Redlisted (8 page)

I placed the
picture face-down on the desk and picked up the telephone. I hadn’t
called my ex-girlfriend Elena more than twice since she’s moved
to Atlanta six years ago, but her number came to mind easily as my
fingers moved across the dial.

Her son picked up
on the other end. “Hello?”

“Hello. Is
Dr. Ortiz there?”

“Who is
this?”

“Uh—Dr.
Radcliffe,” I lied. “From the CDC.”

“Oh, okay,”
he said. “Hold on, she just got in.”

There was a long
pause and some shuffling sounds as the phone changed hands.

“Hello?”
came Elena’s voice on the other end.

I gritted my teeth
and gathered my will to reply. “Elena? It’s Adam.”

She was silent for
several seconds.

“I’m
sorry to borrow you,” I said. “I just... I...” I
looked at the ceiling, at a loss as to why I was calling her at all.
“Alison is dead,” I blurted out.

“Adam, I
know. You told me. On Thursday. Don’t you remember?”

“What?”

“You told me
when you called me on Thursday.”

“I don’t
remember that at all.” How could I have called her? Didn’t
Aya say I was in a coma? “So what day is it now?”

“It’s
Monday,” she replied, annoyed. “What do you mean you
don’t remember?”

“I...”

“Were you
drunk?” She sounded disgusted. “Are you drunk now?”

The room suddenly
seemed like it was expanding, or I was getting smaller in it. I heard
a faint ringing in my ears.

“Oh God. I
wasn’t... when the car crashed... was I?” I couldn’t
remember. “Was I driving?”

“I don’t
know. Were you?”

I had no idea.
Looking back, I saw nothing but a black disconnect, a rift full of
static.

“Adam, I’m
worried about you,” she said, her voice laden with lacerating
pity. “You should probably check yourself into some kind of
clinic.”

“I can’t,”
I said.
They
don’t have rehab for dead people,
I thought, and almost laughed out loud.

“I think
this is more important than your professional reputation, especially
if you can’t even remember whether or not you killed your
fiancée.”

“It’s
not that—“

“You
shouldn’t have called,” she said.

I leaned back in
the chair, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Yeah. You’re
probably right.”

“I’m
hanging up now,” she said, and then she did.

I placed the
receiver back in the cradle, then stared at the phone for minutes
without once feeling the need to blink.

The picture of the
situation was blurring. How had I called Elena if I’d been in a
coma? Aya must have left something out. She must have. Maybe Alison
wasn’t really dead after all?

No. Elena wouldn’t
lie to me, especially not about something like that. Not only was
Alison dead, it was probably my own fault.

Why hadn’t
Julian revived her instead of me?

Why had he revived
me at all?

I pushed the desk
chair away from the table and stood up. I walked to the door to the
suite without considering why. I unlocked the door, opened it, and
stepped out into the hallway.

The corridors
seemed different. The portraits had changed, the intersections had
shifted. I walked down hall after hall, opening doors at random. I
wanted to leave, go to outside. Where were the stairs to the first
floor?

Was the sun still
out? Julian had said it was the afternoon. The sun would probably
kill me, now that I was a vampire.

That’d be
fine.

After searching
for several minutes, I found a stairwell. It was dark, but I couldn’t
find a light switch, so I shut the door behind me and began climbing
blindly. After twelve stairs, I found myself at a landing. I stumbled
forward, feeling along the wall for a door, then for a doorknob. It
was locked. I ran my hands along the wall again, and led myself to a
second flight of stairs. Holding the railing, I began to climb.

On the ninth stair
I heard a door slam shut somewhere beneath me. Someone was
approaching from below, sprinting towards the door to the stairwell.

I ran up the
remaining stairs. I could see a slice of light beneath the door to
the second level; it provided just enough illumination for my hands
to find their way to the doorknob. As I threw open the door, Aya
screamed at me from below.

“Adam, what
are you—Wait! Stop!”

She started
running up the stairs. I shut the door behind me. At the end of the
hall I saw a window to the outside, its drapes drawn shut. I started
to walk down the hallway, then to run, then to sprint. Behind me, the
door creaked open. A split second later, I saw a flash.

Then I heard
nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing.

{Anonymous}

“Hey.”

Haruko’s
voice.

“Hey, are
you all right? Wake up.”

I peel my eyes
open. The office is dark, save for the light of a streetlamp seeping
in through the blinds. I’ve wriggled myself into a corner
without leaving the sleeping bag. I must have abandoned the pillow
somewhere back in the middle of the room; I can feel the imprint the
industrial carpet left on my face.

“Jesus. I
thought you’d gone comatose.” She extends a hand and
hauls me up to a sitting position. “It’s already ten.
Have you been asleep this entire time?”

I rub at my eyes,
trying to swallow. My mouth is parched. I nod.

Adam appears in
the doorway, carrying a stainless steel bowl and his folding knife.
He walks over and kneels down next to me. “Could you give us a
minute?” he asks Haruko.

