“Now…Liam, is it?”
“Henry. Please, just call me Henry. I don’t go by Liam.”
“Okay, whatever. Anyway, obviously you are hiding something fucking enormous so I would say that it would be easy for you to just, let’s say, produce fake paperwork.”
Henry shook his head. “Please, just listen.” He held up his hand. I sighed and finished cleaning up Claire. “I’m from England.”
“Hello? Remember me?” I pointed at myself. “Sherlock-Fucking-Holmes,” I said in an annoyed tone. “Chalk one up for me because I have this phenomenal skill of placing people in the proper geographical locations based on their accents alone.”
“Damn it, Elaina! Please, this is urgent and I need you to listen. We are all in trouble here! I’m trying to be honest so shut it for a few minutes.”
He won that one, but next time... “Okay, fine.” I started to bite my lip, trying to prevent another outburst with the utmost maturity, of course.
“I’ve been living in the States with Harold and Margaret, who are also undercover. I don’t have time to get into all that right now. It’s far too complicated. We will talk about that at a later point.”
I threw my hands up in the air. It never occurred to me that Harold and Margaret weren’t Henry’s parents. They always called him “my boy”. I never would have thought to question it because they seemed to have a very loving relationship. I would have never guessed that they weren’t a family.
I remember the first time I met them.
-March 2013-
Margaret had called Henry one weekend afternoon, while we were still lying in bed, recovering from yet another exhilarating sex marathon. She hadn’t heard from him in a while, and she was just checking on him.
She invited him over for dinner that night. He looked at me. I nodded, and he happily accepted her request. He asked if he could bring a date. She was beyond ecstatic since she had never met any of his girlfriends before.
“Just to forewarn you… She is a bit overzealous.” He sounded worried and unenthused.
“It’ll be fine.” I smiled at him as I got up and sauntered my naked butt to the shower. He leaped out of bed and chased right behind me.
After a round of some shower fun, we left the house and pulled up to their quaint home on the outskirts of town. It was cute and neat as a pin. Perfect landscaping, as well. My mother would have swooned over all the colorful flowers and the perfectly manicured bushes.
As soon as Henry shut off the truck, Margaret and Harold burst out of the house.
“My boy! How have you been?” Margaret embraced him in a crushing hug. Henry had about a foot or so on her and I would estimate near one hundred pounds, as well. She had the typical older mom wardrobe: collared shirt, and pants that looked like a flood was coming in. Her hair and her make-up were perfection, just like her landscaping.
Harold shook Henry’s hand instead of embracing him, and smiled with pride. He was the same height as Henry, but scrawny and thin as a rail. He was bald and had very telling eyes. His attire was much like an older dad matching his mom’s style: plaid button-down shirt, and khaki pants.
“Still having some circulation issues, I see,” Harold said.
Henry pulled his hand back and looked at it. “Yeah, the doctors are still baffled. You know me. I like to keep things interesting.” They shared a laugh.
“Well…aren’t you going to introduce us to this beautiful young lady?” Margaret was so excited to see me. She could have given a clapping seal a run for its money.
“Yes, sorry. This is my Elaina.” He wrapped his arm around my waist and smiled with great pride. It was so sweet and melted my heart.
“I’m Margaret, and this is Harold.” She came right over and hugged me. “This is so exciting! He has never brought a girl home!” I looked at Henry and he shrugged his shoulders.
Harold took both of my hands and held them for a moment. I smiled at him. “You are just stunning. Excellent choice, my boy! Haven’t seen him smile like that in a long time.”
“Well, you don’t know me yet. I can be quite surprising sometimes.” I smirked.
“Sounds like exactly what our Henry needs. A little less routine and a little more…dare I say, wild?” Margaret chuckled.
“Oh, Christ,” Henry mumbled. I looked at him and laughed. If she only knew…
“Well, anyway, please come in. Dinner is almost ready! I made your favorite!”
