Escaping Grace: A Turning Grace Novel

by Davis, J. Q.

  I was a Zombrid: half human, half zombie. Dr. Roberson tests all of us at least once every few weeks, which wasn’t a bad thing considering that apparently I could get sicker than I already was. I would actually like Dr. Roberson to give me a check up from time to time to see if I was okay.

  If I did get sick, then he would send me off to the East Cocos facility. What did they do there? I imagined a big, riveted steel door with the word QUARANTINE engraved into it. What exactly was wrong with them? How was their condition worse than the rest of us? Was their “Need” too much to control?

  What about the triggers? I mean, I already knew what I was capable of. Was Tristen really safe around me?

  Finding out a little more about everyone else was kind of cool. It actually felt nice having so much in common with these guys, especially when it was dying and having the incredible Need to eat human flesh.

  That thought created a hunger bubble in my belly. I winced.

  “You okay?” Tristen asked. I guess he felt me tighten my grip in his hand.

  “Yeah. I’m just a little hungry.”

  We walked to the courtyard of the compound. Number One was standing alone, as usual. Only this time, he was standing near the Newport entrance. He must know the feeding schedule.

  “Mr. Miles, you will have to come with me,” he demanded.

  “What? Why can’t he come have lunch with us?”

  “Unfortunately, there is nothing in the mess hall for him to eat.”

  He was lying.

  “Oh, it’s okay. I can just sit with her while she eats,” Tristen responded.

  “No, Tristen. I think he’s lying.” I analyzed Number One’s face. “There has to be food for you. Not everyone here is a Zombrid.”

  He seemed to have an uncomfortable expression. “I’m sorry, Mr. Miles, but non-subjects are not allowed in the mess hall.”

  “Well, you came in there with me. And you aren’t a Zombrid, are you? Don’t you eat normal food?” It didn’t make sense to me.

  “No. I am not a Zombrid. But it’s the rules, Grace. I’m sorry.”

  What the hell?

  Tristen turned to me. “Grace, it’s okay. I’ll be waiting for you in your room.”

  “But—”

  He brushed my cheek with the back of his hand. “Go eat.”

  He said it in his soft, sexy voice and gave me a smoldering look. I gave in almost immediately. “Okay.”

  He kissed my forehead before we parted ways, and I watched him walk away to the Laguna hut. As soon as he entered, I turned to Number One and gave him the stink eye.

  “What gives?”

  “It’s just the rules, Grace.”

  “Why? I mean, I’m not going to eat him. Why would I? I’d have food in front of me.”

  “Are you sure about that?” he asked.

  I stared at him a moment, trying to come up with some answer. But the sad truth was that I didn’t have one. I didn’t know if I would eat Tristen.

  Instead, I huffed and stomped my way into the mess hall.

  Great. Now I had this to worry about. Not that I didn’t think about it before. Obviously, the possibly of eating Tristen was something I considered before I even moved here.

  But I guess I didn’t really think it was a risk until Number One just brought it up. He knew more about this whole Zombrid thing than I did.

  Whatever. How much could he possibly know? He wasn’t a Zombrid. He wasn’t me. And he didn’t have feelings like I did for Tristen.

  I decided to leave the chomping on Tristen thoughts behind me and focus on the food I could eat.

  The mess hall wasn’t the quiet, empty place I walked into before. Music was playing on the jukebox in the corner of the large room. The television behind the bar had the news on the screen. Someone was behind it, wiping down the counter. Everyone from the beach, with the addition of Estelle, was already sitting down and eating. Estelle was sitting with Charlie and Maddi. Destiny and Ian were at a table next to their booth.

  I walked over to the buffet table and grabbed a plate. A row of platters filled with slabs of meat was placed in the middle. It looked like the same pink and raw meat I had eaten that morning.

  I felt a twinge of homesickness when I realized that my mother’s cooking was no longer available to me. I missed the array of colors and flavors that came from the massive feast she served me every day. Not to mention, it was a little more appealing than just sticking a hunk of barely warm carcass in my mouth.

