Deadshifted

My eyes found the clock. He had less than ten hours now. I wondered if his interrogation of Liz had been profitable. Whatever that woman had was not meningitis—it didn’t map to any illness I knew. But I had a hard time believing that Nathaniel could have come up with an entirely novel disease. Genetics didn’t work like that. You based things on other things, borrowed DNA, jumping genes. So far it was too hard to create anything new out of whole cloth.



So what mapped with fever, sometimes to the point of seizures, and weird hunger, with a dash of froth?



Not rabies, given the number of trays in her room—when you were rabid, your throat constricted and hurt too badly to swallow; that’s why rabid creatures perpetually drooled. And it would be too effing ironic for me to see someone with rabies now when I’d already survived being exposed to were-blood on a full moon night.



The left-sided heart failure I didn’t want to think about. There were meds to help it—but if you were so far gone that you were frothing because your heart and lungs weren’t talking right, your outlook wasn’t good.



Last but not least, there were esoteric genetic diseases that caused strange behaviors. Prader-Willi syndrome caused chronic hunger and disinhibition, which made you want to eat whatever you could. Families with people who suffered from it had to lock their afflicted relatives safe inside houses, and/or strap them down. And Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a rare illness that made people want to eat themselves. The only solution for that was highly experimental drugs, brain stimulation, or pulling out all your teeth to stop you from eating your own lips and fingers. Just the idea of it made me ill. And I couldn’t get away from the image of that women digging through my trash to eat my pre-licked fries.



“Are you going to be sick again?” Emily asked.



I barely managed to nod before I made it into the bathroom to throw up.



* * *



This time, no strangers came while I was gone. And I hoped Emily’d learned her lesson about opening the door for just anyone. But I couldn’t blame her for wishing her father would return, when I was still waiting for Asher. I wanted him to come back and tell me everything was going to be all right, even if it was a lie.



He’d never broken a promise to me before, and that was the only thing that kept me here now. The hope—as impossible as it was beginning to seem—that he’d be back by morning like he’d said he would.



Emily slept on the couch, limp like a puppy, completely passed out. I threw a sheet over her, and then I tossed and turned on the bed, not even trying to sleep, just thinking What-If thoughts. Every flicker of the show Emily had left on seemed like the shadow of the door opening, and I got up periodically to touch her forehead and make sure she wasn’t getting hot.



At 5 A.M., she threw the sheet off. I stood up to check on her again, and if I hadn’t been listening so hard for my own door I might not have heard it—the sound of the next door over clicking open, and then sliding shut.



Was her dad back? With news? Had he seen Asher? And would he take Emily off my hands? I pulled Emily’s room key out of my pocket. Even though Asher would know I wouldn’t leave a child unattended in our room for long, I felt compelled to write him a note with the stationery on the desk.



Next door. Be right back! I signed my name underneath, like he wouldn’t know it was me if he returned while I was gone.



* * *



I tiptoed next door and knocked softly. I didn’t want to interrupt anyone doing anything private, but I did want the girl off my hands. I knocked a little louder, but hopefully too quiet for Emily to hear, just a wall away. After long enough, I gave up and tried the lock with my loaned key.



“Hello?” I called out quietly.



It was dark inside. I reached out for a light switch. Maybe I’d only imagined the sound.



The light illuminated Emily’s father, sitting in the dark on the edge of their foldout couch.



“Oh, my gosh.” I clasped my hand to my chest, startled. “You’re back. Is your boy okay?”



He slowly turned to face me, and his eyes blinked as though they were unused to the chore. “He’s dead.”



That gut punch of a child’s death again. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”



He didn’t shake his head, or hunch over to cry, or anything else that I might have recognized as grieving.



“Did they let you back up here? Is the quarantine off?” I hadn’t heard any obnoxious chimes overhead, and there’s no way in my current state I would have slept through them. He didn’t answer me.



“Should I … go get … Emily?” I said, uncertain of my place here. I backed up against the door. Would he want some time alone with his grief? I could get that. If anything had happened to Asher, I’d need to be the fuck alone too. “Where’s your wife?”



“She’s dead too.”



“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I repeated, like it would help.



He ignored me and turned his gaze back out to the ocean, back to where I realized he’d been looking before. “I’m so thirsty.”



