End of the World Afterparty: Part Six

For End of the World Afterparty: Part One, click here. 

For End of the World Afterparty: Part Five, click here.

 

INTERLUDE ONE

I’m sorry. It’s late, and I’m tired. I keep getting distracted by this other thought, so I might as well tell you about it. 

There’s this video game I used to play, called Zombie Farmhouse. It didn’t get a lot of press before it was pulled from circulation; I think they may have run one or two random ads, but that was the extent of it. I saw the numbers once, though I don’t remember where or how I found them—the game sold maybe a hundred copies; even most hardcore gamers weren’t aware of its existence. 

It was set on an open desert plain, but the minimal detail gave a level of depth I can’t explain. You could tell the graphics designers had felt passion for their setting, had really put some effort into capturing the feel of it despite their low budget. The plot wasn’t terrible, mostly because there wasn’t much of a plot—the objective was straightforward: survive until morning. That was even on the packaging, right under the title—Zombie Farmhouse: Survive Until Morning, with a picture of an indistinct figure holding a gun, watching from a porch as zombies converged from all sides. There wasn’t really a story beyond that; it played like a fever dream. 

To be honest, I’m not sure why it fell through the cracks. Maybe another, bigger game released concurrently and drove its sales down. Maybe the makers of the game found themselves caught in some great and sweeping scandal—that would explain why it was pulled so soon, only three months in. It could also have been a copyright issue. There were a lot of zombie games like it. I would know, because I bought them all. 

Maybe the characters were too strange; they were so oddly specific. You could play as a farmer’s wife who was perpetually hungry and perpetually angry, to the point where she was incapable of speech and could only grunt. Or you could choose to be a time traveling assassin from the 1870s disguised as a modern day sign waver, complete with the ever-present sign. When you paused the game, the avatar spun the sign until you resumed your play. Your last option was a painter dressed in colorful overalls, who, when cornered, produced feral cats out of the ether and threw them at the approaching zombies—a surprisingly effective strategy, though not for the cats. 

I felt no great love for the characters, yet at the same time I was endlessly fascinated by them. I liked to think of new possibilities for additional characters, ones that would fit with the logic-less script: a man dressed like Captain America who was allergic to the green of the grass outside (not the grass, but the green itself); a woman who designed coasters for a living and could shape-shift into a cat when frightened; a self-published author who feared drowning on dry land. I don’t know why it was important to me to produce these scenarios in my head, to fill in the universe that was this game—it wasn’t like I was planning to share them with anyone else. No one would have understood or appreciated the direction in which my thoughts ran, and I look back on that time with a level of confusion myself. 

The reason I bring it up now is because the setting and the action, they resonated with me. The poor pixelation added to the desperate quality of the story. The goal was to survive a zombie apocalypse in the desert. The zombies appeared out of the gloom—you should have been able to see them coming from miles away with the land so flat, but you couldn’t. One moment they weren’t there, then suddenly they were, their eyes gleaming with a feral, intelligent light. They seemed not only monstrous but evil. 

Like I said, the goal was to survive until morning. It took me a long time to realize that wasn’t actually possible, not because you couldn’t survive—you seemed, at first, to have infinite lives; that was one of the things I loved and then later hated about the game—but because night has to come before morning. No matter how long I fought the zombies, no matter how many times my characters died and were reborn, the game remained locked in a perpetual twilight. 

After a while, I started to get the sense that there was no point in defeating the zombies—the same zombies dying and rising up as I did—because there was no life worth fighting for, no existence beyond the rickety house I was defending and the endless, brooding, gray sky. The setting felt like part of a ghost town; it gave the impression that the zombies had already won in every way that mattered, that you were the last survivor in the last house left standing on the whole planet. It was desperately lonely. Every time I played it, it made something go silent in my brain, something that roared back to life louder than ever when I stopped, a ringing in my ears I had difficulty escaping. 

