She pulled back to let me through. I realized the curtains were set up so that gawkers in the lobby, if there were any, wouldn’t be able to see in.
As I rounded the bend myself, I realized why.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The restaurant was like a hospital floor in a wartime film with a big budget, but nothing here was special effects. There was all the chaos with none of the sterility or equipment. It looked like a primitive insane asylum, the kind they’d kept people in up until recently, even in our own “great” United States. People were tied to the undersides of tables with tethers of torn sheets, lashed like so many Odysseuses to masts. That didn’t stop them from moaning, though, or puking, or shitting themselves from the smell.
“Oh, God,” I said, before I could stop myself.
People like me—healthy volunteers—gophered up to see who I was before sinking back down to the tasks at hand. I saw them feeding people carefully, offering sips through straws, passing pills, wiping away the excretia as best they could.
“I know how this looks. Like one of your horror films.” Raluca shook her head. “You probably think us inhumane. But if we did not tie them down, they would run outside and fling themselves overboard.”
It took me a second to be able to answer her, even though I knew she was telling the truth. It was just that the room was so horrible, so far beyond anywhere I’d ever had to nurse anyone before. My head started shaking again. “No—I believe you. I saw a man go over myself.” I could tell my admission relieved her fractionally. “How many people are here?”
“Total? Two hundred. Fifty well, a hundred and fifty sick. A hundred have already passed.”
A hundred deaths on Nathaniel’s hands. “Do you have any idea what’s causing it?”
She shrugged. “Dr. Haddad is working on that still. We’re treating the sick people as best we can in the meantime.”
I wondered if the woman Hal had clocked was down here—and found myself dearly hoping that Asher was not.
“What are you treating them with?”
“Restraints, ice—and Tylenol, Valium, Cipro.” She ticked off the medications starting with her thumb.
Cipro explained all the shit, literally. Nothing like one of the world’s strongest antibiotics to clean out your intestinal flora. And the people underneath the tables couldn’t warn you when they were going to go.
“Where do you put the people who get better?” I asked, still staring around at the horrors of the room.
Her lips thinned into a line. “No one has gotten better, yet.”
A young man moving between the patients lashed to tables stood and waved. “Raluca—we’re out of Valium over here.”
She frowned again, reached for her keys, and headed back to the curtains at the front of the restaurant. “Please, show her how to get ice. I will return,” she said, and then disappeared.
I was left in the care of a teenage boy with black jeans and a black T-shirt with hair clearly dyed to match. He was like the teenage version of a poison dart frog—Don’t touch me. Raging acne scarred his pale face, and his expression was not kind. He took me in and shrugged a shoulder. “Come on—the ice machine’s this way—”
I hadn’t finished looking around the room yet. Too many of the sick people were facing away from me. A few still had attentive relatives or friends nearby, but a lot of them were alone. None of them looked like Asher from here, but I needed to get closer to be sure.
“Can you wait just a second?” I asked him.
“Why?”
“I’m looking for a friend.”
He gave me a look that said that he didn’t have time to explain all the ways that I was dumb. “If they’re here, it’s too late. They’re already a zombie.”
“These people aren’t actually zombies.” I’d been in love with a zombie before. I knew what zombies were like.
His chin twitched up in challenge. “What the hell else can they be?”
I didn’t have an answer for him. “I don’t know.”
He gave me a teenage snort, unsurprised by my idiocy. “Yeah, well—let’s go on the tour.”
We canvassed the room quickly in all its depressingly repulsive glory. The healthy people, volunteers like me or people who’d been trapped when they’d arrived with relatives, had looked haggard. They’d seen too much too fast with too little preparation. It was one thing at the hospital where eventually you became inured to horrors and had coworkers’ support to fall back on; no one, could have warned these people what would happen on their cruise. Even in nursing school, they’d babied us a little at first. These poor people had gotten steamrolled.
Their number included this boy, who, despite his bravado and his penchant for black, was clearly out of his depth. I was sure on Xbox Live he had a lot of swagger, but nothing in his video game world had prepared him for this much actual death.
Most of the volunteers ignored me, too tired to care. A few shot me dirty glances as I hunched over to look into their relatives’ faces to make double-triple sure that none of them was Asher.
One of the volunteers I surprised accosted me. “What are you looking at?” He had a wig cap and makeup on from a prior night. He moved to block my view of his friend, who was slouched over and also had fading makeup, but who looked much worse for the wear.
“I’m searching for a friend of mine is all. Sorry.” I waved my hands to defuse the tension.
He deflated a little, lined lips pursing. “Me too.” He reached down to brush a sweaty lock of hair away from his friend’s forehead. “For your sake.”
I nodded and stood. The boy at my side was still sullen. “Did you find them?” he asked, despite the fact that he’d been with me the whole time.
“No.”
“Lucky you,” he said sarcastically.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I followed the boy down an empty staff hallway at the back of the restaurant. “Where’s the crew? Aren’t any of them ill?”
“Raluca’s got them quarantined separately down below where there’s no windows or decks to jump off.”
“Good idea,” I said and got no response. “My name’s Edie,” I told the back of his head.
