Book of the Dead: AESLI-00: (A reverse harem, post-pandemic, slow-burn romance) (The JAK2 Cycle, Book 1)

by V. E. S. Pullen

  “You just went silent for a solid minute,” Gomez commented, amused.

  “Yeah, sorry, just rethinking some life choices,” I muttered.

  “Well? Jayne Stone?”

  He was way too interested in a simple lab tech, and I was instantly suspicious. “Why? What’s she got to do with anything?”

  He pursed his lips together, annoyed by me asking questions but we were a long way from the dust bowl and he wasn’t my commander anymore. He shook his head, and I knew the conversation was over. At least for now. “Just keep your eyes and ears open. I’ll be in touch in a few days.”

  “You know, if you told me what you were looking for, I’d know what to pay attention to.”

  He shook his head again, getting up from his stool. “Not yet. Just keep your head down and pay attention. And the next time we talk, I’m going to want an answer.” He tossed a few bills onto the bar and set his empty bottle down, then walked out the door, never going back to the group he’d been sitting with before I arrived.

  I dug my phone out of my pocket, opened up a secure texting app disguised as a tower defense game, went to the Social tab, and sent a message to my brother.

  Me: I’m at the bar, just met with G.

  Spider: What did he say?

  Me: Asked about my lab partner but didn’t say anything about anything.

  Spider: What about her?

  Me: Don’t know. I didn’t answer correctly so he left.

  Spider: Odd. What’s she like then?

  Me: Ask me again in a few days, I haven’t made up my mind.

  Spider: …okay?

  Me: I’ll explain when I get home.

  Spider: Cool. Guess what?

  Me: What?

  Spider: I have fucking papers to grade.

  Me: hahahahahhahahahahahaha

  Spider: Yeah, laugh it up. Today sucked ass.

  Me: Yeah? My day started with two little girls calling me “Pretty Boy” and “Soldier Boy” and basically telling me to be quiet because the grownups were talking.

  Spider: Sev is in my Comp Sci class, and Luka is in my study hall.

  Me: You win.

  Spider: They were acting sketchy as fuck too. And I heard Sasha took off with a girl before lunch and never came back.

  Me: Jesus. Subtle those boys are not.

  Spider: First fucking day of class and he hooks up. And I think it was a girl that was supposed to be in two of my classes.

  Me: Damn that’s quick.

  Spider: Do you remember high school?

  Me: Kinda.

  Spider: Trust me, it’s different now. Maybe it’s just this place but… it’s fucking different now. And when I tried to report this girl’s unexcused absence, the office told me it’s fine and I should just email her the assignment.

  Me: Just what teenagers need, a license to fuck around.

  Spider: I haven’t decided if I’m going to just let it go like they told me to. It may be unreasonable, but I’m fucking pissed that this girl could go off in the middle of the day to fuck around and I’m just supposed to send her the assignment to make up. I know this place is different but that’s just unacceptable.

  Me: Spider, you aren’t even here to teach, it’s just an assignment. Why make this a big deal?

  Spider: Because I AM a teacher, and I’m offended. It offends me. Apparently I have standards, maybe even morals. Who knew?

  Me: Certainly not me, that’s for sure.

  Spider: I’ve decided not to let it go. I’m going to deal with it, then I’m going for a run. We’ll figure out food when I get back.

  Me: Give me fifteen minutes to get there and I’ll join you.

  I disconnected and put my phone away, tossed a ten onto the bar, and headed out the door.

  Azzie

  I woke up to gnawing hunger in a stomach that seemed to be digesting itself, an overpowering thirst, a swollen bladder, pounding head, and irritated skin from sleeping in street clothes in conditions that were too warm. Oh, and I had dried blood flaking off my neck and chest. Since the last thing I remember was the “bad touch” crisis before Geography followed by driving off to parts unknown with a set of beautiful triplets with no personal boundaries and a propensity to lurk, being this miserable after the best sleep of my life fit the absurdity of the situation.

