by Davis, J. Q.
And the fact that he hadn’t emailed or left any messages…well, that was certainly heartbreaking. I suppose I was sort of expecting it. I did tell him not to wait for me.
I guess he was doing just that.
“You must be Grace.”
I opened my eyes and quickly glanced around to see who was speaking to me.
A guy was standing on the opposite side of the screened-in patio. I couldn’t see his face all that well. The flame from the Tiki torch created a kind of shadow around his body, and the screen and darkness of the night obscured my view.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just on my way back to my room. It’s late, I didn’t think anyone else would be awake,” he said in a low voice. He had an accent. European?
“How did you…know my name?” My voice was hoarse, and my throat was sore.
He chuckled and looked down at his feet. “Well, you are very popular here. Everyone has been waiting for you.”
“For me? Why?”
“You are Patient Zero, right?”
God, I hated that name. “Yes,” I murmured.
“Everyone has been dying to meet you. No pun intended.”
I forced myself not to smile.
“So, did you just get through with all of your tests? You look kind of rough.”
“Um…thanks?” Seriously? Who was this guy?
He smiled. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just know how it feels afterwards. And your voice seems a bit scratchy.”
I brought my hand up to my throat and gently rubbed.
“It’s okay. It’s normal. You’ll feel one hundred percent once you eat.”
A familiar pain shot across my stomach at that moment. I wasn’t sure if it was achiness from the tests or if it was the beginning of my stomach feeling as though it were going to eat itself.
“Well, I will let you recover. It was nice to finally meet you, Grace. We will see each other around,” he said, then turned to walk toward the Venice hut.
He didn’t tell me his name.
I kept my eyes on him, trying to focus them into the night to see if maybe I could get a better view of what he looked like. However, all I could see was the back of his head and the silhouette of his shorts and flip flops.
Another sharp pain rippled through my stomach.
I got up slowly from the wicker bench and walked back inside my room to the door. It was pretty late, but Number One had to be somewhere, if not right outside my room. I had to check.
When I opened my door there was no Number One, but there was a cart full of covered plates.
Well, that was convenient. But I didn’t want to question it too much. My eyelids were beginning to weigh down and lethargy from the hunger was setting in.
I wheeled the cart into my room and uncovered every plate, finding slices of pink meat underneath. Not just pieces. Slabs. Was this meat undercooked?
It seemed to be drizzled in some kind of red sauce. I poked my finger into one of the slices, only to find that it was cool, warm at best. I normally preferred my meat cooked well-done, but the smell of it was now engulfing the entire room and my stomach was beginning to think for me.
I took the first bite, and that was all I could remember before I realized every single piece was completely gone in a matter of minutes. The aftertaste was so familiar. So luscious. So incredibly amazing. Flashes of the night I bit off Sonny’s arm and the taste of Phoebe whirled around my head.
Was this the same thing? Did I just eat someone? Did I just eat human meat?
Panic coursed through me and I pushed the cart out of the way, rushing for my door. I wasn’t sure where I was going. But I had to talk to someone. How could I have eaten another human?
I swung open my door and jumped at the sight of Number One standing before me.
“Grace! Is everything okay?” he asked, alarmed.
I was breathing heavily. “I…I need to see Dr. Roberson! Someone…someone just left this cart in front of my door and…it was…human…and I ate it and…”
Number One grabbed my shoulders to stop me from squeezing past him. “Grace, calm down! Nothing is wrong.”
“But I just ate a human!”
“No, you didn’t. That was boar. You ate boar.”
I looked up at him. “Boar?” I exhaled.
“Yes. The chef left it in front of your door because we knew you would be hungry when you woke up. We hunt and eat boar,” he explained.
“But it wasn’t even cooked.”
“That’s how it’s served.” He twisted me around and gently eased me into my room. “Everything is okay. I will have Dr. Roberson explain this to you tomorrow. I’m going to take the cart. You should get some sleep.”
I wasn’t tired at all. I was completely energized. And any grogginess or pain that I felt earlier from the testing was completely gone.
Number One wheeled the cart out and shut the door behind him. I stood in the middle of my room feeling a little embarrassed by my overreaction.
Boar. It was just was boar.
Chapter 4
The Immortality
Although the taste of what I just devoured was a flashback of the most glorious, delectable, incredibly satisfying (I knew it was a poor choice of words considering the consequences, but it was seriously that good) flavor that had ever graced my mouth, I did not EVER want to repeat what I did back home again.
Eating human meat was not okay. I didn’t care if I was a zombie, a mythical creature known to the world as flesh-eaters and brain fanatics. Just because I walked around eighty percent of the time starving and swallowing back saliva from the mere whiff of even a squirrel minding his own business as he scurried through the grass trying to get a nut…didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t just tackle anything or anyone I saw down to the ground to eat them.
I sighed.
That thought seemed kind of nice. But no! Never again! No humans!
I relaxed in the bed with my headphones on while I watched my room slowly illuminate from the sunrise.
