Fatal

by T. A. Brock

  “I can’t figure out why you don’t trust me with this,” she said almost to herself.

  Damn it. He didn’t want to fight tonight. He didn’t want her standing so far away from him; he wanted her to be in his arms. So he tried to make it happen, but she pulled away.

  “Cori…”

  “No, Grayson. We need to talk about this.” Her voice was shaky but her expression was firm.

  No matter though, there was nothing to talk about.

  Grayson crossed his arms and stared at the bathroom door.

  “Listen to me,” she urged. “I need you to talk to me about things. I want to be there for you. I…I…Grayson, please let me in. Let me help you.”

  He kept his eyes locked on the door, his arms remained crossed, doing exactly the opposite of letting her in.

  After several moments passed she said, “Are you just going to ignore me? Grayson?”

  Finally he looked at her. “I don’t want to talk about it and I’m asking you to forget it.”

  Tears glistened in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. “You want me to forget that you have a disease that makes you deathly ill if you don’t drink enough water?” she whispered. “You want me to forget that at any given time you could…could…” Her voice cracked.

  “Yes,” he said immediately. “That’s what I want.”

  Memory #5: The way her face looks when she’s hurt. He didn’t want to remember it, but he knew he would. And he would always know that he’d made it look that way.

  “I can’t do that,” Cori said in a surprisingly strong voice. “You’re asking for the impossible. I can’t not care, Grayson.”

  There was nothing more to say. They both stared at the floor as he tried to brace himself for what was coming next.

  There was plenty he wanted to say. Like, “You’re everything I’ve been waiting for” and “I want this night to last longer” and “I can’t believe I love you so much.” But none of it would ever be said. Grayson just couldn’t fathom forming those kinds of words. Ever. And it wouldn’t be fair to her anyway because after tomorrow none of what he said would matter.

  So he ended up saying, “Do you want me to take you home?”

  She looked at him and slowly shook her head. “I can walk.”

  Memory #6: “Bye, Grayson.”

  Memory #7: The way it felt to watch her walk out the door. Like a lung being ripped out.

  Memory #8: The way it felt knowing that this was how they were ending. And here, he’d planned for a kiss under the rising sun.

  Cori made it down the stairs and out the front door before the volley of tears started falling. She didn’t bother to brush them away. She just walked as fast as she could toward home. It was dark outside, but the quaint little streetlamps that were a signature in Asher lighted her way.

  She couldn’t believe how the night had ended. How could Grayson be so…so…stubborn? Why did he insist on doing this alone? Why couldn’t he let her be there for him?

  It was obvious he was getting worse. Soon he would be gone just like her daddy.

  Her chest was tight, the compulsion to return to him hard to resist. It was the same feeling she’d had on her first day at Westland. The same way she’d felt when she helped Grayson get to the bathroom.

  She ignored it.

  Cori was about two blocks from home when her phone rang. She didn’t check the ID before she answered.

  “Yeah?” Her voice was thick with tears but she couldn’t care.

  “Cori? Is that you?” It was Aiken.

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  He was silent for a moment before he said, “Are you okay?”

  She wondered if she should lie and say yes just to get him off the phone. “What did you need, Aiken?” she said instead.

  “Well, uh, I just got a call…from Grayson.”

  This surprised her enough to make her stop walking. “Since when did you two become buddies?”

  “Doesn’t really matter,” he said. “He called because he wanted me to talk to you.”

  Cori started walking again. “Well, save it because I’ve already had enough for tonight.”

  She didn’t want to hear any more about how she should just forget that her boyfriend was sick.

  Aiken sighed over the phone. “He didn’t tell you.”

  “Oh, he told me a lot of things. Like I should ignore the fact that he’s dying and that I don’t need to concern myself with his problems. He doesn’t trust me.”

  There was some more silence and then an irritated huff. “I will tell you.”

  Cori stopped walking for the second time. “What?”

  “I’ll tell you everything, Cori,” he promised.

