by Kate Morris
The fact that he was concerned for his little brother spoke to his character. It did not, however, make her feel more comfortable staying the night at his house. But Jane went into his room anyway. She sat on the bed and placed her bag beside her. It was only her purse, which was an old, beat up tan leather backpack that she carried as a purse since it was small and could accommodate the articles she needed most of the time. Having not thought this night through, she did not actually have anything she needed for spending the night away from home. Deception obviously required a lot more planning and forethought.
Jane startled when he came through the door a moment later. He locked it, too. She shot to her feet.
“I still think I should just sleep in my truck,” she said nervously.
He shook his head and went to his laptop still on his desk, “It’s too cold out tonight. You’ll freeze to death.”
“Might be better than how some of those people at the hospital looked tonight,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he stated and turned on the computer. “Hey, you should get a shower. We both should. I mean, not together or anything!” he corrected quickly.
Jane’s eyes grew wide as he spoke. She felt her cheeks burning.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to imply that. Of course, I wouldn’t want to do that. Or…wait, I don’t mean that, either, exactly,” Roman rambled. “Just, here, let me get you some towels.”
He brushed past her into the bathroom, and Jane followed. “There are extra supplies in the cupboards; toothbrushes, and toiletries.”
“Why do you have so many extra toothbrushes? Do you have an unhealthy obsession with teeth or something? Or do you often have girls spending the night with you?”
He chuckled, “No, nothing unhealthy or obsessive or overnighters. When I was younger, my cousins from out of town would come and stay for a week in the summer. My mom just always stocked the bathrooms full of supplies any of them might need.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Towels,” he said, pointing to another cupboard. “Do you need anything else? Girl stuff like…I don’t know… face stuff or…anything else?”
“No, I prefer not to remove my normal layer of skin to reveal my hideous, monstrous side with fur and scales and talons until I’m in the comfort of my own home.”
He smiled. “Got it. I’ll let you get yours first. I just think it’s important to get any of those hospital germs cleaned off that we might’ve carried home on our clothes or skin. I’ll throw our clothes in the wash.”
“Probably a good idea, except I didn’t plan very well for this, and I don’t have any other clothes to wear.”
“Oh, you can borrow some of mine. I’ll grab you some gear.”
He fled the bathroom, which was the size of the spare bedroom on the second floor of Nana Peaches’s house and returned a moment later with a clean stack.
“Thanks,” she said with a half frown.
He left, and Jane locked the door behind him. He knocked and said, “Give me your dirty clothes, and I’ll throw them in the wash with mine.”
“Okay,” she called quietly through the door.
Jane stripped, balled her clothing tightly to conceal her undergarments and handed them out the door. He took them, and she slammed the door shut again, locking it. She thought she heard him chuckling.
It took her a minute to figure out the shower operation with the multiple heads and buttons and levers and sprayers. When she stepped away from the spray to reach for the shampoo bottle, she looked up and noticed a skylight in the ceiling. She could see the stars. It was probably the best shower of her life, but it didn’t stop her from scrubbing her skin until it was red and raw. All she kept picturing as she did so were those dead bodies lining the hallways of the morgue in that super creepy hospital. If she was skeptical and still holding out hope before, she no longer was. Roman was right. He was right about all of it. They were in trouble.
She pulled on his sweatpants that she had to roll the legs up three times they were so long on her. It felt strange going without panties, but she reminded herself that this was her own fault for not being prepared. It was the just punishment a person got when they were being deceitful. Then she donned the t-shirt and hoodie. Being braless was also uncomfortable. He really did look up to Johnny Cash because the ensemble was all black and resembled the rest of his wardrobe. She brushed her teeth with the disposable toothbrush and threw it in the waste can when she was done. Wrapping her hair in a towel, she went into the bedroom again. He was working at the desk on his laptop still doing research but spun in his chair at the sound of her approach. Roman was wearing a long, navy blue robe. His feet were bare, which led her to speculate about the rest of him.
“It’s starting to get leaked on the internet even more now,” he said, pointing to the screen. She leaned over him to squint at the hundreds of thumbnail video links, most with still frames of horrific images of people who didn’t quite look like people anymore. Roman turned his head and almost bumped her cheek. He cleared his voice before continuing.
“Look at this one,” he said, clicking on a thumbnail. “Someone did in Seattle what we did tonight, but they actually got into one of the tents at their hospital and took video footage. It’s been viewed over a million times, and it was just uploaded forty-three minutes ago. People are talking about all of it, too, in this thread.”
The comments ranged from people calling it all a hoax full of conspiracy theorists, to others saying they were headed for their underground bunkers with their families. Jane wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t have laughed at something like that a few weeks ago, but now she found herself feeling a little envious. She wished she could take Nana Peaches and her dad and Dez and head to an underground bunker. Maybe Roman, too. Definitely Connor.
He found another video with the closed caption script going full speed as scientists in white lab coats argued in Russian with plain clothes people at a round table. It turned heated. They began shouting, and Jane could barely follow the words scrolling to translate their discussion.