If you played the game long enough, the zombies started to whisper your character’s name in their hoarse, grating voices. A while longer, and they started to look like you. It got harder and harder to control your character. You began to move jerkily no matter what you did, killing with more hesitation, as if controlled by an unseen opponent. 

I played the game all the way through upwards of eleven times, without ever getting a different result. I came to realize there was only one possible ending. Zombie Farmhouse was not a game you could win, no matter how skilled you were; the package had been a lie; you were always meant to lose. It was a desperate struggle against an inevitable end, that was all. 

Invariably your character—whichever one of the three options you chose, it didn’t matter—became convinced they were turning and killed themselves, and after that you didn’t respawn. The screen went dark, leaving you alone with the stunned reflection of your own face in the extended pause before the credits began to roll. It made me wonder if maybe the characters had been insane the whole time, if nothing had been wrong, except inside their own heads, and so then I wondered what they’d actually been shooting instead of zombies. 

I spent so many summer evenings trying to guess what the programmers and story writers had been thinking when they made the game, what they’d been trying to say. In all the confused futility of it, there seemed to lie some obscure message meant only for those wise enough to understand, but maybe the point was that there was no point. I’d sit and think about it until the nauseated pit in my stomach became almost unbearable, always convinced I would be one of the solemn few to discern its meaning and be initiated into the ranks of the enlightened. 

In Jason’s garage, I felt like I was trapped in that video game. I wanted to get out, but my character was no longer responding to my commands. There was this deepening sense that the whole situation had been rigged from the start, whether by Jason or by someone else, and no matter how hard I tried to alter the course of events, I was stuck following the narrative to its inevitable terminus. 

I’m only telling you this now because I was right. And because, at last, I think I figured out what truth the game was meant to convey. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Several hours passed before I got sick of waiting around, doing nothing. Night of the Living Dead had ended, followed by Zombieland and Train to Busan—I’d managed to eat a little something and doze for a while, which was nice. But I was starting to ache where Jason had hit me with his car, and it was making me cranky. Everyone else had been drinking heavily, and I considered grabbing a few beers to take the edge off, but my experience back at the farmhouse sat like a warning in my stomach. That made me even crankier. Being the only sober person in a room full of drunk clowns is only fun if you like clowns. 

At some point Alana and Jason emerged from the other room looking flushed and glazed-eyed, and I studiously ignored them, though Jason tried again and again to catch my eye, that triumphant smile never leaving his face as Alana stared up at him with undisguised adoration. The whole thing made me sick. 

Eventually the group moved on to Resident Evil: Apocalypse after a short but passionate squabble. Why they skipped the first one, I wasn’t entirely sure—I’d stopped paying attention. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I snatched the remote from Ann and paused the movie, right as Milla Jovovich’s character burst through a stained glass window on a motorcycle. She hung suspended, frozen halfway in and halfway out, as Alana yelled, “Why did you do that? It was just getting good.” 

“We need to remove that zombie,” I said. No one else was acknowledging it, but even if it wasn’t for Mr. President, leaving the body to decompose inside seemed like a terrible idea. Sitting around watching apocalypse movies wasn’t going to solve anything, either. 

“You don’t like the smell of rotting flesh?” Mr. President asked. He looked genuinely surprised, even curious. “It smells bad to you?” 

“Well, it doesn’t smell like a bouquet,” I snorted. “That, and we don’t know if the fungus is still active. It could be releasing spores to infect us as we speak, and I’d rather not take that chance.” 

“I hate to be that person,” Alana said, “but how are we going to get the body outside without letting more zombies in?” 

“Oh, that’s easy,” Ann said in an airy voice. “There are windows high up, and you can throw bodies through them.” She looked at us, eyes wide and unfocused, with all the air of a child waiting for praise. “That’s what I did with all the people I killed.” 

“And how many people was that, exactly?” Jason asked, voice dangerously sweet. 

