Dead Highways: Origins (13 page)

Holy shit, I’m a captain. Captain of what?

“But why does his face look like that?”

“I believe that Peaches may have passed on whatever ailment she has when she bit him. Thus, the site has quickly become infected and has begun to swell at an alarming rate.”

“Wait a minute . . . Peaches is here?”

“Aye,” said the officer I had followed. He pointed to one of the two connecting doors attached to the exam room. “She is in the second patient room, for our safety.”

I slowly walked across the room and stopped in front of the door to the second patient room.

“What is that sound?” I asked. “Is that a clogged-up vacuum?”

When nobody answered, I turned around and realized there was a good reason. Everyone had left.

Good.

This way Peaches and I could be alone.

I opened up the door to the second patient room, and upon stepping inside, was instantly transported back to my old room at the bookstore. Peaches was sitting on my bed smoking a cigarette.

“You better put that out,” I said. “Grandma will get upset if she knew you were smoking inside.”

“Grandma isn’t here anymore,” she said softly, and then took a long drag. “It’s just you and me, captain.”

I sat down on the bed next to her. “It’s really hot in here. It was really cold out on the deck.”

“What are you gonna do about it? Take off your clothes?”

I started blushing. I could feel something begin to move around due south of my belly button.

She ran a hand across my face and then pulled me closer. “I want you to kiss me . . . like you did before. Can you do that for me?”

“I’ll do anything you want me to do,” I said.

When our lips touched, I was in heaven again.

So perfect.

Then she sunk her teeth into my bottom lip and tore it off like it was a piece of barbecued meat. I jumped back in disgust and covered my mouth. Warm blood trickled down my chin.

“Why did you do that?”

She didn’t respond. She just sat there, chewing on what used to be my bottom lip.

I ran out of my bedroom and back into the examination room. All of my ship companions had returned. The officer in the blue uniform asked, “Is there something wrong, sir?” But I ignored him and continued to run away, out of the exam room, up the staircase, and back out onto the open deck.

I was expecting cold outside but instead I got heat. A blistering, burning, feverish heat. It was inside of me. My vision began to blur. I felt dizzy. I felt like I’d just stepped off one of those spinning carnival rides.

And I knew I was infected.

Someone grabbed me, shook me, and the world spun faster. “Are you okay?” they asked through the ever-expanding echo chamber that was my head.

I tried to respond, tried to ask, “Where am I?”

As I collapsed to the wooden deck, the last thing I heard before passing out was, “You’re on the ship of dreams, sir.”

When I came to, I was no longer on the Titanic, but in a dark room I barely recognized. I felt my face and thanked God my bottom lip was back. Then I looked around, trying to figure out where I was. There was a single sheet on top of me and an unlit candle beside me. Next to the candle was a book. On the other side of the room was a twin bed. Someone was sitting on it and looking directly at me. My eyes were foggy, so I rubbed them and sat up to get a better look.

It was my grandma.

“I never thought you’d wake up,” I said. “But it’s good to see you again, grandma. Even if . . .”

Even if this is just a stupid dream.

She slowly rose from the bed and walked over to where I sat on the floor. Then she looked down at me with an expression I don’t think I’d ever seen her show.

Indifference.

“Aren’t you gonna say something?”

Nope, she had nothing to say to me.

But it wasn’t until she tried to attack me that I realized I was no longer dreaming.

When I imagined my first time putting handcuffs on a woman, I never thought the woman would be my grandmother—maybe somebody else’s grandma, sure, but
never
mine.

But that’s exactly what I had to do. I had to help handcuff my seventy-nine-year-old grandma to a dining room chair—the same chair I had eaten dinner in hours earlier, when the worst thing I had to worry about was whether or not Robinson’s cooking would have me up all night on the shitter. And it was all because she’d put her hands around my throat and tried to choke me to death. Thankfully, due to her age I was easily able to overpower her until the police arrived on the scene. And by police, I mean Officer Robinson.

