by T. A. Brock
“It’s done now anyway,” Grayson said with disgust. “You got your way.”
“Whatever,” Aiken muttered. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Grayson raised one eyebrow at the Reaper’s pensive face. “Yeah? Have anything to do with the zombie who’s eating humans?”
Aiken’s features hardened. “No, actually. But mind telling me how you know about that?”
“Leiv. He got called up to Haute. Said there was muddy blood everywhere like they’d tried to turn them after they ate them.”
“Or before,” Aiken muttered, a sick look on his face.
“Zombies eating zombies? What kind of sick—”
“NOYB, civie.” He wasn’t being smart though. More like a warning. “NOYB.”
Grayson shivered and didn’t even try to hide it.
“I think you should tell Cori what you are.”
“No way.”
“She’ll be safer if she knows there are monsters out there.”
“There are just as many human monsters. Besides, I can keep her safe.”
“You need to tell her.”
“Are you telling Peg?”
“No.”
“No. You’re not. You’re going to do your job and make them safe and that settles it.”
“Of course. But your situation is different. She came to me, asking questions.”
Grayson ground his teeth together. Both at the idea that Cori had reached out to Aiken and because he had no idea how much the Reaper had told her.
“It doesn’t matter,” he gritted out. “I’m not telling her that zombies exist and that she’s been kissing one for the last two and a half months.”
Aiken pursed his lips and eyed Grayson in an annoying way. “Tell her.”
Grayson just looked at the guy. The Reaper didn’t understand. If he did, he wouldn’t be insisting that Grayson reveal his darkest secret to the only girl he’d ever loved.
“I can’t,” he said, his voice a hard edge.
“She’s worried, Grayson. She thinks you’re dying.”
“I know!” he shouted out of frustration.
Aiken stared at him, no trace of sarcasm or humor in his eyes. The laughing, taunting Reaper was nowhere to be found. There was only a fellow zombie now. “The longer you wait, the worse she’ll be hurt.”
He knew that. Grayson knew that.
But there was no way he could look into her sweet blue eyes and tell her what he was. He would rather die and rise all over again. Fifty times. A hundred times.
He was a coward. He knew it as he said his next words. “I cannot do it.”
“Fine. Then I will.”
“No.” The word that was meant as a command escaped Grayson’s mouth as a breath instead.
“She deserves to know, Grayson. If you don’t tell her by tomorrow, I will.”
Grayson couldn’t tell her. Couldn’t stand the thought of her knowing at all. But he especially couldn’t imagine actually saying it.
I’m not human. I’m dead. I’m a riser. I’m a zombie.
There must be something he could do to stop Aiken.
Grayson felt like his world was crumbling, as if his feet stood upon a foundation of collapsing stones. He realized that his dream of dancing with Cori and watching the sunrise would be nothing more than that—a dream. He felt his limbs go numb as he realized that after tomorrow, his arms would never hold her again, his lips would never kiss her again, his fingers…they would never slip in and out of her hair again. But worse than all that, he wouldn’t be able to make her smile any more or dry her tears or watch her laugh at Rex during lunch.
“Y-You can’t do that,” he tried. “Leiv said Reapers can’t interfere with a Save.” His voice was a broken mess.
“In this case, I can.” Aiken didn’t say it in a cruel way. He was just stating a fact. “My job is to keep zombies from hurting humans. You are hurting her by not telling her what you are. Think about it, Grayson. Her dad—”
“You asked for my help and in return you want to…to ruin me?” Grayson was grasping at things, something to sway him.
The Reaper shook his head. “No. I’m not trying to ruin you. I’m trying to help you.”
It was over. The end was coming quickly and hard and brutally.
Grayson was breathing hard. His chest ached. His eyes burned. The bell rang and he noticed that even his ears hurt.
Half in a daze, half in terror he went from the bathroom as fast as he could.
Grayson was late to class, but Cori wasn’t thinking about that.
Worse than simply dying…
Aiken’s words and the chilling way they’d sounded over the phone last night snaked through her mind for the thousandth time.
What did they mean?
Dying would be paradise…
Cori didn’t know a lot about terminal illnesses, but she’d always assumed that the suffering was so great that when the end came, it was a welcomed thing. She supposed that was what Aiken had meant. But something about it struck her wrong. The feeling that she was missing something nagged at her.
Grayson arrived, looking ill. He’d been fine at lunch. Did he need water again?
Cori bit her lip. Hard.
Something was wrong.
She reached out and touched her fingertips to his cold hand and he flinched. Flinched? What was wrong with him?
While she continued staring at their hands—hers trying to make a connection and his lying lame against the desk—Aiken walked in. He too looked wrong. Not himself. She glanced at him questioningly and got a shrug in return.
The classroom was relatively quiet and she shouldn’t have tried, but she felt like she would be sick if she didn’t figure out what was wrong. So she said, “Grayson?”
He still didn’t look at her. She felt like she did that day after he’d been up to her bedroom, when he’d made her cry and then apologized so sweetly. She felt like she’d been slapped.