  “You will?”

  “Yes. But not tonight. Tomorrow.”

  Cori knew she’d never be able to sleep. “Why not tonight?”

  She passed two lampposts before Aiken answered her question. “Because I want you to be absolutely sure. You need to realize that what I tell you will change everything. For you, for Grayson. You have to decide if knowing is that important to you.”

  Aiken’s tone was so serious Cori felt a worrisome chill slide up her spine. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “I mean you have a choice. You can let this go and keep things the way they are. You two seem happy. It would be smart to just let Grayson deal with his…sickness. Or I can tell you the truth and I promise, things will be different.”

  “Different good or different bad?” Cori asked. Her fingers felt numb for how tightly she held the phone.

  “I guess that’s up to you, really.”

  Well if it was up to her, it would be different good. “Okay, then I want to know the truth.” Decision made.

  “Sleep on it, Cori. Decide tomorrow.”

  “Fine,” she agreed, frustrated. But only because she knew he wouldn’t give in.

  As Cori started toward her house again, she couldn’t help feeling like tomorrow was doomsday.

  After he called Aiken, Grayson walked to Cori’s house. Just to make sure she’d made it home all right. When he got there, the light was on in the kitchen, so he peeked through the window. Apparently he would be peep-tomming it tonight after all.

  Cori was leaning against the counter, a carton of ice cream in one hand, a spoon in the other. Her eyes were red-rimmed. Angrily, she jammed the spoon into the carton and came out with a gooey lump of ice cream. Grayson continued to watch as she dumped the ice cream back into the container and slammed it down on the counter.

  He wanted to go to her, wanted to say something to make things better, but it was too late. It was over now. They were no longer racing toward the end—they were there. It was only a matter of hours before she found out his horrible truth. Now he just hoped that when she looked back over their time together, she didn’t despise what they’d had.

  Please don’t let her regret our time together. Who he was pleading with, he wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter.

  Grayson took one last look at his Save and, with despair that squeezed his chest like a vice, pushed away from the window.

  Chapter 22

  Monsters Are Really Real

  CORI SLEPT HORRIBLY THAT NIGHT. Dreams of Grayson watching a sunrise haunted her. He was so alone. She wanted to be there for him, with him. She could feel the bitter despair as the rays went from muted to brilliant. And every time she tried to go to him, the rays reached out and burned her. They wouldn’t let her near.

  When she’d woken, she couldn’t get back to sleep. She even heard her mom leaving for work before dawn. Her nerves were too raw for sleep, and she didn’t want to revisit her nightmare.

  To busy herself until Aiken called, she decided to make pancakes. She cooked several stacks of them even though there was nobody but her around to eat them.

  By noon he still hadn’t called and she couldn’t wait a second longer. She’d already chewed all her nails off—and she wasn’t even a nail biter.

  She dialed his number.

/>   “Oh, hey, Cori,” he answered casually, as if she wasn’t waiting on pins and needles for him to explain Grayson’s mysteries to her.

  She got right to the point. “I made my decision,” she said. “I want the truth.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, seriously. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  As she hung up she wondered briefly if she’d made the right choice. For so long she’d worried about pushing Grayson to talk because she feared it would complicate things. But after last night she realized that no matter what, this illness was going to come between them. Somehow, some way. The best thing to do was to face it head on. Right?

  Once she knew everything, she would go to him and make him see that they were in this together. No matter what. No matter if he was dying. No matter if she would lose him eventually.

  She loved him.

  Cori was sure he didn’t love her back. Not yet. But that was okay. She assumed it was hard to fall in love with someone when you knew you were going to die. Probably even harder to let someone love you, she realized.

  Aiken showed up twenty minutes later.

  “I think you should sit down, Cori,” he said when she brought him into the living room.

  She was anxious and nervous and really didn’t want to be sitting but she did it anyway. Anything to speed things along.

  Aiken didn’t sit, though. He stood off from her, against the wall.

