Dating After the End of the World - 27

My teeth clamp down, ripping through the perfectly crisp yet tender flesh. Golden liquid trapped in the embryotic dome erupts in my mouth, dribbling down my chin. Bacon, egg, and cheese toast is an incredible treat, and it was afforded to Blake this morning since it might be his last breakfast with his memories intact. As his dedicated guard, I too am reaping the rewards.

“You know you don’t have to sit down here and watch me.” Blake stares through the bars of his cell, a slight look of disgust on his face, likely from the way I’m unabashedly eating with reckless abandon.

“I know. But I want to,” I answer with a mouth full of food.

“Well . . . thanks. That’s actually really—”

“Especially since my dad is treating you like you’re on death row with these decadent meals. He has Elaine making you all the best stuff in reserve. I mean, look at this.” I hold up another slice of toast topped with bacon and an over-easy egg, smothered in melted cheese, and speckled with salt and pepper. “This is a masterpiece.” I dive in for another bite, as big as my mouth is capable of.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself at my expense.”

I nod along with my heavy chewing. “Mm-hmm.”

Blake gets to his feet and crosses his cell. Gripping his hands around the bars, he leans his forehead against the cold metal, eyeing me suspiciously with a raised brow. His face is flushed, sweat dripping from his hairline. He looks terrible, and I’m sure feels that way too, but he hasn’t complained once.

“Or maybe,” Blake says, “you’re hoping I turn into one of those monsters, and you just wanna be here for the show.”

“Nah. I’m actually hoping you lose your memories.”

“What? Why?” He jerks his head back.

“So you’ll forget how much of an asshole you are.” I smile up at him, trying to make my dimpled cheeks as prominent as possible.

He chuckles and looks down at his watch, noting the time and doing a quick calculation based on when he was bitten. “It looks like you’ll only have to wait about twenty more minutes to see if your wish comes true.”

I notice the worry lines on his face, and my smile fades. My jocular attitude and attempts to keep the situation light are waning in their efficacy as the nearness of his fate is beginning to take hold. His bright eyes have seemed to dull, darting in random patterns, likely in lockstep with the frantic swirling of his thoughts. I set my plate down and wipe my hands and face with a napkin, composing myself.

“Are you scared?” I ask in a serious tone. I know I am, but I don’t say that part out loud.

I can tell by his expression that he wants to answer no. He wants to play tough and act like this is nothing compared to what he’s been through in his life. But not even he can fake it through the gravity of what might happen next. “Yeah,” he says just above a whisper, like he doesn’t want me to hear it.

“Don’t be. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because only the good die young, so you’re gonna live forever.”

He stares at me; his face is unmoving. He starts to lightly cough, holding it in his throat, but soon the coughing breaks free. His mouth opens, and he erupts in a full, deep laugh as he takes some comfort in my wit.

Blake sits on his cot and finally starts eating. His runny yolk has congealed, but he doesn’t seem to care. He checks his watch several times in between bites. I can’t take my eyes off him because I’m scared, and deep down, I’m worried I’m gonna lose him. I study his face and eyes as they go through the torturous uncertainty. He meets my gaze every few seconds. There’s a fear in his eyes that I wish I could cure for him, but not everything can be fixed.

As much as I’ve joked about a negative outcome befalling him, I do hope he has the same good fortune I did. I glance down at my own scar from when I was bitten, realizing I didn’t go through any of the same agony of waiting that Blake is because I didn’t know any better. I thought a deranged patient, hopped up on meds or in a fugue state, bit me, and that was that. What he’s experiencing is far worse. We only fear what we’re uncertain of, and right now, that’s Blake’s future. His life hangs in the balance.

“You know at the hospital, when I froze?” he says, pulling me from my thoughts.

I lift my head and watch him stare off at the side wall of his cell. It’s the same look he had in the hospital, and it’s like he’s standing right back where he was.

“I couldn’t forget . . . even if I wanted to,” I say.

Blake shakes his head, and tears run down his reddened cheeks. Suddenly, he slaps himself with both hands at the same time, blowing out a heavy stream of air.

“I knew him,” he admits.

I stand and walk to his cell, passing my arms through the bars, letting them hang down on their own. “Who?” I ask, not fully following what he’s saying.

“The biter. The one that bit me.”

“What do you mean you knew him?”

Blake stares into my eyes with such an intense gaze, it’s like he wants me to see into his soul, so he doesn’t have to say it himself. “He was my friend. We were in the Seal s together. His name was Grant, and he saved my ass more than once, and vice versa. You can’t really get closer than a bond like that.” I can see from the look on his face that these moments of life and death, someone else putting themselves on the line for you, are playing out in the theater of his mind.