  I rolled over and tried looking around the room but it was practically pitch black. I could hear random snuffling sounds, creaks and wheezes, and the occasional unidentifiable body noise — which could have emerged from several places both geographically and in terms of the body — and I could smell warm bodies in sheets that needed laundering, sweaty sneakers, and the musky-spicy-woodsy-piney scent that all three of them seemed to exude from their pores just to set my hormones aflame — I just couldn’t see anything and that was edging me towards a panic attack.

  On top of my dislike for complete darkness, I’d been sleeping since 11am and missed two major meals and at least three snacks, which is not something I can do, health-wise. Even when I’m having trouble digesting things and I have to live off of smoothies (like the last week), I still drink like seven of them a day.

  I dug my phone out of my back pocket and checked the screen: 4:45am on Tuesday, and I had six unread texts and emails.

  I checked the texts, both of them were from Rachel: the first asked if I was eating dinner with them, and then around 10pm she told me to check in when I had a chance. I guess I should be happy she even noticed I wasn’t there. The four emails were from teachers, sending me the assignments I’d missed; two were from a new teacher, an “schandler@salemhs.edu” who apparently took over Comp Sci and my study hall. The first email was my homework, the second was giving me a detention for missing study hall.

  A fucking detention? For STUDY HALL?!

  Yeah, no. Not fucking likely.

  I turned on my phone’s flashlight as I stood up, and was really glad I did since I came within inches of stepping on Sasha, asleep on the floor next to the bed. I leaned down to shake him, and his eyes popped open instantly, it was almost scary how quickly he came awake.

  “Hey,” I said softly, not wanting to wake the others if they were as hair-trigger as him. “Thanks for letting me sleep but I have to go. You can have your bed back.”

  He grunted and sat up, the blanket falling away from his bare chest, and my phone’s light turned his body into a sculpture of shadows and ridged muscles painted with swirls of ink. Once again, I was throwing it out there into the universe that there was a kidney up for grabs if I could just have as much time as I wanted to explore his skin.

  “Are you awake?” I whispered at him and he blinked, then shook his head. “Good. I hope you don’t remember this in the morning: I’d give up body parts, cheerfully, to get some quality time with your tattoos.” By the way he was grinning, I had a feeling he was more alert than he seemed.

  “Do you need a ride home?” He rasped out, coughing slightly to clear his throat. I shook my head and he pushed past me, lying down in the warm cocoon-like pocket of blankets I’d just emerged from, and now I was wondering why the fuck I’d gotten up. “Okay, see you in class.”

  I nodded to his sleeping back, picked up my boots, and crossed the room. “Azzie,” he called out and I looked back. He was sitting up again, shielding his eyes from the light I shone back on instinct, so I faced it down and he grunted. “Your bike is in the back of the truck.”

  “Thanks, Sasha,” I whisper-shouted back, but he was out cold again. I wasn’t going to ask about the bike lock — even if they cut it, they still did me a solid.

  “You’re welcome,” was muttered from one of the other beds, followed by a “the front door will lock behind you.”

  “Thank you, Sevlukasha,” I whispered, covering my bases. In the dim light of my phone’s glow, a hand emerged from the bed closest to me and gave me a thumbs up.

  I exited their room, found their bathroom — remarkably clean for a single bathroom shared by three teenage boys — used it, and then
sat on the stairs to put my shoes on. Climbing the stairs was arduous, my joints tend to swell and they ache the most when I first wake up, but very soon I was outside in the bitter cold of pre-dawn, shivering in my thin jacket that I’d found with my backpack next to their bedroom door.

  I tried to haul my bike out of the bed of the truck without scratching it but it wasn’t going to happen, so I started walking. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood I was in, but I headed towards where I could see traffic lights in the distance, and within a few minutes a patrol picked me up and drove me home.

