Tainted

by A. E. Rought

  My heart clenches on a beat when Jason dashes across the narrow, empty side parking lot to my car. Safe, he drops down into its shadow and then gives me a thumbs-up.

  “Em,” I say, “I have to let you go for a second. We need to run to my car.”

  We can’t be caught here, with Emma covered in Trent’s blood. They’ll arrest her. They’ll give her blood tests because she’s so confused and wobbly. Then every sin I committed to save her will be exposed.

  “Alex,” she says, voice pitchy and sour at the same time. “I don’t feel right.”

  She spins from my grasp and heaves. Partially dissolved popcorn in a stew of stomach bile and lemon-lime soda splashes to the ground at our feet – none of it dark like the vomit next to the fallen inside. Em wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve, then I hook an arm around her waist and we risk capture running to my car.

  “Keys,” Jason whispers when we hide by the tire well. “Get the car open.” Thankfully, he leans over and pulls Emma’s sweatshirt off, and with it most of Trent’s blood.

  The keys are jammed deep in my front pocket, and I have to straighten up to get them out. A police car slides to a stop in front of the VFW hall, headlights beam my way. Swearing, I duck down before the officer sees me. I press the door lock button, and breathe a little sigh when all the doors unlock.

  “We’ve got to be fast,” I tell them. “When the doors open, the dome light comes on.”

  Jason takes Emma’s hand, guides her in front of him. “Go around,” he says to me. “Tap the car then count to three, and we’ll all jump in.”

  Following his instructions, I creep around the grill, thankful the headlights aren’t on to cast my shadow on the building wall. Once in position, I tap the car and count to three. A flurry of motion, like a Chinese fire drill in reverse, rocks the car as Jason and I wrench open the doors. I jump in, he shoves Emma in the back seat and then follows. I slam the button to turn off the dome light. Jason rips off his coat, flings it over Emma, and then we sit for a few minutes, barely breathing.

  When the majority of first responders are in the VFW building, I pop the gear into neutral and let the car roll back on the natural slope of the parking lot. Turning the wheel, I aim it at the drive circling behind the factory and leading to our escape.

  “Go,” Jason begs.

  I start the engine and drive behind the factory, rolling past the loading docks and the hulking stacks of pallets. On the far side, we have a clear shot to Walsh Road and then we can disappear in town. Still, I drive slowly, not wanting to catch anyone’s attention.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jason cusses as we line up with the pandemonium surrounding the front of the VFW and what’s left of the Reindeer Games.

  “Yeah.” I can’t think of another thing to say. “Tiff said they were all poisoned.”

  “Who would do that?” Jason mutters.

  “He said he was sorry,” Emma mutters from under Jason’s coat.

  “Sorry for what?” I ask.

  “He couldn’t say,” she responds. “He said he was sorry until he died.” In the rearview mirror, I see Emma lift her bloodstained hands into the light cast by a corner streetlight. Tears run down her face. “I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

  My poor Emma. What have I exposed you to? What did I make you become?

  A numb, queasy kind of shock takes up residence in my chest. I can’t take her back to my grandparents’ when Bree’s parents are waiting for her.

  I pull in at the gas station on Water Street. “We’ve got to clean her up,” I tell Jason.

  “I’ll pump some gas so it doesn’t look suspicious.”

  What would I do without him?

  Emma slides out, then nearly collapses to the ground, like her body doesn’t want to work for her anymore. I stoop, ease an arm around her ribs and stand her up. Em wobbles, one hand grabbing my shoulder for stability. She slides into Jason’s coat with my help, my heart fracturing with every moment, every movement. No spark, no fire, hardly anything of her behind the confusion.

  “Keep your head down,” I tell her.

  She follows my command, blond hair dropping like a curtain before her face.

  Bright lights turn the gas station interior into a magnifying glass, blowing up every bloodstain on Emma. It’s not until I turn us into the aisle headed toward the bathroom I notice the blood in the creases of my knuckles. God, Trent, I think, what drove you to goad me, to die on her?

