Outer Banks

by Anson Barber

  “Hmph,” she grunted and went back to the microscope again. She switched slides and then put drops of our blood on the same slide.

  I remembered being eight, and making a blood bond with the boy next door. Tim was his name. He moved away two months later and I never saw him again, but it had been a sacred moment of friendship. This kind of felt similar. Stupid, I know, but it’s how I felt.

  I started to get sleepy and when I looked at the clock on the wall, I realized why. It was close to daybreak.

  “Time for bed, Dr. Mitchell,” I announced.

  “I was just about to—” The alarm on my phone went off.

  “It doesn’t matter what you were about to do,” I interrupted. “It will be here waiting for you when you wake up.”

  “I can finish this,” She looked at me and then back to the microscope.

  “You can fall face first in a petri dish is what you can do. Come on. I know you can feel it, stop pretending.” I held my hand out toward the door. “Let’s go,” I ordered.

  We didn’t make it. I reached for her just as her eyes closed and her face dropped to the table. She was out cold.

  “Shit.” Thankfully, I was able to carry her to bed. I closed the drapes in her room. The windows were UV protected, but it still made me nervous to see the sun shining on her skin.

  Once I made sure she looked comfortable, I left and locked the door.

  As I passed the lab I went in and checked the slide in the microscope. The slide that contained both our blood.

  I was no expert, but it appeared as if her blood was consuming mine, making the entire sample black. That was disturbing. No wonder transfusions alone didn’t work.

  I backed away from the equipment and went to my room. It was perhaps the first thing about the Haunts that truly creeped me out, though I would never tell Emery that.

  It took me a long time to fall asleep. I kept seeing the black cells in my mind. I turned on the TV and the talk shows put me under in minutes.

  When I got up I had a bowl of Cheerios, watched some TV and did a load of laundry. I unlocked Emery’s room and went on the deck to watch the stars come out until she woke up. A little while later my phone rang. I recognized the area code. Corey.

  “Don’t start,” I greeted him with a warning.

  “Hey, Dillon.” His voice was strained.

  “What’s up?” I could tell the answer wasn’t going to be good from his tone, but it seemed reasonable to ask. “What’s wrong?”

  “I got beat up—” The phone cut out as expected. It was that time of night.

  “Are you okay? Did they try to take your game? I told you to just give it up. I didn’t want you getting hurt over it.” I stood up and started to pace.

  “I’m fine now. They didn’t get it. I hid it. The batteries are dead because I couldn’t charge it, but I still have it. It’s mine,” he said firmly.

  “Sorry,” I offered, covering many different things. I was sorry I ever took him there. Sorry I’d given him something that made him a target. Sorry he was too stubborn to see it wasn’t worth getting beaten up over.

  “When do you think you’ll stop by next?”

  “Probably not for a while.”

  “You’ll be hangin’ with the doctor?” he said, his voice full of scandal.

  “Yes.”

  “Ooooh. Dillon and the doctor!” he sang.

  “I told you not to start.”

  “So how’s it going with the whole hope thing?” he said. Maybe he did have a clue what I’d meant by that.

  “Slow.”

  “Figures. By the time I get the chance to eat real food again, I’ll need dentures.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about speeding up the schedule.”

  I rolled my eyes for my own benefit as Corey chuckled. He was family. Distant, yes, but it still meant something.

  “Later, Dillon.”

  “Later, brat.”

  Emery came out a bit later. Her hair was in a ponytail and she was wearing workout clothes.

  “Going for a run?”

  “More like a fast paced walk. You want to come along?”

  “I probably should.” My protective instincts were at play. I knew CPR. I sure didn’t want to have to use it on Emery.

  “Sometimes ideas came to me during my runs.”

  “All right, well, let’s go see if we can chase one down.” I smiled. “Give me a minute to change.”

  When I came downstairs she was already outside looking up at the stars.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Try to keep up,” she joked and took off.

  She did pretty well, managing a jog rather than just a fast paced walk. She was faster than any Haunt I’d seen before. Not that it lasted very long. She needed to stop for a break after just a few minutes.

  “This sucks!” She kicked the stones by the side of the mountain road. “I hate being like this!” she screamed. Her voice echoed back to us, multiplying her anger.

  She sat on the dirt road and put her head on her knees.

  “Emery?”

  She looked up at me.

  “Everyone faces challenges in their lives. They can be used to defeat us or make us stronger.”

  “Are you saying I need to stop feeling sorry for myself?”

  “I tried to make it sound a little nicer.” But she was right. There were plenty of uninfected people who couldn’t go out for a run either. Look at that Hawking guy. She needed to focus on the things she could do instead of what she couldn’t.

  “I still don’t have a clue. What am I supposed to do, Dillon?”

  “Relax. I think maybe chasing an idea is the wrong approach. Maybe you should lie in wait, ready to ambush it when one comes out of hiding.”

  Her brows rose. “Where do you suggest I lie in wait?”

