by A. Giacomi
I check the front of the house for cars. Luckily Mrs. Dashkov’s car is already gone. Alex would be alone inside. I quickly run up the steps to her house and grab the key hidden under the welcome mat, a very obvious place for it, but I wasn’t complaining. As I open the door, I hear screaming. I am face to face with Janna, Alex’s little sister.
“Shit!” I blurt out as I race to cover her mouth with my bloodstained hands.
“Janna, shhhhhh…I’m not going to hurt you…I know this is all a little weird, but I can explain…”
Janna struggles in my arms and then bites one of the fingers holding her so hard that I let out a little yelp myself, but it only causes me to hold her closer. “Dammit Janna, I said calm down!” I try to restrain her, using my full strength.
“Let…her…go!” a voice booms from the stairway in a very serious manner. It was Alex she looked angry and perplexed, she repeats, “Eve, let her go right now, she’s turning blue!”
I hadn’t realized my own strength and frantically release her when I notice the colour of her lips. “Oh my god, Janna, I’m so, so sorry. Are you alright?” I go to help her up as she tries to catch her breath, but she slaps my hand away.
“Don’t you touch me, you dead bitch!” she says in her vilely superior way as she crawls toward Alex to create some space between us. It was nice to know some things hadn’t changed a bit. Janna was still a top notch brat.
“Al, what the hell is going on?” Janna asks with a twinge of terror in her voice now.
Alex lets out a rather large sigh. The truth would be a long story, and we simply didn’t have the time. Alex walks over to the kitchen and pulls a butcher knife out of the drawer and walks toward me with it. She points to my hand and asks, “May I?”
I, of course, oblige her offering up my hand, it was much easier to show people what I was rather than spend hours explaining it. Janna looks on in horror as Alex creates a rather large gash in my palm. Sure it hurt, but not as much as it would have if I were still human, it was like a dull ache, like my body still remembered what pain felt like. Muscle memory? Is that what it’s called?
The blood pours all over the hardwood floors, and Janna begins to look less blue and greener. Her fearful grimace soon turns to wonder as the wound heals and I hold up my perfectly intact palm to her.
“No way!” She whispers, “No effin’ way! Eve’s got superpowers? But how? What else can she do? I mean she nearly snapped me in half a minute ago. So she’s really strong, and heals super fast? Oh, my god, does she have metal claws too?”
I laugh at the thought, and the comparison. I wish I was something as cool as Wolverine, but alas I was simply some dead girl with borrowed time who also happened to receive a few neat parting gifts. Alex has no issue clearing up the comparison quite quickly.
“Janna listen, there is nothing cool about this! Now I’m sure you’ll want to tell your friends, and everyone because you can’t keep your big fat mouth shut, but I’m begging you not to! It looks like Eve, it talks like Eve, but she’s also dangerous. Don’t be alone with her at any point, you can’t trust her...” That last part stings a little and Alex looks over at me apologetically. “Sorry Eve, you know it’s true. I have to protect her, she’s my little sister and with all the people after you. I can’t have her anywhere near you or even have her mentioning your name around town.”
I nod; of course, I understood the dangers of being around me. I didn’t want anyone getting hurt. I simply wanted to leave town, but it wasn’t possible at the moment. They would be watching the roads, waiting for me to leave town, waiting for Cam and Alex to try and transport me somewhere safe. Staying invisible seemed my best option, that way they might believe that I had already left town and somehow snuck under their noses.
The air between Janna, Alex and I is so tense that I find it necessary to cut it before a discussion ensued. The Dashkov’s sort of resembled those Village of the Damned kids. Blonde with piercing eyes and creepily adorable when they were mad. In order to avoid their searing gazes, I hop off the sofa in the living room and turn on the television.
“Well now that we’ve verified my freak-dom, anyone want to watch tv?” I smirk as they look at me skeptically, I suppose it was a lot for Janna to absorb, and I understood Alex’s concern since her little sister had never been good at keeping secrets.
