Dead and Beloved (2 page)

“Ah.” He folds his arms and leans his head back with pleasure. “Well, if you decide on another school, let me know. I'll write a recommendation for you.”

Another school. That's his play. I glance around the room, searching for a hint of why he's against me going to Stanford, but this
isn't his classroom. It's a detention room. Only military career posters and trade school ads cover the walls.

“Thank you,” I say to him. Stupid jerk. “I'll keep that in mind.”

Mr. Montrose tries to pat me on the shoulder and it startles me so much that I flinch away. People don't touch zombies. Since the infection spread a few years ago, contact has been taboo. Scientists proved it's a viral disease, but society has a way of twisting worry into panic. The only physical interaction I get with anyone is through rubber gloves and sharp needles. The man must have a death wish.

"Remember what I said," he tells me.

"Yeah," I mutter. I'll remember.

~ O ~

Outside the school, it's exactly as I feared. The shuttle is speeding away, leaving a handful of protesters standing on the sidewalk near where it had waited. They see me when I turn to go back inside the school. A woman screams, a man drops his 'zombies are death' sign, and the rest stare. I'm not going to hurt them and I want to say that, but they don't give me a chance. Some of the people glance back toward the distant shuttle and seem to realize that there's no other place for me to go. They scramble toward their cars, shouting as they flee.

It's not the first time I've had to walk home, but it has been almost a month since the last time. I lost track of time that day and missed my ride. I've tried hard since then to stay on schedule. Now I'm standing in the open without a ride and a dozen screaming idiots making me anxious. Don't they know they're not helping me?

I pull out my phone and call the emergency shuttle number the hospital gave me, but no one answers. That doesn't surprise me. The last time he left me, the driver claimed I had never called him. Even with the number on my cell's call log, the administrators had blamed me for the error. With a groan, I tuck my phone into my pocket, tighten my backpack straps, and head down the street.

Smack! I duck as something strikes the stop sign next to me. A man yells. I look back and see a rifle in his hands. Swearing back at him, I jump behind a tree, though its trunk is too thin to protect me. A police siren wails in the distance. Another smack vibrates the metal sign. Then one strikes the tree sending splinters flying past my shoulder. This day keeps getting better and better.

I don't know what the man is thinking and I don't care. I don't want to get shot and I don't want to face a cop. I dart across the sidewalk and jump over a low hedge. I'm turned around. The man’s yells, a few whizzing bullets, and the approaching sirens add to my fear that I'm being hunted. Stupid Mr. Montrose. I could have been on a shuttle.

I decide to run, and running is something I can do well. My condition makes me swift and nimble. The Virus constantly feeds whoever is infected with adrenaline, making us burn more calories in a day than a normal person would in a week. The body craves what it lacks and as calories decline, so does the flesh. I've never tasted human flesh, but the desire to fill my body's urges hasn't left me in the two years since I became infected. That's why the specialized meals are so vital. The protein fills my need while the drugs fight the adrenaline and other effects. The doctors have told me that missing a meal or taking the wrong dose of medication could turn me into the monster everyone fears. Luckily that hasn't happened yet.

I round a corner before any sirens can follow me, and head east toward the mountain and to my home. It's almost two miles, but I hardly notice the distance as I go. In minutes, I'm passing the specialized surgery buildings surrounding the hospital. My shuttle is there and the driver is explaining something to the attendant at the entrance.

“I'm here,” I announce, slowing down and strolling as casually as I can toward the conversation. “I was held up and missed the shuttle.” Arguing won’t hel
p me escape the cops or the jerk who shot at me. I shoot a glance behind me as another siren sounds. “I'm sorry.”

The driver smirks at the attendant, who quickly keys information into his tablet. Then I'm escorted inside to the Scream Room.

~ O ~

I decide to shower, hoping it will help me calm down. The run from school has quelled my cravings, but I'm still on edge. I keep thinking about what Mr. Montrose said to me and how much I hate him for making me miss my ride. Once I'm clean, I glance at the clock. Fourteen minutes until my scheduled chat with Jessica. It's too long to wait. I decide to open the envelope from Stanford.

Miss Reeves has gone above and beyond my expectations. Inside the packet is a thank you letter advising me that special requests for academic consideration are not a guarantee of admission. There's a note about my financial aid request, a questionnaire, an online code with links to personal assessments, and several small stamps.