  I filled my plate with as much as I could, realizing just then that once I actually saw the food, my hunger spasms increased.

  As I walked over to the section where everyone was seated, I noticed that no one was speaking. They were hovered over their plates, shoveling the meat into their mouths in a constant motion. I walked slowly to a chair at the table Ian and Destiny were at and examined them closely. There was only the sound of their chewing, maybe a grunt here and there. Destiny’s hair fell to the sides of her face while she hunched over her plate of food. I couldn’t see her facial expression. Ian sat more upright and his eyes were closed as he chewed frantically on a large piece of meat. Red juice dribbled down the sides of his mouth and dripped onto his plate.

  Good Lord! Was that what I looked like when I ate?

  I flinched and stopped myself from lunging forward when I felt another hunger pain shoot across my stomach. I sat down and before I knew it, my eyes were closed and I was only thinking about what was going into my mouth.

  Although I missed the appearance of my mother’s cooking, the taste of this boar was a million times better.

  Once I came to and out of my eating coma, I opened my eyes to no one at the table. I glanced over at the empty booth next to me. I was sitting alone.

  I walked outside to find Number One standing near the entrance. “Where’s Tristen?” I asked.

  “He’s in the Malibu hut.”

  I hadn’t been inside there yet. I walked the few steps it took to the Malibu hut, hearing the faint noise of what sounded like an air hockey table and music. I walked into a large room the same size as the Newport hut.

  I glanced around. It had the same Hawaiian décor as Newport too. In one corner, there were two couches surrounding a large television. Maddi and Charlie sat on one, watching what looked like a Disney movie. In the other corner was a little bar and wooden stools. Glass bottles filled with a red liquid were aligned neatly on top. In another corner were two doors with a sign on each: CHICKS and DUDES.

  Three arcade-style machines lined up against the wall across from the bathrooms. In the center of the room, there was a pool table and an air hockey table, which was where Tristen was playing with Ian.

  He looked up at me. “Hey, you.”

  “Hi.”

  “Wanna come play? You can have loser, which will be me because I haven’t been able to win one game against this guy.”

  “Uh…no, I’ll just watch,” I said, moving over to the wall.

  I glanced over at Charlie. She and Maddi were snuggled up on the couch watching…huh, it was the Disney movie Brave. I really liked that movie.

  The sound of a door opening prompted me to turn the other direction. Destiny came out of the bathroom, drying her hands with a paper towel as she walked over to me.

  “How was your lunch?” she asked.

  “It was okay,” I answered. I was embarrassed to express how amazing it was.

  “Awe, you know it was great,” she laughed. “You don’t want to admit it yet. It’s all good though. I know when I first came here I was uncomfortable about the food too.”

  “Did you come here right after you…died?”

  “Yeah, I did. But that’s because I had nowhere else to go. I was pretty much living on the streets. Dr. Roberson kind of saved me, in more ways than one,” she said, sentiment in her tone.

  We turned to watch the game. Tristen was concentrating hard on preventing the little plastic puck from entering his goal, which seemed to be going at an unusually
rapid speed when hit by Ian. I watched Ian for a moment, who was now wearing a tank top and shorts. He seemed to be barely moving his arm when he hit the puck, but it was sliding across the table at a high speed. I felt sorry for Tristen when I realized there was no chance in hell he was going to beat him.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “Um…I’d say about four years.” Her eyes moved over to Maddi and Charlie. “Maddi has been here about a year. Charlie has been here three years. And Ian, well I’m not too sure about him. He was here before I got here.”

  “What about Estelle?”

  “Do you know how old she is?” she asked, pie-eyed.

  “Yeah. She’s one hundred and fourteen.”

  “I know! Isn’t that crazy? God, it’s so cool knowing that we will never die.”

  A chill ran down my back. “You’re okay with that?”