As I flip through the channels I spot something unbearably familiar that makes me sit up straight. The local news was running footage of a strange attack at a drive-through restaurant. The tagline said, “Young woman viciously attacked and disemboweled.” As I watch the footage, I notice that it is hazy. Thank goodness for that! However, it was clear that the girl had been dragged through the window and feasted upon. So much for CSIS thinking I had skipped town already. Alex comes running over to the sofa and turns up the volume. The look on her face reminded me of my mother, it was the look she wore before she was about to scold me for something stupid I had done.
“Eve…did you do this?”
I shrink down into the sofa unable to look at Alex.
“Eve, did you?”
I nod without glancing up. I couldn’t bear the disapproval in her eyes. I had already let her down so much.
“Yes, Alex. I was hungry. I can’t stop it…you know that!”
Alex slams the remote onto the ground and it shatters into a million pieces. I had never seen Alex so angry. It unnerved me; she was supposed to be the calm and collected one of our trio, but that Alex was not here right now.
“Eve you think this is some kind of a joke? You have to be more cautious. I mean how many times do we have to say it? Do you want CSIS to take you back to that place? Do you want them to take us as well? I mean we’re here protecting your ass, the least you could do is be a little less reckless.”
At this point, I’m on the verge of getting defensive. I understood where Alex was coming from, but I also didn’t appreciate the fact that she seemed to think I didn’t care about what happened to them. “Listen, Alex, I love you, but if you don’t shut up I am going to slap you so hard you’ll be missing teeth. I want to keep you safe, but I can’t control what’s going on inside of me. I wish I could!”
Alex shakes her head. “You know what I’m scared of, Eve? I’m scared that you like it…That you justify it as something you can’t control, but really it’s just…you’re free…you know? You think the same rules don’t apply to you anymore. That scares me most of all, that this virus…it’s all that’s left. So if you’re still in there, then control it…”
With that, Alex storms off and Janna right after her. I felt extremely alone at the moment and couldn’t bear to think about my actions. It would only hurt more. Maybe Alex was right, maybe part of me liked being this monster. I suppose all monsters love power. I wouldn’t let that be me.
I decide to turn off the television and trade it in for a laptop. The news report had me curious about something I had never thought of before. Agent Williams and I had been on many missions in the year and a half I had worked with him, we had discovered many zombies all over the world, and they had caused some devastation along the way. Surely there would be news about the occurrences? People would ask questions, wouldn’t they? But it wasn’t until now that I had actually thought about it. I only knew what Vallincourt and Marcus had told me to be true. I never actually looked into it myself to see what news outlets around the world were saying about the incidents.
My memory recalls Chichén Itzá, Pompeii, and Las Vegas as I begin to frantically type the places into the search bar. Chichén Itzá comes up as a terrorist attack, just as Vallincourt had communicated to me, but it had not ended there. Article after article mentioned that the terrorist attacks were still occurring and becoming more and more widespread throughout Mexico. Travel to Mexico had not been advised for many months following our visit there. This was not a good sign. I pray that this was an isolated incident, but begin t
o panic when I start to read about Pompeii.
Last I heard from Vallincourt was that they were starting to rebuild the city of Pompeii after most of it had been destroyed by the volcano, but the articles I discovered stated otherwise. Pompeii had been evacuated; in fact, all of Naples and the surrounding area had been evacuated and deemed unsafe only just recently. There were articles that mentioned a quarantine that somehow the volcano had made some people sick and now they were behaving “oddly” none of the articles expanded on what exactly constituted as “odd”, but I had an idea. I feel sick to my stomach, but force myself to read on.
