Anton Strout - Dead Waters

“Got a sec?” she asked. “I couldn’t sleep.”

I closed my eyes and tried to shake the psychometrygenerated emotions off of me, but managed only to make myself dizzy on top of slightly disoriented. “Actually, can it wait?” I asked, trying to control the fear and anxiety in my voice. “I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”

“Oh,” Jane said. I looked up from the broken piece in my lap. Jane’s face was a mix of disappointment and sadness.

I slid the piece of the sign off my lap and got up off the floor. “It can wait,” I said, pushing down the remaining raw emotions. I grabbed Jane by the hand and walked with her over to my sofa. “What’s wrong?”

“When you started with the Department, did they put you through Undead 103?”

“103,” I repeated as I tried to recall it. “Oh yeah. Shamble On?”

Jane nodded. “That’s the one,” she said. “A lot of zombiefighting techniques and the philosophical aspects of confronting them. How did it make you feel when you took it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was so overwhelmed that it kind of blurred into everything else I was learning at the time. Wesker may have just thrown the pamphlet at me and left it at that. Why?”

Jane sighed. “We were going over what to do in the event that one is bitten by the living dead. Wesker suggested that there was only one thing to do in such a case, only one inevitable conclusion. Kill them.”

“Leave it to Wesker to take it as dark as he can right out of the gate,” I said.

“But he’s right, isn’t he?”

“I try not to think about it,” I said. “I take a more optimistic approach to our jobs than that.”

“How so?”

“I do my best not to get bitten in the first place,” I said.

“Seems to be working so far,” Jane admitted with a small smile. “Still, don’t you worry about dying?”

“I didn’t use to,” I said, “but lately? Yeah. Mostly because of the Inspectre. He’s looking and acting old , more so since Mason Redfield came back all rejuvenated.” Jane nodded, but didn’t say anything. “Have I been acting more morose than usual because of it? If so, I’m sorry.”

“No,” she said, quick to correct me. “It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

She squeezed my hands, meeting my eyes with dead seriousness. “It’s just that . . . with this mark on my back, I can feel myself changing. You saw how useless I became on that boat the other night. I can feel it trying to gain control over me. I don’t want it to come to that.”

I didn’t like where this was going. “What are you suggesting?”

“You saw how they protected me,” she said. “Those water zombies. They’re waiting for me to change. I’m slowly falling under her spell.”

“So, we’ll fight it,” I said, and then added, “Together.”

“For how long?” Jane asked. Tears began running down her cheeks. “Wesker’s not having any luck breaking that woman’s hold on me. The magic is too old, too strong. He’s been able to slow it with a few counterspells, but we’re fighting inevitability here.”

“I won’t let that happen,” I said. “I promise that. We’ll find a way.”

“Promise me something else,” she said. “Please.”

“Name it.”

“If I become like her. . . or worse, I want you to kill me.”

The air went out of my lungs and my heart sped up. “Don’t ask me for that,” I said. “I can’t promise that.”

Jane looked angry. “Why not?” she asked. “Don’t you love me?”

I wanted to shake her. “That’s precisely why you can’t ask me to do that to you,” I said. “How can you expect me to strike you down?”

“Listen to me,” she said, grabbing my face and pressing her forehead against mine. “If it actually comes to that, I won’t be me anymore. That’s the point.”

“I’m the glass-half-full kinda guy, Jane. You can’t ask me to do that.”

“Fine,” she said, agitated. She stood up and turned to walk away but I grabbed her arm.

“Jane, don’t.”

She turned back to me, crying. “What do you want me to do, Simon? Do you want me to end up killing you? Because that’s what she’ll want me to do. I can already feel it.”

“You can?”

“Yes! For days now.”

The emotional panic of my vision mixed with my own frustration. “Why are you only telling me now?” I snapped.

Jane softened. “Because I thought if I told you, you’d want me around here less. I mean, what guy wants a homicidal girlfriend, right?”

“I. . .” I couldn’t find the words, which only frustrated me further. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Jane. I mean, I’ve dated girls with far more homicidal tendencies than you.”

“Really?” she said, cheering up a little.

“Really,” I said, calming down. I could do this. I could separate my emotions from the feedback loop of my psychometry. “You wouldn’t be the first. If I had a dime for every time a woman wanted me dead, well. . . I don’t think I can count that high, frankly.”

She smiled at that. “Just promise me you’ll think about the bigger picture if I. . . change ,” she said.

“I will,” I said. “I’ll think about the bigger picture, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to kill you if it comes to it. It just means I’ll come up with something.”

“Ever the optimist,” she said and hugged me.

She wrapped her arms tight around me, and despite the fact that it felt good, it took all of my nerves right then to fight off the unbidden image rising up of her crushing me until I was lifeless in her arms.

I had walked through the theater at the back of the Lovecraft Café countless times by this point, but it was rare these days to actually stay in it longer than it took me to get down the aisle and key into the hidden door that led to the Department of Extraordinary Affairs. Several days later, however, I found myself sitting in one of the theater seats, taking in the newly cleaned-up, zombie-free beauty of the place. Gilded fleur-de-lis decorated the walls and an ornate old-world chandelier hung high above. It was really quite beautiful now that I had stopped to take it all in, more so than I had in the past. Jane sat on my left, wrapped up in the ending of Fright Night , while Trent looked around nervously sitting on my right.

“So, this was your genius idea?” I asked him. “Hanging out, watching movies? Great master plan, Trent.”

“Hey,” he said. “At least you’re getting paid. I’m not even getting a snack or anything out of this.”

“Funny,” I said. “I thought payment enough for you would be not sitting in a holding cell.”

“I’m the victim here,” he said earnestly. “I told you. I had no idea that what they were up to was so sinister.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “Depending on how helpful this is, it may go a long way to getting you back to school instead of prison.”

“Shush,” Jane said, not looking away from the movie.

I lowered my voice and leaned in toward Trent. “You sure they’ll come?”

He nodded. “Oh, they’ll come, all right,” he said. “Trust me. They won’t be able to resist the movie lineup I’ve put the word out about. A horror film festival? It’s going to be impossible for them to pass up.”

Connor sat several rows in front of us and turned to look back at me. “How do we know they’ve even heard about it?”

“We put up ads everywhere,” I said. “Online, even on campus. In the old days I would have gotten a Shadower team to do it, but in the spirit of economy the Inspectre hung every flyer up himself. Jane even chipped in, in her own way. She told the computers to help spread the news of the film festival.”