Guts Are Usually Trustworthy

I tackled John while screaming like a banshee before he could open the car door all the way, and the two of us went crashing onto the concrete. Something struck my right shoulder as we rolled, sharp enough to make me cry out, and within seconds I could feel blood soaking through my oversized white shirt. John’s hand closed around my head almost immediately, but I barely registered it over the ringing in my ears.

“Fuck,” I heard Art curse somewhere above us. By the time I managed to lift my head, he was already kneeling beside us.

John was staring past me with a stunned expression, so I followed his gaze and found his car engulfed in flames only a few feet away.

“It waited until you opened the door,” Art said, his expression hardening as he studied the wreckage. “Someone wanted to make damn sure you were standing beside it when it went off.”

Art helped me stand up, was that also in your dream? he asked.

“No,” was the only thing I managed to say. I was still too stunned by the sight of my brother’s car burning in front of us to form anything more useful.

I had been right to be suspicious of Asterion. In my dream — or whatever the hell my first life had been — the police hadn’t even bothered putting crime-scene tape around the office where John’s body was found. His office had been cleared out almost immediately after his death, and by the time I arrived in Rye, there was nothing for me to take home anymore.

At the time, I had been too consumed by grief to notice how fast everything was moving. But now, looking at John’s car’s burnt-up wreckage, I am quite sure that his employer wasn’t entirely innocent.

“You’re bleeding,” Art said as he shrugged off his jacket, bundled it up, and pressed it against my right shoulder.

The same shoulder the crying infected girl had bitten in my dream.

Goosebumps rose along my arms at the memory. She had been the first infected I had ever seen cry, much less form a coherent sentence. At the time, I had been too busy trying not to die to think about what that meant, but now the memory felt important in a way I couldn’t explain yet.

I looked up and found John standing a few feet in front of us with his phone to his ear, probably talking to 911. He wasn’t on the ground anymore, and aside from looking shaken, he seemed unharmed. Seeing him standing there alive loosened something in my chest that had been clenched since the moment I woke up.

“Take Patty to the hospital, Art. I’ll stay and talk to the police.”

“No,” I said immediately. “No, John. You saw what just happened.”

I stared at him with wide eyes, and I could practically see my brother weighing the logic behind my protest. Someone had just tried to blow him up in the parking lot of his own workplace. None of us knew who was involved yet, and separating now felt like the stupidest possible thing we could do.

“She’s right,” Art said. “There’s something seriously wrong about what just happened, and considering everything Patty told me this morning, I think our best option is going back to my place. We can pick up Jumbo King on the way, and I can stitch Patty up there.”

“Or I can do it,” John said. “You know I’m still a doctor, right?”

Art rolled his eyes at him. “That was not the important part of what I just said.”

We reached Art’s place not long after, but not before checking every car-door handle before touching it and grabbing the supplies I had packed from my Corolla. After what had happened to John’s car, none of us were taking chances.

Jumbo King nearly mauled me with excitement when we stopped to get him. The poor mutt launched himself at me so hard I almost reopened whatever damage had already been done to my shoulder, but I didn’t have the heart to push him away.

John disappeared into his room for a few minutes and came back carrying a thick stack of papers. He packed them into his luggage so carefully and hid them beneath his clothes with enough paranoia that I didn’t need him to explain what they were.

Whatever was inside had something to do with the dead waking up.

We were gathered around Art’s dining room table now, although I had my back to both of them because John had made sure Art was standing as far away from me as possible while I had my shirt off. It was pretty ridiculous considering I was twenty-two years old, but brothers would apparently be brothers even when the world was possibly ending.

I had just finished telling John everything, from the scheduled message he sent me after his death to the part where Art had tied a strip of cloth over my mouth while I was turning. What surprised me was how calm John looked through all the impossible parts: the dead getting back up, Art finding me again, even the crying infected girl who had been strong enough to drag me off the fence.

Instead, the thing he chose to comment on was Tomi.

“I told you multiple times to break up with him,” John said. “See where that got you. Even in a dream, that man is still an asshole.”

“Really? That’s your takeaway? Not the reanimation of the dead?” I asked, staring at him in disbelief.

“Well, of course I knew something like this could happen.” John said it so casually that for a second I thought I had misheard him. “The pathogen came from my research, after all.”

I sucked in a sharp breath.

“What did you just say?”

Art’s voice came from behind me, and when I turned my head enough to look at him, the expression on his face was worse than shock.

He looked betrayed.