I still knew that I was Jack, only I didn’t want her to know just how sick I felt. So I didn’t reply.
As I agonized over what had happened and worried about what was to come, I sat with them at the kitchen table in the Los Feliz house where I sometimes lived, a place that was usually full of warmth and memories of good times for Anna and me.
“Jack?” I heard my name again as if from far away, like an echo, and recognized where I was. But I felt feverish, drugged.
I tried to focus on my hazy surroundings, to not let familiar recede from my recognition. We were in a beautiful, old Spanish-style house, set back from the street and overlooking Los Angeles. The faint creamy-pink color stucco home had been lovingly crafted with arched wooden doors and Mexican-tiled halls throughout and a terracotta tile roof where doves nested under the eaves and cooed in the mornings. The house wasn’t mine, not in my name, and that was a good thing. Otherwise, I would most certainly have been found by now, and perhaps wiped off the face of the earth by the Agents in Black.
“Earth to Jack,” Mike said. “Come in, please.”
“Snap out of it, Jack!” Carla said.
I sat with my elbows on the table, my head buried in my hands, and tried to concentrate on the conversation unfolding around me. My daughter, Anna, sat next to me, along with her boyfriend, Jared, my good friend Carla the cop across from me, and finally, Mike to my right.
Mike had been infected along with my brother Joe and I had ended up drowning him. Yes, drowning him. Mike, of course, had survived that drowning and for the first time since he was infected, he seemed normal, hopefully cured. He now showed no symptoms of the illness. So the general consensus was that I would have to be drowned, too, if I wanted to save my sanity. And my life.
Jesus, what an option. A horrible, shitty option.
I moaned and held up my hand for them to see.
“Look at that! It’s getting worse,” Anna said and got a package of frozen peas from the freezer and laid it on my hand. “Maybe this will help.”
The pain in my hand was excruciating, but I didn’t really care. I contemplated the bluish veins creeping up from my hand to my arm, probably toward my heart. I didn’t care. My head ached, my body ached, and I was hungry. I was very, very angry. Mostly, I strove for emotional control.
“We’re losing him,” Jared said from seemingly afar.
“No, he’ll be okay,” Anna replied, equally far away.
As far as I knew, my brother Joe, who had been infected along with Mike, was still out there somewhere, getting sicker, but gaining the enormous physical strength the infection presented after a period of severe illness, all while slowly going insane. Before Mike was “cured,” he had actually been obsessed with feeding on human flesh.
All of these thoughts went through my feverish mind in a haze. I tried to keep focused, to keep caring. I cared, but I didn’t care, too.
So weird.
I wanted so desperately to keep my daughter safe. And I cared for Carla, too. Who else? Jared, and even Mike, although just hours ago, he’d wanted to kill Anna. And, of course, I cared for my little brother, Joey.
I didn’t know what to do and I was so sick that I almost didn’t give a damn. Almost. But I had to give a damn. God, I wanted to live, but at the same time, I was losing...interest.
Jesus.
“Dad, I’m counting on you to keep it together,” Anna said. “We all are.”
I tried to hang onto that more than anything else.
“Jack, are you hungry?” Carla asked.
I nodded. The growing fatigue, I knew, could only be cured by feeding. Feeding on...human flesh. To be more specific, gray matter. Brains.
Lord help me.
“Want an ice cream sandwich?” Anna asked me. “We have lots.”
I shook my head, gathered my thoughts. Or tried to. Mostly, my thoughts were on the gray stuff. I looked absently down at my hand. It had been cut a couple of days ago by a punch I’d delivered to my own brother. I was guessing this infection, or disease, was spread through blood contact. I didn’t even want to risk touching anyone.
Mike was absolutely convinced he was cured. That meant...what? I couldn’t remember.
“Hey, bro, come back to us,” Mike said. His voice came from so far away.
“You got better,” I heard Anna say to Mike. “Does he have to get better the same way?”