  “What I’m about to tell you…You’re going to find it pretty unbelievable. It might even scare you. But rest assured, you’re not in any danger and you never have been.” His voice was flat, neutral.

  Cori’s brow furrowed but she didn’t interrupt.

  “You know how you think Grayson’s sick?” She nodded. “Well, that’s not exactly the case. Grayson and I…we’re different. Different from you or Peg or Rex. We can’t eat food like you can, and well, you know about the water. There are other limitations as well. However, in many ways we are like you: we think like you, have feelings like you, we breathe like you—” Aiken paused, waiting for her to say something. So she did.

  “What do you mean different?”

  “We are…not exactly human. We used to be, though,” he added quickly.

  Cori’s jaw dropped, her mouth hanging open like a baby bird waiting for its next meal.

  “That is not funny, Aiken,” she hissed, her expression scathing. “Did you and Grayson make this up to get me to stop asking questions?”

  Aiken raised an eyebrow as if he hadn’t considered that tack. “No, Cori. It’s the truth. And you’re right. It isn’t funny at all.”

  Cori jumped off the couch, fists clenched. “You really expect me to believe that you aren’t human? What are you then? A vampire? A werewolf? Wait, lemme guess…a leprechaun?”

  “We’re risers.”

  Riser. She’d never heard of that. For a moment she felt dumb about her outburst.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Okay, don’t freak out. A more common name for what we are would be…zombie.”

  Riser. Zombie. Riser, like rising from the dead.

  “It’s not as bad as you think.” Still he stood there with that calm demeanor. As if he wasn’t claiming to be a walking Mary Shelley tale or something.

  Cori crossed her arms over her chest. Un-freaking-believable. Here she thought she’d be getting answers today. Real ones.

  “I don’t expect you to believe it without proof,” he offered.

  “And you can do that? Prove to me that you are a zombie? Shouldn’t your skin be falling off or…or shouldn’t you be trying to eat my brains or something?”

  “Our skin doesn’t fall off until we reach the Age of Deterioration, and we don’t eat brains. Well, most of us don’t.” As an afterthought he added, “And yes, I can prove that I am not human.”

  Cori just stared at him. Even if he could prove it, she wouldn’t be able to believe it. It was ridiculous. Zombies didn’t exist.

  “Would you like me to show you?” Aiken asked after she’d been glaring at him for too long.

  Cori shook her head. “No. I want you to leave.”

  “Look, I told you this would change things. I tried to make you see that some things you’re better off not knowing. But you said you wanted the truth. Well, here it is,” he insisted.

  “You’re crazy. You can’t expect me to believe what you’re saying. I won’t fall for this…this…whatever it is.”

  He stared at her for two seconds. Then he pulled out a serious looking dagger. The shiny black handle glinted in the light.

  Cori threw her hands up. “Whoa, whoa—”

  Her protests were interrupted when he sliced the blade down the inside of his forearm. Instantly, his skin split open and brownish colored flesh peeked out. Another millisecond later the wound was bleeding. But it wasn’t blood. It was…it was…dirty water? Or that’s the only description Cori could come up with.

  “Aiken!” Cori exclaimed, panicked. “What did you do? Oh God, Aiken!”

  “Look at it, Cori.” He seemed to not be in any pain, his expression solid. “Look at my blood. It isn’t like yours. It isn’t human.”

  Cori was too alarmed to care. “Aiken, we have to get you to a hospital. Now! Oh my God, you’re gonna need stitches. Lots of them.”

  Calm as ever, Aiken walked to the kitchen, dripping brown blood on the tile. Cori followed him, pleading.

  “Where are you going? We have to go now, Aiken. Aiken?”

  He went to the sink and grabbed a glass. “Cori, calm down and watch.”

  She was still stuttering out protests as he filled the glass from the tap and downed it. Then another. And another. She was about to attempt to physically drag him out of the house when she noticed the wound was getting smaller, the skin weaving back together as if by magic. Two more glasses and the cut was completely sealed, only leaving a thin gray-brown line. Another glass of water and even that was gone.