  “Where every brilliant idea lurks. In front of the television, of course.” I sniffed, making her laugh.

  “I guess I can give it a try,” she conceded as we walked back to the house at a leisurely pace.

  We sat in the living room together for the first time, watching some brain dead sitcom rerun. I got up during a commercial to get a snack.

  As I walked behind the sofa I saw a shelf lined with photos. I recognized Emery when she was a teenager, looking way too cute with the braces. I saw a picture of a baby that could have been Em or any baby. They all looked the same to me, really.

  There was a photo of Emery and her dad skiing. That looked more recent. The last was a professional portrait. It was of Emery and a man sitting on the ground. Smiles on their faces. The shiny diamond on her left hand was obviously being showcased. An engagement picture.

  I continued walking to the kitchen. When I opened the refrigerator I saw the blood inside next to the beer. What a combination.

  “You need anything?” I called.

  “No thanks, I’m fine.”

  I got a beer and some chips and went back to my spot at the other end of the sofa. There was enough room for three people to sit between us.

  “So your dad mentioned you were engaged. Is that right?” I looked down at her left hand which was empty. She caught me looking.

  “I traded my ring for some of that lab equipment you saw in my room at OBX. And my father shouldn’t be sharing my personal information with the hired help.”

  Ouch.

  “Sorry,” I said with an edge. I finished my beer and went back to my room without saying good night, or good day or good whatever.

  “Hired help?” I muttered to myself. “What a bitch!” That was it. I was angry at myself for ever being smitten with her. It had blinded me to the kind of person she really was.

  I continued to grumble as I brushed my teeth and changed. By the time I came back out to my room I had hal
f talked myself into leaving with my money as soon as she went to sleep. This was the last straw.

  “Hired help. Who says that anymore?” I continued my rant as I gathered my things for a quick escape. “She wasn’t human even before the Bugs came.” I wasn’t going to let her just say she was sorry and then do this to me again and again. It just wasn’t worth it.

  I heard a light knock at my door and froze. Was it too late to pretend I was asleep? She could probably hear me muttering and see the light under the door.

  Fine. She was rude. I could be rude too.

  I opened the door brusquely and she jumped back in surprise.

  “Can I talk to you?” she asked.

  “As long as it’s not personal.” I turned my back on her to continue gathering my clothes. It was only then I realized I was only wearing shorts and no shirt.

  “Are you leaving?” she asked.

  I shrugged again. I still wasn’t sure. I might have just been throwing a fit like a girl.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I keep saying horrible things to you. I keep having to apologize.” She held her hands out.

  “You don’t need to apologize. I am the hired help. It’s not my business.” I calmed down and threw my clothes on the dresser. This was the truth. I wasn’t acting like a professional, I was acting like a friend. And if she didn’t want a friend, fine. I didn’t have to be one.

  I had no right to be mad at her. I should have been mad at myself for being attracted to her in the first place. It kept getting in the way.

  “Dillon?” She said my name quietly, causing my heart to skip. How did she do that? “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way. I was rude. I know what you risked to bring me here, yet you did and now I’m being so mean to you.”

  She covered her face and slid down the wall by the door.

  “The answer to your question is, I don’t know if I’m engaged.”

  She looked up at me and I don’t know what she saw. I didn’t respond.

  “When Trevor found me at the hospital after I’d changed,” she gestured down her body. “He acted like the same person I knew. He was always a little clinical, but we were scientists and it worked for us. But at that point, I needed someone to hold me and tell me everything was going to work out. I wanted to hear that he didn’t care what I looked like, he would love me anyway. He didn’t. He started talking about how we should focus on finding a reversing agent, where the best place would be to set up a lab, who to recruit for the team.

  “He acted like nothing had changed and this was just another problem to solve. At first, I appreciated it. It kept me focused. But at some point I forgot to go to the clinic for food. I could feel sleep coming so I asked if he would go for me. He said something about being uncomfortable around those people.” She took a deep breath.

  “It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. As you are well aware, I’m not one to keep my mouth shut when something bothers me. We got into an argument. He said he didn’t mean me. Eventually he went, but I was asleep before he got back.”

  I knew this story was about to take a tragic turn.

  “When I woke up, he had a bag waiting along with an apology. I didn’t hear him because the hunger took over. I don’t know what happened. After I ate and was calm again, I saw scratch marks on his face and a cut on his hand. He was terrified.

  “He suggested I surrender myself. He came up with the idea of me working from inside the facility in OBX where I would be safe and have better access to volunteers while he worked on a cure from the outside with the company’s resources. We were supposed to coordinate once a week.

  “After a few weeks he stopped answering my calls. Then things went bad in the lab, I was in general population and I ended up writing on my walls and hating everyone.”

  She shook her head.

  “It wasn’t his fault. I attacked him. He’d fallen in love with a different person than I am now. I’d fallen in love with the person I thought he was.” Her head tilted up slightly. “He’s working on another project now. I wish him the best.”