“Excellent!” Henry smiled appreciatively. Then he looked at me and apologized under his breath. I laughed. “Not funny, love.”
“Oh, yes, it is.” I have never met a more enthusiastic woman in my entire life. I wondered if she took too many Prozacs.
As soon as we walked into the house, which was lavishly decorated for such a cozy home, Margaret had us sit at the dining room table. Harold opened the first bottle of wine. “This is a spectacular year. Once I told Henry about this wine, he bought us several cases to keep us stocked up.”
“Well, aren’t you a peach?” I said with a grin.
“That I am, my love. That I am.” We laughed and sipped the delicious wine.
“Is there anything that I can do to help with dinner?” I asked Margaret, hoping she would say no.
“Oh no, sweetie. You sit just there and enjoy yourself. It’s almost ready. I just need to dish it up.” She smiled and happily headed back into the kitchen. Harold, Henry, and I kicked back and enjoyed our glasses of wine.
Within minutes, dinner was served. She served us salad, beef stew, and buttermilk biscuits. Henry groaned when she placed the bowl of stew in front of him.
I loved that groan. I heard it several times the night before, and maybe a few times before lunch, as well. I smirked at him. He reached under the table and squeezed my thigh.
“Best ever. I swear.” Without pause, he dipped his spoon in and lifted it to his mouth, just as Margaret glared at him with a raised eyebrow. “Yes…sorry,” he said as he set the spoon down and pulled his salad in front of him.
“Still too hot to eat. Salad first, like always, my boy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered in embarrassment. I laughed. I loved seeing him knocked off his high horse. It was truly funny.
Margaret cleared her throat as Henry ate his salad in silence. “So, tell me, Elaina. How did you two meet?” I told her the story of Henry saving me from the flat tire and phone thieving fairies. They beamed with pride over his chivalrous behavior. I failed to mention that he was practically living with me the very next night.
The conversation carried on throughout the course of the evening, and two more bottles of wine were opened and drained. For dessert, Margaret served us French Silk chocolate pie and coffee in the living room.
I settled in between Henry’s arm and chest. He was so comfortable. All of their voices became more distant as I melted further into him. I tried to keep up, but I kept fading out. I didn’t realize I nodded off until he began rubbing his cool fingers on my cheek. “Love… wake up,” Henry said softly in my ear.
“Oh, god. I’m so sorry!” I sat up with a snort and wiped the drool off my face. Henry laughed, and I glared at him.
“Oh, sweetie, it’s fine.” His mother winked at me. “I fed you a rich meal and you had a couple glasses of wine.”
“She told me she didn’t sleep well last night. Something about a nightmare.” Nightmare, my ass. I glared at him.
“Oh, really? Henry gets horrible nightmares, too. Like night terrors. I hope it isn’t like those. They used to scare the hell out of us.” I knew all too well about those night terrors. I’ve had to talk him down from a few in our short couple months of being together.
I casually swatted my hand through the air. “Oh, it was just a regular old nightmare. I just couldn’t go back to sleep after it.” In reality, neither one of us slept much. We made love three times during the night, and again in the morning. I wasn’t sure what had gotten into him, but he was one horny toad.
“Glad to hear i
t. You should get this wonderful young lady back to her home, Henry, so she can get some rest.” I’m sure rest wasn’t in Henry’s mind. He was going to try to jump me again. I knew it from the devious look in his eyes.
“Yes, I do believe I should.” He smiled at me.
We said our goodbyes and headed out to his truck. He leaned back in his seat and laid his head back on the headrest, letting out a loud sigh of relief. I laughed at him. He didn’t think I was funny, by any means.
-October 2014-
“So, what you are telling me is that everything is a lie?” I started to feel sad and helpless as I stared at Henry, waiting for some sort of truthful response.
“No. Not everything. Remember, I love you so much. I cannot express that enough. I wouldn’t have proposed if I didn’t. You are the first woman in my life that brought me to my knees. Others were just a fling or a one-night stand. What I feel for you is, without a doubt, real. When you feel loved by me, that is real. It’s not a lie, or fake.” I wasn’t sure if what he was saying was true, but I so wanted to believe him with my entire body and soul that he truly did love me. He paused for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to finish. “But, yes, my life is a lie.”
