Because You Exist (3 page)

Chapter 4

“End?” The word sat in my throat, melding with me, sinking into me. Somehow the word finally made everything seem real. I didn’t feel scared or empty, or any of those things the poets and writers waxed on and on about in English class; I felt an unsustainable amount of energy hum inside of my body.

I had to do something. My body demanded action. It had been called into a war it didn’t know existed. Without reason or explanation from the creeptastic man in front of me, I believed. My body believed and that was enough for me.

“End,” I growled again.

The man nodded. “This is why it’s so important to listen to me. Everyone you ever loved is dead, but we can stop it from happening.”

Screw that. I’m not sure if something on my face alerted the man to my thoughts, or if his instincts seemed to be as good as mine, but he took a step towards me. “Now remain calm, Logan. Freaking out isn’t going to help any of us.”

I took a step back bumping into Carrie. She grabbed onto my arm to steady me. I looked back at her. Her eyes met mine and I saw my horror matched in hers.

“Run,” she said, looking directly at me.

I didn’t hesitate. I spun around and ran as fast as I could down Kempsville Rd. Or what used to be Kempsville Rd. Every time I felt myself sucked in by the darkness, the ruin of my once life, I pushed myself harder. It was probably the fastest I had ever run. Never in a game had I sought something that meant so much to me.

I had one place I needed to go.

One place that meant more to me than some damn football game, and my body knew it too.

Jenna. God, Jenna.

I tried in vain to ignore how my chest burned and my eyes stung as I ran through her neighborhood. She lived close to the school. Freshman year I started to ride my bike to her house every morning so I could walk with her. I got a lot of hell from my friends for that, but I didn’t care. She was beautiful and kind, and I wanted her.

She made me work for it. She wasn’t going to go out with me just because my uncle was some hotshot lawyer, or because I was a star on the JV football team. She wasn’t impressed with any of that, and it made me like her more. Sure, I loved the attention I got because of who I was, but I wanted to be liked for the parts of me others didn’t think were important.

I wanted to convince myself that I was more than that.

I skidded to a stop in front of what once was Jenna’s house. It looked as if a tornado or hurricane or something had touched down and forever claimed her house. There was no going back from this. This was complete and utter destruction. Door torn off its hinges. Mrs. Maples’ JCPenney designer curtains  ripped from their rods. Jenna and I spent three hours at the mall while her mom picked out just the right shade of blue.

That’s what this was—a complete and utter raping of every good memory I had in this place. The best memories I could ever wish to have. These memories had no place in the house I shared with my uncle. They belonged with Jenna and the family I liked to pretend that I belonged to.

Gone was the porch swing where I shared my first kiss with Jenna. I remembered sweating an ungodly amount during those frightful moments when I wondered if she would accept my kiss. The swing now lay broken in the yard. The big bay window I had smashed last summer when I attempted to teach Jenna’s cousin how to throw a baseball.

Destroyed.

I took a deep breath and bounded up the steps. Before I reached the door, my foot fell through a hole in the top step.  I lost my balance and fell to my knees. Maybe it was from pure physical exhaustion, or maybe it resulted from a growing sense of loss that I had yet to experience in my seventeen years of life, either way I vomited right there on the steps. I dragged my hand across my mouth and was surprised to feel tears falling down my cheeks.

When did my body give up? Only minutes ago it pushed me with an energy I thought impossible. Now it seemed to accept something my mind couldn’t quite grasp. With a heavy grunt, I pulled myself to my feet and entered the house.

I almost vomited again when the stench filled my nostrils. It smelled like the time I had forgotten about the bottle of milk in the back of the fridge. It had been expired for about two weeks before I discovered it attempting to make some Mac-n-Cheese for dinner. I never thought something could smell so bad.

I was wrong. The putrid smell of rot filled the Maples household. I plugged my nose with my hand and ventured further into the mess. Tables and furniture were overturned. Cockroaches crawled all over Mrs. Maples’ brand new carpet.

Jenna’s mom freaked out when you set a soda down on the coffee table without a coaster. What would she say about this?

She would say nothing. She would say nothing because she was dead. How surreal it was to see a dead body. I had never seen one outside of television or movies. And it was the second dead body I had seen in less than an hour.  I didn’t scream or run away. I just stared. I couldn’t stop staring. How was something like this possible? How were her limbs and eyes filled with life one moment and empty the next? Was this the same woman who made sure I had a cake for my birthday, knowing my uncle would forget? Where was her kindness and empathy? It certainly no longer lived in this carcass on the floor, this rotting, decaying waste of skin and bones.

She lay in the center of the floor as if she had dropped dead in the middle of cleaning the living room. Her skin was pulled tight against her face, and her eyes bulged from their sockets. Her arms were covered in pestering, oozed filled sores.

And then there were the maggots.

They twisted and curled along her long limbs, creating a ballet of death and destruction, a mockery of the life this woman once led.

I couldn’t stop staring.

Stop staring.

Stop.

STOP!

I stumbled to Jenna’s room. I knew what I would find. I knew the man in the suit hadn’t lied to me. Maybe he hadn’t been completely forthcoming about who he was or his purpose, but he didn’t lie about the death. Everyone I loved was dead.

Including the girl I loved most in the world.

Jenna lay curled on her bed. Her hands covered her face. When I removed them from her face, I was eternally thankful her eyes were closed. A small, acidic blessing. I could see the same wounds mark her beautiful skin. I carefully sat on the bed next to her. For some reason I didn’t want to disturb her. Like that was possible. I meticulously picked every maggot off of her body. I gently undressed her and got rid of the maggots that hid under her clothes. I couldn’t stand the thought of them having any part of her.