  This was crap. You don’t just give up like that. If the woman I loved was infected I would take her somewhere she could be safe and protect her with my life.

  “He’s called me a few times since my father filled him in on our operation here. I don’t know what to say to him.”

  I opened my mouth to give her a few suggestions and then shut it. She wouldn’t want to hear them.

  She gave me a weak smile. “You’re a good person, Dillon. I don’t know why I keep treating you so badly. You don’t deserve it. Please forgive me, and please stay. I don’t know if I would be scared here alone, but I would be lonely if you left.”

  “You should go to bed. It’s almost time to sleep,” I said. I hadn’t decided anything yet.

  “I can’t go to sleep not knowing if you’ll be here when I get up.” She shook her head. “If you’re angry and you leave and I don’t get to fix this…”

  I sighed. “I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Do you promise?” Her black eyes were fixed on mine.

  “Really? You need me to promise?”

  “Yes. You said you were a man of your word. I need you to promise you won’t sneak out while I’m asleep because you’re mad at me.”

  “Okay, I promise.” I shook my head. Smitten again. Such an idiot. I grabbed a shirt and pulled it on while I followed her downstairs.

  She paused at her door before going inside. “Dillon? Would you sit with me until I fall asleep?”

  “Sure.” I followed her inside and checked over her curtains while she got in bed. She was wearing shorts and a very thin T-shirt.

  “If you’re still here when I get up you’ll get a reward,” she teased.

  “I don’t need a reward, Em. I’d just like you to stop trying to scare me off.”

  “Okay. I’ll stop trying to scare you off and you’ll get a reward.” She took a deep breath and fidgeted with her blanket uneasily.

  “Are you scared?” I asked, wondering why she would need me to stay in here with her.

  “Kind of.”

  I went over to the chair by her bed and sat down. She reached for my hand.

  “In case you’re lying, and you’re not here when I get up. I just wanted to see you for as long as I—”

  She was sleeping.

  I brushed her hair back from her face.

  “Why do you do this to me?” I asked her. I didn’t know what there was between us, if anything, but I did know I wished she’d let me in.

  I sighed and got up from my seat. I would be sitting there again when she woke.

  “Have good dreams, Emery,” I wished her, knowing it wasn’t possible for her to dream at all. I typed in the code to lock the door.

  Chapter Twelve

  I was sitting by her bed when she woke.

  Emery blinked a few times and then smiled.

  “I’m not a liar,” I said.

  She took a breath and relaxed again.

  “Thank you, Dillon. I’m sorry for the things I said. Really.”

  “I know.”

  She said nothing.

  “I’m not him, Em. I’m me. I’ve seen the worst this brings out in people, infected or not, and believe me you’re not even close to that. I can handle this.”

  “I know. I think that scares me more than anything.” She frowned and then changed the subject. “So are you ready for your surprise?”

  “I told you, I don’t need a reward. I’m just doing my job.”

  “It’s not your job to put up with my bitchiness. I really want to show you this. I think it will make things better.” She put her clasped hands in front of her like she was going to beg.

  I nodded and motioned toward the door. “Fine, surprise me! Do your worst.”
r />   She clapped and led me to the living room. After digging around in the entertainment center for a few minutes she stood up with a VCR tape.

  “Oh jeez!” I fretted. I hadn’t seen one of those for years.

  She popped it in the recorder and picked up the remote.

  “Okay, so before I start this I want you to know that I’ve never showed this to anyone, not even Trevor. You’re the first person outside of family I’m showing it to.”

  “All right,” I hedged and looked at the screen.

  A commercial started first. A caring mother with blonde hair was soothing her adorable blonde daughter. The little girl was pouting because she had a cold, but didn’t like the taste of the medicine.

  I stared at the little girl and then looked at Emery.

  “That’s you!” I recognized her green eyes from the photos. Even the pout was similar.

  I looked back at the screen to see the mother coax the little girl to try the medicine and when she did she let out a theatrical “Yum!”

  A moment later she was gone and the logo for Grapessence Cough Remedy came up across the screen.

  Emery looked embarrassed. “It’s even worse than I remembered.”

  “You’re an actress!” I teased.

  “No. I’m not.” She shook her head laughing. “It was for Mitchell Pharmaceuticals, my dad wanted me to be in it. It doesn’t count.”

  “Play it again.”

  “No!”

  “Come on! It’s my reward, remember?”

  She sighed and ran the tape back to replay it. “Fine.”

  “Hey! I think I remember this commercial.” It had been on during Saturday morning cartoons for a while.

  “No one knows it’s me.”

  “That’s really neat, Em.” I wondered why she had never shown it to the fiancé. It didn’t matter. She had showed me. “Thanks for sharing that.”

  “It’s not something I would share with hired help. It’s something I would share with a friend.” She watched my face to make sure I understood.

  “Can you share it with your friend just one more time?”

  She indulgently ran the tape back. “I’m hiding this afterwards.” She laughed when we were done.