“Fifty, maybe. I don’t know for sure. But the police are starting to get wise to it.” 

“I see.” Jason nodded, turning to us with a “wow, she’s crazy” look plastered on his face. For a moment, he seemed to forget he wasn’t staring into a camera. 

“I hate to say it, but she does have a point.” I glanced up at the windows, eyeballing their measurements. They were certainly larger than the windows in the farmhouse basement. “They look wide enough. We don’t even need a ladder. We could just pull the G Wagon closer to the wall and stand on top of it. Jason, do you have trash bags?” 

“I do, but hold on a minute. No one’s standing on my wagon. No way in hell I’m letting you scuff the paint.” 

“So you’d prefer to die?” I demanded, thinking that now might be a good time to punch him again. “You might not be worried about turning into a zombie, but I’m sure there are all sorts of infections you can get from a dead body. Before long, the air’s going to turn putrid; forget about partying, you’ll be too busy puking. So either we stand on your wagon, or you find another way for us to reach the window. I don’t give a crap about your paint job.” 

“Well aware,” he grumbled. 

I stared him down. “Do you have a ladder?” 

“Why would I keep a ladder in my party garage?” 

Ann turned to him, eyes wide and questioning. “You’ve never had to throw a body out a high window before?” 

“Can’t say that I have.” 

“Oh.” She stared down at her feet. “Must be throwing boring parties.” She wandered vaguely over to the kitchenette and began opening cupboards. 

Jason leaned forward and stage whispered. “Not to be the responsible one here, but I think we’re going to have to do something about her.” 

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Ian said, brow furrowed. 

I fought the urge to scream with frustration. “So do you have a ladder or not?” 

“Of course I have a ladder. Every straight, alpha male owns a ladder. It’s just…back at the house.” He threw up his hands and heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Fine, we do it your way, but you’re paying me back for any damage.” 

“Okay, and do you have trash bags? It would also help if you had bleach.” 

“Trash bags, bleach. Hell, I’ve got a handsaw, if we need to chop up the bodies.” Just like that, he’d managed to sprint across the line between dragging his feet and looking a bit too eager, and it made me want to backpedal until I figured out what had changed. 

As soon as all this ended and I was safe, I decided, I was going to hire a private investigator to dig up as much dirt as possible on Jason Vanderbilt. Maybe it would be enough to put him behind bars. And the first person I intended to track down was his mother. 

“What, do you have rubber gloves, too?” 

“Nitrile. Look in the cupboards,” he shouted over his shoulder as he crossed the garage and dove back into the pool. “You guys have fun. Ian, don’t let Singh behind the wheel.” 

Cleaning up the body, as well as the various severed hands and arms, took about an hour. At first, everyone aside from Jason seemed willing to pitch in. But quickly it became apparent that Ann would be zero help, not with her stepping away every few minutes to count on her fingers. And Mr. President was more trouble than he was worth. When I caught him trying to hide a severed hand in his jacket, I swallowed my gag reflex and banished him to the other side of the garage. That left Ian and Alana to help me. 

We had mostly cleaned up the smaller pieces when Alana rocked back on her heels. “Guys, I don’t feel well. I’ve had the Spanish flu for a long time, and my immune system is compromised. I don’t want to get infected.” 

“We’ve told you before, the Spanish flu is not a thing anymore. You look healthy,” Ian said. 

“That’s so ableist. How could you say that? I have an invisible illness.” 

“I have fibromyalgia,” I pointed out. “That’s an invisible illness. The Spanish flu is not an invisible illness—it’s an obsolete illness. Maybe you have the regular flu, but looking at you, even that’s unlikely.” 

“You don’t understand—my immune system is too weak to put up a fight. That’s why I’m not showing symptoms. You only get a fever when your immune system is fighting back. When I die from this, you’re going to regret being so unkind.” 