As angry as I was at him, I loved him with every fiber of my being. I nodded with acknowledgement that I believed his love for me was true, even though I was unsure. I wanted it to be true.
Claire lay back on the couch, staring at the ceiling, and it looked like she was completely and utterly lost. I was with her on that. “Can we get to the point? I lost Marc out there to those people…or not people. I don’t give two shits about your love for one another at the moment! Just get on with it, would you already?” Claire’s words came out with venom and frustration. She was angry and her proper etiquette flew right out the window. Rightfully so. I was angry for her.
“Yes, I’m so sorry, Claire, for what happened to Marc. I considered him one of my few friends.” Henry seemed genuine in his sorrow.
He took a deep breath and started talking again. “I’m an agent for the government. My job is to keep tabs on special diseases. One, in particular.” Henry started to rub his chin. I desperately wanted to rub his five o’clock shadow. He was shaved so perfectly and to my liking. “I was relocated here, to the States, a few years ago to keep track of it, and to provide necessary action against this disease.”
“What kind of disease are you talking about?” I hoped curiosity wouldn’t kill this cat.
“In layman’s terms, it’s a zombie virus. Or, as we call them, ‘undeads’.”
“Shut the fuck up.” I sat back and rolled my eyes. I was a pro at that. “That’s not real. What a joke! It’s movies and TV shows. It’s just something that was made up. Something all those doomsday preppers prepare for. No fucking way.” My vocal chords no longer worked, but I kept mouthing No fucking way. I looked over at Claire. She looked to be in shock.
“Yes, fucking way. My job is to keep track of it. Our governments created this bloody virus in the lab, and my government wants to keep tabs on it. It’s extraordinarily dangerous…as you have already experienced.” I flashed back to Henry taking out our pastor and limo driver. I started to feel sick to my stomach again.
He continued. “Your government doesn’t know about me. They have no idea that England has planted people like me here. That is one reason why I haven’t told you the truth. If they knew about me, I would be in danger. You would be in danger. Anyone affiliated with me would be in danger. I was just trying to protect you.”
It was a difficult pill for me to swallow. It was uncoated, and the size of a boulder. I felt like my stomach was trying to escape out of my mouth.
“Elaina, if this virus gets out of control, we, as a population, would be annihilated.”
“Out of control?” I laughed, knowing what I saw today was the purest example of out of control. “So how did it get out then, if you are supposed to be keeping track of it? Sounds like someone’s going to get fired. And why the hell would they create something like this?” I admit there was a little attitude behind my words.
He ignored my “getting fired” statement. “Well, it was created because they can. I don’t know why they did it. It’s a super virus. The only cure is true death.”
“True death?”
“Yes. True death.”
“Like on that vampire show…when they say true death?”
“Yes...well, no. Sort of, but not vampires. There’s no such thing as vampires!”
“But there is such a thing as zombies?!” He was flustered at my reference, like he took offense to it.
“Once the virus enters the body while the brain is still intact, the body ‘dies’.” He used air quotes. “And then it reanimates. The virus lives in the brain. It’s attracted to the electrical signals and feeds off of clean blood. The person could be missing all four limbs, have bled nearly every last drop, and they would reanimate. It drives the body to hunt down more blood.”
“Wait. Are you saying that Marc is out there right now eating people?” Claire started shaking all over. I could tell she was going to start sobbing again.
“Yes, my dear, I’m sorry to say.” Henry reached for Claire, but she shoved his hands away. “If he hasn’t had a true death, he will be doing the same to others as Pastor Jones did to him. I only gave the pastor and the limo driver true death because they were the immediate threat. I needed to get you two out of there before something happened to you.”
