Chapter Twenty-Four #3
“Not much, to be honest. People turn anywhere between five minutes and ten hours, though each day the window between bite and conversion shortens, likely due to the virus’s rapid mutations.
Yesterday’s average was fourteen minutes.
My working theory is that it depends on how much of the catalyst you already have in your system and how much of the activated viral load transmits through the bite. ”
Maisie’s breath trembles. She presses the talk button. “Has anyone been bitten and not turned?”
“Not…yet. Not that we’ve seen.”
The metal bunker is quiet after that. I take a ragged breath in, and Chicken appears beyond my cage.
“Hey, girl.” I reach through the bars to stroke behind her ear, but she surprises me by squeezing inside to lie in front of my chest, floofing right against my heart.
It’s still beating, for now. I wrap an arm around her and spoon her close, which she tolerates. Also for now.
“Hey, that’s a good sign,” Maisie says, her voice shaky. “She’s not hissing.”
“Or maybe I’m the only zombie that gets a pass.” I snuggle my face into her. “You’ll still love me if I’m undead? Hmm?”
She scoots away, which I deserve. Maisie huffs through her tears, a wobbly, desperate sound.
“Listen, Maisie. I think we need some—new ground rules.”
“Oh, yeah?” She tries to smile, her breath escaping in stray sobs. “What are these new rules, Professor?”
“First, you have to promise me that you won’t do anything stupid once I turn. Don’t let me out of this cage. Don’t try to take me back to Gemma. Don’t risk yourself whatsoever. If I die and reanimate, I want you to tase me. I need you to.” I pin her with my eyes. “Promise me, Maisie.”
She takes a deep breath. It catches in her chest, but when she releases it, she sounds stronger than before. “I promise.”
“Second, promise me that if you need anything, you’ll go to my family for help. They care about you, Maisie. They are your people now, too.”
Maisie blinks against the new tears welling in her eyes. “I promise.”
“Lastly, I want you to acknowledge that you have, in fact, Miseryed me.” I gesture at the cage surrounding me, the bunker beyond, the wounds she’s expertly bandaged on my arm.
Maisie bursts out laughing. “Jesus, Everett!”
“You played the long game, Nurse Bennett. And you won.” I pause, then frown. “I guess we’re lucky that Gramps had this cage.”
“You can’t smell why?” Maisie’s broken smile is lopsided and exhausted. “That was Bo’s old crate.”
I sniff the air. “Was Bo a—a dog?”
She nods. “A giant hound. Very slobbery, Gramps always said.”
“That explains the smell.”
“He liked to roll around in deer shit,” Maisie says through a sobbing laugh.
“This apocalypse just gets better and better.” But hearing Maisie laugh, though it’s tired and ragged and loaded with despair, does help. There are tiny joys to be had even now, while the unknown number of remaining hours, minutes, seconds ticks down the last dregs of my human life.
“I love you, Maisie,” I whisper as I lay my head back on my arm.
She’s already laid out a neat bed of blankets in front of my cage, and a pillow.
She lies down on them now, across from me, smiling at me through the bars.
I extend my hand through the cage again, and she takes it gently in hers.
“The second my eyes start to glow, you cut this thing off,” I say, nodding toward my hand. “Got your machete ready?”
“Yeah.” She laughs a little, the sound thick. “I’m prepared.”
“I’m so, so glad my stupid, amazing, irreplaceable best friend catfished you.” I smile, a tear sliding over the bridge of my nose. “I’ve lived more this week than I have in the last three years.”
“Well, I’m so, so glad you were too nice to cancel and stuck around even after I bungled Shayla’s monologues from Dreamsdate, episodes one through four.” Maisie runs the back of her hand under her nose. “This is the best date I’ve ever had.”
“Oh, come on. This has easily been the equivalent of the first six months of dating! We had our first date, first kiss, first fight—”
“First shopping trip, first road trip,” Maisie adds, smiling crookedly. “First camping trip.”
“First camping disaster, you mean. First movie night, first night together.”
“First sex,” she says quietly. “My first love. First marriage for me, at least. I even met your parents.”
I exhale. “It’s not fair, Maisie. None of this is fair to you.”
“It’s not,” she agrees. “But you opened the whole world to me. You slowed it down and cracked it open and helped me look inside when I’d always been too afraid to before.
You showed me beauty and places I would’ve never known, and you showed me myself.
The person I can be, when I let others in.
More than a prepper. More than my fear. You showed me how to trust. This week was a gift, Everett. ”
“But I never wanted to hurt you again,” I say, my voice breaking as I squeeze her hand in mine. “And I’m hurting you now.”
“I’d rather carry the hurt of loving you for the rest of my life than one more second of the nothing that came before.
” She brings my hand to her mouth, brushes her lips slowly across my knuckles.
The tears are flowing freely down her face now.
“I’m so sorry, Everett. You saved my life, but I hesitated, and now—and now—”
“Stop. I’ll never be sorry for protecting you, Maisie.”
We hold each other’s hands, while we still can.
We feel each other’s warmth, while we still can.
We carry the weight of our love and our grief together, while we still can.
When the radio static crackles and flares, and Gemma’s timid voice checks in, we celebrate that I’m still here, while we still can.
“Can he hear me now?” Gemma asks. “Can I talk to him?”
Maisie drags the microphone as close to me as possible, then sits at the desk to operate the talk button.
“I can hear you, Gemmy.”
“Evvie, I love you so much. Can I ask you some questions for science?”
I bray a single, loud laugh. “Of course, Dr. Greer.”
She proceeds to ask a barrage of medical questions interspersed with tearful anecdotes of our lives together, and I know this is how she’ll get through her pain. By studying this virus, by dismantling every deadly piece of it, vengeance for her lost friends, for her colleagues, for me.
Mom and Dad come on next. After an overly detailed accounting of Plan B’s incredible success (“Over three hundred zombies dead, son! We might be able to reopen the athletic fields for football again!”), an awkward, halting pep talk begins.
“Just say no to the virus, son.”
“It’s not drugs, Dad.”
“You were always very healthy. Perfect attendance! T cells of steel!”
“I wasn’t that healthy. You just wouldn’t let me stay home!”
“Your fevers never exceeded 102 degrees!” Mom adds. “The fact is, you’re a fighter, Everett. A winner. You’re going to kick this virus right in the bee-hind—”
This goes on until Gemma convinces them to let me rest to ensure primo virus-ass-kicking, and Maisie turns the radio down low. She settles back onto the blankets across from me.
“So, what do you want to do?” she asks, running her thumb across my hand. This is the one touch we’re allowing ourselves—my hand on hers outside my cage.
I arch an eyebrow. “I could get you off one more time—”
“The fact that you think I could come right now is frankly ridiculous,” she says, but my proposition has had the desired effect of making her laugh, the joy of which I hold deep inside, next to my heart.
This is how I want to remember her. Laughing.
“What else?” she asks, her smile gentle.
“Well, if watching you come isn’t feasible, how about a movie?” I roll over on my stomach and bat my eyelashes. “I know just the film.”
Maisie groans, but she finds Misery on my laptop and presses play.
As we watch Rob Reiner’s arguably most upsetting movie, save maybe 2007’s cursed Bucket List, the grays and blues of the film’s palette dancing across Maisie’s beautiful face, I fall into a hazy, aching sleep thinking, If this is how it ends, it really isn’t misery at all.