  We duck into the women’s bathroom when the attendant isn’t looking, and I lead Emma straight to the sink. She leans against me while I wash our hands. Bloody ghosts swirl into the running water, Trent’s life swills down the drain. Then I plug the drain.

  “Bend closer,” I coach, and Em wordlessly complies.

  I use handfuls of the foam soap to scrub the blood from her hair, then run sink after sink of water to rinse it.

  Of course there are no paper towels.

  She stands limp, pale and somehow empty, when I pull off my Henley shirt and dry her off as best I can. The hallway’s vacant when I peek out so I creep into the storage room and, sleeve over my hand, steal a bottle of bleach. Em stands where I left her, and watches me dump bleach in the sink to destroy any blood evidence.

  The guy behind the counter eyes us, a sleazy grin on his face. He thinks we were screwing around in the bathroom, so I let him. He doesn’t need to know anything more.

  No one speaks until we get to the Ransoms’ house. Bree stands in the open side door waiting. Jason helps me coax Emma from the backseat. Jason runs ahead to fill Bree in on events and beg her to keep it quiet. The secrets are piling up, deeper than the snow, blacker than the cracks in the night sky.

  Emma stands watching our friends talk, her face blank of expression.

  “I love you, Em,” I tell her at the door.

  Just inside the house she turns back to me and says, “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  The door swings shut on me and Jason, his unwavering loyalty and my sickening guilt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Morning steals into my room. I roll to my side and regret it – my jaw hurts where Trent punched me. Instinct says to be angry, he’d been my personal pain in the butt for years. He should still be living, pestering me.

  He’s not.

  My memory dredges up the image I don’t want to see, Trent lying dead at my girlfriend’s feet, bloody because of me. And he wasn’t the only victim: Sam Ashton, girls I didn’t know, security guards, possibly more. Bodies twisting, faces grimacing in pain, puddles of dark vomit. How did I ever fall asleep after witnessing the hell the Reindeer Games became? Sometime in the night’s waning hours my frayed nerves finally gave way to exhaustion after Bree texted that Emma was safe in bed.

  Em’s white cat Renfield gives me a surly noise when I dislodge him from my cellphone. I’m not sure if he’s waiting for Emma’s ringtone, or trying to muffle it.

  No new messages according to my display screen. My screensaver picture of a Whitetail buck fades into the messaging program. I tap on Em’s thread, and write: The truth is, at night, the memories are his – you are my dream. I’m not sure what’s happening, but you are not alone.

  “Alex?” Gran’s voice carries up the stairs. “Breakfast is ready.”

  Sitting to a Sunday pancake breakfast with my grandparents seems so unreal. Normal life, after all of this hardly seems possible.

  “I’m not very hungry,” I call down the stairs. My stomach is coiled into a knot, and I may not be capable of untying it.

  “Then don’t eat,” Grandpa responds. His steely timbre carries from one floor to the other. He’s been my grandfather long enough for me to know my butt’s about to go through the ringer.

  “Coming down,” I answer.

  A vibration from my cellphone announces a text. Apprehension filters through me. The last thing to hit this phone was the picture of Emma by the Reindeer Games marquee. Before that, we received the video of her at Ascension’s gates. The first morning,
when Em returned to me, Bree sent me the one of Em on my father’s property, killing the animals. The list of suspects shrank to Paul and Hailey.

  Holding my breath, I lift the phone and look at the display screen. A text from Emma.

  I never want to be alone, either. I’m scared I’m losing myself and no one will be able to find me.

  I couldn’t save her from death, either. Can I save her from losing her mind?

  The pent breath escapes in a rush.

  I will find you, I text in reply, no matter what. I’ll talk to Paul today. There must be something we’ve missed. We will beat this.

  My closet is cold, the wood heat never reaches all the nooks and crannies like regular furnace heat does. I pull on a pair of jeans, then layer a couple of long-sleeve T-shirts and grab the leather jacket Emma talked me into buying right after Thanksgiving.

  The cat is so close on my heels I’m half afraid I’ll bump Renfield in the nose all the way down the stairs. He follows tight to me into the kitchen, then veers off toward the food bowl.