The last search and perhaps the worst experience was Las Vegas, Nevada. I shut my eyes as I remember the moment that Marcus was bitten, I didn’t know if he was bad before that, or if the bite made him that way or simply made him worse. All I knew was that the man I had fallen in love with was a lie. I felt dirty as I remember his embraces and kisses and how much I had enjoyed them. He had made me feel accepted, perhaps not as monstrous as my friends now perceived me. I shake off my self-pity and continue to read about the terrorist attack that left hundreds of thousands dead on the Vegas strip and many hotels and casinos destroyed. Vegas had not been the same since. It looked like a wasteland from the images online.
The cover up story seemed to stick news wide for the most part, except for this one particular site that specialized in conspiracy theories. The site was quirkily called the AppocalypseTracker.com. The man running the site seemed a bit like he dabbled in drugs here and there; this is probably what had kept him alive. A drug addict reporting news was not exactly credible, and therefore CSIS and the CIA probably found him to be a speck on their threat radar. He called himself Apocalypse Sid, he had a mustache, and very curly unruly hair, and wore crazy glasses to boot! His appearance may have lacked credibility, but it was fun to watch him rant in his online videos. He was very entertaining, and when I got to the theories about Vegas I also found him to be spot on. Sid started talking about a zombie virus that’s source had been traced to the Grand Canyon, he mentioned the water being contaminated, also true. He talked about some kooky filtration system he had created and then went back to talking about seeing a bunch of government agents on the Vegas strip shooting individuals in the head. Sort of like a clean-up crew. His final statement in the video stayed with me:
“Listen here kids. I may not have footage of what happened, but I was there. Now ask yourselves this question…why would they be shooting all these people in the head? It was like a damn execution! You know what else you have to shoot in the head to kill? Zombies…the dead that return. It’s the only way to stop them. I know some of you many not believe in zombies, but I’m telling you right here and now, they’re real, and we’re too stupid to notice that they’re already among us. Until next video, listen to Apocalypse Sid, stay alert, and stay hidden!”
Apocalypse Sid sure came off as a lunatic. Did he really think that people would go into hiding based on his recommendations alone? People needed evidence, proof before they would abandon their current lives. I had proof, but the files were locked up in the underground CSIS facility and there was no way I could go back there. I was the something extra they needed, and that terrified me.
I had thrown the last piece of red rock into a zombie’s mouth and then thrown that zombie into an oven. I knew the rock would not be destroyed, but if it could delay Vallincourt’s plan, then I was all for it. I knew that mixing the stone with fire could reanimate a corpse, but luckily there hadn’t been any recently dead bodies around to reanimate, just crispy double dead ones.
The Eye of Ra was still a mystery to me. I decide to search it online, but I don’t find much. I get that it’s symbolic of many things, but what about zombies? Nowhere in Egyptian history or mythology did it mention zombies! Whatever Vallincourt and Agent Williams needed it for, whatever power it possessed; it was completely unbeknownst to me.
CHAPTER THREE
CAM
I had spent the night at Mr. Brenner’s house after the funeral. I didn’t want him to be alone; I knew what being alone felt like. I had been alone most of my life. My mother died when I was young and my father was simply never there for me. It felt good that I could be someone’s safety net for a change. Mr. Brenner and I had always gotten along. He was the strong silent type, but for whatever reason, when I was around he would soften, joke around a bit, and really loosen up. Perhaps it was simply the fact that he had another male to talk to in a household of women.
We didn’t speak much the day of the funeral, but I stayed close to him. Part of me wished he had been my father. He was good to his wife, took care of her through her illness, and never complained, he simply made the best of things. He raised a wonderful daughter, who I was sadly still in love with. The more time I spent around Mr. Brenner the more I imagined some life that might have existed in another time and space. An alternate future where I married Eve and Mrs. Brenner never got sick, and we all lived happily ever after. That image of a family, of children, of a life, stuck out in my mind, and I knew that I would not be imagining those things if I wasn’t still in love with her.
Things had definitely panned out differently, and I was powerless to stop it. Life was this train that charged on, it would not slow for anything, and those in its way would surely be obliterated. There were times when I wondered if being obliterated was really all that bad? Sometimes life seemed too much to bear, especially when those you loved kept being taken from you.