  “Of course I am! Who doesn’t want to be immortal? Anyway, Dr. Roberson started Everlasting Paradise around 2002, when she was injected. She says she was like me and came right after, so I’d say she has been here about—”

  “Ten years,” I whispered. Although it was simple math, it felt good to use one of my most skilled abilities: numbers.

  Destiny smiled at me. “You love math, don’t you?”

  “Um, yeah. Why?”

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “We all do,” she stated. She reached inside her pocket and pulled out a cigarette and a lighter. “It’s part of our Zombrid brains. For some reason, the serum makes us smarter. Anyway, I’m going to have a smoke. I’ll be back.”

  I nodded and turned toward the game, pretending to watch it. In the meantime, my head was swirling with questions.

  I wouldn’t say that I was smarter than anyone else. I mean, math did come easier to me than most people I knew, but it could to a non-Zombrid too. And if Dr. Roberson started this place two years after I…turned, then why didn’t I come here sooner? Was it because Mom didn’t want me to come? Also, Destiny died four years ago. I didn’t know her exact age, but she couldn’t be over twenty. She must have overdosed at a really young age.

  “Grace?”

  My vision focused in on Tristen’s face. “Yeah?”

  “You okay?”

  How long was he standing there for? “Yes, I’m fine. Hey, you want to go someplace…away from everyone? Maybe back to my room?”

  “Sure.”

  I took his hand and led him to my room in the Laguna hut. Once inside, I glanced over at my computer, feeling an urge to email my mother to ask her why she didn’t send me here long ago. Instead, Tristen grabbed me by my waist and pulled me to the bed.

  I allowed myself to fall back into it, giggling on the way down. Yeah, yeah…I was being a girl. But who cared? The one and only person that I wanted to be around was here, and I was really happy about that.

  He laid partially on top of me and brushed the back of his hand across my cheek. “Are you feeling better since you ate?”

  “You worried I’m going to take a bite out of you?”

  “Hmm…why does that thought sound more naughty than scary?” he asked, smiling deviously at me.

  “You really aren’t scared that I’ll try to eat you in the middle of the night?” Number One’s question of whether or not I was sure I wouldn’t eat him started burning a hole in my mind.

  “I really don’t think you would.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you like me too much,” he stated, reminding me of that matter-of-fact expression Phoebe used to give me.

  I looked away, trying my best not to allow what I did to her ruin the moment.

  “Hey, you okay?” he whispered.

  “Yes. I’m fine.” I gently pushed him away and stood up from the bed. “This is just still all so surreal. I mean, I’m a Zombrid? How did this happen?”

  “So you’re a Zombrid. It just means you’re different. It’s not necessarily a terrible thing, Grace.”

  I shot him a look of disbelief. “How is it not? I ate my best friend! And I liked her…a lot!”

  Tristen stood up from the bed and slowly walked toward me. “Yeah, you did. But now you’re here in this amazing place and getting the food and treatment that you need.” He tucked his finger under my chin and gently forced me to look up at him. “The worst has happened. You don’t think it bothers me? What happened the night before you left? I killed someone, Grace.”

  The look in his eyes was almost heartbreaking. This whole time my thoughts had been on a constant loop, reliving what I had done to Phoebe and Sonny. But I forgot that Tristen was there too. And I had forgotten what he did to save me. Eric was getting ready to choke me to death before Tristen killed him by smashing his head in with a bat. The guilt must have been eating him up.

  As if to have read my mind, Tristen continued. “I don’t regret what I did. I protected you. But that was before I knew that even if he did kill you, you wouldn’t actually be dead. So I can’t let myself dwell on it. I just knew at that moment, I was saving your life.”

  “Would I have actually died, though? I mean, can I die again?”

  Tristen squinted his eyes as if to be mentally analyzing that question. “I don’t know. I don’t know what would end your life, if it could end at all.”

  “But I don’t want to live forever, Tristen.”

  There was a knock at the door. I stepped away from Tristen to open it.

  Maddi stood in the hallway. “Hi, Grace. Um…I was just wondering if you wanted to come see my seashell collection.”