“Apokalypsis,” Roman said. “Apocalypse. That’s what they’re calling this. There!”
“What?”
“I saw it again,” he told her and pressed the button to rewind the recording. “See?” he asked, pointing to the word, ‘Apokalypsis.’
She swallowed hard. “Apocalypse. They think this is an apocalypse of some kind. Really?”
“I guess so. You can keep watching if you want,” he offered and stood. “I’m gonna hit the shower.”
“Okay,” she said on a yawn.
“Or go to bed,” he offered. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
There was a dark gray one in a small sitting nook near the windows. It didn’t look long enough to accommodate the height of Roman.
“No, I’ll sleep there. I’m shorter.”
“I insist, milady,” he teased and offered a sweeping bow. “Take the bed. I’m probably staying up for a while anyway. I want to keep looking into this. Plus, I want to make sure I put our clothes in the dryer and get them back out tonight.”
“Oh, right. Don’t want your dad to find out I’m here.”
“No, it’s not that. I just want to make sure I run them on super hot heat so that whatever the hot water doesn’t kill, the hot air will. Don’t worry. My dad’s not like that. He wouldn’t even care if he found out you were staying here overnight.”
“That’s pretty…generous,” she observed. “So, you do have frequent female guests who stay overnight here with you.”
She eyed the bed nervously.
“Never,” he told her. “You’re the first.”
“I think we both know that’s not true,” she said, not talking about the overnight guest thing anymore. He frowned as if he found the discussion not to his tastes.
“He’s just a lot more lax than my mom. He’d be more worried about us using protection. That’s always his go-to worry.”
Her eyes widened. Then she
recovered and said, “We used rubber gloves and face masks. Do those count?”
He laughed.
She looked at her feet, embarrassed that she was such a nerd. “My grandmother would probably kill me.”
“I’ll drive you home first thing. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
Jane nodded and handed him the damp towel from her hair since she didn’t know what to do with it. He nodded unsurely and stood there.
“What is it?”
Roman shook his head and said, “Nothing. I was just worried about you tonight. I shouldn’t have taken you with me.”
“I’m fine,” she shrugged and reassured him. “Trust me. That was not the worst situation I’ve ever been in.”
He nodded with a look of understanding and seemed like he wanted to prod her for more information.
“I’m gonna turn in,” she said, denying him any more answers about subjects of which she didn’t wish to speak.
“Got it,” he said and took another pile of clothing to the bathroom.
Within a few minutes, she heard the shower going again. She wished she knew the way around his house so that she could put their clothing in the dryer, but Jane did not and also did not want to run into his father. Roman might’ve been cool with her staying, but she was uncomfortable. So, she curled up on the bed, pulled a soft throw over herself and passed out from exhaustion.
A few minutes later, she woke again. He must’ve come out of the bathroom. She looked around and sat up confused. Roman was snoring softly from the sofa near the windows. She looked at the digital glowing clock on the bedside table. It was almost six a.m. She’d fallen asleep a lot harder and faster than she thought she would. Her eyes searched the still dark room. Care of a nightlight in the bathroom that just barely spilled into the bedroom, she spotted her clothing neatly folded at the foot of the bed.
Jane slipped from the comfort of Roman Lockwood’s bed and took her pile of clothes to the bathroom where she quickly dressed. Then she pulled on her shoes and sneaked out of his room. She didn’t need a ride. She needed to make an exit without being seen by neighbors, enemies from school who also lived in this neighborhood, and his father. She was able to do so but ran smack dab into his little brother in the hallway on the first floor walking around eating cereal from a big, white bowl.
“Oh, hey, Jane,” he said casually as if his brother had overnight guests of the female variety quite often. Either that or he was just comfortable around her.
“Oh, um…hi, Connor,” she said, holding up her hand in greeting. “I’m just going home.”
“Okay, let me disarm the system,” he offered and went to the pin pad near the garage door.
“Thanks,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief. She’d forgotten about that. Hard to make a stealthy escape while also setting off a screeching alarm system and alerting the security guards of their community and probably the cops. “Bye.”
“See ya!” he said chipperly and padded back down the hallway eating his cereal.
She sprinted away from his house, down the street, passed the guard, who she waved to in the guard shack and who also looked at her as if she were doing a walk of shame and even shook his head with judgment, and ran to her grandmother’s house next door down the street a hundred yards. She even managed to get inside, relock the door, sneer at Delores the cat, who already disliked Jane, and dash silently up to her bedroom. The third stair from the top squeaked as it always did, but her grandmother did not come out of her own room to confront her. So, this was what it felt like to sneak around behind a parent’s back. She flopped onto her bed dramatically and sighed. It didn’t feel so great. Not at all. Her grandmother didn’t deserve her behaving like a liar and a sneak.