“I mail this in?” I wonder aloud while staring at images of eagles on the little stickers.

Sure enough, the instructions for application include details of how to mail in the required essays. It seems odd to me; no one sends mail anymore. While I'm examining the instructions, my computer sounds an alert. Five minutes.

“Jessica?” I type without waiting.

“Hi, Ryan.”

I grin. “Thought about you today.”

“Wink. Me too.”

“How are you?”

There's a pause. Too much time passes, more than a minute. My mind worries. Is something wrong?

“I'll be okay. It's good to talk to you.”

I stare at the words, repeating them over and over with her imagined voice in my mind, searching for another meaning. She's not okay. Her words say she is, but they don't mean it. They don't. My fingers tremble. I can't type. I key letters, but they're wrong so I delete them just as quickly. I don't send anything. Instead, I jumble random characters on the screen, trying to decide what to tell her.

“Are you there, Ryan?”

I delete everything. “I'm here,” I finally answer. “Wish I knew what was bothering you.”

Her response comes too quickly. “No, you don't.”

My heart stops. My hands shake. “Will you tell me?”

“Can't. It's good to talk to you, though.”

I'm screaming inside. What's wrong? While I'm working on a response, something to tell her that I'm glad to have someone to talk to, she sends me another message.

“Need to go. Talk to you soon.”

Soon? “Soon!” This time I yell. I don't care if a nurse comes. For a week, we've had a standing arrangement. We always chat at the same time. It's our thing, our connection. Soon was never part of it. Soon means not tomorrow. It might not even mean the day after that. Soon means I won't have anything to get me through the weekend. Soon is too far away. Now the angst from my lack of enough exercise blows up inside me. My arms tingle and my face burns. I need to move, I need to go somewhere. I'm frantic for something.

As expected, someone pounds on my door. “Are you okay in there?” asks the floor nurse on duty.

I ignore her. “Jessica?” I type, relying on one word to help me solve my problem. "What's your last name?”

The door pounds again. “I'm okay,” I answer. But I'm not okay. Not yet.

The screen stays blank for the longest time, but then an answer appears. “Snow.”

No other words come from her, but I'm not expecting any. I'm already searching the web. Jessica
Snow. All I need is an address.

I've sneaked out of the hospital before, but never like this. Not for as long as this will take. Quick trips to the closest gas station to buy Snickers bars and Dr. Pepper were meager tests of evasive skill. Tonight's adventure will take more than that. It'll take some planning and a lot of luck. After dinner, I shower again, brush my hair and my teeth, apply some skin conditioner to my neck, and dress as casually as I can. Then I examine myself in the mirror.

“Is this who she'll expect to see?” I ask, shaking my head. I don't even recognize myself anymore.

The drugs to keep the Virus under control have darkened my hair and thinned it. My eyes don't appear as sunken as they used to be, but the gap in my neck where I keep losing skin is obvious. I switch to a turtleneck from my wardrobe and throw on a faded old Broncos cap. It's the best I can do to look normal. Tonight, I need to look normal. Not for Jessica. She knows the truth about me. For the world.

The walk home today had been more contact with people's hate than I expected. I'm used to people running away and screaming at school. I'm also used to the protests. I never want to get comfortable with someone shooting a gun at me. I'm crazy to do this, I keep telling myself, but I want to see Jessica. The risk is worth it. If I don't see her, I'll be awake all night worrying.

My first year in the hospital, the nurses kept my door locked. I had been uncontrollable then; all newly infected are, so I understand the reasons now. But after the treatments cleared my head, and I learned to control my cravings, the staff started leaving the door unlocked. I still think of this place as a prison, though. My home is Lakeview Hospital, a halfway house for the living dead.

The hallway is empty and the floor nurse is missing from her station. Luck. I need it. I dash to the stairwell with barely a sound, then pause to calm my nerves before taking careful steps down to the main floor.

The nurses are gathered at the lounge, all focused on the television, and exclaiming that they know the doctor on the screen. I leave them to their entertainment and creep toward the utility entrance down the south hall of the hospital.

Outside, cold air welcomes me to the living world. It's been so long since I've tasted fresh night air that it burns my lungs and freezes my face. I dash to the nearest bushes and plan my route. There's a bus station on Fourth West, a couple blocks away. I see it every day on the way to school. I’ll risk being seen there, but riding the bus is the fastest way to get to Cottonwood Heights and the address I found for Jessica Snow. It’ll be twenty-five miles, according to the map on my phone. I'm a good runner, but even that seems like too much for a night excursion. Plus, the bus will give me the cover I need.

