by Kate Morris
“Here ya’ go,” Livie stated a while later and set a platter in front of him with his burger and salad.
“Thanks,” he said and started with the salad.
He kept scrolling her photos as he ate. There were some with her family. They looked like the blonde Swiss family fucking Robinsons. Her dad was tall, taller than him, it seemed. There were a few pictures with just Avery and her dad and were tagged ‘Cambridge.’ He assumed it was the college in England because it looked like some old college with stone buildings in the background. She had a lot of unusual photographs of just architecture, some in black and white. Others of flowers or road signs or an animal on a farm somewhere. She seemed to like taking a lot of pictures.
They were an active family for being so big. There were photos from Niagara Falls, New York City, Florida, Italy, and a lot of them that just looked like their property. But every one of the photos the family was doing something, either fishing, shooting bow and arrows, paddling around in rowboats, or hiking in the woods. There was even a photo of Avery with black smudges under her cheeks and a tactical helmet on her fair head. It was tagged, ‘let’s get it on.’ That saying and staring at her pale blue mysterious eyes that stood out even more from the darkness under them made something twitch within him. It wasn’t his heart, either. It was a lot lower.
The photo, however, was simply her and her siblings playing airsoft in the woods because the next twenty were of her brothers and sisters, a buttload of them, in black or camo style tactical gear complete with helmets, knee and elbow guards and airsoft rifles. Last night when he’d met her, she’d been so serious. In most of her photographs, she was smiling or laughing with her mouth open wide, exposing all her teeth and her long neck arched back with glee. She seemed like a carefree person, shy but carefree. Tristan clicked her phone off. There was no point even looking at the photos of someone like Avery Andersson.
“Is your girlfriend not joining you?” Livie asked a while later when he was finishing his burger.
“She’s not really my girlfriend. Just…a friend,” he explained, getting a lascivious and very approving grin from her. She licked her lower lip, letting her tongue piercing be seen by him. Tristan wasn’t stupid. He knew the effect he had on a lot of women. Not Avery Andersson, clearly, but a lot of other women.
“I’ll get your check,” she said and swung around. There was a pep in her step this time and a swish of her black ponytail.
He left her a generous tip. Then he asked about the man last night and the other three who’d behaved the same way in the last week. He noticed her tank top was a little lower in the front now, as if she’d pulled it down and pushed up the goods a little more.
“I don’t know what’s goin’ on,” she said, wiping down the bar in front of him. “People have been actin’ strange for the last few weeks. My roommate and I were watchin’ the news the other night, and they said a bunch of people have died from some weird flu or something. It sounded like it was more overseas, though.”
“What about the people who’ve been taken out of here in the past week? Think it was the flu?”
“No, we just seem to draw the local drunks and the weirdos. Your friend,” she emphasized, “shouldn’t come in here thinking she’s not gonna get hit on. I’ve seen her and her friends in here a few times.”
It was more than just being hit on, but Tristan didn’t correct her because he didn’t want to break their rapport. “Yeah? Did they ever leave with anyone?”
It had nothing to do with what happened last night. Tristan just had a sick interest in knowing.
“Nah, they’re all prudes and dick teases if you ask me. Blondie always draws a crowd of gawkers, though.”
He could understand why.
“A girl like that, men just want to conquer them, ya’ know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Goody-two-shoes, ivy league, spoiled rich girl, thinks she’s better than everyone else,” she stated, showing a certain amount of her own jealousy. “Men want to be the first to take what she’s obviously still walking around with. She’s frigid.”
It wasn’t Avery’s fault she was attractive. And Tristan didn’t get any of those impressions from her. Obviously, she came from money, but she hadn’t been braggy about it, hadn’t even mentioned it at all. If he’d been interested in what the bartender was clearly offering before, he wasn’t now. He decided to move their conversation back to the point of his visit.
“What about the other ones? The other people who were bounced earlier in the week? Your doorman said they’d already had trouble similar to last night three times in the last week. You don’t think they were like Steve?”
