BLAM
I wouldn’t have thought a shotgun round would work that well against such thin creatures, but that one shot actually takes out three. They fly apart in a dizzying spread, and a few of their packmates actually trip over their fallen limbs. The driver’s side door squeaks open. I pump my fourth round into the chamber.
BLAM
Another few fly apart. I chamber a round and take aim at the nearest cluster.
BLAM
The engine revs painfully to life, and the driver’s side door slams. I pray I left the windows rolled all the way up, and chamber the last round. The exes are only a few feet away and don’t seem all that intimidated by my gun. Then again, most swarms aren’t.
BLAM
I hear Tedrin shout, “I can’t remember how!” and my entire body goes cold. I scramble backward up onto the roof of the car and pull rounds from my stock shell holder with shaking fingers. An ex stabs itself down into the trunk and can’t dislodge; I manage to load a round, chamber it.
BLAM
The ex disintegrates and four more take its place.
Then the car lurches backward, and I have to drop to my belly and grab at the rust-covered roof rack to avoid being thrown off. Accelerating fast enough to dizzy me, the car rams backward through the swarm. BANGCRASHBANGCRASHBANG SWERVE CRASHBANGCRASHBANGCRASH—
We fly out into the street and whoever’s driving slams on the brakes so abruptly that I tumble off the roof, off the trunk, and onto the asphalt. Air whooshes from my lungs.
The driver door opens. “Get in!” Ron screams.
I get to my wobbly feet. Both my tail lights have been utterly destroyed, and there are a dozen holes in my trunk, but at least I didn’t lose any tires. I come around to open a back seat door, gun dangling clumsily across my front. The swarm, or what’s left of it, has reversed course and is rolling down the alley toward us.
Ron is already peeling forward. I’m almost left behind, but I throw my weight through the open door and end up sprawled across the back seat. Ron runs over a few more exes on her way through a wide turn; then we’re barrelling down the street in the general direction of ‘away’.
I sit up and manage to yank the door closed. When I look up, I find a weird sight: Tedrin is in the driver’s seat, grunting with pain because Ron is in his lap, driving. Every time she shifts her weight, her ass digs into the wounds in his belly.
“What do you mean, you can’t remember how to drive?” she shrieks over her shoulder.
“Veronica,” he hisses through clenched teeth, “I am in a lot of pain.”
“You almost got us killed!”
“You are the one who wanted me to drive, even though I am mortally wounded. My hands aren’t even healed yet.” He holds up his right hand, or rather, his right palm with no fingers.
“I’m just not that great at driving!”
He closes his eyes and seems to be trying to concentrate through a haze of agony. “You’re doing a fine job.”
I lean forward between the seats. “Why can’t you remember?”
He eyes me sideways, and I recognize the self-pitying look in his eyes. He worked so hard on his story, and now a complete idiot has found an unforeseen plot hole. Let me get out my miniature violin.
“Let’s get to safety first,” he mutters petulantly.
Ron taps the brakes hard enough to push me forward a little, but I brace myself against the front seats. Tedrin is thrown into her, jamming his wounds into her hips, and he lets out a strangled roar.
I glance out the back window and don’t see any exes following us. “Safety achieved. Now talk.”
His teeth are bared, but at least his eyes are normal. “I can’t remember, okay?”
“You can’t remember how to drive,” Ron rephrases skeptically. “Since when?”
“Since—” He chokes, then looks out the window and mutters something.
Ron twists around in his lap and stares at him in horror.
I lean forward. “What? I couldn’t hear—”
“Since I transformed!” he snaps. “Since my head became needles!”
Two puzzle pieces click together. “Since you blew yourself away.”
He bares his teeth at me. “I woke up in that church with a gun in my hand, my brains all over the wall, and no idea who I was. What, you think I made up a name because it would be cool? I can’t remember where I lived, I can’t remember . . . There’s nothing!”
I shake my head. “But driving is like muscle memory. You still remember how to walk, and not to eat gravel—”
“It’s random things.” He’s not looking at us, just staring at the radio like he wants to destroy it with his mind. “I remember getting a haircut when I was eight, but I don’t remember my mother’s name or face or— When I woke up, I had no ID on me, no clues.”
“You have a phone, though,” Ron whispers.
“I got it afterward.”
I give Ron a meaningful look. “He killed someone and took their phone.”
“Not helping!”
He hesitates, then lets out a shaky breath. “They gave it to me. The people at the homeless shelter.”
We stare at him.
Ron asks slowly, “Where have you been staying?”
He smiles tightly at the radio. “Your apartment.”
“I mean before that.”
He says nothing.
Ron’s expression is unreadable, but I can guess her thoughts. She’s spent our last few conversations being Tedrin’s advocate, trying to sell me on this infection and all the good it can do. Then comes the revelation that not only can it turn us into homeless stroke victims, he hid this information from us. From her.
“I just . . . I didn’t want to tell you yet. I was going to—”
Ron slaps him so hard that the side of his head cracks against the window. “When?” she screams in his face. “When were you going to tell us that your phenomenal fucking powers come with early-onset Alzheimer’s?”