  First thing I did at home was shovel yogurt and then peanut butter into my mouth-hole, planning to revisit the kitchen once that settled. I went upstairs to my room and took a long shower — longer than I should, and warmer than I should, but I was still a bit cold from my walk. I doused my skin with lotion, let it sink in, then did it again before dressing in a pair of soft leggings, a too small t-shirt that had been washed a million times and was super soft, a big flannel shirt, a hoodie, thick socks, and my steel-toed shit-kicker boots.

  Somewhere in there I blow-dried my hair on low heat so as not to irritate my scalp — my hair that was still only just past my shoulders after growing it out for two damn years — and braided it back in two pigtails after rubbing some product into it that should keep it controlled. I hate staticky hair, especially when it sticks to my skin; I already have anxiety attacks whenever something touches my face or neck, or anything is remotely itchy, so keeping it constrained is a necessity until the day I finally give in and shave it all off.

  Plus, after something like seventeen hours of sleep, I didn’t think I was going to need it to hide my face while napping in class.

  It was already six by then, so I went down to the kitchen and quickly blended one of the pre-made smoothies that Rachel left for me in the fridge. It was a bunch of green stuff with yogurt, protein powder, and about forty other ingredients I couldn’t distinguish. They weren’t exactly the most delicious things in the world, but they were filling, easy on my digestive system, and loaded with all the vitamins, minerals, and iron that I needed.

  The symptom of PV that finally sent me to the hospital the first time was when I started vomiting up blood — well, it was mostly a mucus-y froth of substances threaded with blood — I won’t get into the details, but it was really, really unpleasant. Even after, when we knew what happened, my mom was so traumatized by the experience that she worried for the longest time that I had bleeding ulcers or stomach cancer or something equally awful along with whatever was going on with my bone marrow.

  The doctor eventually explained that when the blood starts getting too thick to flow and oxygen isn’t getting circulated, the body protects itself by shutting down the various organ systems starting with the least important and ending with the most: the digestive system goes first, the brain and nervous system is the last. The vomiting was my digestive system shutting down and expelling everything it could, kind of like taking out the trash before you lock up the house and leave on a vacation. Of course, as he was telling us that, I was also going blind because the blood was pooling behind my eyes and the nerves were shutting down out of self preservation, so I was less concerned with what my small intestine was up to and more interested in why the fuck I couldn’t see anything. I ended up almost totally blind for two weeks before my vision started returning, and that whole time they didn’t know if it would ever come back. For an eleven-year-old, the whole experience was terrifying.

  The scariest thing was that I’d been totally fine, maybe a little run-down and achey, but nothing dramatic until one morning my body just reached its limit and started closing up shop. Then shit started happening so rapidly that they couldn’t keep up and they had no idea what it was, first treating me for accidental poisoning like I was a toddler eating detergent pods while my blood got as thick as ranch dressing. Frankly, it was a little insulting how many times I was asked if I ate any household cleaners or crunchy bits from the basement floor, but I think that experience helped me understand how things went so out of control with JANUS-23. In the early days, when they had no way of knowing what it was, all they could do was scramble to treat symptoms as more and more people got sick and then started dying. Sometimes diagnosis and treatment is just a process of elimination, rinse and repeat until there’s only one answer left on the board.

  End result is that my digestive tract — the only system that shut down completely before they figured out what was going on and I received treatment — is still a little wonky even years later, and I sometimes have trouble with my eyesight too, especially if I’m really tired or my blood gets too thick. Thus the smoothies, the saline eyedrops I carry with me 24/7, my obsessive use of sunglasses and sunscreen whenever I’m outside in daylight, and full-coverage clothes outside no matter how hot is is because my skin is hyper-sensitive and sunburns are agonizing.

  I have a lot of things I need to pay attention to just to get through the day. It’s fucking exhausting.

  And all of this is mainly why Mouse, the only person who knows me, is my only friend: I’m super high-maintenance. Not for other people as much, I’m really self-contained, but I don’t have the time or energy to spend on maintaining relationships with people. I have to constantly be aware of a laundry list of symptoms and all the things I need to do to stay functional and even remotely healthy. I’m lucky to have Rachel handling my diet and everything food related because I really don’t know when I’d have time to study or do anything else if I also had to track my nutrition, shop, prep, and cook my meals (or at least assemble for blending), and bonus that she dabbles in homeopathic skin care.