“I guess they were. Who knows? They probably all got a bad batch of crack or something. Last year they busted some drug dealers lacing crack with bath salts and animal tranquilizer. It’s probably just that shit going around again, ya’ know?”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said and stood, figuring he wasn’t going to get any other information from her.
“Hey, I get off at eleven tonight,” she said.
“Bummer, I gotta work the midnight shift tonight,” he lied, although he had no intention of coming back. “Maybe another time, though.”
“Hell, yeah,” she swore and wrote her number on a cocktail napkin and slid it across the bar to him. Tristan nodded and tried to offer a partial smile.
He left the bar and went to a local coffee house to use their wifi. Tristan scoured every bit of information he could find on the web about this flu going around. With it hitting so many cities and overseas, as well, according to the bartender, he sure didn’t come up with a lot of information on it. He logged on to the Army website and searched there, too. In a chatroom about schools on base where it was mostly moms asking questions, he found a thread about it. He scrolled down and started reading the comments and posts.
Most of the comments were about the moms being worried about the flu season. Then they became more ominous. One mother said her child was sick. She was looking for more holistic medicine ideas because nothing the doctor prescribed was working. Then another mother stated that her son was sick, too, and so were three other children in his kindergarten class. He tapped on the second page and kept going. A new mother on the thread stated that her daughter had died from this flu. The term RF1 was used. Tristan had not heard this name before.
After that, he found reference after reference to RF1. He had no idea what that meant or stood for. The nightmares of these poor mothers seemed to get worse as he went. By page six, he had to stop. He also tallied up in his head that eighteen children were dead from this flu. The first post on page seventeen was from three weeks ago. The last week of August.
When he couldn’t take anymore, Tristan ordered another coffee and stepped outside for a smoke. The air was becoming cooler. Before he left base, he looked for his leather jacket. It was gone. He remembered loaning it to Avery outside the bar, but he thought she left it in his truck. He’d grabbed a black hoodie instead, one with a gray American flag on the back.
He finished his smoke and went back in to retrieve his coffee, leaving a tip for the teenage girl working the counter. Then he got back on their wifi and looked into this RF1 flu. So much of the information out there was either misleading or just plain confusing.
Leaving the coffee house, he drove around for a while and ended up whether consciously or subconsciously on the road to Avery Andersson’s family property. It was dark as he pulled off the side of the gravel road at the top of the hill, stopping way before the closed driveway gate. Their property probably started somewhere around here, but the home sat far back from the street. He had an uncanny feeling come over him while he was driving around the back-country roads that he should check on her. It was stupid, and he felt even dumber as he sat in his truck idling it. He wished he could see the house from here, though. That unlocked, unsafe apartment.
Instead of being a total creeper, Tristan put it in drive and kept going again all the w
ay back to base. A party had kicked off at Royce and Spencer’s place. He went to his own house and grabbed a bottle of beer. Then he scrolled through her phone again. There were a lot of dude’s phone numbers, but most were tagged with friend emojis or labeled like: John from church, Pastor Eustace. It didn’t seem like she had a boyfriend, but someone named Joshua was in a lot of photos with her, and he had dark hair, so it wasn’t a brother. He had a sudden need to punch the guy.
Instead of figuring out who Joshua was or where he lived, Tristan looked at the photos some more. She seemed to really like taking pictures but wasn’t in a lot of them. She had close-ups of a single leaf or flower petal or a section of faded white fencing that probably was an animal paddock. There were some tagged ‘Renee’s’ and had horses in them. The girl sure did like nature and animals.
He watched the twenty-four-hour news channel on the internet that he followed (definitely not mainstream) while he consumed a bag of cheese Combos. They were reporting unprecedented cases of the flu, an unnamed flu without the positive identity that would link it back to the term RF1. He figured it was the same one, though. Over a hundred thousand people around Europe had died from it already. The numbers in Asia were even worse, and they said that there was no cure or a preventative vaccine yet. Strange that he was just learning anything about it. It made him think about what that young deputy had mentioned. Nowhere on the news or the internet searches he’d performed were there any mentions of a flu that made people violent. If that guy and the others didn’t have this weird strain of deadly flu, which had made people crazy and violent, then what the hell was wrong with them?