I struggled a lot with what this life was really all about. I suppose you could call it bitterness, but it had grown inside me like a weed and I had no idea how to extract it. Perhaps Mr. Brenner and I had that in common, he had never been an overly smiley kind of guy, but he was clearly a changed man as I watched him sit silently in his living room. How could he remain the same after all he’d lost? I could see death in his eyes, not that he himself was dying, no, it was his hope that perished. From what I’ve learned, when hope dies you might as well be dead. It’s all human beings have, hope for a better tomorrow, without it, we die a little each day.
Mr. Brenner turns to look at me and asks if I would like a coffee.
I shake my head and smirk. “No Sir…I’m afraid I need a real drink. How about you?”
He smiles in earnest, even though it is brief. “Yes, Cameron I believe you’re on to something. Now is as good a time as any for a real drink.”
I nod and head into the kitchen. I knew exactly where the liquor cabinet was. Back in our high school days, Eve and I would sneak into it and sample different liqueurs, we mostly spit them out since they tasted so bad. I chuckle as I remember Eve sipping Whiskey for the first time, she nearly vomited. I remember holding her brown locks above her head in case she did; I recall her saying “No one likes smelly hair.”
It’s amazing how one can time travel within their own mind. I had gotten lost along the way to retrieve drinks for Mr. Brenner and me. I was lost in beautiful memories that had expired.
I quickly pour two glasses of whiskey and head back into the living room, handing one of the glasses to Mr. Brenner before I sit down. I am about to take a sip before I notice Mr. Brenner awaiting my attention. He holds up his glass and clears his throat. “A toast if I may…”
I nod. “Of course Mr. Brenner, toast away!”
His hand shakes as he holds up his glass. “To my Jane. I wish I could have kept you a little longer, but if you had to be taken so soon may you at least be at peace. Watch over us dear, we will need you now more than ever.”
Mr. Brenner begins to weep. I head over to him and place my hand on his shoulder. “Tom, that was beautiful. She will always be with you. Someday we’ll all see her again.”
He nods his head. “I hope so Cam, but sometimes I worry. Maybe I won’t?” Mr. Brenner takes a rather large sip of his drink and then asks “Do you miss her?”
I nod thinking he meant Jane, but he quickly corrects
my confusion.
“No Cam, do you miss Eve?”
I clutch at my drink, I wasn’t drunk enough for such honesty just yet. “Everyday Mr. Brenner, sometimes I wish I could forget her, but then I would be forgetting part of the only family I’ve ever known. So painful as it may be, yes, I miss more with each passing minute.”
I see Mr. Brenner smile as I complete my answer. He walks over to me and hugs me. “You know I’ve always considered you a son, Cam. You are family, don’t you forget it, and this is your home if you want it to be, no pressure, but you’re always welcome.”
We continue to drink until singing felt like a good idea. We sing everything from the Beatles to the Beach Boys to the Bee Gees. In the middle of Hey, Jude, Tom begins to sob again. This time, he is the picture of true torment, the loss, and the ache had caught up to him, all there was left to do now was sleep and hope tomorrow would be more tolerable.
I help him upstairs to his room and place him in his bed. He glances over at me apologizing again and again for being a bother, and I tell him that he’s never a bother. Before I can leave him to rest, he grabs my arm and pulls me close. “Cameron I miss her so much I can’t take it. I knew that Jane was going to die, but Eve… She wasn’t supposed to leave me. She was supposed to be here with us. Doesn’t it just eat you up inside?”
If only I could tell him the truth.
“Yes, Tom…it does…what if you could see her again?”
Tom smiles. “It would be a dream come true, Cam. I see her every night when I close my eyes, but all I really want to do is hold her. I just want her back, Cam, I want her back.”
Tom repeats himself over and over again until he lulls himself to sleep. I am glad to see him resting. No one would blame him if he slept a whole week. Greif could exhaust you to that point.