She looks at the
bowl, then at Adam. “Don’t overdo it,” she says.
“We’re not doing what we did last night ever again.”

“I
understand that,” he replies tersely.

She smirks at him
and steps out of the office.

What’s
the bowl for?
I
ask.

“You didn’t
seem to enjoy sucking on my wrist. I wanted to give you another
option.”

I frown.
If
I do it that way, will I remember anything?

“If you take
it from the vein, you'll recover something for sure. If you don’t...”
He puts the bowl on the ground. “Well, normally things would
come back to you in dreams, but...”

All
I’ve been dreaming about is you.
I unintentionally recall his suicide attempt; it makes me feel
ashamed for both of us.
Jesus.
Sorry. I can’t help it.

He flips the knife
open. I look away before he makes the cut.

“It’s
all right,” he says after a pause. “I guess it’s
only fair. I mean, you’re an open book to me, and I can’t
help that, either.”

I nod, still
averting my eyes.

“So which
way do you want it?”

I want my
memories back.

“The wrist,
then.”

Yeah.

I reach for his
arm. I put my lips over the cut. I push down my feelings of disgust.
This is going to be a regular thing now, so I might as well get used
to it.

As his blood
enters my mouth I feel that same floating, disembodied sensation, the
same feeling of sinking and drowning. Unlike before, however, as the
office fades away the feeling persists.

I’m still
submerged, still in over my head. I’m in some kind of huge fish
tank—one large enough to hold a shark or an octopus, or, in
this case, me. The tank is full of blood.

I swim up to the
top; there’s just enough room to allow my head to surface if I
tread water—tread blood?—if I tread blood with all my
might. The effort is excruciating. I can feel a matrix of sutures all
across my torso, limbs, and face. Every time I flex a muscle, the
stitches pull. My reflection in the glass of the tank looks like a
macabre sort of rag doll stitched together from swollen flesh.

I push against the
lid of the tank, trying to force it open, but I can’t. I end up
pushing my own head back under, back into the blood, and I inhale
some of it accidentally. I sputter and cough, flailing back to the
surface and gasping for air.

I hear footsteps
approaching. I swim up to the glass and try to look out into the room
beyond, still hacking and wheezing, but I can’t see. It’s
too dark. It’s getting harder and harder to keep my head above
the level of the blood—harder and harder until it becomes
nearly impossible—and then it overwhelms me, and I’m
going under, and I might never be coming up again—

And then I flash
back to the abandoned office in the abandoned grocery store.

Did I pull away or
did Adam?

He picks up the
bowl, stands up and doesn’t say a thing.

///

We get back on the
highway, heading west, further into the mountains. Adam drives. I sit
in the back with Aya, reading the signs as they pass with the feeling
that I’ve been down this stretch before. Morganton, Marion,
Black Mountain. We’re in western North Carolina.

Adam takes us to a
shopping plaza somewhere near Asheville and parks the car in the
enormous, floodlit parking lot of a big-box retailer.

“Why don’t
you and Aya go fill up the tank?” Haruko says to him. “I
can take her in on my own.”

What?
Take me where?
I look at Adam.
I
don’t want to be alone with her.

“I... need
to get something to eat,” he says.

“Whatever,”
Haruko says. “That’s fine.”

“I’ll
be along as soon as I can,” he says.

Haruko shrugs,
unsnaps her seat belt and hops out of the car.

Adam and I follow
her towards the entrance. She pulls a smartphone out of her back
pocket and starts fiddling with the buttons.

What are we
doing here?

“We don’t
have any food,” Adam says. “Or anything else you might
need, for that matter.”

I guess he’s
right. Haruko’s clothes are too tight to be comfortable, and
I’m dying for something to eat.

We step through
two sets of sliding doors and past an elderly greeter who waves at us
with blithe indifference. I squint and shade my eyes; the light
inside the building feels nearly as oppressive as the sun. Haruko
grabs a shopping cart, pushing it one-handed while continuing to type
with the other.

The store is
crowded even at this time of night, full of teenagers, young couples
and families. I watch Adam slip away from us and into the crowd. He
looks perfectly innocuous in his dark jeans and black track jacket.
Nothing about his appearance gives him away.

I shudder.

“Let’s
get you some clothes,” Haruko says. She starts walking towards
the women’s clothing department.

I follow her, my
stomach churning. I can’t stop staring at her, thinking about
her like she’s some sort of big cat set loose from the zoo. And
I can’t get the image of her stabbing that man out of my head.
She’d killed like a machine. She’d killed the other
double, too. And she’d wanted to kill me. Said I was a
liability.

Just
tell yourself you’re out with a friend,
I decide.
A
human friend who doesn’t drink blood. Or kill people.

She stops playing
with her smartphone and hands it to me. “I found a
text-to-voice application,” she says. “I know your voice
is shot right now, so you can use it to talk.”