Chapter Eight
She helped out in the babies and toddler room during both first and second service at church and also stayed after for a meeting to finish final plans for the church’s annual fall festival in a few weeks. It was always a lot of fun. The kids loved it.
“Hey, girl,” Renee said and looped her arm through hers. “Got any plans later?”
“No, just staying in. I need to get a jump on this project.”
“Boring,” she commented with a sly grin. “Why don’t we go out and get your phone back from that hot soldier?”
Yesterday Avery had gone to Renee’s apartment in the next town over and had hung out for a while. Then they’d gone to town for coffees and pastries and spoiled their dinner appetites. After, they stopped in at the country western bar and asked if they’d seen her phone, to which the bartender with all the piercings and tattoos had told her that she’d given it to her boyfriend, which she figured out through some questioning that she meant Tristan.
“No,” she said. “I-I think I’m just gonna buy a new one.”
“What?” Renee asked loudly and started laughing. “You are such a chickenshit!”
“Renee!” she scolded and led her more quickly toward their cars near the back of the church lot. “Good grief. We’re on church property.”
“So? God knows me. I ain’t perfect. I’m no sinner, but I’m not an angel, either.” She paused to laugh loudly. “He knows. He made me this way.”
Avery laughed. Her friend always came up with funny things like that to atone for doing something bad like swearing. It was hard to believe she was also homeschooled. Even more surprising was the fact they were best friends.
“I don’t want to go out there and track him down and make a big deal out of getting my phone back.”
“But…”
“No!” she said more firmly and toyed with her car keys. “Besides, stuff…happened. I don’t think I can face him.”
“Oooh, like what kind of stuff?” she jacked her eyebrows up twice to insinuate something naughty. “Spill the tea, girl.”
“What? No, there’s nothing to tell. And it’s nothing like that,” she stated vehemently. “Get your mind outta’ the gutter. Geesh.”
“Oh,” she said with disappointment. “Too bad. He’s hot. That’s a waste of that bod. He’s like mega hot. Bet he has nice abs.”
“Not my type. Like, at all,” she firmly stated.
“Ave, babe, he’s any woman’s type,” she corrected as if it were a fact. “I’m gonna order an ultrasound on you to make sure you have ovaries.”
Avery just rolled her eyes and wrinkled her nose to further her point. “Anyway, Dad’s leaving tomorrow afternoon for Hungary…”
“Hungary? What the heck for? He’s always going.”
“Giving a lecture to a university in Budapest.”
Renee bobbed her head a few times. “I don’t know how your parents do it. They never see each other. How the hell’d they have so many kids? Guess it was quite the reuniting when they did see each other, huh?”
She elbowed Avery, who blushed and told her to shut up about her parents and sex. “Ew! Never discuss that again, thank you.”
Renee laughed, an ornery sound.
“Anyway, they’re taking the kids out for a big dinner and a movie. Something animated. I figured it’d be a good time to stay in and get some work done. Besides, I’m still kind of sore.”
“Aw,” her friend sympathized and touched her arm gently. “Poor Ave. That sucks. I ever see that weirdo lunatic in the street, I’m running his ass over.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Take a bath with some Epsom salts. That’ll help a lot. And wine. Lots of wine.”
She laughed again, and Avery grinned.
“Take care, babe,” she said. “I’m outta’ here.”
“Hey, why did you want to know if I had plans? Are you guys going out again?”
“Yeah, I am with Sheba. We’re meeting a few of those Army studs for dinner in the city.”
The city meant not their town. It meant Canton or somewhere bigger.
“Ooh-la-la,” she joked. “Hey, wait a minute. I was gonna be third wheeling it? Renee!”