She fell over onto my shoulder and cried. “I can’t believe it. My Marc…”
Henry cut her off. “Once he is exposed to the virus, he’s no longer the person you knew. It controls the brain.” Claire curled up into a ball on the couch with her head in my lap.
I didn’t even know how to console my best friend. There were no words that would have made it better for her. Or for me, really. My family, my friends, his fake family... they all were in danger, or had become the danger.
While sitting there in silence, trying to process all the new information, we heard a high-pitched scream from outside. Henry jumped up and looked out the front window.
“Shit!” He jammed his hands in his pockets…looking for keys maybe? “Shit,” he said again as he dashed off to his bedroom, coming back just as quick as he left, all the while pulling on his boots. He unlocked the trunk with a key. There was another, more modern trunk inside with a keypad. He plugged in a code and the lid opened on its own. I couldn’t believe what I saw.
It was an arsenal of weapons. There was some serious shit in there and I couldn’t believe my sweet Henry was versed, or even involved, with it. He pulled out a shotgun and loaded it, while jamming extra shells in his pockets. He pointed a finger at me. “Stay here. And I mean it this time. Do not leave the flat, and lock the door behind me.” He ran out, slamming the door. I did what I was told and locked it. Then I ran over to the front window, only to see this poor woman being eaten by another…human.
“Should we call the police?” Claire asked, while we both stared out the window in disbelief.
“Uh, I don’t know. Let’s wait until Henry comes back…if he comes back.” My voice began to get shaky.
It was official. I, Elaina Leigh Cooper, was scared out of my fucking mind.
I was so scared that I lost my sarcasm. I couldn’t crack a joke or roll my eyes. I was transfixed on Henry -- or was it Liam. Henry. Yes, he said Henry.
He was a machine with no emotion. It was like he had been killing these so-called undeads his entire life. He walked up behind the undead, raised his shotgun and, just as the former living human turned around, he pumped it and pulled the trigger.
The undead’s brains splattered all over. He looked down at the woman who lost her true life to this former human. I saw him say something to her and he stroked her cheek gently while she cried. She reached up to him. He touched her hair as he spoke to her. She nodded. He pumped the shotgun again, put it to her head, and pulled the trigger.
Both Claire
and I screamed. I whispered, “Oh, my god, Claire.” Tears welled up in my eyes. We had just witnessed a murder. Wait, was it really a murder? Would killing a person who obviously had been infected with the man-eating virus and would do the same to others be considered murder? I wasn’t so sure anymore.
I was so confused. I had mixed emotions about everything. If Henry was who he said he was, then he knew what he was doing. He knew that if this woman became undead, we would have all been in danger.
“Elaina, I don’t think I can handle all this.” Claire dropped to her knees and started crying again.
“I am not sure what to even think. Just an hour ago, I was supposed to have been married to the man of my dreams. We would have been at my reception right now, having drinks and dancing like fools. This can’t be real. I can’t believe Henry has been hiding all of this from me.”
“It is real, Elaina! Wake up! Marc is gone. Everyone we knew at the wedding is gone. We’re all going to die, Elaina.”
I knelt down. “We’re all going to die, anyway.” I was trying to tuck my emotions away in a pocket that I didn’t have in my stupid dress. I tried to console Claire, but I don’t always say the right things.
“It’s not supposed to be like this!”
“You’re right. It’s not. I’m sorry.” I reached down and grabbed her hands. Then we both jumped when we heard pounding on the apartment door.
“Elaina! Open the door!” I got up, went to the door, and I put my hand on the knob. I hesitated. “Elaina, please. Open the bloody door!” How could I be sure that we would be safe from Henry? What if he was bit and I let him in? He would kill us both. “Elaina! Claire!”
He kept pounding. I was looking at Claire for permission. She looked at me for permission. Then she jumped up and rummaged through the chest and pulled out some sort of archaic-looking double-sided axe. She handed it to me. “Here. Take this.” I felt somewhat empowered with this well-crafted medieval-style weapon. I held it up like a baseball bat.
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