When we were in junior high, Andre and I used to take the bus to City Creek on Saturdays. There had been plenty of crazies on the bus then, people shooting up under overcoats or talking to themselves. I figure that I probably won’t appear much different from them now and I'm hoping that riders will leave me alone.

When the bus arrives, I scan my pay card, snatch my printed ticket, and scramble to the empty seats at the back. The last thing I want is for someone to see the details of my face. Acting like a recluse is part of my plan, and the only way I'll get some privacy.

There's a woman and her little girl on the bus, but they don't look at me when I take my seat. They're focused on the screen near the ceiling. A news story highlights a doctor, the same one the nurses were watching.

“Will his enhancements work?” asks the broadcast narrator. “We pray that time will be on our side.”

I smirk at the report. It was a cure that made me this way; the cure to end infection; the magic potion to end all disease. It had worked. Zombies don’t get sick. We violently consume and then we die. And fast. I shift to hide my face as the little girl on the bus turns to look at me.

I'm ignoring the television, but then I hear my own name. I look up to see a photo of me. It's an old one. No, it's from today. I'm outside the school. I'm glaring at the shuttle as it speeds away. The image changes to a woman being interviewed. I recognize her as one of the protesters from school.

“He came after us,” she tells the camera. “And we fled for our lives.” The woman wipes a tear from her face.

“He's a danger to us all.” Another man peers into the picture. He's the one who dropped the sign.

Because of deception and malice, I've become the lead story on the broadcast. The bus stops and picks up another passenger. I'm focused on the screen.

“News for you, tonight at ten. These witnesses tell us the infected student, Ryan Moon, left school today and chased them. Their survival stories are telling and tragic. The hospital claims he's safe, but are
you
safe? Are your children safe? Who's telling the truth?”

“Not them,” I mutter, as a stun gun commercial takes over the screen. I turn away, out of sight from the people on the bus, and realize I've been clenching my fists. My knuckles are white and my veins are dark blue. I release my hands. The television has gotten to me. People have gotten to me.

When I had started my push to return to high school, I told a news crew that I'd never be bothered by what people said or did. I told them that I wanted to be normal, and live a calm life like the one everyone deserves. Have I changed since then? I lower the brim of my hat and peer at the people on the bus. They aren't paying attention to me. The newcomer, an old man, is reading a crinkled magazine.

The bus jerks us sideways and I look outside the tinted glass. North Salt Lake. We've barely traveled anywhere. I close my eyes and try to sleep. It will be a long night, and I still have one day left in school this week.

~ O ~

“Do you know where you're going?”

I'm awakened by the bus driver, who stands at the center of the bus. “Yes,” I answer, rubbing my eyes. “Cottonwood Heights.”

“We passed it.”

My leg jerks in protest as I twist to fully wake. “Passed it?” I look around. The bus is empty except for the driver and me. “Where are we?”

“Are you okay?” asks the driver. “You don't look well.”

I cough, forcing him back two steps, and nod. “Flu,” I say. This makes him move back farther. “Can I get off here?”

The driver retreats to his perch at the front of the bus and opens the mechanical doors. I adjust my coverings and wave to him as I step outside. The air is colder. It's late. Probably after eleven. The road isn't empty, though. There's some traffic, but it's dark on the sidewalk. The nearest street lamp is broken. I duck under the covered bench of the bus stop and study the map on my phone. I’m in Draper. I went too far.

I tuck my phone back into my pocket and start jogging north.

Jessica's neighborhood is up the hills, at the base of the mountains. It's the kind of place I wasn't expecting. The yards are like small estates, fenced in by tall brick walls and traces of snow left by the last storm. The leafless trees along the winding roads allow me plenty of cover as I follow the GPS map on my phone. It’s eerie; I haven’t been out this late for a couple years. Nothing moves, nothing sounds. A few dogs start
to bark at me, but they silence quickly, leaving me to the quiet of the February night.

The home with the address I found online is tall and foreboding. There's a large bay window on the second floor which I assume is her parents’ bedroom. As a precaution, I make a mental note of all the trees and dark places offered out of view of that window before sneaking around back. More windows, double paned and smaller. She never told me how many brothers or sisters she had, so I don't know where to find her. For the first time, I doubt my plan. This might not even be the right place.