I was running out of patience, and I had the nasty urge to point out that, for her, the infections she most needed to worry about contracting were whatever STDs Jason had. Despite my best effort, and despite the plastic bags I’d laid down, the knees of my pants felt stiff with blood. Every time I opened my mouth, I tasted the iron stink. I just wanted to be done, and anyway, I knew where she was going with this. 

“It doesn’t matter what you two think. I’m sick, and I can’t—I feel light-headed.” She stood suddenly. “I’m sure I’ve got the zombie fungus now. If I don’t quarantine myself, I’ll infect you all.” 

The only thing that stopped me from putting my head in my hands was the blood all over my gloves. 

“You’re feeling lightheaded because you stood up too quickly,” Ian said, patting me on the back like he was talking to me instead of Alana. “That happens with people who have low blood pressure or low iron. You should sit down and drink some water. Singh and I have got this.” 

I wanted to stand toe to toe with Alana and punch her in the nose so hard her head whipped back. Over in the pool, Jason peeked out of the water, his beady eyes tracking us as if he could hear everything we were saying from that distance. 

By the time I climbed onto the G Wagon with Ian and threw the final trash bag out the window, the sun was already starting to rise. The horizon was bloodless, clouded and dull. Below, I could see a number of zombies had begun to tear into the several trash bags strewn around. From this angle, the undead reminded me of raccoons, snuffling and foraging. When we dropped the last bag, it landed on a zombie’s head, crushing it Loony Toons style, which under any other circumstances would have been hilarious. 

Once that was done, all that remained was to move the G Wagon back to its original position by the main bay door, bleach the floor, and wipe away the last traces of blood. After that, I locked myself in the bathroom and stared at my reflection, my rust-speckled skin and the shadows under my eyes. Somehow I’d expected my face to be unrecognizable, forever altered by the events that had occurred, but aside from the blood, I just looked like I’d pulled an all-nighter. 

I washed my face and my hands, my arms up to my elbows, fought the urge to turn on the shower and jump in. I didn’t want to spend too much time away from the others. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop worrying about what might be happening in my absence, what new chaos Jason might be orchestrating. It felt a little arrogant, seeing myself as the only voice of reason, but also it wasn’t wrong. So I hurried as I rinsed out the knees of my cargo pants, using the hand soap to clean off as much of the old blood as possible, and then I gave up and rubbed bleach on them, even though I knew it would burn my sensitive skin and leave eczema blisters that would take months to heal. At this point, I figured that was the least of my concerns. If I had months to heal, then I would consider myself fortunate. 

I took another moment to check my face again, to make sure all the dried blood was gone. It wasn’t about aesthetics; the closer the infected blood was to my mucous membranes, the more likely it was to make it into my bloodstream. We touch our faces so many times without thinking, hand to cheek to mouth. 

Bracing myself, I stared deeply into my own eyes, momentarily convinced I would find mycelial threads creeping out from inside my pupils, but everything looked normal. Even if something was there, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find it. Thinking about Alana’s fears, her certainty, I wondered how long it would take to discover if any of us had been infected. It seemed like, given how fast cordyceps had moved through the general population, we were probably in the clear already, but still I couldn’t shake the creeping dread. 

When I stepped out of the bathroom, everyone was huddled around the back door, and the TV had been turned off. Right away, I knew something was wrong. 

 

CHAPTER TWELVE

“What’s going on?” I asked. Everyone fell silent, turning to me in various states of surprise. Something like guilt played over Ian’s face; it was obvious I’d caught them in something I wasn’t meant to witness. 

“Nothing,” Ann said, a little too quickly, then burst out giggling, hands clamped over her mouth to keep in the sound. 

“What’s happening out there?” I demanded. I could feel pressure building behind my eyes. A flurry of activity erupted beyond the door—muffled thumps, scratching noises, something that could have been a yell. “Is someone trying to get in?” 

