Of course “here” was where I found him.
He’d made it as far as the automatic sliding glass doors of the ER before collapsing. I could see the people running toward him as he convulsed and vomited on the cheap tile floor. The cavalry had come to rescue me and I meant that without an ounce of sarcasm. He’d risked his life over this and he knew it. Cal, who looked all human on the outside, but we had no idea what he looked like on the inside and I couldn’t take a chance.
I’d lost the security guard, but I didn’t make any new friends when I hit a doctor with one shoulder knocking him flat, and then did the same to a nurse on the other side. Scooping Cal up, I kept running through the still open doors. It was dark outside now and none of the ER staff were the runners the security guard had been. Even carrying Cal, I lost them after several blocks of twists and turns.
I had him up with his head over my shoulder. I didn’t enjoy the warmth of his vomit spilling down my back, but that was much better than him choking on it. The convulsing turned to squirming, and then he was gasping in my ear, “Nik, get away from me. Nik, get away!” That might not have halted my running, but his fists pounding as hard as they could against my back did. I stopped in an alley between a long out-of-business store and a church and gently put him on his feet. He fell instantly, scrambling backward on all fours, horrified eyes on me.
“Cal?” Confusion and a flash of panic wrapped dual hands around my lungs and gripped tightly. I took a step toward him.
“No.” He moved farther away, then lunged to his feet and toward the nearest garbage can, digging through it until he found a can of Coke that was not quite empty. He poured what was left over his hand, then covered up his nose and mouth.
That’s when I got it. For an hour and a half I’d been in the hospital soaking up the stench of illness and dying that had had Cal on the floor flailing in his own sick. Worse, I’d been in a drawer with a corpse, who from the whiff I’d gotten, had died of gangrene. I was making Cal as sick as the hospital could. I backed away. “Tell me when I’m far enough,” I asked as if it were an ordinary question. Right now we both needed to believe things were ordinary if we had to lie to ourselves to do it.
After several more steps he nodded, still keeping his mouth and nose covered. I’d have to write a thank-you note to the Coca-Cola company, I thought with only a slight edge of relieved hysteria.
“Where’d you go?” he asked, accusing words muffled by his hand. “You said a half hour. You were gone an hour and a half. You were gone forever. I thought he got you.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Cal. I am. A security guard chased me through the entire place. I had to hide. . . .” He didn’t need to know where I had to hide. “We forgot Sophia said that place had been picked clean. They’re still watching for anyone who looks suspicious.” A wandering teenager alone in a place that had been repeatedly robbed would look suspicious.
He was only half listening to my answer. The rest of his attention was taken with jerking his gaze from my feet up to my face, back down, and then over again. “You don’t smell like you. You smell like that mouse in the wall. You smell like you’re rotting. I can’t smell you at all. You’re not you.” He took a sliding step back, the unsteadiness better but not gone.
Cal was the same as any ordinary person in having only five senses, but he was different in that one of them was incredibly heightened. With my normal nose I could detect the nauseating taint of gangrene that clung to me. For Cal it covered everything else, including the way that I had always smelled to him. I hadn’t known until this moment the extent it factored into how he perceived people. For him to not be able to smell the usual me at all would be the same as if I’d suddenly gone blind and couldn’t see him. I’d be able to hear him and touch him, but a huge part of what made him Cal to me would be gone.
“But it is me,” I assured. “Same hair.” I tugged at the short ponytail. “Same voice, same willingness to not yell at you although I’m half covered in your vomit. It’s me, Cal, and as soon as we get home and I wash, I’ll smell the same as always.” The clothes, I’d have to throw away. No, burn.
“It’s you?” His other foot was hovering in the air about to take him yet another step away. He looked at me searchingly up and down one last time and let his shoulders slump and his foot drop. “I’m stupid. I know it’s you. You’re just not . . .” He shook his head.
“Just not all of me. Not that you can smell. I know. Let’s go home and I’ll fix it, all right?”
He nodded, hand firmly in place between me and my new smell. “Okay. But could you walk ahead of me? Really far ahead of me?”
“Behind you,” I amended, to watch for the same type that had tried to rob us the night before. “But far behind. I’ll wash out back with the hose and soap.” That would keep the smell out of the house. “You can go tell Mrs. Spoonmaker since you already lied about me being seventeen. She might get a thrill.”
That made him smile. I could see the dimple beside his covering hand. “It’s cold. The water’s going to be colder.” He held up his free hand, the index finger and thumb about half an inch apart. “That’s not going to impress anybody. She goes to mass though. She might pray for you.”
“You know more than you should for your age and way too much than is good for me at any age.” I shook my head in mock despair. “Home. Move it. Even I don’t like the way I smell right now. Your puke isn’t like rose petals and baking apple pie either.”
We started walking. Home would be good. I could get clean and not think about how if I hadn’t had to hide in the morgue, the plan would’ve worked in a different way than I’d thought. If I’d walked out of the hospital smelling like death after only being in the cafeteria that would let Junior off the hook. It took only one goal-oriented security guard and one dead man who’d liked sugar more than his leg and life to throw that all out the window.
“Walk slower,” Cal said from in front of me as he plodded, steps tired and occasionally wobbly. “I can still smell you.”
By the time we were home, Cal had recovered and took a quick shower before coming out back. I kept as far away as our tiny backyard would allow as he threw me the soap. He uncurled the hose while I stripped and dumped my clothes in the garbage can for later burning. For once I was thankful we couldn’t afford to live in a neighborhood that had streetlights. If any of our neighbors saw me as anything other than a smear paler than the night, then they were trying too much. Cal would be happy to go paint a giant P for pervert on their doors if they did.
“Ready?” he asked. But he didn’t wait for my answer. How would that be fun for him? A stream of ice-cold water hit me in the face. I grimaced but began soaping up as Cal hosed me down like an elephant on a hot day at the zoo.
I scrubbed every inch thoroughly before waving my arms. “Cal, all right, stop. I think I’m fine now.” Except that I expected my skin had turned blue and I was freezing. Cal was right. Mrs. Spoonmaker would have to pray for me.
Cal took an experimental sniff, then shook his head. Part of the decision, I thought, was driven by how much he was enjoying himself. Little brothers and water hoses are deadly combinations. “One more time. To make sure it doesn’t get in the house. You really, really stank.”
I couldn’t disagree with that.
11
Cal
Present Day
I absolutely stank.
Being attacked by the dead will do that. A few years ago I would’ve been yakking my guts up over it, but you can, as they say, get used to anything. We’d fought enough things that while weren’t dead, they did smell that way or worse. It turned out the real thing wasn’t quite as bad as some of those. It wasn’t enjoyable, hell no, but at least I could fight now without taking a time-out to puke on the feet of whatever I was shooting or carving up at the time.