I find a tall metal swing set in the backyard and my mind eases. The first time we chatted, Jessica told me how much she loved to sit on her swing and listen to the trees. She had said the stars wove their tales above, carrying the mysteries in silence until the wind whispered them away. It's one of the reasons I like Jessica so much. She has a way of describing things that makes the world seem beautiful and peaceful. While I live trapped between hospital walls and school classes, her descriptions offer me hope of a normal life. It's a dream, really—a fantasy. The cold air seeping under my turtleneck gives me little shots of pain to remind me how far away I am from normal.

I walk to the swing and run a finger down one of the chains. Chilled and coarse, it offers nothing like the vision she had given me. There's no magic here, no mystery. Only frozen metal welded to a pole. The grass is worn away below it, leaving dirt and some gravel. I pull the swing seat far back and release it and a piercing scream haunts the night as the chain drops the seat forward. I'm so frightened by the sound that I scramble behind the nearest bush and wait for someone to find me.

But no one comes. It's only me and the night cold and the echo of the scream. I'm stepping from the shadows when an upstairs window creaks and scares me back. The window swings open, a white nightgown breaks the darkness, and a face appears. My heart stops. Is that Jessica?

I'm terrified, excited, nervous, and bold all at the same time. “Jessica?” I whisper.

She turns toward me. “Who's there?”

My hands tremble and my throat dries. I don't know what to answer, or if I should say anything, but I'm caught in the moment. “Ryan,” I tell her. “It's Ryan.”

A raven flees into the night from the trees above me. I duck down, startled by its movement. When I look up at the window, Jessica is gone. Waving curtains have taken the place of the dark room that framed her before. I've ruined the moment. She doesn't want to see me. All the excitement of seeing Jessica for the first time has vanished, leaving a sharp hole in the bottom of my stomach. It hurts, and suddenly I feel a craving.

Someone unlatches the back door and turns its handle slowly. The door opens and the night welcomes the same long nightgown that appeared at the upstairs window.

“Ryan?” Jessica whispers and the tumbling in my stomach continues.

“I'm here,” I say. I stand, though I'm still in shadow.

“I can't see you.”

I dare myself to step forward. I take off my hat so she can see my face.

Jessica grips the door handle.

“You're beautiful,” I say. “I imagined such, but you truly are.”

She smiles and looks down, shyly. “You're really—” She pauses. “You're really here.”

I stand in place and shrug
.“
And I'm really a zombie
.
”

This makes her smile. She drops her hand from the door, peers back inside her home, and then tiptoes toward me. “I heard the swing,” she says.

“I remembered you love it.”

She smiles again. She’s an angel.

I shift my stance. “I had to see you.”

“You were on the news.” Jessica's voice is low and carries a warning. “My parents know who you are.”

I swallow. “I'm not a monster. People will say anything to get on TV.”

Jessica takes a deep breath, then exhales. Tiny wisps of steam curl in front of her then disappear. She takes a step closer. I can almost touch her hair. She grips the chain of the swing and stands there. She's barefoot, but doesn't seem to mind the frozen grass against her toes.

“Do you think I'm dangerous?” I ask.

She nods. “Yes.”

The honesty in her answer makes me smile. I've chatted with Jessica plenty online, and appreciate how smart and witty she is. Some people can be different through words, but she is the same as I expected. Smart. Honest. Pure.

“I won't hurt you,” I say.

She tilts her head, as if examining me before speaking. “I think you could,” she says. “Hurt me.”

“But I won't.”

“How do you know?” Jessica takes a step forward.

I step to meet her. “I've never tried to hurt anyone,” I say. My breathing is quick and loud.

“Neither have I.” Jessica leans closer. Her eyes
are
blue. “But I could hurt you.”

The terror inside my stomach returns. “Then we're perfect for each other.”

Jessica reaches out and touches my fingers. Hers are chilled and shaking. “You're hot,” she says, gripping my hand. “I thought zombies were cold and dead.”

“I'm alive,” I say. She feels so good. It's been a long time since I've touched anyone. I hold her hand tight. “Do you feel that? I'm trying to live as long as I can.”

She takes my other hand and leans close to whisper. “Thank you for finding me.” Her breath sends a shiver down my neck—it's a tingling frost. “You make me feel alive.”