“Rory,” he said without slowing down.
“Who wrangled you onto this boat, Rory?” I knew he hadn’t made the call to go anywhere tropical—he had even less of a tan than I did, and with his lack of vitamin D he must have been approaching rickets.
“My parents. Who became zombies and died horribly,” he said completely deadpan. “They wanted to get me out of the house. Any more awkward questions?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Whatever.”
He pushed through another set of saloon doors, and we entered a huge industrial kitchen. Rory led me around countertops and tables, all shining stainless steel, until we reached a massive ice machine at the back. He rummaged off to one side and returned with an empty trash can, which he handed to me. “Only take as much ice as you can really carry. It gets heavy by the end of the hall.”
Without gloves, we reached into the machine’s belly and scooped the ice out by hand. It wasn’t long till I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, which was good because then it didn’t hurt. Scraping out handfuls of ice, hearing the sound of it drum and settle on the bottom of the cans—my actions fell into a rhythm with my thoughts. I was glad Asher wasn’t here—but where else could he be?
Rory touched my arm with an icy palm before whirling and startling me.
There was a shadow behind us—I saw its reflection in the ice machine door.
“Hey!” Rory shouted as I turned more slowly.
“Hey yourself,” the shadow shouted back. A man stepped out from behind a rack of dangling spatulas.
My breath caught in my throat. Nathaniel. I put a nearly frozen hand to my face.
His eyes narrowed at the sight of me. “Good to see you again—Edie, was it?”
I kept my hand in place as it froze me. This Nathaniel was the older one with the slight belly,
the weaker jaw—not the younger specimen Asher had imitated perfectly on his way out yesterday.
“We ate dinner together the other night. Before this nightmare began,” he clarified for me.
I put my hand down slowly. “I remember you.” I wanted to say more, but I wasn’t sure how. Have you seen my boyfriend? The last time I saw him, he was imitating you, didn’t seem feasible, no matter that it was true. “How’s Liz?” And a second later, when I remembered I wasn’t supposed to know that Thomas had died, “And your son?”
“Died. Both of them.”
“Why’re you here?” Rory asked, staring him down.
“I got trapped down here, with everyone else,” Nathaniel answered, with an irritated tone.
“You weren’t eating back here, were you? Like the others who’re getting sick?”
“No.”
“Then why aren’t you out there helping?” Rory demanded.
I decided to cut in. “Do you know anything about this? About what’s going on?” I tried to sound confused, hoping he’d let some small clue drop.
“Of course not,” Nathaniel said.
What were the chances he’d just come out and tell me about his nefarious plans? He wasn’t some villain by way of Scooby-Doo. I wanted to confront him, but I didn’t want to blow my chance at it—I didn’t think I’d get more than one shot.
Rory looked back and forth between us and then stared at Nathaniel again. “So what were you doing back here?”
“I was tired. They wouldn’t let me back upstairs. I was taking a nap.” Nathaniel pointed behind himself and off to the side.
“With everything that’s been going on—you’ve been taking a nap?” Rory said, his voice rising. He had a lot of anger and no place for it to go.
Nathaniel took offense and spoke in clipped tones. “I had a long night.”
I placed a cold hand on Rory’s arm to hold him back, just in case. Rory was tense a second more then shrugged me off.
Nathaniel patted down the collar of his jacket and then straightened his tie. I didn’t have proof of anything, and I couldn’t let on about anything that Asher’d told me. Before I could think of what to say he jerked his chin at me. “Where’s your doctor fellow?”
To lie, or not to lie? Given what Asher’d been doing, I probably should lie—but my hands weren’t the only thing that were numb. I decided to answer honestly. “I don’t know.”
Nathaniel’s lips pursed at this, and his brows rose. “Well, well.”
“Have you seen him?” I blurted out. I felt like a little kid asking Have you seen my puppy, mister? minus a handmade sign. I hated myself for putting him in a position of power over me—but if I didn’t ask him, and if it somehow managed to be just this simple, I’d hate myself even more.
“No. Why would I?” He yawned and shook his head, as though he was still waking up.
At the yawn, Rory snapped. “I don’t know if you noticed, but everything’s going to shit and the rest of us aren’t getting to take naps.” Rory pointed up the hall like he was chastising a dog. “Go back in that restaurant and ask Raluca where you can help.”
Nathaniel gave Rory a cold smile. “Make me.”
A moment passed between them like gunslingers in an Old West showdown, and I would have bet all my money on Rory, his anger lashing around him like a whip. Maybe sensing this—that Rory’s irrational heat was sharper than his cool pride—Nathaniel subtly backed down and snorted dismissively before walking away.
He was rumpled, but not distraught. I believed that he’d been napping, yes, but not that he’d seen two loved ones die. Whereas beside me Rory’s loss was etched on his face and held in his hands, clenched into fists at his sides.
“When you caught him behind us—those were some insane video game reflexes right there,” I said lightly, trying to calm him down.
“Thanks.” He grunted and shrugged, apparently his preferred method of communication, and I could almost feel him swallowing his anger down, folding it away. And in case I might forget that he didn’t like me, or anyone else in the world right now, he added, “I guess.”