“Would you like a glass of water?” I could see into the bathroom from where I stood, glasses from last night’s room service at the ready.



It happened in the second I looked away. One moment he was seated, apparently morose—the next he was standing and walking toward the balcony doors.



“Hey—” I took a step away from the door as he stepped outside.



From there it was only a long step and a half to the railing. I’d started to run, but he climbed up like he was mounting a horse, swinging over one leg at a time, and without hesitation he leapt.



This time was different from the man I’d seen go before. We were still six floors up, but the night was clear, and the moon was bright. I raced outside after him, hands reaching, too late. My hands clung to the railing as I looked overboard.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN



He’d splashed—not like an Olympic diver, but like a kid, cannonball-style, disappearing beneath the waves. Everything had happened in silence. I hadn’t screamed. Screaming would attract attention—it would wake up Emily, and then where would I be? Explaining that her father’d just flung himself overboard?



But I was screaming on the inside. I watched the ocean in horror, biting my lips. I stepped back from the balcony’s edge and into the room, backing up until my knees were caught by the foldout couch where Emily’s dad had just been.



That wasn’t right. It simply was not right. He’d been here, and then he’d just thrown himself overboard—why? Grief? Panic? Why?



I took two deep breaths, and then I picked up the phone to dial guest services for whatever good it would do. I was sent to a messaging service, and I set the receiver down without leaving one.



I crept back to my own cabin, and touched Emily’s cool forehead again, just in case. How would I tell her? Should I? I generally wasn’t in favor of lying to children, but if I didn’t tell her, who would? Everyone else in her family was dead. It could wait until morning at least; she deserved one more night of sweet dreams.



She was alone in the world now.



As for me … I wrapped my hand around my stomach, where Asher’s hand was supposed to be. Was he, in some small distant way, partially responsible for all of this? I didn’t know. I could figure how to deal with that later.



For right now, I just wanted him back.



I would have cried but I was too tired and too frightened. Crying would have been like admitting defeat. So I didn’t, I just lay down and watched Emily dream.



* * *



I must have gone to sleep after that. Too much crazy, not enough to eat—I woke up and didn’t remember anything for a blissful second and then, ushered in by the sound of Darth Vader breathing nearby, it all came rushing back.



I opened my eyes and found Emily three inches from my face, with the N95 mask on.



“Jesus Christ!” I yelped. She jumped back, as startled as I was.



“I found this!” Emily explained, her voice muffled. “It’s like a bridle!”



“It is,” I agreed with a pant—and I remembered that I’d seen the last remaining member of her family float away the night before. God.



“You look sad,” she said.



“I’m just tired is all.” I sat up, blinking, and checked the clock. It was 10 A.M. Emily had watched TV quietly and helped herself to another sandwich while I’d slept in. Asher hadn’t returned. My note to him last night sat tented on the desk, mocking me.



I rocked back in bed and nodded to myself. This was it. He’d had his twenty-four hours and more. I was going to have to go look for him.



“Neeeeighhhh?” Emily said for attention, pawing at the ground with a foot like a horse.



I gave her a half smile. “Here, let me show you how to wear your bridle right.”



I folded the mask’s metal bridge around her nose. It wouldn’t seal—it was the wrong size for her. But she still didn’t have a fever. I didn’t think she’d contract whatever had taken the rest of her family down, due to either luck or natural immunity. While I tied the elastic bands to fit tighter around her head, I looked around the room.



All of my belongings that I liked were in this room with me, with the exception of Minnie, my cat, who was being boarded back home. The silver cuff Asher had given me a Christmas ago, to help protect me from vampires. The glamorous shoes I’d bought on super-sale that I’d carefully broken in, that I’d been waiting to get the chance to dance in. The blue shirt that I’d worn on our first real date that had felt like a date, a normal date, just us going out to see a movie, like normal people do. I had the feeling if I left this room I would never see any of it again.



And that was okay, as long as I found Asher.



“Are you going to be sick again?” Emily asked, her voice hushed by the mask. Her glasses fogged up with her breath.



I shook my head. “There’s no time for that anymore.”



* * *



I took Emily out into the hall and knocked politely at Hal and Claire’s door, trusting Claire’s ears to hear us. I heard a grunt behind the door as Hal spotted us through the peephole, and noticed when he opened the door up that he’d set down his cane nearby. All the better to beat us with.