Getting some sleep was impossible. I tried after I had taken a shower, but only tossed and turned and thought about checking my emails every twenty minutes to see if Tristen left one. I wasn’t completely sure of the time change just yet, so maybe that had something to do with his delay.
It seemed impossible to me that he would just forget me. Why hadn’t he written? Or called?
I reached over to check my phone. 7 a.m.
The sound of a door shutting provoked me to finally get out of bed. I opened the door to my room, only allowing my head to poke out and take a quick glance.
A short girl in pigtails was walking toward the entrance to leave the hut. She looked like the same young girl who was walking to the beach yesterday.
“Are you Grace?”
I turned my head in the opposite direction. A girl wearing all black stood in the middle of the hallway.
“Yes.”
“Hey, I’m Destiny. Nice to meet you.”
I nodded. Intimidation washed over me immediately. She seemed to be a bit…scary. She had long black hair with blue streaks. Her shirt and skinny jeans were black and tight, and I could see a bit of her belly. She had on black boots and one black fingerless glove. She was pale, making her dark clothes seem even darker. Even her eyes were dark, with black eyeliner and maroon eye shadow. Her lips were bright red, and there was a silver loop hanging from her bottom lip and her eyebrow.
She was more gothic than anyone I had ever seen in real life or on television. But although she looked like she could have been a member of the Adams Family, she was still very pretty.
“Uh, hi. I’m…I’m Grace.” I held out my hand to shake hers, but she shrugged and looked down at the pile of books she was holding.
She giggled. “Yeah, I have totally been waiting to meet you, man. Well, me and like, everyone else.”
“Why…er…why is that?”
“You’re Patient Zero, duh! Listen, I gotta go. I’m late for class. But hey, we will tot
ally hang out later. I know where you live now,” she said with a smile and a wink.
I smiled a half-smile back at her and watched as she scurried down the hall.
I quickly shut the door behind me to avoid meeting anyone else. I peeked over at my computer and saw a bolded headline on my email page. I hurried over to it, only to find that it was more junk.
“Damn it,” I whispered.
A knock came from my door.
I walked over and opened it. It was Dr. Roberson.
“Good Morning, Grace,” he said in a chipper tone. “I trust you are feeling much better today.” He stood in the doorway with a grin. Dressed in gray slacks, a blue button-down shirt, a slightly darker blue tie, and a white lab coat, it seemed as though he was ready to take me back to the Z lab to run some more tests.
I hesitated before answering. “I am.” And it was true. The grogginess and achiness was completely gone.
“Good. Now, follow me. I am going to show you around.”
Before I could grab my bag or cell phone, Dr. Roberson had his hand on my shoulder and moving me into the direction of the entrance.
We walked outside onto the porch of the hut. The gray skies were gone. The sun was still rising, but it was pretty bright out anyway. The flowers in the courtyard were blooming, showing off their brilliant colors of orange, pink, purple and red. The palm trees stood tall and the leaves wafted softly in the breeze.
We walked to the center of the courtyard.
“Okay, as you know, you are in the Laguna hut, which is where the female subjects reside.” He pointed to the Venice hut. “That is the Venice hut, where the male subjects reside.”
He pointed past the Venice hut and to the two-story structure in the far right corner. “That is El Matador. It’s where classes are held.”
“Where did the names come from?” I asked. I was almost certain they were places in California.
“Ah, yes. I chose these names for the huts because they are some of my favorite beaches in California. I had some good times there,” he grinned.
I didn’t say anything.
He turned to point to the left. “That is the Malibu hut, which is the common area. There are televisions and a pool table and video games in there. It’s where our subjects go to relax and lounge. And that is the Newport hut or as we like to call it, the mess hall.”
“Mess hall?”
“It’s basically the cafeteria. It’s where our chefs cook and everyone gathers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“Where they cook boar,” I murmured, adding a sarcastic tone to the word “cook”.
Dr. Roberson glanced over at me. “Yes. Boar. I take it you had your dinner last night. How did you like it?”
“It was…cold.”
He sniggered. “It was fresh.”
I stared at him.
“We serve mostly fresh food here. Some is frozen, but nothing is cooked in order to preserve the essential nutrients. The first meal you had was just a little something to remind you of home. However, as I said before, your body is needing better nourishment. Did you enjoy it?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
He shook his head once and smiled. “It’s okay, Grace. I know it’s different. But you will get used to it quickly.”
I bit my tongue from saying how extraordinary it was.
He continued on with the tour. “And that is the Z lab, which is where you were yesterday. Do you have any questions?”
“Is the Z for Zack, your son?” I asked, remembering our conversation with Tristen and my mother. Dr. Roberson explained that Serum Z, the injection he gave me to restart my heart, was named after his late son who drowned.
He paused and gazed over at the building before answering. “Yes. Yes it is. Now come, I have a surprise for you.”
We walked over to El Matador. He held open the door for me and I walked ahead. The inside of this hut didn’t look much different than ours, only it was two stories. There was a long, wide hallway with wooden floors. The hallway was lined with doors to what I was assuming to be classrooms. Straight ahead were stairs leading up to the second floor.