* * *
We hauled the half-full trash cans back to the restaurant’s floor, where Rory had me hold trash bags open to catch the ice as he poured. And when we were done, with ten separate trash bags half full, he picked up one. “Find the hot ones that are still alive.”
I picked up two bags and walked around. A weeping woman gestured me over and then had me apply the cold bag to the man beside her. Nearing, I could see that he was a boy. Presumably her son. He wasn’t much older than Rory, if that, and while Rory was an example of nerd-life, her son had been a shining testament to model boyhood with a sunny tan and a sleek quarterback’s physique—and a fever of at least 105. She glanced over at me and then over at Rory walking past us with ice for other patients, and I could see her thinking that it was unfair.
“I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m thirsty,” her son responded.
She focused back on him. “I know, honey, I know.” She held up a cup of water and a straw. In a second, he’d sucked the whole cup down.
“I’m still thirsty,” he complained with cracked lips as she took the cup away.
“You have to wait a bit first. You can’t drink as much as you want, you’re not right in the head now, okay?” the woman patiently explained, holding back tears.
“But I’m so thirsty—” the boy complained, his voice raw.
I didn’t know if I should stay or go. What would I do if it were my child under there? I heard the ice in the other bag I held clink as it settled, melting, which gave me an excuse. I made a gesture with it to the woman to explain my leaving, and I backed up and stood. I looked away because I had to—and caught Nathaniel, leaning against a wall of the restaurant, not helping in the least, watching me.
I stared back. If he had done this, I would come up with a way to make him pay.
“Hey, ice lady.” The man with the wig cap on snapped his fingers to get my attention. I went over to his side as he stood.
“Here.” He held up a half-melted bag of ice to me. Not knowing what else to do, I took it. “It shouldn’t go to waste,” he explained with tears in his eyes. I glanced down. Beneath the table, his friend was slumped forward. No chest rise.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, for all the good it would do.
The man stood and held his hands to his face, beginning to cry. I set the bags of ice down and patted his back gently, trying hard not to be a sympathetic crier. Rory was right—this room was full of zombies. But they weren’t the sick people, they were all the living ones left behind.
Raluca returned through the curtains, the Robin Hood to our not-so-merry crew. “Hello everyone. I’ve got more Valium, and it’s time for another round of Cipro.”
“I’ll take some of that over here.” The man beside me reached up and pulled off his fake lashes savagely. “The Valium, not the Cipro.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The man set his false eyelashes down on the table, where they looked like lost caterpillars. Then he knelt down and began undoing the knots that had tied his friend.
Rory came over to take the ice from me that I was doing such a shitty job of distributing. He looked down, shaking his head. “I don’t want to move another corpse.”
Calling this man’s friend a corpse in front of him seemed harsh. But then I hadn’t been through what Rory’d been through.
“I can’t go back there again,” Rory went on. It took me a second to realize where he meant—the morgue. Or wherever they were keeping all the bodies. And I realized what I had to do, just in case. If Asher wasn’t here, there was still one place worse he could be. I frowned and looked up. Nathaniel was still watching.
“I’ll go,” I volunteered.
Rory nodded with increasing speed, picked up the bags of ice, and took them away.
“Help me then?” The man unfurled the sheet his
friend had been tied with, preparing to use it as a shroud.
“Sure.” I knelt and grabbed the corpse’s feet, and together we rolled the man over and onto the sheet, which made a hammock-like gurney for transport.
The man hefted his half up easily. Mine came up with a grunt. “Let’s go.”
* * *
We walked down the same hall Rory and I had with the body dangling between us, but past the kitchen doors. I was glad that he was the one walking backward down the hall into the unknown instead of me. The hall bent, and then we took a freight elevator down to the first floor.
I had no idea what I’d do if I found Asher’s body up ahead. None at all. There was a growing knot of fear inside my stomach even contemplating it. It seemed unlikely, but unlikely wasn’t the same as a zero percent chance. I heard a small puppy-sound and realized the man holding up the other end of the sheet was crying. I’d been too self-absorbed to notice. I bit my lip. What to say?
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” As generic as a sympathy card. Dammit.
He nodded and whimpered again. It was the part of the time with families when I’d normally hug whoever was crying—but I couldn’t here, I’d drop half of his friend. The elevator opened and he walked backward out of it, walking and crying, until he reached a lull in his tears.
“The worst part is that our act was finally doing so well. We were finally going places together, just like we’d always dreamed.”
Talking was better than crying. “What was it?” I asked him.
“We were the Two Chers on South Deck,” he said with a long sniffle. “Just another Steve and Eve show—you know, two drag queens, high heels and higher wigs, trying to make our way in the world.” He said it all very tongue-in-cheek before sighing. “We were the late-night entertainment two nights a week. Raunchy comedy and karaoke favorites. Stefano did a mean Cher. I did a nice one.” Interpreting my silence for the confusion that it was, he continued. “You know—he was very ‘Dark Lady,’ I was more ‘Believe in Life After Love.’ Except that he’s dead now, and after the shit I have seen today I don’t believe in fuck-all anymore.”
Edie Spence [04] Deadshifted Page 12