Cori swallowed hard. “Please,” she barely whispered. She didn’t even know if her voice had made a sound or if her lips had just moved.
Grayson finally looked at her, though. His eyes were so green they almost matched the grass outside. His mouth was a wide flat line. But he squeezed her fingers once, quickly, and then pretended to pay attention to whatever the teacher was saying.
After class the two of them walked silently through the hall until they’d reached Cori’s locker. As she fumbled with the combination she decided to try again.
“Are you okay?”
He nodded, looking at the ground. Still, he said nothing as they went on to their next class.
For the rest of the day, Cori worried. She tried to catch Aiken in the halls to ask him about it, but he was elusive. When the last bell finally rang she went looking for Grayson. He wasn’t at his locker or hers. Cori waited until most of the students had cleared out and it was obvious that he wasn’t coming before she ventured outside.
She found him waiting just outside the main doors. He was leaned against the brick wall, his hands looped in his pockets, but he looked anything but casual. He straightened when she came near.
Cori approached him warily, like you might approach a wounded animal, afraid he would bolt away or something.
“I thought you’d left,” she said quietly.
Grayson shook his head, his eyebrows forming a deep V above his nose. When he stepped toward her and grabbed her hand, Cori released the breath she’d been holding.
“Do you have plans tonight?” he asked. He was staring at the hand he held, running the pad of his thumb across her nails.
“It’s Friday,” she said softly. “You know I don’t.”
He met her eyes for a moment, and her heart stuttered. The intensity there was alarming, and it sent a wave of panic through her. Somehow things had changed drastically since lunch—and not for the better.
“Can you…will you…spend tonight with me?”
The request was strange, and she
was sure the look on her face reflected her thoughts.
“I mean, uh, you’ve never been to my house and I thought tonight we could, you know, go there instead of the river. If you want to, that is.”
“Yeah, sure. As long as I’m home by curfew it should be fine.”
He looked at their hands again. “Could you…stay later than curfew? Could you stay until the sun comes up?”
Cori squinted up at him. “What exactly are you asking?” Her heart was pounding. A silly girl might have assumed his request meant he wanted to “spend the night” with her, in the biblical sense. But she wasn’t a silly girl and she had the sinking feeling that this meant something else—something bad.
Before he answered, he brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it carefully.
“I just want to spend time with you,” he said, trying too hard to sound normal. “Nothing more. I promise.”
Immediately Cori’s mind raced, trying to figure out a good cover story—if her mom even decided to wonder where she was.
“Okay,” she told him. “What time do you want to meet?”
His hand went up to her hair. “Right now sounds good.”
Cori smiled a little. “I have to go home first.”
“I’ll come get you in an hour?”
Cori nodded. “An hour.”
Chapter 21
Racing toward the End
TONIGHT MIGHT AS WELL BE the last night of Grayson’s life.
At least it was the last night of his life that he would consider actually living. Every day and night after this one would simply be existing. Because he had to. For his family’s sake.
Before, when he was human, he didn’t know when the end was coming so he didn’t celebrate his last night. But tonight he would make the best of things. He would make memories to hoard away for when he could no longer recall being happy. Since he was a zombie, perhaps the ones he made tonight with Cori would last him until the Age of Deterioration.
Leiv and Raina would both be gone tonight—Leiv was pulling a double shift, something he’d been doing a lot lately, and Raina was traveling to Portland for an overnight shopping trip (electronics, not clothes, she’d specified)—so Grayson and Cori would have the house to themselves.
On his way to pick her up, he stopped to get flowers because that’s what he would’ve done on the night of the dance. He chose tulips even when the saleslady tried to get him to go with roses. Roses reminded him of the Hawthorp grave. Tulips reminded him of Cori. Simple and not simple all at the same time.
At her house, Grayson knocked on the front door. No peeping in windows this time…
Memory #1: The way she looked when she answered the door. She’d changed into a dark purple shirt that made her eyes look like ice. A dark curtain of hair framed her face, and Grayson swore he’d never seen a more beautiful sight.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t know if he could. He just handed her the tulips. Cori’s polar eyes got really wide then.
“What are these for?” she murmured through a smile.
Grayson shrugged. “Just because.”
“They’re pretty. Thank you.”
He could tell the flowers made her happy, and he couldn’t help the little ribbon of pride that went through him.
“No one’s ever gotten me flowers before. Well, no one except my daddy.”
“I’m glad I was the first,” he said.
Grayson waited, feeling slightly awkward, while she went and put the flowers in water.
When they were both buckled into his car, he said, “Are you hungry?”
Cori nodded. “Maybe a little.”
Good. He wanted to take her to Erma’s. He’d never eaten there since they didn’t serve raw meat, but it was the kind of place where every table felt secluded. Grayson wanted to try to guess what she would order off the menu, and then watch her reaction as she sampled the meal. Would she order ice cream for dessert? He knew how much she liked it.
They’d never gone on a dinner date before. This would be their first. And most certainly their last.
