Because You Exist (11 page)

Chapter 17

“You’re gonna get us killed,” Bentham coughed out as he slowly pulled himself to his feet.

“Wrong. You’re going to get us killed. Answer the damn question,” Josephine replied, still holding the gun on Bentham.

“We’re shifters just like you. Thought that much was obvious,” said Bentham.

Randall pulled off his glasses and began to wipe them furiously with a cloth. “We don’t have much time, Ben. They’ll be here soon.”

“Who will be here?” I asked.

“More of the zombies,” Randall replied, throwing a nervous glance to the school entrance.

“Zombies? Really? They seemed pretty alive to me when they were kicking my butt,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.

“It’s just a nickname he has for them, Einstein,” Bentham replied. “Besides, they might as well be dead. And they do feed on the flesh of the living.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding. Please.” I said.

“Enough,” Josephine yelled. “How’d you know we’d be here?”

“Ran into a zombie last time we shifted, and he was muttering about there being some teenage shifters running around. Points of entrance are usually some place familiar to both shifters. When we noticed a bunch of the flesh maggots hanging around here, it made sense this was your point of entrance,” Bentham replied. He didn’t look a bit nervous about the gun Josephine still held on him.

“Points of entrance? You figured all this out in two shifts?” I asked with a bitter laugh. There was something about Bentham that was really starting to piss me off.

“Two shifts? Son, we’ve been shifting for two years,” Randall replied.

Two years? Would this hell last so long? I looked over at Josephine, but her eyes were still fixed on Bentham. My stomach felt queasy, and I wanted to be alone. I needed time to work this all out. But I was no longer in control of my time. Josephine was in control, something I doubted I would ever feel in this world.

Bentham was standing but still bent over slightly when he reached a hand towards Josephine. “Give me the gun.”

“No chance,” she replied, holding the gun steady right at him.

“Listen, we have maybe ten minutes before this place is crawling with flesh eaters. Randall and I have a car. We have safe spots. Once we get somewhere safe, we’ll answer any question you ask. I promise.”

“I don’t trust people I know. You expect me to trust you?” Josephine asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, it’s the end of the world, might be time to try new things,” he replied, a slight smile on his face.

“Please. We really have to get going. We can protect you,” Randall pleaded.

Josephine tore her eyes from Bentham and looked at me. “Your call, Logan.”

“My call?” I asked.

Josephine nodded. “I trust you.”

The rolling waves of nausea in my stomach stopped. I hadn’t given her any reason to trust me, but she did. This was an US vs THEM situation, and even though we were dysfunctional, there was definitely an US. Somehow that made all the difference. “We go with them. On one condition.”

“What would that be?” Bentham asked.

“Josephine keeps the gun. If you’re telling the truth, she’s a great shot. She could take out as many of those survivors as you could. That way you can focus on getting us to this safe spot. If you’re lying...”

“Fine. Let’s go.”

***

The drive down to the oceanfront wasn’t exactly the most fun I’ve ever had in the backseat of a car. Even the time I nearly got a concussion trying to hook up with Jenna was loads more fun. Randall spent most of the drive attempting lame ass jokes, but no one was laughing. Bentham kept his hands curled tightly around the steering wheel, and his eyes staring straight ahead. Not that I blamed him. The scenery wasn’t very scenic per se. In fact, it was pretty much my worst nightmare playing on a loop.

Most of our drive was spent speeding over curbs and medians, moving between abandoned cars and dead bodies. Clean Up the Bay Day would be a lot more difficult this year. As we got closer to the strip, there were less cars but the chaos of the plague was still evident. In between the hotels and tacky surf shops were a hodgepodge of boats, ranging from small sail boats to crudely made fishing boats, strewn across the sand. Had people attempted to escape this place by sea? If so, why didn’t they make it? What were they running from if they knew they were already doomed? Why run at all?

I would have asked but the intensity of Bentham’s stare as he drove and the gun Josephine still held on him didn’t really create an atmosphere for sharing information. Josephine sat up front with Bentham, and I wished she were in the backseat with me. I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable with Randall and Bentham, and it would have been nice to grab her hand for support. Some wordless sign we were still in this together. If she would let me. I wasn’t exactly sure we were back to being friends or if it was merely a temporary cease-fire because we were better together in this situation than apart.

We finally parked the jeep behind a trashcan at a gas station. We were near 71st street, a less touristy part of Virginia Beach. Here were the homes of the beach’s power couples. Real Virginia Beach-ers tried to grab a parking space down here and use the private beach access to avoid the tourists during the summer. Now, it appeared, it served as a hideout from crazed flesh eaters.

We walked in silence towards the beach, only stopping when Randall and Bentham grabbed a couple duffel bags and a tent stashed inside an abandoned beach house. It would have made sense to set up camp in one of the many large homes that decorated the side streets, but I was pretty sure I knew what was rotting away inside of them. Apparently, pure preppy-ness didn’t stop one from catching and dying from the illness. And even I was clever enough to know it would be harder to attack us out in the open, where we could see anything coming a mile away.

Josephine lowered the gun, but still held it in her hand as Bentham and Randall went to work setting up the tent and a campfire. Never wasting my time in boy scouts, I sort of just stood around awkwardly. As much as I wanted answers, I was praying the whole time for a shift.

“Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable. We’re going to bunker down here a few days before moving on. The zombies don’t quite like it here. Harder to surprise us and all,” Randall said, plopping down on the sand in front of the fire.

Josephine didn’t sit. Instead, she shifted her weight from foot to foot. If she wasn’t sitting, neither was I. “They don’t trust us yet, Randall,” Bentham said dryly, unrolling a sleeping bag outside the tent.