Jane fell asleep and woke near eight this time. She felt like crap from the screwy sleep pattern, the lying, the guilt, and from finding out that the world she was living in was not an honest one, either. She dragged herself downstairs to the familiar smells of breakfast being made. Pulling her phone from her jeans pocket, she found four missed messages from Roman. They were urgent, or at least, he made it seem that way. The first one was him expressing anger at her for leaving without waking him because he was worried for her safety, which was silly since she literally lived next door, separated by the barrier of a tall, brick wall, of course. The second was less angry because Connor had told him that she’d left but that he didn’t tell his father on him. The next two were discussing the Russian flu and that he wanted to see her as soon as possible.
“Have a good time with Destiny?” her grandmother asked, sending an arrow of guilt straight into Jane’s heart.
“Um, sure,” she said.
“Eat up. You have to be at work in an hour,” Nana Peaches reminded her.
“Oh, crap!” she stated and started consuming her scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon like a maniac.
Her grandmother laughed and sipped her coffee. “Where’s your mind lately, Jane?”
“Uh…” she mumbled and took a drink of her orange juice instead. “Sorry, ma’am.”
They ate in silence, and Jane cleaned up and washed the dishes when they were done.
“Mind giving me a lift to Dot’s?” Nana Peaches requested. “I need to run her some crates of applesauce.”
“For the homeless shelter?” she asked, knowing her grandmother donated to their local food bank.
“Yes, she said their donations have been slow lately. She’s not sure what’s going on.”
Perhaps it was the flu. Maybe people weren’t donating because they were infected, caring for family members who were, or hoarding food in their secret, underground bunkers. Jane mentally slapped herself to get a grip. Good grief. This was getting out of hand. Tinfoil hats were in her near future if she didn’t calm down.
She finished the dishes, stored away the leftovers, which was just bacon, and sent Roman a quick text that she had to go to work today. She wanted to add that some people actually had to work for money but refrained. It wasn’t in her nature to be spiteful or covetous anyway. She did like that bathroom of his, though. Those eight spraying jets and rainwater shower head. That she did want to covet, just a little.
After dropping her grandmother with Dot and also being told that she’d be late because they had plans of playing cards that evening, Jane drove to the barn and got there ten minutes late. It didn’t matter apparently because not a single soul was in sight. She just started her work and began by mucking stalls. They seemed particularly dirty. Most of the horses weren’t turned out, either, even though the weather was perfect for it, so she stopped cleaning and started leading the horses one at a time to their designated pastures. Something seemed off. There were seven horses still out in the far pasture. They were filthy as if they’d rolled in mud all day yesterday and last night. Those were show horses and not ever permitted to be turned out for so long. A few hours here and there was basically all they got. Their owners were going to be very upset when they saw the condition of their horses’ normally sleek and perfectly detangled manes and tails that were total rats’ nests and caked with mud. They were also trying to rush the gate like they were hungry when she opened it, which was unusual. She waved them back and turned to go to the barn again when she caught sight of Roman walking toward her. She waved. Then she felt like a loser and stopped. Dork! She needed to act a lot cooler. He hung with the cool clique. Then she berated herself. He wasn’t interested in her like that anyway. They were just the queen’s spies, buddies, partners in infectious global diseases crime.
“Need some help?” he offered.
“You’ll get dirty,” she warned.
He smiled down at her- him in all of his perfection with his cool guy Ray Bans and neat clothing and sleek hair; and Jane in a ponytail, dirty jeans, matching jacket, no makeup, probably dark circles under her eyes, and dusty boots. She was quite sure she looked totally hot. She tried not to groan. He looked ready to walk a runway in New York or Paris.
“I told you befor
e, I don’t care about stuff like that,” he said and paused to look over her shoulder and remove his sunglasses. “What’s their deal?”
He was referring to a few of the already high-strung show horses fighting and screaming at one another.
“Not sure. I was just going to try and find out,” she told him.
She led him to the barn again, and Jane noticed one of the outside water troughs, “That hasn’t been filled.”
“Want me to do that?”
“No, we’ll get it later. Let’s just turn the rest out.”
They worked together, which made it go so much faster, until all of the horses were released into their appropriate pastures. Then they filled the six different water troughs, all of which were either empty or nearly so.
When they returned to the barn, Mrs. Goddard came up to her in a rush. “Jane, dear,” she said the way she always did, “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“What’s going on? Where is everyone?”
“Leonard didn’t show up for work Thursday, and I just learned from his wife that he’s in the hospital.”
“Oh, no, that’s terrible. What happened? Accident from around here?” She was just trying to fool herself, or by saying the words, allow herself to hope that it wasn’t what she figured it was.
Roman shot her a look that let her know he was thinking the same thing.
“This flu everyone seems to be getting. I called Patrick, and he’s sick, too.”
Her heart sank at the word ‘flu.’ Patrick did more of the handyman work around the farm, but Mrs. Goddard called on him to help out when others couldn’t.
“Then it struck down Barb, and Jessica’s son has it, so she can’t come in, either.”
They were both trainers and didn’t like doing the farm work that went along with the farm anyway.
“So, nobody’s been here since I worked yesterday?” Jane asked.
“Just me,” she said. “Noah’s supposed to be coming down tonight to help, but he said Marilyn isn’t feeling well. If she’s got it, he might get it, too.”