She ended up ordering lasagna and Caesar salad. He’d guessed spaghetti and meatballs. For dessert, she had cheesecake.
Memory #2: The way she looked when she tasted that cheesecake. On the first bite, her eyelashes fluttered closed over those expressive eyes and for a moment, Grayson was annoyed that he wouldn’t be able to read her. But then she made a little noise of intense satisfaction and all annoyance was instantly erased.
“Wanna bite?” she asked when she realized he was staring at her lips.
Grayson shook his head. But then he leaned forward and kissed the flavor from her lips like he’d wanted to do when he’d watched her eat that banana. When he pulled back, Cori was staring at him.
“Tastes good,” he said.
Her cheeks blushed ten shades of red.
“How come you never eat?”
“I do. Just not…I have…a special diet.”
A crease formed between her eyebrows. “Like what?”
He downed some ice water before answering. This was a horrible topic. “Just…you know, things that are easy to…digest.”
Cori stopped chewing, her eyes falling to her plate.
Luckily, the waiter came with the check.
Next stop was his house. He gave her a short tour of the place he called home before showing her his room. For the first time in his memory, he was a little nervous. What would she think of his room? It was kind of dark. He liked blue and black and gray so that’s what his room was done in. There was a large TV hanging on the wall and dark wooden bookshelves with books and DVDs loaded into them and a desk with his computer on it. He’d put away all his weapons earlier, so there was nothing like that lying around.
Grayson held the door open for Cori as she stepped in and looked around.
“You know, you didn’t tell me you lived in a mansion.”
He looked at her quizzically.
“I’m pretty sure your bedroom is the size of my living room,” she explained.
“Oh.” He shrugged.
“Whose money funded this castle anyway?”
He gave her a sideways grin. “It’s hardly a castle, but mostly Raina’s. She’s a computer genius. She helped develop that video game, Grave Raider. Ever heard of it?”
“I’ve heard of the movie.”
He grinned. “It was a video game first.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Really? Wow. So, Raina the gamer. She’s so, you know, glamorous. I never would’ve expected that.”
Cori went and sat down on his bed. He sat next to her.
“Well, what are we going to do until the sun comes up?” she asked.
He thought about it. Really, they could count sheep and stare at the carpet for all he cared. As long as he could be near her while they were doing it.
“We can watch a movie if you want,” he suggested.
Cori nodded. “Whatcha got?”
Grayson went over to one of the bookshelves. He didn’t have any movies she would be interested in, so he ran downstairs to check the den. He brought up an armful of miscellaneous videos and Cori chose one.
The two of them settled back against his headboard, Cori nestled in the crook of his arm. He wished…he wished…
Grayson cut the thought off before it got started. It didn’t matter what he wished. He had to remember what this night was really about. It wasn’t a casual movie night, just one of many. No, it was a night to say goodbye, both to what they had and to what would never be. Wishful thinking was not allowed.
Grayson didn’t watch a single second of the movie. He only watched her.
Memory #3: Her facial expressions. He wanted them burned into the backs of his eyelids. How she looked when she was happy. How she looked when she was excited. Even how she looked when she was sad. He wanted to remember how she always pressed her lips together when she was thinking.
Suddenly, the same sense of loss that had overcome him in the bathroom w
ith Aiken threatened to overtake him again. He pulled her closer, his arms already aching at the idea that by this time tomorrow, she would be forever out of his reach.
When the movie concluded she turned her face up to him. They were so close he could feel her short little breaths hitting his cheek.
“You want to watch another one?” he asked. He wouldn’t mind watching her face for another hour and a half. He still had a lot to memorize: the curve of her cheek, the ridge of her eyebrow, the wisp of her lashes, the few freckles that dotted her nose…
Cori shook her head. “I’d rather talk.”
“What would you like to talk about?” he asked while he kissed her by her ear.
Memory #4: The way she smelled. Her fresh rain scent. He breathed it in, willing it to burn into his lungs in a permanent way.
“I want to talk about serious things,” she said, looking into his eyes.
“Like what?” But he knew what, and it made him feel cold all over, the kind of cold that almost burned.
Cori reached for his hand, linking her fingers with his. “I want you to tell me about your illness.”
He stared at her for a long time. He was suddenly aware they wouldn’t make it to see the sunrise he’d hoped for.
“I already told you, I can’t.”
“Grayson, I want to understand what’s going on with you.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “Tell me,” she urged.
“You don’t need to understand,” he barked. “It’s none of your business.”
Cori yanked her hand away and stood up. “How can you say that to me?” She said the words so very quietly, but Grayson knew there was a fire behind them.
“Because. It’s true. You don’t need to be thinking about my problems.”
Her eyes grew narrow and her chin lifted stubbornly. “Do you ever think about mine?” she asked. “Do you concern yourself with my mom never being home or how I’m handling my father’s death?”
Grayson’s brow furrowed and he sat up to get closer to her. “Of course I do. You know that.”
“But you expect me to ignore yours? What kind of relationship is that?”
“The kind that works,” he snapped. She was quiet for a minute, and he wished he hadn’t said it.