Before anyone could stop me, I crossed the garage to Jason’s desk, where I pulled up the security feeds. At first I didn’t know what to make of what I saw: a cluster of zombies, shifting away as if drawn off by something. The ones that had been rooting around in the trash bags, chewing through plastic and flesh alike, were more alert now—intent on the activity around them though still interested in the remaining scraps of food. When I turned to the third feed, I saw Jason in a tactical vest, surrounded by a horde of zombies, as many as twenty. He stood locked in an embrace with one, a silent, wordless struggle that made no sense at first, until I realized what he was trying to do. 

More zombies converged from all sides, frantic and clumsy like boozers in a mosh pit. He held what looked like a loop of twine with something dangling from it, which he was trying to wrap around the zombie’s neck, all while it chewed on his vest like a nursing infant. Another zombie pressed in close behind him, similarly decorated. 

I zoomed in on the feed, acid rising hot and sour in my throat as my heart clawed at my ribs. It was a key fob, I was almost certain of it—that was what he’d tied to the rope, and to the other rope as well, and I knew which keys they were without having to ask. My eyes moved of their own accord to the G Wagon and the Challenger as all the air went out of my lungs. 

Without thinking, I grabbed my gun and bolted to the back door, a narrow metal affair. Mr. President tried to restrain me, but I shook him off. The unaccountable chill of the doorknob bit into my hand, and I would have hesitated for half a second to consider what I was doing if I hadn’t been too overcome with rage, too drunk with the wrong kind of fear. 

As I threw open the door, I emptied both barrels. The first two shots meant for Jason went wide—maybe I didn’t actually want to kill him, or maybe he moved just in time, I couldn’t tell you in retrospect—and ended up blowing off the shoulder of a nearby zombie. The zombie turned to me, making dry clicking sounds in its throat, jaw opening and closing as I reloaded. If anything, it looked annoyed, like it wanted to chew me out rather than chew on me, and I fought the unexpected urge to laugh hysterically or maybe apologize. 

By now, fifteen more stragglers were closing in from all sides, mouths gaping and hungry, so hungry. The weight of their breathing, the hoarse cottony sound of it, demanded my attention. 

“What the hell, Jason?” I yelled, leveling the gun at him as I considered slipping back into the garage and locking the door behind me. I could keep him out, maybe. The image rushed toward full maturity in my mind—the sound of him banging on the door, begging to be let back in, the rising crescendo of his screams before their eventual, abrupt terminus. If I thought there was a chance it would work, I would have done it. I would have considered the payoff worth the additional risk. But I saw other scenarios playing out, ones that spoke with greater force—they all began with him tearing down the door and ended in sequels too grim to describe. “Give me the keys, or I’ll shoot.”

He was wearing a motorcycle helmet. So far it had fended off the gnashing teeth, but I wasn’t so sure it would stop a bullet. 

Laughing, he draped the keys over the nearest zombie’s neck, as casually as if he were dressing a mannequin, and emptied his magazine into the knot of zombies that had gotten too close. Out of necessity, I shifted my aim and fired, but my hands were shaking too badly for accuracy. The shot took off a nearby zombie’s legs, reducing them to splintered bone, but the thing kept coming, dragging itself across the blood-slicked grass toward me using only one hand—the other had been hacked off, a cruel and jagged amputation. Still it moved with alarming speed. 

For a moment the horror of it all left me frozen, unable to process, unable to act as my fear took over. “This is impossible,” my brain insisted, a separate entity, distinct from me, “bodies can’t function like that. He shouldn’t be able to move. None of this is real, so just watch it play out and see what happens.” 

A scream lodged itself in my throat, and I turned to Jason for help, only to find him doubled over with laughter. Through the smudged glass of his helmet, it looked like his eyes were squeezed shut and leaking tears. 

As the zombies began to converge on me, he ducked and charged, aiming for below my center of gravity. There was no time to sidestep or counter before he tossed me over his shoulder and kept on going, through the now-open door where the others were frantically yelling for him to hurry. Only after he’d slammed the door shut on a probing set of fingers did he put me down. 