We walked down the hall. The doors had rectangular windows, allowing me to get a glimpse inside of the only one that was lit. All I could see was a teacher sitting at a desk, but it reminded me of a classroom at Middleton.
We stopped at the last room on the left. A sign on the window read RESERVED.
Dr. Roberson unlocked the door with a key and flicked the light on. My eyes sprung open when I stepped inside.
A large, white table was placed in the center of the room. On top of it were white plaster sculptures; some of only a head, some were of the head and torso.
Along one side of the wall were shelves filled with paint brushes and small paint canisters. I walked over to get a better view. There were containers piled with makeup and gels and glitter and random items.
On the other side of the wall were rows of hanging nude-colored masks. They were of faces, with no detail. Like a blank canvas. Empty molds of torsos and heads were scattered around the room, along with sewing machines and other machinery that I wasn’t sure what it was for, but I was assuming it had something to do with aiding in the creation of special effects.
I looked over at Dr. Roberson, who was standing in the doorway with his hands in the pockets of his slacks.
“Is this…”
“An effects studio? Yes.”
“You guys teach this here?” I asked, surprised that enough people would be interested for Dr. Roberson to fund it.
“Not yet. But we will.”
I furrowed my brows.
“This is for you. Aren’t you interested in becoming a professional makeup artist?”
How in the hell did he know that? I had only made that decision the morning I left home. Tristen was the only person I told.
“I…I didn’t know you knew about that.”
He slowly walked toward the table, reaching over to lay a hand on one of the sculptures. “Grace, when I told you that we would take care of you, I was serious. You are very special, to me and to everyone else here.”
Before I could ask him why that was, remembering the guy from last night and Destiny’s comment this morning about everyone awaiting my arrival, Dr. Roberson continued.
“When I first saw you lying in that huge hospital bed, you reminded me so much of my son.”
He walked to the single window on the far side of the wall and looked out. “You were so tiny. So sick. Helpless. The event that took place the day Zack died replayed in my mind, as if I were watching him in that hospital bed again.” He turned to me. “Do you know that he would be in college right now?”
I shook my head no. At that moment, with as much as Dr. Roberson creeped me out at times, my heart strings were slightly tugging for him. I thought of my mother and realized that she was in the same situation he was in at one point. She had to watch me die.
I blamed her, but it wasn’t for the decision she made to allow Dr. Roberson to inject me with Serum Z. She was only doing what she could to save my life.
I looked down at my hands.
“I didn’t want Eve to go through what I had gone through. Losing my son was…the hardest thing I have ever had to endure. Knowing that I would never see him again. Knowing that I would never hear his voice or watch him play or hug him ever again. It changed my life, and my feelings on what the meaning of life truly is.” His voice cracked with obvious emotion.
“Is that why you made Serum Z?”
He walked closer to where I was standing. “I made Serum Z so humans can have a second chance.”
“But you didn’t know this would happen, that I would become what I am,” I stated under my breath.
He gave me a crooked smile. “No, I didn’t. But you are alive, Grace. You are here. And every subject in this facility is alive and was given that second chance.”
Patient Zero was bad. But referring to everyone else as subjects? I guess my nick
name wasn’t so terrible.
Dr. Roberson continued. “Unfortunately, my team and I were unaware of the full side effects. Being that you were the first patient, the first time we ever used Serum Z, we had no idea what would happen. After you were injected and revived and we found out what your side effects were, we continued our research. Surely, there had to be a way to fix the…complications. We have worked diligently to figure out ways to reduce the side effects or wipe them clean altogether. But as with many medical experiments and research, there was good news and bad news.”
I was afraid to know.
“You already know the bad news. We haven’t found a way to reduce the side effects just yet. But the good news? It’s better than good, Grace.” His eyes widened and he leaned in closer to me, leaving me a bit scared of what this “good” news was.
“It’s immortality,” he whispered.
I tried to focus my eyes on his, hoping that it would help me to better understand where he was getting at. He did mention immortality back in the States, but I was in too much of a freak out mode from all of the other information I was given that I didn’t worry it. And I knew what immortality meant: the ability to live forever. But was he being serious about me living forever?
He read my mind and answered. “We discovered through our research that with the proper nutritional supplements, our subjects would be given the wonderful gift of immortality. Of never dying again. You and everyone here, and possibly everyone in the world could live forever. Dying would no longer be an option. No more pain. No more loss.”
“Is that why I’m here?” I asked, not sure of where I was really going with that question. I knew the reason I was here was for…treatment. However, my thinking was more of trying to reverse what was wrong with me.
Dr. Roberson paused for a moment before walking over to me. He put his arm around my shoulder; a gesture that I was learning must have been his forte for a nice way to tell someone we are walking now.
We walked toward the door. “Grace, you are here so that we can make sure you are taken care of and given the proper treatment for your condition. We only care about your wellbeing. Not to mention, the other subjects are very thrilled that you’re here. You’re Patient Zero. You are the reason why they are alive. Don’t be surprised if you get some thank yous.”