After I found some clean clothes, I dressed her. I just sat there waiting to feel the things I was supposed to feel. But I didn’t feel anything. I reached out my hand to push her hair from her forehead. I felt something give way. When I pulled my hand from her forehead a chunk of hair and skin came off in my hand.

I started to scream.

Chapter 5

I didn’t see Scary Carrie arrive. Instead, I felt her hand hit me upside my head with a force that knocked me back onto my elbows.

“You have to stop screaming,” she snapped.

Her face was flushed and she was out of breath. Granted, nowhere near as exhausted as I was after my run. I remembered hearing something about Scary Carrie being on our loser track team.

I was once again briefly treated to seeing her without her hood over her face. Somehow the sight of her made the screams die within my throat.

I wasn’t alone in this. Whatever this was. Whatever she and I had to stop from happening. That’s what Mr. Weirdo-Apple-Tossing-
Mad Men
-Wannabe had said anyways.

Carrie caught me staring and pulled her hoodie back over her head with a frown, though she let her eyes peek through this time. “Funny,” she said.

“What the hell could possibly be funny about this?” I snarled. Maybe I was alone after all.

“Oh. I didn’t mean that was funny,” she said, carelessly pointing to the rotting body of my dead girlfriend. “I meant the whole hitting thing. You see it used in movies all the time to calm down irrational people. I mean have you ever seen
Night of the Living Dead
? When that girl got slapped? I mean talk about being slapped. Who knew it really worked?”

I rubbed my hand against my head, which was still throbbing. Only made worse by the sound of her voice. “Really? You choose now to do all your talking for the entire year?”

“I guess you’re feeling better. Back to your same old self.”

“Where is he?” I asked through clenched teeth.

“You mean Mr. Ambiguous?”

I nodded.

“I guess back where I left him,” she said with a careless shrug of her shoulders.

“How’d you get away?”

“He just let me go. He asked me if I wanted to follow my friend.”

“He just let you go?”

Carrie nodded. “I think he wanted us to trust him. Not that I do. There’s just something about that guy that gives me the creeps.”

I understood what she meant. “How’d you know I’d be here?” I asked, fighting the urge to look back on Jenna’s body. God, Jenna.

“Where else would you go?” Carrie asked quietly.

“I didn’t know you knew her,” I replied, suddenly finding it impossible to look at Carrie. I stared at the carpet instead, wishing to be anywhere but there.

Carrie sighed. I looked up at the noise to see her pull her hoodie further down over her face. No longer could I see her eyes. “I used to live across the street.”

I hadn’t known that. I heard Carrie was a ward of the state, something about her mother being dead and her father in jail. Maybe that meant I should have given her some sympathy over the years, but she was a freak. She never seemed to want or need any affection from anyone.

“So what do you think happened?” I asked. I couldn’t stop myself. Without looking back, I reached my hand behind me and placed it on Jenna’s stomach. I wanted to feel her underneath my hands before she wasted away, before she was completely gone from whatever fucked up world I seemed to be stuck in.

“I think there had to have been some sort of attack, maybe biological, and the sickness took out the humans,” Carrie replied, stoically.

Sickness. I pulled my t-shirt over my nose.

Carrie’s hand reached out and pulled my shirt from off my face. “I think we’re immune, dumbass. Why else would we be chosen to stop all this? Whatever the hell that means?”

“What does any of this mean? I mean are we supposed to believe that crap he said about being shifters? I mean time travel? Really? How is that even remotely possible?”

“I don’t know what were supposed to believe, Logan. But I guess you’re gonna want to believe we can stop this, because otherwise this is your future,” Carrie replied.

No. I couldn’t believe this was final. I just damn well couldn’t.

“Is all of this real?” I asked.

I watched as Carrie turned her head to look past me at Jenna. “It sure feels real.”

“Isn’t there someone you want to check on?” I asked, clearing my throat. Even though she was trying to hide it, I could see Carrie felt something concerning Jenna’s death. This made her a little more likable in my eyes. I wondered what caused Carrie to feel anything for her at all.

Carrie shook her head. “Nope.”

That one word seemed to summarize the biggest difference between Scary Carrie and me, a difference that could change who a person was.

I stood and pushed my way past Carrie. I couldn’t spend one more second sitting still. I had answers to find. What the hell was a shifter? How was it possible to stop the destruction that consumed my world? Why was Carrie here with me?  Why me?

I continued to walk towards the front door. I couldn’t stand to be in this house anymore. It did me good to see these things. It gave me a purpose, something that I hadn’t ever really had in my life. Winning a football game and scoring with your girlfriend really didn’t seem so damn important when compared to this.

I was going to stop this. I would have to believe that it was possible. Everything I knew to be possible and true told me all of this was beyond reason, but I believed. I felt my girlfriend’s skin come off into my hand. I had to become a believer.

“Where you going?” Carrie called after me.

“To find Mr. Ambiguous.”

“Why?”

“To force him to give us some answers.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

I turned to face Carrie. I needed her. I knew that, but I didn’t need her attitude. “And why won’t it work? I can be pretty convincing,” I said, curling my hands into fist. Granted, the last time I got in a fight was with Steven Oliver who weighed twenty pounds less than me.

“Because your eyes are watering,” she snapped.

“What?” I asked, reaching up to find a tear roll down my face. My skin began to prickle.

When I looked back to Carrie I saw her nose was bleeding.

Damn it.