  “Sit,” Grandpa commands. Identical military tattoos on his forearms peek from his rolled-up sleeves.

  “Yessir.” I sink to the chair directly across from him, squarely in the path of his narrowed glance. Gran passes the pancakes and I put them off to the side. Both grandparents sigh. My grandmother won’t take “no thank you” for an answer when it comes to scrambled eggs or sausage, though. “You need your protein, Alex,” she tells me.

  I pick at the food, and wither beneath Grandpa’s unflinching focus.

  “Do you know anything about what’s been on the news?” he asks.

  “I don’t know what’s been on the news,” I hedge. The Reindeer Games, has to be. It’s bigger news than the blizzard coming our way.

  As if to demonstrate how correct I am, Grandpa presses the power button on the remote by his morning paper. The TV comes to life, the news channel running a segment filmed outside the VFW hall. In the video clip, it’s still night and filmed from across the street, a full view of the madness we narrowly escaped. An ambulance sits to the edge of the walkway, doors open, a paramedic leads Tiffany Schultz toward the vehicle. Tiffany’s clutching my jacket around her like she’s trying to ward off the rest of the world.

  “Well?” Grandpa prods.

  “I don’t know what happened.” True enough. I stood in the middle of that room, and my brain isn’t able to process what I saw even now. Last night is bits and pieces of horror film cuttings running through a projector, a flash of this death, a glimpse of someone suffering.

  “Were you there?” he asks, gaze as unwavering as his voice.

  “Not by choice.” Maybe my pleading will play to my benefit. “We went to the movies like I said we would. Emma got a text, said she needed to use the bathroom and disappeared. I got a picture of her there. She’s not been right since I woke her. I had to go.” I drop my focus to my plate and murder eggs with my fork. “I got into a fight, and–”

  “I see your shiner,” he interrupts.

  “They kicked me out. Jason and I went back and that had happened,” I stab my fork in the direction of the dead TV screen. “We found Emma, got her out and came home.”

  “And you have no idea what transpired when you weren’t there?”

  “Tiffany said the victims were poisoned.”

  “Do you know where it came from?” Gran asks, and rests her hand on my arm.

  “No idea.”

  My best friend is dying. Hailey is trying to pressure me into signing over half of Ascension. Emma’s afraid she’s losing her mind and I’m afraid it’s my fault. In a moment of sick realization, the thought, I wish my dad was here, goes through my head. He might’ve been a bad man, but he was brilliant. He could’ve figured this out. At least Emma’s problem.

  “Does anyone else know you were there?” Grandpa continues to needle me.

  “Two people,” I say, “both old friends from Sadony Academy.”

  “We haven’t had a call, yet,” Gran says, thoughtful and soft. Grandpa nods. “The police have had hours to interview witnesses. No one’s called or stopped, yet.”

  “Maybe he’s going to be safe.” It sounds equal parts question and hopeful statement coming from Gran. “His mother escaped a lot…”

  “His mother didn’t escape everything.” Grandpa’s eyes go hard and his expression closes off. Candles could catch flame with the fire in his eyes when he turns to me again. “Something in that lab is evil, boy. Or somebody. I know you’re dependent on it, but you can’t let what’s rotten there fester and destroy everything else.”

  “Paul and I are looking into everything.”

  “Paul Stanton?” Grandpa leans back, snagging a slice of bacon his way. “Your father’s right hand man. Are you sure you’re trusting the right person?”

  My grandfather hasn’t seen the picture in Paul’s office. He hasn’t seen the way Paul looks at my mother in it. He felt for my mom the way I feel about Em. How can a person who knows love like that be evil?

  But my grandfather’s staunch distrust of pretty much everyone else has put roots in me. I question Paul’s honesty, his involvement in Emma’s problems. Why else would that video show up on his computer? Or the one he swears he deleted show up on our phones?

  I force my mind off that track, choosing not to swill farther into doubt, and work at the food Gran put on my plate.

