Rob Thurman - Slashback

“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.

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.

We did keep an all-but-industrial-strength soap on hand for these occasions though, as Niko’s hippy-churned natural crap wasn’t going to do the job-unless the job was making me smell like a bowl of zombie cereal with a healthy serving of goat milk over the top.

The cuts on my legs weren’t as bad as I expected. Whatever type of mist hid Jack’s inner jagged self, it had been enough of a barrier to keep me from impaling myself when I’d gated on top of him. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought about it, but a little impaling-the kind you survived, if not walked away from-was worth it to take out Jack. I’d have happily crawled away from the scene of the deed if it meant putting down that son of a bitch. But, as it was, the cuts were superficial. Some antibiotic ointment and I was good to go, no bandages required. I did have at least one cracked rib though, maybe two from where Jack had fallen on me as shockingly as if the moon had fallen from the sky. But I’d had cracked ribs before-and I’d have them again if we could get Jack out of the picture. Move carefully, don’t breathe too deeply, eat pain pills like M amp;M’s, and I’d be fine.

Bending my head down to scrub my wet hair with a towel, I stepped into the main room in time to hear Promise say, “But there are no such creatures as zombies.”

“You’re ruining a lot of fantasies by saying that,” I pointed out as I straightened and dropped the towel on the floor. “Don’t get between a geek and a good apocalypse. They’ll probably kill you quicker than Jack would.”

Promise turned her head from where she sat on the couch and gave me a glance as opaque as they came. It didn’t help her. I knew what she was thinking. I was wearing sweatpants but was shirtless. That made it easy to see that I had more than my share of scars, some of them uglier than others. I also had a line of stitches across my stomach and a dark garden of bruises blooming up like black roses over my ribs. I thought Promise could make her peace with scars, more specifically Niko’s. He had fewer than I did; he was the better fighter, but he still had a few. But when a job ended in spilled blood, and as she was a vampire I knew she could smell mine, and cracked ribs-that was new, wasn’t it? Not old scar tissue you could write off to “he was younger then. He’s better now. Undefeatable, human or not.”