership but proud that I did this for myself.
