Some sort of cancer that turns them red and as hard as bricks. I know more details, but you don’t want them. Same old story since Noah: Humans are lousy stewards of the earth.
I don’t remember if I ate him. I don’t remember much of anything until I woke up in that lab. Just snatches. Hunger slicing through my muscles like an itch that could only go away if I peeled off my own skin. Blood like steam off a lake, warm and misted in my nostrils. And meat, raw and salty, filled with bones that caught in my throat and brains that slid down like oysters. Everyone is anonymous when I pull them apart. No one has a name when I eat them. Not even my father. Not even my sister.
Not even Jack.
5. Pulling Mussels (from the Shell)
The girl two seats down from you in the bleachers thinks you’re cute. You are cute —probably even before the prion problem, and certainly afterward. She has short brown hair and a nice-ish smile, though you could do without the braces. Those make nasty marks if she decides to fight back. You decide to smile after the second time she glances over her shoulder and giggles. You have to eat sometime, after all, and the Jack situation has, in practical terms, made you go hungry. Mac-and-cheese himself is running across the field now, yelling at one of his teammates to pass him the ball as he guns for an opening in the opposing team’s lines. His green jersey is drenched in sweat and clings to his muscles in a way you know makes you look as bug-eyed as the girl with braces. You’ve overheard enough to know that she’s a good mark—here from out of town, visiting some friends. If you do this right, you might get to stay in Colorado for a few more weeks, at least. It’s funny—you usually care about finding a new town as much as you used to care about finding a new supermarket. Just another place to buy meat.
On the field Jack violently checks another player. They fall to the churned-up turf while the ball sails into the net. The crowd cheers, even though Jack gets fouled.
The goal is good. Jack is a lot more violent on the field than he is off of it. But then you remember that strange, fierce way he looked at you for a moment yesterday afternoon. You remember the scar on his forehead and his ice man dad.
At halftime he comes over to the bleachers, breathing hard and grinning. A few other students give him high fives. You hang back, knowing he sees you and wondering if he’ll say something. It’s Saturday. You’ve never come to a game before. The whole field smells ripe, hundreds of walking, talking, laughing Happy Meals, and even from a few feet away, Jack smells better than all of them. For a moment you contemplate leaping over the bleachers and just eating him in front of the whole crowd. You’d probably get at least a few bites in before the police come.
Maybe they’d even use deadly force, seeing as how you’re clearly a rabid beast, and finally solve all your problems. Saliva pools in your mouth. Jack looks up at you.
You won’t eat him. No matter what.
“Grayson,” he says with a half smile. He climbs the bleachers and sits next to you. “You like the game?”
You breathe very slowly. His arm brushes against yours, slick with his sweat. You have such a raging hard-on you can only hope he doesn’t look down.
“Nice,” you say. “You always that aggressive?”
Jack shrugs, but his grin is pleased. “If I need to be. We’re winning, aren’t we?”
“Guess so.”
Jack looks at you quickly and then away, and once again you’re enthralled by his countervailing waves of awkwardness and ferocity. “Grayson, about yesterday … my dad …”
“He’s not here, is he?” you say, playing at being scared, though actually the ice man does sort of scare you.
Jack laughs. “God, I hope not. Dad barely tolerates extracurriculars. He thinks I should be training… . Hey, you want to go into the city with me tonight? I’ve got an extra ticket to Modest Mouse.”
This would be marginally appealing even without the additional bonus of Jack, but you look back down at the braces girl, now chatting with her friends. Your hunger is starting to feel like that first time, a longing that cuts into your muscles and makes the world turn red. You can’t go much longer without a meal.
“Sorry,” you say. “Can’t.”
You know you ought to offer a better explanation. Homework or community service or a part-time job. But you don’t want to lie to Jack.
So you hurt him instead.
“Okay,” Jack says. He looks away. The game is starting again. He walks back onto the field. Deliberately, knowing he’s still looking, you move so you’re right behind the girl. You smile at her.
“Haven’t seen you here before,” you say.
She goes bug-eyed. She blushes. You can smell her blood like it’s already broken the skin. “Visiting from Boulder,” she says. She says other things. You can’t quite hear her. Jack is staring at you from the edge of the bench. Even from here you can see the ice in those blue eyes. Like he wants to kill you.
You arrange to meet the girl—she has a name, but you try not to remember it, easier that way—in the parking lot in an hour. You tell her about some concert you have tickets to, would she like to come? In a converted farmhouse just outside the town limits. You wonder why you always get away with this routine. Like none of these girls or boys ever actually listened to a thing their guidance counselors told them about date safety. Sometimes you want to shake their shoulders and yell, “Hello? Doesn’t this sound strange to you?”
Whatever. You’re hungry.
The game is almost over when Jack’s dad walks onto the field. His limp is more obvious now, but it doesn’t make him less threatening. The referee stops the play and yells at the ice man for a few moments before deciding it’s hopeless. Jack doesn’t say anything, just walks off the field with his shoulders stooped. You wonder what’s happened—did he forget target practice again? You wait for him to come back, but instead he grabs his gear and leaves with his father. He glances at you once. You can’t see his face from so far away, but somehow you know he’s afraid.
I need you to be ready, the ice man said yesterday. Ready to kill a monster?
You’re not as careful as you should be when you meet the girl after the game.
You don’t check if anyone sees you leave together. You don’t even bother to have a conversation once she gets in the car. The doors are locked. The prions have done their job—she has entered a permanent bug-eyed state. Her pulse speeds up like old faithful when you look at her. You’re pissed that you have to do this. Angry like you haven’t been since you first woke up in the lab. About the normal life stripped away, at the maniac left behind. You want to be at that Modest Mouse concert with Jack so bad your stomach hurts. But you can smell the food beside you, and the urge to eat it now, at the intersection two blocks away from school, is almost overpowering.