“Have you lost your mind?” I yelled, as he removed his helmet and leaned back against the shaking door to catch his breath, heedless of the teeth behind it. Panic coursed through my body, hot and fast, pulsing in my fingertips like ten new heartbeats. My stomach felt like that time I accidentally leaned against an electric fence. “Those cars were our only way out! You’ve just killed us.” I was too afraid to ask about the key to the Porsche—there was a good chance it was outside, too, and if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to draw attention to that fact. 

“We took a vote while you were in the bathroom. Everyone else was against leaving, right?” Jason shrugged, eyes wide and innocent. 

There was a chorus of clearing throats and soft muttered yeses, a nod or two. Everyone seemed a little ashamed, but no one was willing to take it back, and I wasn’t sure if this was because they actually agreed with Jason or because they too were afraid of the obvious way his mind was coming unlaced. It took me a moment to realize that Ian was holding a camera and that it was pointed at me. 

“You were causing tension,” Jason continued. “I figured I would render the whole issue moot. Arguably, it’s your fault for hogging the bathroom. If you had been quicker, maybe you could have stopped me.” His tone implied he didn’t think that would have been possible but that the thought of me trying amused him. 

“None of this is my fault, asshole. What’s wrong with you?” Before anyone could stop me, I closed the distance between us and punched him in the face. Maybe he’d expected me to default to defeat instead of rage, or maybe he just hadn’t expected me to do anything about it. Either way, he looked stunned, eyes momentarily blank, nose dripping blood. But when I tried to hit him again, he caught my wrist and twisted it behind my back, forcing me up against the door so my cheek was pressed to the shivering metal. 

Through the peephole, I had a limited view of what was happening outside. There were the fobs, visible in the new dawn every time the zombies shifted, restless and thwarted. Heedless of the pain in my shoulder, I ran through all the various scenarios, all the ways of getting them back. With someone to provide cover fire, and with Jason’s bulletproof vest, I stood a chance; I’d been outside even without those protections and hadn’t died. Maybe zombies weren’t as dangerous as the media made them out to be—maybe knowing what you were up against was all the advantage you needed. And the zombies with the fobs were so close—they were right there. If I opened the door, I might be able to just reach out and grab the knotted loops of rope. 

“Go ahead.” He breathed in my ear. “I know what you’re thinking. If you want to go outside, I won’t stop you. But accidents happen. Would be a shame if you got locked out.” 

“We’re all going to die because of you,” I snapped. His grip on my wrist was so tight my fingers had started to lose feeling. 

“I did what was best for everyone by eliminating the conflict of interest that was putting us in danger. We’re safe here, and we should stay. All I did was make sure we don’t have to fight about it anymore. And they were my cars, so it was my choice to make. You getting mad will only cause everyone to dislike you more than they already do.” He eased up on my arm a little, enough so my shoulder wasn’t burning so terribly. 

“Staying was your choice, not mine. Why couldn’t you have just let me leave on my own?” 

“I did you a favor, so thank me and get over it. And I guess let me know if you need painkillers for your period.” 

I slammed my foot down on his instep and thought maybe I heard something crack—could have been nothing. When his grip loosened and I turned to face him, I caught the glint in his eyes, a moment of open and unrestrained anger. 

“You need to calm down.” He forced the words through gritted teeth. “You’re going to end up in more trouble than you know how to deal with if you keep it up. I’ve been pretty understanding so far.” He leaned in close enough for me to smell the tang of whiskey on his breath, and underneath that, something earthy and foul. “Don’t push me.” 

There’s a video of this whole scene, as there is of most scenes—I could have described the footage instead of giving you my perspective; in some respects it might have been more accurate. It starts with Jason putting on his bullet proof vest and informing us that it’s American-made before stopping to explain what a tactical vest is and why people might wear one, as if this was new information to anyone. If you would have preferred that version, you’re not my target audience anyway. You’ll find it in the feature-length film I’m compiling, but this is my version, so I make the rules. 