  I turned to look at Tristen, who gave me an unspoken go ahead with a nod and a smile.

  “Okay. Sure.”

  Maddi’s face instantly lit up. She took my hand immediately, and we practically ran down the hallway to her suite.

  I could smell the lavender right as she swung the door open. “Wow, Maddi! It smells really good in here.”

  “Thank you,” she said as she walked over to a dresser along the wall. “It’s my mom’s favorite flower.”

  I glanced around her room, realizing that I was completely different when I was her age. There was pink and purple everywhere. Her bed was covered in dolls and stuffed animals, all enclosed in a canopy with white, translucent drapes. Her computer chair was pink and her desk was a bit shorter than mine. It seemed to fit her height just right. The walls were purple, with pictures and cutouts of butterflies and flowers. It was actually quite cute. But when I was younger, I had comic books and movie posters all over my room. I wouldn’t say that I was a tomboy per se, but I definitely wasn’t as girly as Maddi.

  She stood at her dresser, clearly proud for me to finally see her seashell collection that covered every inch of it.

  And it really was a collection. There were probably about a hundred shells, all different sizes and all different colors.

  “Are these all from the beach here?” I asked, leaning in to get a better view of them.

  “Yeah. I love seashells,” she stated innocently.

  “How come you love them so much?”

  She picked up a large, white shell with what looked like spikes coming out the sides. She held it up to her ear and grinned.

  I smiled back, patiently waiting for what she was going to say.

  She pulled it away and held it up to me. “Listen.”

  I brought it to my ear. There was a distant sound of hollowness.

  “Do you hear it?”

  I pressed it harder against my ear, trying desperately to hear something because clearly she wanted me to. When I didn’t hear anything in particular, I smiled so I wouldn’t hurt her feelings.

  She smiled back. “It’s my mom. She’s saying my name.”

  I pulled the seashell away from my ear and looked at it. Maddi reached over to grab it with her tiny hand and gently placed it back on her dresser.

  “Do you miss home?”

  Her smile faded. “Yeah, I do. But it’s okay. I like it here.” She walked over to her bed and picked up a stuffed ani
mal.

  “Weren’t you scared to come here all alone?” I asked. Surely, she was. She was a little girl who left everything she knew. And she was a Zombrid. That was scary all on its own.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “At first, yeah. But I can eat all I want here. My tummy doesn’t hurt anymore. And Dr. Roberson said that when I get better, I can go home.”

  “Did your tummy hurt a lot at home?”

  She nodded. “Except…” She looked down at her doll and began pulling at a loose thread that dangled from its button eye. It was hard to believe that she was eleven years old. She seemed much younger than she was. She was tiny, first of all. And second, she was in her preteens. Shouldn’t she be reaching the age of puberty? She was sweet and small and just so fragile.

  I kneeled down to her level. “Except what?”

  “It didn’t hurt anymore after I ate her.”

  “Ate who?” My heart began to race. I was nervous about what I was going to hear next.

  “Emma.”

  The whisper of her small voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “Who is Emma?”

  “My little sister. Mommy and Daddy brought her home from the hospital. And then it happened.”

  My stomach turned. Emma was a baby. A newborn.

  A light knock came from the slightly open door. “Maddi, dear? Are you ready to watch that movie before dinner time?”

  Maddi jumped up from her bed and ran over to Estelle, who was now standing in the doorway.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had company.”

  “No, no,” I said as I stood up. “It’s okay. She was just showing me her seashell collection.”

  “Ah, I see. She loves her seashells,” Estelle stated, reaching down to pat Maddi on the head. “Maddi, why don’t you go wait for me in Malibu?”

  “Okay. Bye, Grace.”

  “Bye,” I waved, but she’d already left the room and began skipping down the hallway.

  Estelle chuckled. “So full of energy, that one.”

  I smiled. “Yes, she is.”

  She walked into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “So she showed you her seashells, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “She isn’t crazy, you know. She’s just a child who misses her parents. She is trying to hold on to something.”