He tightly presses his eyes shut, as though he’s trying to squeeze the memories out, not wanting to relive something so painful. Blake wipes away the tears and glances up at the ceiling, inhaling and exhaling deeply. “Grant was in town visiting. We’d gone out drinking to blow off some steam. The next day, he was feeling like shit. I chalked it up to him being hungover, since I wasn’t much better off myself. I told him to just take it easy, pound some fluids, and I’d get us something nice and greasy to soak up the aftermath of the booze. But his hangover wouldn’t go away, even into the next day, and then things started getting really weird. His memory was starting to go to shit, and I don’t mean like he was blackout the night before, which he was, and couldn’t remember how we got home, but I mean . . . he couldn’t remember my name, or his. I panicked, and I took him to the hospital.”

“That was the right move,” I say.

“Yeah.” He turns to the far wall of the cell, his back facing me. “Well, maybe not.” Blake pounds his fist against the cinder block, holding it there. I can see his arm begin to shake, like he’s trying to push right through it, letting free the guilt trapped inside him.

“I was waiting in the lobby. The doctors said they needed to run some tests, but something was off. Nurses and doctors started rushing in and out. At first, they just seemed hurried and busy, but then their urgency morphed into fear, and I knew something big was going down. That’s when I saw my first one. A patient stumbled out of the double doors covered in blood, and he looked . . .” Blake turns to me, shaking his head. His gaze falls to the ground, searching for a description for a thing that doesn’t exist. “I’d never seen anything like it. Seconds later, the hospital erupted in chaos. There were screams all around me, people running for exits, some bloodied, some still untouched. More and more of those things came pouring out from where my friend had been taken. I figured he was dead.” Blake walks to his cell door, taking my hands in his. “It wasn’t until the other night at dinner, when you told us about the different outcomes, that I realized if I had known better, I could have saved him.”

A new torrent of tears begins to stream down his face as he squeezes my hands. His grip is actually too much, sending pain shooting up my arms, but I’m more than happy to endure it in the moment. It all makes sense now. That’s why he was so upset with me, why he stormed off during dinner. He went from thinking he had left his dead friend to thinking he might have left someone who had a chance.

“That’s why I didn’t want to believe you. Because believing you meant that I was a coward and selfish and evil in a way I couldn’t bear to deal with. It meant that at the slightest inkling of danger, I only cared about me. It meant that I left my friend behind. I wouldn’t even be standing here if it weren’t for him. I’d be lying dead in a compound over in Syria, rotting in the sand with my head cut off or my legs blown halfway across the country. When danger came screaming toward us and stuck itself between Grant and me, he looked it head-on and chose my life. When the same happened in that hospital . . . I ran.”

I squeeze his hands, guiding them up, hoping that his eyes will follow, and they do. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t possibly have known.”

Blake tries to pull away, but I yank him right back, keeping him engaged. He can beat himself up for being a jerk to me, but I won’t let him beat himself up for this.

“Hey, I did the same thing as you, Blake.”

He cocks his head back, both confused and intrigued, unsure of how anything in my life could be equivalent to what he did.

“I worked in a hospital, remember? I was on shift the night everything went to hell, and when my patients started turning and people were dying, you know what I did?”

My eyes bounce back and forth, waiting for him to reply with the obvious answer, but he just shakes his head instead.

“I ran. I ran right out the exit and never looked back. I left every single one of my patients, every single one of my coworkers, every single person on my team. I left them to fend for themselves. And if I wouldn’t have run . . . I’d be dead right now. I was lucky that I only came away with this.” I lift my arm, showing him the scar again. The jagged curve of someone’s teeth, like a dental mold etched into my skin that’s softened over into a paler spot, a reverse tattoo, taking the color with it.

Blake holds his bite mark up next to mine. They’re in nearly identical spots on our arms, and he looks between them both, the gravity of the situation sinking in.

“I know you’re probably right. But I’m still not proud of what I did. I didn’t even try to save him.”

“Hey.” I squeeze his arm to jar him out of his wallowing. “You don’t have to be proud of what you did. But you do have to give yourself grace. There’s no changing what happened, so you just need to be okay with it.”

He stares back at me and nods, not saying anything. I’m sure he won’t be able to easily forgive himself, but in a few minutes, it might not be a problem he ever has to deal with again. Blake tilts his head to the side to read the time on his watch. “Only five minutes left.”

“Would you prefer to be alone for this?”

“I want you to stay.”

“Okay then. I’ll stay.”