“Okay,” Jason said, stepping back, his expression rearranging itself into something more bland and pleasant. “Emotions are high right now. Let’s all just agree to take things down a notch before we do something we’ll regret later.”

I will say this about the existing footage. By that point Mr. President had taken over the camera. Why Jason didn’t insist on someone with steadier hands and a clearer mind, I don’t know, but the remainder of the shot is shaky and distorted by heavy breathing and grunting noises that mean whatever you want them to mean. If Jason had gotten Mr. President to film everything for him, I think he would have ended up with a more honest account on balance, though it would have been a lot harder to watch. 

Jason pointed at the fridge in the kitchenette. “I think we all need to take a step back and relax. Have a beer. Play some video games. Sleep.” 

“Sleep is a good idea, but I don’t think we should get too comfortable. We should put someone on watch in case, you know, the zombies get inside.” Ian gave me a sideways glance, and I could tell what he was really trying to say. 

“I’ll take first shift,” I volunteered, just to test the waters, to get everything out in the open; it was worth a shot. 

“Actually, I was thinking I would,” Ian said quickly, failing to make eye contact. Looking back, I’m not sure why I ever thought he would make a good ally. The man he portrayed on TV had balls, but I could almost guarantee that the Ian standing before us had never actually cut his way out of a bear trap, or drunk his own urine, or eaten a field mouse raw, or participated in any other survival scenario. Probably he’d required a stunt double to replace him every time the director wanted his character to handle anything scarier than a daddy long legs. But the fiction hadn’t been lived out on TV alone; he’d lived it in his mind as well, just enough to make him think he really belonged here, a little boy playing with his toy guns, believing that made him a real soldier. 

The sad truth that Ian never realized about himself is that he had more in common with the makeup and the stage lights and the trained animals used in his show than he did with the face he thought he saw in the mirror every morning. If anything, his arguments about vaccines had less do with a sincere and reasoned belief that everything was screwed up thanks to the government, and more to do with the fact that he was afraid to go back outside, that he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to make another run for it even knowing it was his only chance, not after what he’d witnessed. 

“I see how it is. If that’s how you want to play it, then I guess that’s how it’ll go.” I slipped the gun into its holster and held my hands up, palms out, already planning how I was going to orchestrate my coup, who I was going to kill first. My rage was an incandescent thing, so bright and focused it burned like the heart of a star. It was the only way I could ignore the fear clawing at the back of my mind. 

Everything boiled down to the simplest of problems, really. I would have to get those fobs back sooner rather than later. Eventually—and I was praying the thought hadn’t already occurred to him—Jason was going to realize it would be a good idea to hamstring the vehicles, damage the brakes, cut the fuel lines, slash the tires, and then the fobs wouldn’t matter. Trying to put myself inside his mind was a dark, haunting experience, impossible to leave unscathed. 

I needed them to think I’d given up on the idea, so I took a deep breath to compose myself, gave an exaggerated shrug, and wandered over to the fridge, trying my best to project a sense that this was fine, everything was fine, why wouldn’t it be fine? I could feel their eyes like insects crawling all over my skin as I rummaged through the food. After a moment, I forced myself to grab a beer, crack it open, and take a sip, even though all I could think was how hard it was going to be to steal Jason’s tactical vest and how much I was going to need it if I wanted to survive in the long run—how I was going to need more weapons than just my gun. I was shaking so badly, it was almost impossible to drink without sloshing beer down my tank top, and I was convinced Jason could already see the plans forming in my mind. 

“Singh’s got the right idea,” Jason said, coming up beside me and slapping me on the back before grabbing his own beer. He tapped it against mine and winked. “We can still turn this into a party to remember.” 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Elizabeth Brooks