  Sullen quiet sits like an unwanted guest at the table. Gran sips her tea, pushes around her food. Grandpa seems determined to make up for the lack of appetites at the table this morning. He piles his plate a second time, fork stuck in the syrup-laden mess when he lifts his cool blue glance at me. “You’re not going to achieve anything sitting there mashing eggs that are already scrambled.”

  “No sir.” I scoop up my plate. Renfield leaps into my vacated seat after I stand. He watches while I clean my plate. At least the cat’s faith in me doesn’t seem shaken. Then again, I doubt he had much to start with.

  What will restore Grandpa’s faith in me? Saving Emma? Rooting out the poison sickening Ascension Labs?

  Despite my grandfather’s doubt, I still have some faith in Paul.

  I will confront him; then together, we can solve the riddles.

  Rock salt crunches under the Acura’s tires when I turn onto Ascension’s drive. This weekend’s bitter temperatures have rendered the salt ineffective. Michigan winters have mad skills – so damn cold, the salt won’t melt anything. At least the grit provides some traction.

  Just past the gates, I’m tempted to stand on the brakes and throw the car in reverse. Hailey’s flashy Audi A4 sits parked a few spaces from the doors. What is she doing here now? It’s bad enough we share the same planet, why do we have to share the same lab? My grip on the steering wheel tightens, my jaw clenches and revives the ache nestled there. Maybe I step on the brakes too hard when I park, but I’m suddenly pissed.

  I lift my chin, like I’ve seen Emma do when her stubborn side comes out. Hailey is not going to chase me out. Flawed, poisoned as my Grandpa says, Ascension will be mine someday, not hers.

  The building doors open, and Hailey strolls out, dark hair whipping like a flag in the wind. Her pause is so brief I might be imagining it. Something flashes across her face, too quick to read. Her gaze finds mine when I step out of the car. Then she straightens her fur collar and a predatory grin cuts into her cheeks. If she was a cat, I would be looking for feathers around her mouth. Careful steps carry Hailey across the parking lot, she stops at her car long enough to give me a perfect parade float wave.

  Bitch.

  I tuck tighter into my new leather jacket, taking some comfort in its stiffness. Black leather, motorcycle style, plenty of zippers and snaps – with everything falling apart, a little toughness is a good thing.

  My ex-girlfriend sits behind the wheel of her prissy car, texting, when I walk past. I’m too irritated with her to feel any trepidation walking up to the building.

  “I’ll buzz you in,�
� Paul says through the intercom when I reach the doors.

  I’m not the least surprised when my cellphone goes off. I snatch it out of my pocket when I walk into the building. The caller ID reads: Hailey Westmore.

  “What?” I snap when I answer the call. The doors whisk closed.

  “Nice jacket,” she purrs. “Is that new?”

  “What do you care?” I turn and glare at her shadow in the Audi.

  “Oh, now don’t get pissy with me, Alex. You won’t like me when I’m angry…”

  “Ha!” I snort and pour as much condescension in my voice as possible. “Don’t quote Bruce Banner. He turns into the Hulk. You’re just a bitch.”

  “That’s so nerd-boy of you,” Hailey says, voice iced over and brittle. She guns her Audi, the car lurching forward, tires hurling rock salt at the doors. “Slumming has really brought you down a few levels.”

  “I would say I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I nearly growl, “but I don’t want to lie.”

  “You still care about me,” she says. “You’ll come back.”

  “You would have to kill me first.”

  “There are better ways to coerce you.” That damn I-know-more-than-you tone in her voice makes me crazy. “For instance, I could tell the press what I know about your activities on Christmas Eve.”

  Oh God.

  The bottom drops out of my gut. Cold shock floods me. Christmas Eve? How can she possibly know? Paul said he deleted all the files. If I acknowledge what I did to Emma, Hailey will use it against us. I might as well hand her Emma’s head and the keys to Ascension.

  I have to act like she’s wrong, like she’s crazy.

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “Tell yourself that,” she says, her voice full of false sweetness, “if it makes you feel better.”

  “Hailey?”

  “Yes, Alex?”

  “Go jump off a cliff.”

  Admittedly not the most mature way to end a phone call, but I can’t tolerate another minute of her. I stuff my phone away, choking down my heart.