Silence fills the room for what feels like an eternity, the minutes melting away as slowly as an ice cube in a refrigerator, just a couple of degrees above where it could hold itself together forever. Blake takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

“Wait,” I say.

His eyes burst back open. “What!?”

“You said your friend lost his memories, right?” My fingers bounce back and forth in front of me like I’m visualizing my thoughts dancing around in my head.

“Yeah.”

“So he was a Nome.”

“I guess so.”

“But he was a biter when you saw him in the hospital on our run.” I’m pacing in front of the cell, trying to connect the dots in this scenario, more talking out loud than I am to Blake.

“I mean, obviously. That’s how I got this.” Blake holds up his arm, as if I need a reminder as to what happened.

“Hmmm.” I start massaging my scalp, prodding my brain to work out what I think I’ve come to realize.

“What is it? What are you thinking?”

“I saw patients turn into Nomes, and I saw patients turn into biters, but the biters weren’t Nomes, or vice versa.”

“What’s your point? We know that both things can happen.”

“Right, but what if when a Nome is bit, they turn into a biter? No matter what. Like, the additional infection instantly overloads the system and deteriorates whatever’s left, devolving them even further.” I stop pacing, letting the idea settle in.

“Have you ever seen that happen before?”

“No. Anytime I would see a Nome get attacked in the city, it was always by multiple biters at once. They would be ripped apart and eaten on the spot, so they never had a chance to turn.” A light bulb goes off in my head. The herd of biters that came and attacked the compound—it never made any sense to me. That many turning into biters? It’s statistically impossible.

“The bus!” I yell out.

“What about the bus?” Blake isn’t following, and I can tell my ramblings are more confusing than they are helpful.

“If the bus had been full of regular people and someone turned, the biter would have just attacked as many as it possibly could while all the others fled. It would be days before the survivors turned, and they’d be scattered all over the place. But”—I begin pacing again—“if the bus were attacked by multiple biters, it’d be just as chaotic with people fleeing and dying. Still impossible. Unless . . .”

I run to the cell and grip the bars, pressing my face right in between two of them. “What if that bus was full of Nomes and only one biter? The Nomes would be so confused by the attack. They’d be trying to flee, toppling over one another, especially if the bus door was locked. Based on what happened to your friend, all the Nomes would turn into biters.”

Blake tilts his head. “But how would all the Nomes get on the bus? And who was driving?”

“Someone must have been transporting them on purpose, and something went very wrong.”

“Who would want a bunch of random Nomes?”

“Someone who wants bait or free labor or an army.” The realities that they haven’t seen out here are astounding, a mixture of a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, they haven’t witnessed Nomes being used as slaves for labor and personal enjoyment or prodded around to lure others out. That also means they aren’t prepared. But trouble is coming, whether we like it or not. I can feel it in my bones.

I turn to Blake, almost forgetting he’s still in the room. His forehead is beading with sweat, glistening from the overhead light in the cell. He swallows hard, far too often for what is normal, as he stares down at his watch.

“Are you okay?” I soften my tone, realizing that all my hypothesizing is not doing anything to help take his mind off what might happen.

“I’m fine.” He wipes the sweat away reflexively, not pulling his gaze from his watch. “I just have a headache.” Blake taps the watch face, taking in deep, heavy breaths, one after another. “About a minute now.”

“It’s gonna be okay.” I force a smile, trying to remain positive, but he still won’t break from the staring contest he has going with his watch.

I return to the cell door, reaching through the bars. His hand is close enough to grab, so I draw him toward me, breaking his trance.

Blake stands up straight, hesitating, like he wants to go back to his way of doing things, but instead, he pivots his weight and comes closer, lacing his fingers through mine.

“Thank you,” is all he says, and I only smile in response at first, not knowing any words that could possibly comfort him in this moment, but then it dawns on me. If I were about to lose all my memories, what is the thing I would want most?

“What’s your best memory?” I ask, watching as he looks at me like I asked him a pop question. A mixture of terror at revealing a response, coupled with the uncertainty of it not being the right one.

“What? Why?” he asks, clearly unsure whether this is something genuine and real between us, something that’ll give him even the smallest semblance of relief prior to the numbers on his watch face switching over, or if I’m just using this moment for my own enjoyment, a private torture show for one.

“In case you lose them.”

He looks down the bridge of his nose, quickly wiping away a tear that formed and was ready to fall. I can see the inner workings of him searching for the memory, the nerve endings poring through his hard drive like two fingers dancing along the contents of a filing cabinet.

“So I can remind you of your favorite one.”