After helping secure her to the chair, Robinson and Bowser stood on opposite sides of the dining room table and stared at me like I had the answer to some question they were afraid to ask. Peaches was in the living room changing Olivia, while Diego and Luna were still sound asleep in Robinson’s bedroom. Lucky them.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“She’s
your
grandma, Jimmy,” Robinson said.

“No shit.”

“Well, what do you want to do?”

I stared at my grandma, trying to collect my thoughts. She had her head down, calm and peaceful, quite the change from minutes earlier. It was as though a switch had gone off in her, so much so that I wondered if maybe she was falling back into the coma. The moment the cuffs went on, she stopped struggling. She stopped wanting to attack not just me, but anyone she could get her hands on.

So what did I want to do?
That was easy. I wanted to go back in time to when life was easy, before the world began to self-destruct. But it didn’t matter what I
wanted
to do, only what I
could
do. And if there were something I could do, or some explanation for what just happened, I had no clue what it was. But I’d try my hardest to find out.

“Leave me alone with her,” I finally said.

Robinson and Bowser exchanged a quick glance and then left the room.

I added a few more lit candles to the center of the table and then sat down next to my grandma. She continued to stare into her lap, eyes open, not acknowledging my presence. It reminded me of the girls I’d used to sit next to in the school cafeteria.

“Grandma, can you hear me? It’s your grandson, James. Or Jimmy, like you always called me. You don’t know how glad I am to see you awake. But I need you to help me understand what’s going on. Why did you attack me? Were you confused? It’s okay if you were. You’re probably scared, wondering where you are. We’re at Officer Robinson’s house. Do you remember Officer Robinson? He was the cop who helped us out after the robbery.”

No response. She didn’t move a muscle. She remained locked in that statuesque position, head down and disengaged. I couldn’t tell if she was ignoring me or just didn’t hear a word I was saying.

“Do you remember me telling you about the infection, grandma? I showed you the news reports. We watched them on TV together. Well, sometime last night you came down with it, and then you went into a coma. You weren’t alone either. While I haven’t shown any symptoms yet, it seems most of the world hasn’t been so lucky. So I decided to join a group of survivors, led by Officer Robinson. Like I said, this is his house. There are others, as well. I know how confusing this must sound to you, but I promise you there is nothing to be afraid of. Nobody here wants to hurt you. In fact, now that you’re awake, we want to help you. We want to take care of you. Grandma, please say something if you can hear me.”

Still.

No response.

I sighed and looked over at Robinson and Bowser sitting quietly in the living room, sneaking the occasional glance my way. I figured they weren’t talking because they wanted to overhear my one-sided conversation with my grandma, or they just had nothing to say to each other. Perhaps a little of both.

“I don’t know what else to say to ease your mind. I’m not a doctor. I don’t know anything about comas, or how people react when they wake up. Maybe what you’re feeling is normal. Maybe you just need time to rest. I don’t know. I’d like to take the handcuffs off, but I want to make sure you won’t try to hurt anyone. I’ve been your responsibility for so long, but now you’re mine. And you just . . . you just feel so distant from me right now. Is any of this getting through to you, grandma? If you can’t speak, then nod your head if it is.”

This was going nowhere. I had lots of questions, but she had no answers for me. Worse, I felt a growing tension between us that I couldn’t explain. The more I talked, the more I felt it. I had never experienced anything like it before in my life. It was as though she was attempting to communicate with me through some other method than words, yet I didn’t have the code to decipher what she was saying. Instead, all I received was electrical fragments of whatever strange, magnetic energy, surged between us.

I only had one question left. It was, in fact, the only question that really mattered.

“Grandma, do you even know who I am? Do you remember me?”

I didn’t expect an answer. I expected more of the same. But this time she gave me an answer. She finally lifted her head and looked over at me. In her face, I saw the same look of indifference she’d displayed ever since she first woke up. Her eyes though . . . her eyes were what told me the truth. And the truth hurt
so
much.