It’s dark by the time you get to the woods. By now even braces girl is starting to get a little worried, but you tune her out. You don’t like it when they scream. Really, you don’t like it when they’re alive at all. Best to just knock them out and be done with it. But you hate to mess up the car, so you make up some excuse about the engine breaking down and stop in the middle of the gravel road. You know from experience that no one will find you.
“Hey,” braces girl says, “I think I want to go back home. This is a little—”
“Yeah, hold on, I have to see what’s wrong with the car.”
She nods, nervously. You get out, pretend to look at the engine, walk back around to her side. “Something’s smoking,” you say. “I should probably call for a tow. Could you get out for a second? I think the number’s under the seat.”
She nods, reassured, though you sure as fuck don’t know why. This is the worst part. The last moment they trust you, when some part of them must know they shouldn’t. She opens the door.
She gets out.
6. Dirty Harry
The prudent serial killer’s guide to avoiding the cool, yet bureaucratic, hand of the law.
• Move around! Superheroes call them lairs; police officers call them crime scenes.
• Blend in. In colonial Massachusetts a Quaker living alone with cats had a front-row ticket to a witch trial. In twenty-first-century America, a solitary lifestyle is still a sign of deviance. I’m about seventeen, so I go to high school. Lots of high schools. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to forge credentials, and all the teachers love a good student.
• Vary your targets. I know, the victims are supposed to be the telltale heart of serial killing. The fatal flaw: Every killer likes their type. Bad idea. I’ve eaten big jocks and old ladies. I’ve raided funeral parlors (not recommended: formaldehyde is to corpses what the Kraft factory is to Vermont cheddar). I’ve even put an ad online!
And finally:
• Use your brains! Or someone else will eat them for you.
7. You Know My Name (Look Up the Number) The girl stares at you. You stare at her. The hunger feels like knives delicately inserted into your stomach and pushed through your spine.
And then she shrugs, takes a step forward, and kisses you. Perfect opportunity.
A kiss is like a non-prion version of eating someone. But you just clench your fists and return it. Why not? The braces aren’t so bad. You imagine she’s Jack. That’s better.
“Grayson,” says Jack. “Step away from her.”
The girl breaks it off first, looks over your shoulder, screams. You turn around, a sudden warmth dulling the sharp edges of your hunger. Jack stands in front of the thick row of trees on the side of the gravel road. He has a gun. Despite the prion problem, you haven’t had much interaction with guns in your life. This one looks big and black and shiny. Jack looks like he knows how to use it.
“Funny, I didn’t peg you for the jealous type, Jack.”
He grimaces, but the blush staining his neck and ears probably isn’t caused by anger.
“What the hell are you doing? Are you robbing us?” The girl’s voice is so high she’s nearly squeaking. She’s reaching out, like she might hold you for support. But you look at Jack, his steady hand and his big black pistol, and think that might not be the best idea.
“I’m saving your life,” he says.
For a moment you can’t hear a thing—not your frantic pulse, not your labored breath, not even Jack as he says something to the girl and gestures with his gun.
You wish he would just shoot already. You wish he would just fucking kill you.
But the girl, trembling now, shuts the hood and opens the driver’s side of your car.
“The keys are in the ignition,” Jack says. “Drive home.”
“But the engine …”
“Go.”
She shuts the door. The car starts without a problem. She backs down the gravel drive, slowly at first, then so fast she nearly careens into a tree.
You and Jack are alone. He still holds the gun.
“Grayson … it’s true? What they said about you. What you—”
“Yeah, of course it is. Why the fuck else would I be out here?” You close your eyes. “Hurry up, will you?”
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“I’m putting the gun down.”
“So you can stick me with your samurai sword?”
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Open your damn eyes, Grayson!”
The gun is in a holster around his jeans. His hair is spiky with dried sweat, but he’s changed out of his lacrosse uniform. His face is flushed red, like he might cry.
“We’ve got to leave. I put Dad off, but he’ll be here soon.”
He turns without another word and walks deeper into the woods. He’s quiet, though you can’t see how. When you follow him, the cracking leaves and twigs sound like an earthquake. Ten minutes later you reach his car. It’s parked in the middle of a road that’s little more than two ruts of packed dirt. You get in. You’re not sure what else to do. He drives smoothly, carefully, and yet with the same steady fierceness you’ve sensed in him all along.
“Jack, if you’re not going to kill me, you have to let me go.”
“Dad’s decided to get you on his own. He’s been nuts for something like this ever since he got invalided out. It’s not safe for you.”
You have to laugh. “Safe? Do you really know what I am?”
There must have been something in your voice, some tremor, because Jack looks at you now for the first time since you got into the car. “Grayson … they said … ZSE is rare, but there’s a few cases each year.”
“ZSE?”
“Zombie Spongiform Encephalopathy.”
Zombie. That’s what Jack thinks you are.
“You should kill me. Your dad wants you to kill me, right? Isn’t that why we’re running away from him?” You don’t even recognize the road signs now. He’s gone far off the highway, down some long country roads bounded only by soybean fields and great tubes of hay.
“Why are you so damn interested in me killing you, Grayson?”
“Why are you giving a ride to a raving cannibal?”
“Shut up!”
“Why, it isn’t true?”
“You sound just like him!”
“Then maybe he’s right.”
Jack abruptly slams his foot on the brake. The car skids a little on the deserted road before shuddering to a halt. When he turns to you now, he is crying, though you can tell he doesn’t know it.
“I watched you decide to not kill that girl.”