by Adrian Birch
I nudged Kaypay with my heels. Chris held on tight behind me. The entire progression of horses, connected by a single rope and loaded with provisions, gear, and mounted refugees, followed Kaypay’s lead. I waved good-bye to Bill, and we headed toward the mountains.
* * *
The beginning of the journey was relatively easy. The trails weren’t very steep yet and no one got saddle sore. Everyone accepted the necessity of the blindfolds, and people fell into their own thoughts as they swayed atop the horses. Few of the refugees said much of anything. Even the baby was quiet.
When the sun set, it was much harder to navigate than I’d thought. We reached what was marked as Pines Bluff on my dad’s map after two in the morning. From there, we’d need to climb up a steep, winding incline. Chris and I decided to stop and let everyone sleep until dawn. No one complained. By this time, they were all sore and exhausted, but there had also been a release of tension as we moved farther into the mountains. The refugees had been living in constant fear of being discovered by the Home Guard, and now people were starting to feel safe.
I woke everyone up at first light. After rolling up my blanket, I made my way into a ravine to pee.
As I squatted behind a rock, I felt the Insta-Read test in my front pocket.
It had been bothering me that Chris wanted me to test myself. I was now basically certain that I hadn’t contracted the pathogen, but Chris’s suggestion had planted a doubt that had nagged me all night.
I succumbed to temptation and opened the Insta-Read package. If I tested myself now, at least I’d know for sure that I wasn’t sick. Then I could stop being preoccupied by it, and I could concentrate on finding the cliff dwellings. Besides, all of the refugees knew they were positive, and Chris knew he wasn’t. I was the only one who wasn’t sure.
The applicator was exactly the same as the one Morgan had used. The same simple instructions for interpreting the results were printed on the plastic.
I clicked the button, and the applicator needle shot out. I started to pee. I reached between my legs and held the tip into my stream of urine.
I set the Insta-Read on a rock to wait for the result while a pulled up my scrubs and tied the strings at the waist.
The result appeared almost immediately.
Three blue lines: stage three TGV.
Something was wrong. It had to be a faulty applicator. Even if I were infected, there was no way I could be at stage three.
Still, was I infected? I’d hoped to set my mind at ease by seeing once and for all that I wasn’t. But the circle labeled “TGV negative” definitely had not turned blue. Now I was even more uncertain than I was before.
I put the Insta-Read back in its wrapper and slipped it into my pocket.
Chris had already gotten all of the refugees onto their horses and made them put their blindfolds on. Everyone was waiting for me.
I pulled myself onto the saddle behind Chris. My heart was pounding.
When we started moving up the trail, I reached around Chris and handed him the applicator.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “It’s broken, right?”
Chris read the Insta-Read. For a moment he said nothing. Then he shook his head and sighed.
“I was afraid of something like this,” he whispered. “I didn’t expect stage three, but I was afraid of this. Oh my God, Ashley. I’m so sorry.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered back. “Something’s wrong with it. Something has to be wrong with it. Even if I were infected, there’s no way I could be stage three. It’s broken. It has to be. Right?”
“These don’t break,” Chris said. He was being so uncharacteristically patient with me, it was frightening. “It doesn’t work like that,” he explained. “These applicators test for a protein that’s unique to the TGV bacteria. It’s physically impossible for the blue lines to appear without the presence of that protein.”
“You’re wrong,” I insisted. I couldn’t believe how certain Chris seemed when I was so obviously nowhere near the state of a stage-three positive. “Chris,” I said. “I never died! Don’t you think I’d fucking remember something like that? Dying? I never even got sick! How could I be stage three if I’m still alive?”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Am I sure about not having died? Yes, I’m pretty fucking sure about that.”
“Seriously, Ashley. Are you sure?” Chris turned around in the saddle to face me and then put his hand on my forehead.
“What are you doing?”
“I was suspicious that something might be up when I disinfected your feet. You were warm, Ashley. Positives run a slightly high temperature—about one hundred and one degrees. I felt it in your feet. And, yes, I can feel your temperature now. It’s high.” He pulled his hand from my forehead and turned back around. “So are you sure you didn’t die?” he whispered. “Are you absolutely sure you never woke up filled with energy and in an unusual state of elevated confidence? Are you sure that never happened? I bet you’ve even been craving milk protein and high-caloric foods, haven’t you?”
“Oh my God.”
The motel room. I’d woken up after a night of extremely heavy drinking feeling great. I remembered feeling like I could race up a cliff.
“Oh my God,” I said again.