“I thought it might just be me!” he shouts back. “I thought maybe it wouldn’t affect you!” He jabs a newly-grown finger in my direction. “She doesn’t have any memory gaps!”
“I still have my original brain,” I point out icily. “Shrink-wrapped and everything.” Well, other than the large thorn-shaped formation through the middle, but I’m pretty sure those aren’t memory centers.
He tries to cup Ron’s face in his hands. “Even if you start to lose yourself, I’ll be there to remind you!”
She pushes his hands away. “You can’t remind me of childhood memories, or personality, or— Jesus, how could you?”
Note to self: In Ron’s world, the idea of her boyfriend murdering her best friend is shrugged off as drama, but her boyfriend not listing side effects of full-body transformation is cause for slapping and screaming.
Of course, I’m trying very hard not to think about the implications on my own mind. Have I already lost memories to the thorn running through my brain? Will I lose contact with my family? Will I forget where my apartment is, or the password to my email? How long before I forget my own name?
“Guys,” and I hold up my hands peaceably, “between the discovery of a new kind of monster and now this, tonight has gotten heavy in a hurry. We need to rethink—”
There’s a crunch to my right. Our heads all turn at once to see an ex outside the car. Its ‘stabbing leg’ has punched right through a backseat window and become stuck; it wriggles helplessly, still trying to get at us.
I look around to make sure there are no more outside, then slowly slide away from it. Then I point at the damaged window and whisper, “I’m not paying for that.”
Ron throws the engine into ‘drive’ and takes off; after a block or two, the ex slips out of the hole and is lost behind us. I pray we didn’t drag it into a populated area. Wind whistles in the neat little hole in the window, the size of a quarter.
We stop at a red light despite the complete lack of traffic, and Tedrin takes a moment to cl
imb into the passenger seat. Ron whispers something about his wounds, and he mutters, “I’m fine.”
“How much can you remember from before?” I ask him. “Like, what kind of job did you have?”
He relaxes into the seat and stares into space for a moment. “Temp agency, ‘Security something’. They’d hire us out as mall cops for big events. They probably thought I knew karate.”
Ron snickers despite herself, then forces a serious face. “We could hit up their offices, see if they remember who you are.”
He grunts. “There was this one gig I really enjoyed, working a music festival on the south side of the state. Less police there, so they were trying to turn it into Woodstock. Ended up more like the Gathering of the Juggalos.”
I bare my teeth in a grimace. “Ouch.”
He’s on a tangent now, a little excited at being able to remember something. “These . . . people would walk up to me, high on four different things, crying, with snot running down their faces, begging me to help them find their friends. And it’s like . . .” He looks uncomfortable. “I was disgusted, but mostly I felt sorry for them. They were never taught any better. I worried about them.” He stares out the window. “I think I was a better person back then.”
Ron reaches over and grasps his hand, squeezes. “You’re a good person now.”
I look out my own window at the falling-down buildings and recall her telling the same thing to a gallery of past boyfriends.
“Did you look?” I wonder out loud. “For your family?”
“I thought about turning myself in to the police, finding out if they have a missing persons report for me, but there’s too much risk that they would figure out what I am. What if they wanted to take blood for a DNA test?” He swallows and adds, “It’s a nice fantasy, some woman running up to me in the street and calling me her son. ‘Atashi no musuko! Atashi no kazuma!’ But I’m starting to think they don’t live here. Maybe I’m an immigrant, or an orphan.”
Now I’m getting depressed. I want to tell him to shut up, that I regret asking.
He sucks in a deep, shaky breath and laughs a little. “My plan at the moment is to make sure neither of you have to go through that. You’re right, I should have given you all the facts.” He looks to Ron and squeezes her hand. “I’m sorry.”
Doesn’t make me feel any better. I slump back and can’t decide whether to cry or throw up.
Ron peers at me in the rear-view mirror and instantly picks up on my mood. “We’ll figure something out.”
I scoff and look out the window, shaking my head.
“Please don’t be like this,” she whispers. “We need to stay positive.”
My jaw tightens, but I say nothing.
Too late I realize where Ron is taking us — when she pulls into the parking lot at my apartment building and starts to slide into a space.
“I don’t want him to know where I live,” I tell her, voice tight, not looking away from the window.
“You said yourself, we need to rethink our strategy.”
“Somewhere public, where he can’t murder me again.”
She parks the car, switches off the engine, and jams my keys into the center console a little too hard. “Not this shit again.”
And I’m suddenly sure that if I sit in that car for one more goddamn nanosecond, I’m going to reach forward, grab her by the hair, and start ripping her apart. So instead, I unlock the back seat door and pile out as fast as I can.
I can’t go to my apartment; then Tedrin would know which is mine. So I just start walking down the parking lot, thinking I might go to the gas station. The shotgun is still in the car, but I shouldn’t need it. The monsters haven’t come to my neighborhood yet.
Oh, wait. Tedrin calls out behind me, “Aren’t they going to find it a little weird when The Postwoman walks in?”
Dear Gawd: If I get one chance per lifetime to light someone afire with m’mind, bestow this power upon m’now, Lawd, so that I may do your work. Amen.