The answer was no.

She had no idea who I was.

“What’s the verdict?” Robinson asked from the comfort of his recliner.

I shrugged, sat down next to Bowser on the couch. “There isn’t one. She wouldn’t talk to me. In fact, I don’t think she even knows who I am.”

“That’s strange. Could be some sort of side effect.”

“That’s what I’m thinking. Maybe if we give her some time, her memory will start to come back.”

“While we’re waiting, would you like me to take off the cuffs?”

“Well, obviously I don’t like seeing my grandma handcuffed to a chair,” I said. Robinson began to get up. “But
should
you take them off? I don’t know.”

Robinson relaxed. “She probably just hallucinated. Don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” I said, looking back over at my grandma in the dining room. She had her head down again. “As much as I hate to say it, I think for now we ought to just keep her where she is. I’ll try to talk to her every so often. Hopefully at some point she’ll snap out of it.”

“Are you worried about her attacking you again?” Bowser asked with a hint of a smile.

“Not really. She’s almost eighty. I’d be more worried about her hurting herself. She doesn’t know where she is, or who any of us are right now. She may not even know who
she
is. So I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

Peaches entered the room and leaned against the couch. “I put Olivia back down. Is your grandma okay, Jimmy?”

“No, she’s not,” I said. “But she’s awake, so I guess that’s a step in the right direction.”

“What about everyone else?” Peaches asked.

“What do you mean? Everyone else is fine.”

Robinson sat up in the recliner. “I think she means—”

“The others,” Peaches interrupted. “The other infected. If your grandma woke up, maybe they did too.”

“You know, I hadn’t even though about that,” I said. “I haven’t had a moment to think about anything except my grandma’s condition.”

“But it’s possible, isn’t it?” Peaches asked.

“My grandma just tried to kill me. At this point, I think anything is possible.”

“You had said yourself that maybe whatever was causing people to go into a coma would eventually wear off. Maybe this whole thing is coming to an end.”

“That would be nice,” I said.

Bowser stood up. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s get on out of here.”

“Now hold on a minute,” Robinson said. “I wouldn’t go running off into the night just yet. Could just be a coincidence. We should at least wait until morning and then we can see what’s up. There’s still no power, and the roads are a mess. It’s gonna take some time to clean it all up. I say we chill out, get some rest.”

Bowser reluctantly sat back down.

“Well, you guys don’t have to stay up,” I said. “I can watch over my grandma. You can sleep in my room if the light out here bothers you.”

“We could take turns watching her,” Robinson suggested.

“No, you guys don’t need to suffer. She’s my grandma. Besides, I won’t be able to get to sleep now anyway.”

No way I was gonna tell them about the crazy dream I’d had—certainly not Peaches, who had played such an integral and disturbing role.

I got up and went back to the dining room where my grandma sat handcuffed to a chair. Instead of sitting next to her, this time I sat across from her. Bowser took me up on the offer and went to sleep in my room. Robinson, however, remained on the recliner, and in record time was back to snoring his face off. Peaches sat outside, chain-smoked cigarettes for a while, and then headed back to her room.

And then it was just us. She and I.

The only two awake.

I stared at her, bewildered, while she continued to stare into her lap.

Somehow, my grandma had done the impossible. She’d woken from a coma that I just assumed would end her life. She’d woken . . . but something wasn’t the same.
She
wasn’t the same.

Over the next hour, I tried talking to her some more. I didn’t ask questions. I wasn’t looking for answers. I just wanted to see if she’d speak to me, give me some small sign that she was getting better—that whatever had caused her to act so violently, and now so withdrawn, was wearing off. Please, God, have her say something. Anything.

But she never did.

She never said a word.

Finally, I put my head down on the table and gazed into the burning candles until my eyes got tired—until I faded off to sleep.