Had I died that night? Was it possible? Had I been too drunk to notice?
“That night,” I whispered.
“What night?”
“When I slept with Bryce two days ago…it wasn’t the first time,” I confessed. “The first time I slept with him was the first night of the fair, but I don’t remember anything. I have no idea if we even used a condom. And when I woke up late the next day, I felt, well…really amazing.” I let my head fall against Chris’s back. “Oh my God. Chris? Am I dead?”
He turned around to look at me.
“I think you must have died that night.” He shook his head in amazement. “That must have been when it happened. You must have contracted the pathogen from Bryce, then passed out from alcohol. You didn’t even know it happened. You must have fallen into a coma, died there in the motel bed, then woke up thinking you’d just had a heavy night of drinking.”
“But how is that possible?” I was still totally confused. I didn’t want to believe any of this. “I’m not walking around like some kind of fucking zombie!” It was getting hard to keep my voice low enough so the refugees wouldn’t hear me. “I’m here! I’m me! If anything, I should be only stage one? Right?”
“That’s what I don’t understand,” Chris said. “If you drew three blue lines, your blood has to be almost entirely honey at this point. I thought something was up with you yesterday, the way you confronted that ranger kid and shot him like that. The pathogen is affecting your behavior, obviously. It’s stimulating your confidence and making you take risks—I can tell. It’s also doing everything it can to make you more sexually active and sexually attractive both. Honestly, now I understand why I’ve been so fucking turned on by you ever since picking you up at the fairgrounds. It’s been killing me. Seriously. I haven’t even been able to think straight. And now I get it. Now I know why.”
“You didn’t assume it was just my natural sexual charm?” I couldn’t believe I was able to make a joke.
Chris let himself laugh. “Well yeah,” he said. “Your natural sexual charm, and the fact that your pores are oozing with pheromones.”
Knowing that I was dead should have terrified me, and yet now I felt strangely indifferent about that fact. Ever since robbing the pharmacy, I was feeling oddly invincible. It was true. The pathogen must have been giving me some weird natural high. But the disease seemed to be affecting me differently than other people. Maybe I was dead, but I wasn’t deteriorating. And I felt alive as ever.
“So maybe I have little more confidence,” I said. “Fine. But how come I’m not like Morgan was at the end? I don’t understand.”
“Honestly,” Chris said, “I don’t understand, either. Maybe
you have some kind of different pathogen strain. I’d love to give you a blood test, but it’s not like that’s going to fucking happen anytime soon, way out here. So I have no idea why. But, Ashley, you’re definitely infected. I have no doubt about it.”
I thought about this. It was strange that I wasn’t more concerned. Truthfully, I was glad I wasn’t more concerned.
“Do you think this could last?” I whispered. “Is it possible I could just go on like this without all of those awful symptoms?”
Chris sighed.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I sure hope so. But I have no way of knowing.”
* * *
We reached the ravine just before sunset.
The cliff dwellings were even more extensive than I’d remembered, and they looked beautiful as we approached them in the evening light. The low sun brought out the stone’s natural orange hue, and the rock walls glowed. I told all the refugees they could take off their blindfolds.
It was a perfect place to hide away. The ravine was narrow, but formed on the north side by a large overhanging cliff. The dwellings—ancient buildings, most of them still intact—were formed by a series of sturdy sandstone walls. Some of the structures were three stories high, reaching all the way to the ceiling of the hanging cliff. Ever since exploring this place with my dad as a kid, I remembered walking through the complex’s interconnected passageways and looking out the stone windows. There must have been thirty or forty rooms in all; plenty of space for everyone. There was even a freshwater spring at the base of the ravine.
I remembered my dad telling me that the people who built the dwellings—the Anasazi Native Americans—had been hiding out from an aggressively warlike rival group. We couldn’t have hoped for a better hiding place. Because of the cliff, the structures weren’t even visible from the air. And because my dad kept the place a secret, it still wasn’t on any maps. We were the only ones who knew about it. As long as word didn’t get out, the Home Guard would need to search for months—years, even—before tracking us here.
“Well, here’s our hole-in-the-wall,” Chris said, slipping off the saddle.
The refugees began exploring the dwellings. People were actually laughing with one another as they walked from room to room, sounding hopeful for once.
I took Kaypay and the rest of the horses to the spring and watered them in the last of the evening light.
There was a round dugout at the center of the dwelling complex that must have been for storing food once, but we used it as a fire pit and heated up our ration packs. Chris made the rounds passing out another dose of antibiotics.
I didn’t take any.