“You think because you pitch us a tent we’re supposed to trust you?” Josephine asked.

“No. I think because we saved your butt, you’re supposed to trust us. But goes to show you...kids these days.”

“Really? What are you like, twenty?” I asked. I was starting to wish Josephine went back to shooting first and asking questions later.

“Good guess. What are you? Fifteen?”

“Seventeen and Josephine is...” I had no idea.

“Seventeen. Not like it matters. Kid or not. Especially considering I still have the gun, and you still have questions to answer,” she replied, looking directly at Bentham.

“Ask away,” he said with a lazy shrug of his shoulders.

“Please take a seat ya’ll. You’re making me nervous standing around like that. Better to rest now why’ll you can,” Randall spoke up.

With a sigh, Josephine took a seat on the sand. I took a seat next to her. “You said you’ve been shifting for two years? If that’s true, what the heck have you been doing this whole time? I mean if the point is for us to stop this, why haven’t you?” I asked.

“Well, it’s really not that easy, son,” Randall replied. “As you know, we don’t get to exactly choose when and how often we shift. Over the past two years, we’ve really focused on gathering information.”

“What kind of information?” Josephine asked.

“For starters, we scoured old newspapers for articles on the illness in an attempt to learn more about it. We searched houses and dumpsters for them,” Randall continued.

“That’s actually pretty smart,” Josephine admitted.

“Yeah. Sorry, we didn’t have time to do that. I guess we were too busy running for our lives from a bunch of crazed men who wanted us dead,” I replied. Of course we would have thought of that. Eventually.

“He wasn’t trying to insult your intelligence, Einstein. He was just answering your question. So, why don’t you calm down,” Bentham snapped.

Had I gotten an attitude with Randall? I looked at Josephine for confirmation but she wasn’t paying me any mind. Her eyes were still on Bentham. I took a deep breath. “So, what did you find out?” I asked, hoping my voice sounded calmer.

“Seems it started in Norfolk. There were ships coming in and out of ports there everyday.”

“Not to mention Tidewater was one of the biggest military areas in the country,” Bentham added.

Their past tense verbs were driving me a little mad. This future wasn’t set in stone.

“The first case of the disease was at Norfolk General. A Norfolk Shipyard worker came in with a variety of flu-like symptoms. High fever. Sweats. Trouble keeping anything down. Even when the man passed away, the doctors didn’t think much of it. It was during flu season after all,” said Randall.

“It wasn’t till three more cases came in later that week that doctors started to look a little more closely at the symptoms. Added to the common flu symptoms were red eyes and hiccups,” Bentham added.

“Ebola?” Josephine asked.

“Not quite, but your knowledge of deadly diseases is quite impressive,” Bentham replied with a laugh.

“I bet you say that to all the girls,” Josephine replied, a slight blush to her cheeks.

Were these two flirting? Amidst the talk of death hiccups and sickness no less? I stared at Josephine trying to decipher her. I watched as she set the gun down next to her. It was still close enough to grab in no time if she needed it, but she no longer seemed to feel threatened.

Josephine caught me staring. “What?” she asked, “I started studying up on illnesses last night.”

“Remind me to talk to you about getting a life.” I shook my head and turned back to Randall. “So, what was it?”

“They stared calling it the Grossman after the first man who died from it. The illness had many of the same symptoms as Ebola, but there were some striking differences. For starters, deep gashes started appearing on the skin of the victims,” Randall said.

I shuddered. I remembered the marks covering Jenna’s body.

“Around the gashes the skin became lose, weak. In some cases, near the end, the skin would literally pull away from the bone with a slight tug. Which, considering most victims complained of insanely itchy skin right before the end, most of the victims lost a lot of skin in the process of dying. Eventually, most died either from the insanely high fevers or the acceleration of the heart. The body just couldn’t take it.”

“You all right there, buddy?” Bentham asked Randall who was looking a little pale.

“It just never gets easier to talk about, Ben.”

“I know, Randall. Trust me, I know.”

I caught Josephine’s eye and she gave me a small, pained smile. Would we be comforting each other one day? What would two years of living in this world do to us? God, I hoped this didn’t go on for two years.

“Are you cold, dear?” Randall asked Josephine. I hadn’t noticed that she was shivering. The sun was almost completely down, and the wind sweeping off of the ocean caused the air to chill considerably. I hadn’t thought to see if she was cold. Was that the sort of thing shifting partners were supposed to worry about? Besides, she did have her hoodie. She always had her hoodie.

“I’m fine,” she replied, pulling her arms inside her sleeves. I wasn’t sure if this action was a result of being cold or the unwanted attention now forced on her.

“I got it,” said Bentham, He stood up, wiped the sand from his pants, and disappeared into the tent.

“She said she was fine,” I called out.

“Coffee,” Bentham grinned as he returned, holding a pot and four tin mugs.

“Did we step into a western?” I joked. “Where does one even find a tin coffee kettle and cups?”

“You’d be surprised what you find going through dead people’s things for two years,” he replied, going to work on the coffee.

“Wait. Something doesn’t make sense,” Josephine said, rocking slightly back and forth as if her whole body was alive with thought. “When we first shifted, Jenna’s body was still pretty, you know, intact for someone who was dead for almost two years. I mean assuming the outbreak had already occurred when you two started shifting.”

Jenna’s body.

Jenna.

I was so caught up in my sudden need to lose myself in the feel of Jenna’s skin that I almost missed Randall’s explanation. “Another odd symptom of the illness—slow decay of the body. Sure, the skin would fall off from the merest touch, but once death occurred, the bodies were slow to deteriorate.”