  “W-Wha—” She’d lost the ability to form intelligent words.

  Aiken dried his arm off and looked at her. “Water. It is our life force, for lack of a better word. It heals us, sustains us…we have to have it to survive.”

  Cori knew her eyes were as big as bowling balls as she looked back and forth from his arm to his face. Only then did it really hit her that his blood had been brown. Brown.

  She stepped backward, away from him.

  He noticed. “Cori, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

  Yeah, right, she thought. And then realized she’d said it out loud.

  “We don’t hurt humans.”

  She took another step back.

  “Grayson?” was all she could manage.

  Aiken’s slow nod confirmed it. “He’s like me. Did you hear what I said, Cori? We don’t hurt humans.”

  “Who do you hurt then?”

  His brow furrowed, deep ridges. “Nobody. Unless we’re provoked. Or there’s a threat. We’re not evil.”

  Cori took another step back and hit the doorjamb. “You’re telling me you’re a good monster?”

  She thought his eyes might have flickered with hurt, but then it was gone. “I guess so. Yeah. I mean, it’s complicated.”

  He was still standing by the sink. He hadn’t moved an inch. Probably afraid of spooking her.

  “You…you shouldn’t have told me,” she mumbled.

  Aiken rolled his eyes and for the first time since he’d arrived, he seemed like himself…like the Aiken she knew. “I gave you a choice, remember. Come on, Cori. If I wanted to hurt you don’t you think I could’ve done it by now?”

  It was true. He was massive when compared to her—and he had a knife.

  “I just—I can’t. I need to think for a minute.”

  He held up both hands. “Fine. Take a minute. Take five.” He propped his hip against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. Casual. How could he be casual in a moment like this?

  Cori’s mind was a load of jumbled up thoughts. She couldn’
t believe what he was telling her, that zombies existed. But then, how could she deny it after watching his arm heal? The thought that Grayson was some sort of mythical monster was…disturbing? No, that wasn’t an accurate enough description.

  Oh God, was this for real? Her boyfriend was a zombie? But Aiken had said they weren’t dangerous. No, he’d said they didn’t hurt humans. She was pretty sure they were in fact very dangerous.

  But when she thought of how gentle Grayson was with her the night he’d dried her tears…

  How could he be a monster? It didn’t make sense.

  Just then, a horrifying thought hit her.

  “Am I…? Will I turn into one?”

  Aiken looked amused, which annoyed her. “We aren’t contagious. The contagious ones are…obvious. Think rotting, shuffling, and drooling. And trust me, you’d know it if you were gonna turn into one.”

  Cori let out a relieved breath. “How do you turn into one?”

  “No one is sure how the first riser came to be but as long as there have been humans, there have been zombies. These days, most of us are turned by another zombie.”

  “D-Do I want to know how?” Her heart was racing, her breath coming fast.

  “It involves our blood.”

  Cori’s eye darted to the sink. “A large amount of blood being placed directly into a human’s veins,” Aiken added. “They have to die first, and then rise before they can become one of us. Or you could get bitten of course, by a rotter, one that’s contagious.”

  “And when—how—does one become contagious?”

  “It happens when we get old. Our bodies start to decompose at an accelerated rate and the contagion in our blood becomes more potent. It infects our saliva, our cuticles…and it can be spread to others. We call it the Age of Deterioration or Age of Death because we can’t last long in that state.”

  Cori shivered involuntarily.

  “So Grayson isn’t dying?”

  “Not dying. No.” The implication was clear. He wasn’t dying because he was already dead. Or undead.

  Cori recalled all the time she’d spent with Grayson. Not once had she felt like she was in danger. Never had she wanted to escape him; she’d only ever wanted to be with him more. What did that say for her? That she was drawn to monsters? That two of her closest friends—one of whom she was in love with—were zombies?