I’d decided to wait and see how my condition progressed. I tried not to think too much about it, but I couldn’t help it.
I excused myself from the fire early and took my blanket to the small stone room I’d claimed for myself. I needed to be alone for a little while.
I’d just learned that I’d died and that a pathogen had taken over my consciousness, but I hadn’t quite worked out what that meant. Who was I now? I wasn’t sure, but I knew at least that I was actually finally feeling a little good about how things were going. I’d managed, with Chris’s help, to get a group of refugees a supply of antibiotics and a safe place to stay—for now, anyway. Of course, we still had a lot to do. More refugees would come, we had to figure out a way to get a steady supply of provisions, and winter was on its way.
But I’d accomplished something. And if the pathogen nesting inside me was using the same brain that I had always used throughout my life, and had found in it the capacity to help all of these people, then what did it matter if I were dead or alive? Maybe the pathogen was part of me now.
The stars gleamed outside the stone window.
I couldn’t help but start to think about Ian.
I hoped that I’d see him again, somehow, somewhere, despite however naïve and unrealistic the idea was that he’d ever forgive me. I’d been trying so hard not to think about him all this time, and now not thinking about him was just too much to bear. It was impossible not to wish that he was with me as I lay there alone in the darkness.
It wasn’t right to wish for that. It wasn’t fair to my sister, or even to Ian. I know it wasn’t. But it’s what I felt, and I couldn’t change it.
However the pathogen may have been affecting my thoughts, they were still my thoughts. All of my yearning and regrets and actions were still me.
I may have been dead, but I was still me.
And whatever I was about to think or feel or do next in my existence, I was okay with it. I had to be.
February 19th, 2014
3:16 a.m.
Author’s Update
I can’t believe I finally finished the first Dead in Bed book! This is the first time I’ve ever written anything like this, so it feels like a huge accomplishment.
When I first started writing the book, I never, ever thought I’d be posting the last part from a motel on the way to California, but that’s what I’m doing. I finished the last scene of Part 7 in the back of Kyle’s car while he was driving. He’s been at the wheel for like ten hours straight, and he’s totally exhausted. Right now, it’s like three in the morning, we're in like Nevada or somewhere, and he’s asleep where he collapsed on the motel’s bed. It’s our first night on the road. (He’s actually snoring a little! It’s so cute!)
I’m so excited. I don’t even really feel afraid. Maybe I’ll start feeling afraid and regret this later, but right now I’m so glad I made this choice. I feel so alive.
I called my dad and told him I’m safe, but I wouldn’t tell him where I am or that I’m with Kyle. I just told him I’m with a “friend,” and that I’ll be back sometime in the summer. He didn’t even yell at me. I was stunned. He just kind of quietly repeated “Uh-huh” when I was telling him all this. He must have been in shock. I've never heard him like that before. I think he couldn't bring himself to believe that I was actually telling the truth. After a long silence he just said, very quietly, “Bailey, you come home. Right now.”
But I just hung up the phone. And that was it.
I can’t believe I actually did this. And I can’t wait to get to California! We’re going straight to LA first. I actually booked a sublet for us online. I had to empty out half of my savings account to do it, but I wanted to surprise Kyle.
I’ve been writing so hard that I’ve decided to take a little break and enjoy myself for just a little while. But I have some really exciting ideas for what’s going to happen to Ashley and Muldoon in the sequel. So stay tuned! The second book is on its way really soon.
xxBailey
About the Author
So, things have been pretty crazy for me since I started writing Dead in Bed to say the least. My life has totally turned upside down, and now there's no going back. If you want the inside scoop, just read along, and I'll try to tell you everything I can as I update.
Basically, though, I'm just a girl from a small town who loves really good stories. My teacher told me I should try to write professionally, so I did—though suspense thrillers about a plague that turns people into crazed sex-fiends probably wasn't exactly what she had in mind!
Ever since I learned about this stupid medical condition I came down with, I’ve been stuck at home without much else to do. But then I started writing Dead in Bed. It was an escape, and it made me feel better about things. And, then of course, everything changed. And I mean everything. But despite all that's happened, I'll do my best to keep publishing new parts until the series ends—or until my dad finds out what I've been writing. (If he ever sees any of this, he'll kill me…well, if he can find me, that is.)
xxBailey
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Full Fathom Five Digital is an imprint of Full Fathom Five
Dead in Bed: The Complete First Book
Copyright © 2015 by Adrian Birch
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No part of this text may be used or reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in review, without written permission from the publisher.
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Cover design by Adrian Birch
ISBN 978-1-63370-093-2
First Edition