A smile slowly spreads across his face, a sense of relief relaxing the veins near his temples. “That’s easy,” he says.

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s you.”

The warmth of excitement from the increased blood flow is making him glow in a nervous hue, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s anticipating his own teasing punch line or if it’s because he’s letting his true feelings show.

“Wow,” I say in minor shock of his admission. “I didn’t realize there was a fourth outcome from the infection.”

“Huh?” His face instantly loses its glow, a coal removed from the fire, thrown into a frigid lake. “What do you mean?” His tone is now clinical, like a patient asking a doctor the definition of a medical term.

“Growing new organs. It would be an incredible medical anomaly, but I guess it’s possible, since you just grew a heart.”

He shakes his head, but the smile on his face betrays any sense of anger or annoyance. “Oh, come on. I already had a heart.”

“Where?” I tease, reaching through the bar and poking at his hard pecs.

He laughs and grabs my hand, taking it in his. He looks down at me with the laser focus of someone being cross-examined in court. “I’m serious, Casey. And you’d better remind me if I forget.”

I don’t question the veracity of his statement and instead agree, not wanting to deny his potentially final conscious request. “I will.”

He releases my hand and lets his body fall back into the wall, slinking down to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees. My brows knit together with worry. I crouch, watching him.

Blake takes a deep breath through his nose, his lips shifting in such small movements that I can’t make out what he’s saying, but by the rhythm and pattern, I can guess he’s counting. And then he stops. His forehead falls between his knees, and he goes still.

“Blake?” I say, needing to know whether he’s okay. “Blake?”

Finally, he lifts his head from its resting spot and leans it back against the wall, rolling his head up and down like he’s giving himself a scalp massage. He pushes off the cinder block and stands, looking around the cell like he’s getting his bearings. When his gaze lands on me, his face twists up, not out of fear or shock, but out of curiosity.

“Blake?” I reach my hand through the bars, stretching it as far as I can, my fingers spread wide, trying to claw the air for just an extra inch. He takes my hand in his, shaking it up and down like we’re associates in a boardroom.

“Blake, are you all right?”

“Who are you?” he asks.

My heart plummets down into my stomach, splashing acid everywhere as a burn begins to radiate throughout my core. I let go of his hand and stumble back in shock.

“Where am I?” he asks, peering up at the ceiling and turning in circles, his steps choppy and frantic. I can sense that panic is about to set in. I’ve seen this with many dementia patients or people coming out of heavy narcotics, and despite how heartbroken I am, I need to be there for him, to keep him calm. His entire life just changed for the worse, and I’m gutted that it happened to coincide with me realizing that I actually care about him.

“What am I doing in here!?” He looks like a fish trying to frantically find its way out of an aquarium, swimming beneath the water of my tears.

“I’m so sorry, Blake,” I whisper as I wipe my tears away, not wanting to worry him any more than he probably is.

I walk to his cell, calling out his name until he settles down enough to focus on me and what I’m trying to tell him.

“I’m so, so sorry, Blake,” I say, unable to hold back my sadness any longer.

“Who’s Blake?” he asks.

I reach my hands out and he grabs them reflexively, holding me by the wrists like he isn’t sure what to do with these “things” that just entered his space. I glance down at my feet. My tears sit atop the concrete floor, unable to penetrate the uniform, smooth surface, no different from the effect they have on the husk of the man standing before me.

Blake lets go of my wrists and collapses to the floor. A burst of laughter erupts from his mouth and rocks through me, like a sound wave sent from a bullhorn. He rocks back and forth, grabbing his sides, chuckling even louder.

“You fucking dick!”

“You should have seen your face!” He points at me, howling in amusement.

I look around for something to throw at him. Spotting my breakfast plate, I grab the hash brown patty from it and tomahawk it through the bars, hitting him square in the face. Pieces fly around the cell and a grease spot now glistens on his slightly reddened skin, but it does little to stop his fit of joy.

“By the way, Pearson, I accept your apology.” He’s still beaming, tickled with joy at his prank.

I squeeze my eyes tight, shaking my head in tiny tremors. “I wasn’t apologizing to you for anything. I was apologizing for your situation.”

“That’s not how I took it.” He relaxes into a smug state of bliss, as if every word of this exchange is like a drop of honey hitting his tongue.

“Whatever.” I turn on my heel and head for the door, no longer feeling the need to watch over him . . . at least for now.

“Where are you going?” he calls out, the coolness of his voice now replaced with a mix of genuine curiosity and concern that his plaything is leaving early.

“To inform everyone that you’re not a Nome but that you are, in fact, still an asshole.”