  I like to think I’m a pragmatic person, and though a girl can have the occasional daydream, I’m realistic. The time I spent with Sasha, Luka, and Sev was really nice despite all the bloodshed and unconsciousness, but we weren’t ever going to have more than that. It might as well have been my subconscious saying those words when I fell asleep in Sasha’s bed, telling myself not to get attached, because I don’t do distractions. I’ve got one job in this lifetime, and that’s staying alive and as healthy as I can. Everything else is white noise.

  Chapter Six

  Azzie

  I left Rachel a note and headed over to the hospital early, hoping I could talk to Mouse alone. No such luck. By the time I got to her lab — still having to use the farthest possible entrance because I was known and expected there — Soldier Boy was already in place, sitting off to the side fucking around on his phone while Mouse was working on the computer and singing along to classic hiphop at the top of her lungs. I think all of the hospital now knew that she was Slim Shady, the real Slim Shady, and all the rest are just imitating. Or maybe that’s why the lab is isolated, down a corridor of locked doors and empty offices. That makes so much sense now.

  Watching Mouse bob her head and aggressively rap along to Eminem gave me the warm tinglies. She’s such a contradiction: she’s in her mid-20s but looks sixteen; she’s tiny — not even five feet tall and maybe a hundred pounds — but the biggest personality in any room and freakishly strong, I’ve seen her fireman-carry a grown man up a flight of stairs on a dare. She was my regular phlebotomist prior to the JANUS-23 outbreak, but before that she was a licensed paramedic working for the fire department, and her size allowed her to maneuver into spaces that others couldn’t. She’s been in horrific situations, but with her long blonde hair and big blue eyes, she looks and acts like a tiny fairy princess hopped up on amphetamines. She commands attention without seeming interested in it, and is beautiful without ever trying to be. She’s my friend, when I made it a point not to have any.

  Both of them looked up with eyes as big as saucers when I pushed open the door, then immediately went back to what they were doing which was annoying as fuck.

  “Hi back, and yes, I’m fine, thanks for asking!” I shouted over the music.

  Mouse gave a heaving, full-body, dramatic sigh before turning down the volume. “Oh, hi Azzie. Sorry if it
seems like you’re interrupting something but you are a half hour early.” She didn’t look up from her screen while administering that burn, but once she was sure that I’d gotten the full effect and appreciated her subtle wit, she jumped up with a screech and ran at me for a hug, jumping up and down like she hadn’t seen me in months, and she was seven, and hopped up on pixie sticks. Soldier Boy watched the whole thing, brow furrowed, then shook his head and went back to his phone.

  “Yeah, sorry, but I was hoping to talk to you alone, and also I slept from 11am yesterday to almost 5 this morning, so I’m very awake right now.”

  Soldier Boy could’ve been offended by what I said, but all he did was roll his eyes and keep playing on his phone. “I couldn’t care less what you talk about,” he said, dismissing us both. Mouse and I exchanged looks and our mind-meld conversation went something like this: Should we start talking about our periods or maybe yeast infections so he leaves the room? Do you feel comfortable with that, even though it would be super effective? Good point… let’s just talk later.

  “Did you have a good day yesterday?” I asked Mouse, but without even giving her time to answer, I kept going. “That’s great, really great. But let me tell you about my day. I’ll start by jumping straight to the punchline: I woke up this morning in a strange boy’s bed, with dried blood streaking and flaking all over my chin, neck, and chest. Then I hitched a ride home with a patrol while looking like an incompetent vampire. Oh, and I got a fucking detention for missing fucking study hall.”

  “Holy shit, I have so many questions!”

  “Yeah, me too. The bullet points are new kids at school, panic attack, busting open my lip while trying to keep from scratching my face off, and triplets. Fucking. Triplets.”