Ron catches up to me and grabs my shoulder. “Quit acting like a brat!” she snaps.
I keep walking, even with her wrenching on my sleeve.
“Why do you have to put me through this?” she demands.
That stops me in my tracks, though I don’t turn. My mouth works, but words don’t come out.
“In that alley!” she continues. “‘Leave him behind’, ‘get to the car’, ‘he killed me’, on and on and on! It gets sickening after a while! And after all he’s been through!”
Her words are barely registering. In a detached way, I realize that I’m angrier than I’ve ever been in my life. I might throw up.
“He was homeless! You and I have almost been there! Do you not feel one ounce of pity?”
She’s almost been homeless several times, thanks to stupid, impulsive, dangerous decisions she’s made. I’ve never even come close because I’m not a failure.
“You’re not in charge of my goddamn life!”
I’m better than her.
“You can’t—”
I deserve better people than her—
“Stop it,” I whisper, and squeeze my eyes shut. “I don’t . . . like this.”
Her hand pulls away. “What?”
“I don’t . . .” I suck in a deep breath. “I don’t like the person I’ve become. I’m turning into a bad person.”
I can feel her staring at the back of my head. “Jesus,” she mumbles. “You sound like a toddler.”
“I’m trying to . . . You know I’m not good at . . .” I rub my forehead for a second and start over. “Every single time this happens, I get so worked-up and afraid. I worry so much about you. And every single time, you treat my feelings, my advice, my warnings, like I’m just doing it to hurt you. I didn’t used to doubt myself this much, but you have spent the last few years teaching me to.”
“I didn’t say—”
“Every single time,” I repeat, raising my voice to override her. “There was the guy, the hoodie guy, who got some other girl pregnant, and she came around and clawed up your face, and I had to drive you to the hospital, and the whole way there you were wailing about how much you loved him and some stupid romantic shit he’d written on your goddamn mirror—”
“That’s in the past!” she almost shrieks at me. “Why do you keep bringing up—”
“Because you keep doing it!” I shout over my shoulder, still unwilling to look at her. “You blanket yourself in this chaos, and you beg me to get involved, to save you, and I can’t say ‘no’, so I rush in with my gun and my car and my mind and I throw myself into fixing your life, and then every single time, you downplay me, saying this one is different, this one is married so you know he’s a good guy—”
“Like you’re perfect,” she sneers. “Trying to make everyone think you’re so smart and perfect— What it must be like inside your head, how perfect you must sound to yourself! What if people knew what you’re really like, huh?”
My teeth are clamped together so hard, my jaw hurts. “I’m rational. My choices are based on logic, not desperation and sex.”
Back at the car, Tedrin calls, “Are you two oka—”
“Stay out of it!” we both shout.
“Fucking psychopath!” I add between gritted teeth.
Ron’s crying now. “Why won’t you just let me make my own choices?”
I want to hit her. I want to rip her hair out. I press my hands to my face.
“What, do you want me to—”
“I don’t want you to do anything,” I whisper, and just like that, a switch is flipped inside my chest. I’m cold all over and very alone.
She’s staring at me.
“I’m done.” I lower my hands and feel tears on them. “I’m done saving you. I have my own life, and I have to learn to live with my fucked-up body, and I’m tired of setting myself aside to waste time fixing your mistakes. I don’t want you in my life anymore.”
Ron pulls back a little as if I’ve slapped her.
She whispers my name, and I want to say that all the hurt in her voice pierces me to my core and plants a seed of doubt that gives birth to a sprout of guilt. But the truth is, in this numbed state, I feel nothing. Her voice delivers nothing more than the utterance of my name.
“When I get back,” I whisper, “you two had better be gone. If I ever see either of you again . . .” I pause, choking on words, then shake my head. “You’d better be gone.”
I start walking again. Her hand brushes my sleeve but doesn’t grab. She doesn’t reach out again.
The way to the gas station is blurry and warped. I manage to go in silence for half a block, but around the time I pass the closed-up post office, little sobs are sneaking up my throat. When I sit down on the rickety little bench outside the gas station, I’m weeping into my hand.
All around me, people hurry in and out of the store, talking in excited voices about stocking up on gas and food. If anyone notices me, they don’t comment. Maybe they speculate inside their cars: Maybe she’s upset about the invasion. Maybe her cat died. Maybe she just broke up with her boyfriend.
I just broke up with my best friend.
A dam breaks inside—
When I get back to the apartment building, my car and gun are as I left them. I pocket my keys, heft my gun, and head upstairs. Unlocking the door, I find my apartment as I left it, but warmer and stuffier. I open all the windows to let in the summer air.
I take one of my special showers, in which I lie down in the bottom of the tub and let the water run over me. I pretend I’m a corpse and it’s raining, and someone will find me soon. People will cry. Someone will hunt my killer. And my smiling face will be in everyone’s thoughts. Everyone will miss me and wish they had been kinder to me. They’ll picture all the terrible things I went through, the things that were done to my body while I screamed and struggled and died, and they’ll know they could have saved me. The guilt will plague them for the rest of their lives.
Eden Green Page 10