“I would’ve told them to scrounge up one more of their friends. I’m not totally insensitive to your plight.”
“My plight?”
“Your lady business and its lack of attention,” she said with a wicked grin, pointing to Avery’s nether regions.
“Renee! Gosh!”
Her friend only laughed loudly and kissed her cheek. “Okay, girl. You go home to your computer and your art pencils or whatever you do up there. But take a bath. Maybe get a little drunk. Alcohol has some magically medicinal pain-numbing abilities.”
“Okay, hippie chick,” she said and affectionately kissed her friend’s cheek.
“And maybe drunk dial that hot soldier,” she added.
She waved to her as she got into her little red sporty car. Then Avery got in her own vehicle and drove home.
She helped her mother and sisters bake homemade chocolate chip cookies for the soldiers on the base. Her mother insisted she pack a separate container just for Tristan, which she did. She had every intention of faking some sort of physical ailment- a cold, a sore throat, bad migraine, the plague or anything tomorrow to get out of having to drive out to the base to deliver them. However, her mother stated earlier that she had a full patient schedule tomorrow on her plate, coupled with helping the children with schoolwork when she was done. Avery started feeling that very unwelcomed emotion called guilt settling over her.
They all left around five-thirty for the city to eat at their favorite Italian mom-and-pop restaurant, Luigi’s, and then on to a seven-forty-five movie time at the huge cineplex located at The Strip, a massive shopping area in Canton, the more expensive and exclusive section called Jackson Township. Avery wouldn’t trade her apartment above the garage for the finest mansion up there, not even on one of the golf courses.
She took her friend’s advice and drew a hot bath with Epsom salts to soothe her aching muscles and sore ribs. Soaking and listening to classical music sans the wine was a lot more relaxing than she would’ve guessed. Paired with the novel she was currently reading about an artist living on Nantucket who fell in love with a mysterious drifter, she just about nodded off she was so relaxed. Jus
t as she was stepping out, a knock on the door downstairs startled her. She stood in silent anticipation a moment. Then the knocking came again.
“Crap!” she told the empty bathroom and pulled her pastel blue satin robe around herself. Her hair was knotted on top of her head.
Avery rushed down the hall, half thinking she shouldn’t answer the door, and the other half of her brain wondering if it was a neighbor or something was wrong. She didn’t know why someone would come to the back of the garage and knock instead of going to the house. She hesitated a moment before opening the door. When she did, she gasped with surprise.
“Hey, oh, is this a bad time?” Tristan asked in the dim lighting that illuminated the pathway and was built into the deck system above him. She pulled her robe more tightly closed.
“What are-what are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry. I just thought…I should’ve called first…oh, wait, yeah, that’s why I came,” he stammered, which for Tristan, looked like it was a first time ever.
Avery realized it was raining and he was wet, his hair dripping. She was being rude. Her mother did not tolerate rudeness, so her years of training in etiquette and good manners kicked in.
“Would you like to come in and get dried off?”
“Uh…sure,” he said and stepped past her as she backed up. “I just brought your phone.”
“You did? Oh, that’s great,” she remarked and led the way up to her apartment. “Come inside. I’ll get you a towel. The weather’s been horrible all weekend.”
Why was she discussing the weather? She was starting to feel like an inexperienced ninny. That wasn’t far from the truth.
Avery rushed back to the bathroom and brought him out a towel. “I’m just going to get dressed. Give me a minute.”
“Sure, no problem,” he said with a nod, taking the towel from her. “Thanks.”
She looked at the floor and skirted his large form in her hallway to slip away to the bedroom where she shut the door and locked it. Then Avery pulled on underclothes, a cream-colored thin knit turtleneck, matching cable knit fisherman’s cardigan and gray slacks. Gray wool socks were last. It was chilly tonight, and although she hadn’t washed her hair, it was still damp in places. When she went back to the hall, he was gone. She found him in the living room looking out over the property.