“I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m thirsty,” her son responded.
She focused back on him. “I know, honey, I know.” She held up a cup of water and a straw. In a second, he’d sucked the whole cup down.
“I’m still thirsty,” he complained with cracked lips as she took the cup away.
“You have to wait a bit first. You can’t drink as much as you want, you’re not right in the head now, okay?” the woman patiently explained, holding back tears.
“But I’m so thirsty—” the boy complained, his voice raw.
I didn’t know if I should stay or go. What would I do if it were my child under there? I heard the ice in the other bag I held clink as it settled, melting, which gave me an excuse. I made a gesture with it to the woman to explain my leaving, and I backed up and stood. I looked away because I had to—and caught Nathaniel, leaning against a wall of the restaurant, not helping in the least, watching me.
I stared back. If he had done this, I would come up with a way to make him pay.
“Hey, ice lady.” The man with the wig cap on snapped his fingers to get my attention. I went over to his side as he stood.
“Here.” He held up a half-melted bag of ice to me. Not knowing what else to do, I took it. “It shouldn’t go to waste,” he explained with tears in his eyes. I glanced down. Beneath the table, his friend was slumped forward. No chest rise.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, for all the good it would do.
The man stood and held his hands to his face, beginning to cry. I set the bags of ice down and patted his back gently, trying hard not to be a sympathetic crier. Rory was right—this room was full of zombies. But they weren’t the sick people, they were all the living ones left behind.
Raluca returned through the curtains, the Robin Hood to our not-so-merry crew. “Hello everyone. I’ve got more Valium, and it’s time for another round of Cipro.”
“I’ll take some of that over here.” The man beside me reached up and pulled off his fake lashes savagely. “The Valium, not the Cipro.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The man set his false eyelashes down on the table, where they looked like lost caterpillars. Then he knelt down and began undoing the knots that had tied his friend.
Rory came over to take the ice from me that I was doing such a shitty job of distributing. He looked down, shaking his head. “I don’t want to move another corpse.”
Calling this man’s friend a corpse in front of him seemed harsh. But then I hadn’t been through what Rory’d been through.
“I can’t go back there again,” Rory went on. It took me a second to realize where he meant—the morgue. Or wherever they were keeping all the bodies. And I realized what I had to do, just in case. If Asher wasn’t here, there was still one place worse he could be. I frowned and looked up. Nathaniel was still watching.
“I’ll go,” I volunteered.
Rory nodded with increasing speed, picked up the bags of ice, and took them away.
“Help me then?” The man unfurled the sheet his friend had been tied with, preparing to use it as a shroud.
“Sure.” I knelt and grabbed the corpse’s feet, and together we rolled the man over and onto the sheet, which made a hammock-like gurney for transport.
The man hefted his half up easily. Mine came up with a grunt. “Let’s go.”
We walked down the same hall Rory and I had with the body dangling between us, but past the kitchen doors. I was glad that he was the one walking backward down the hall into the unknown instead of me. The hall bent, and then we took a freight elevator down to the first floor.
I had no idea what I’d do if I found Asher’s body up ahead. None at all. There was a growing knot of fear inside my stomach even contemplating it. It seemed unlikely, but unlikely wasn’t the same as a zero percent chance. I heard a small puppy-sound and realized the man holding up the other end of the sheet was crying. I’d been too self-absorbed to notice. I bit my lip. What to say?
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” As generic as a sympathy card. Dammit.
He nodded and whimpered again. It was the part of the time with families when I’d normally hug whoever was crying—but I couldn’t here, I’d drop half of his friend. The elevator opened and he walked backward out of it, walking and crying, until he reached a lull in his tears.
“The worst part is that our act was finally doing so well. We were finally going places together, just like we’d always dreamed.”
Talking was better than crying. “What was it?” I asked him.
“We were the Two Chers on South Deck,” he said with a long sniffle. “Just another Steve and Eve show—you know, two drag queens, high heels and higher wigs, trying to make our way in the world.” He said it all very tongue-in-cheek before sighing. “We were the late-night entertainment two nights a week. Raunchy comedy and karaoke favorites. Stefano did a mean Cher. I did a nice one.” Interpreting my silence for the confusion that it was, he continued. “You know—he was very ‘Dark Lady,’ I was more ‘Believe in Life After Love.’ Except that he’s dead now, and after the shit I have seen today I don’t believe in fuck-all anymore.”
“I’m so sorry,” I repeated.
“Thanks. I’m Jorge.” He lifted and wagged the body we held. “This is Stefano. Was Stefano.”
“I’m Edie.” The stupid part of my brain latched on to the only Cher song I knew. “If I could turn back time—”
Jorge shot me a dark look. “Don’t even.”
I bit my tongue too late. “Sorry. Very, very sorry.”
He snorted, defused. “Stefano always liked bad puns.”
The farther down the hall we went, the more it smelled like flowers. Then we started passing them in the halls, piles upon piles of flowers, like a parade float had beached here to die, and I realized they must have repurposed the floral freezer for the morgue.
Jorge said. “You planned it like this, didn’t you?” It took me a second to realize he was talking to Stefano. “You knew I’d be too cheap to buy you all these flowers otherwise.”
Treading upon bruised petals, we walked through the freezer door.
It was less horrific than the restaurant in here by a factor of ten, but twenty times more sad. When I saw the bodies spread evenly on the floor, I felt a huge temptation to just drop his friend and run away. I’d been around carnage before, but I’d never seen so many bodies all at once—and I still had to see if any of them were Asher.
I concentrated on helping Jorge at the moment; I didn’t want to drop my end of Stefano. Jorge looked over his shoulder and shuffled backward to Tetris in Stefano’s body at the end of the fourth row. When he was done, he folded the end of the sheet over Stefano’s feet.
I did some quick math. There were ten rows of ten bodies here, minus an incomplete row here or there, but at least ninety corpses. Some were clearly women and children, but others were men in suits. I shivered and tried to tell myself I was just cold.
Jorge straightened out Stefano’s limbs and stood quietly, looking down at his friend. Maybe lover. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know. “Did you want to say something?” I asked him. “Or I could, if you wanted.” It wouldn’t be the first time a family member had pressed me into oration.
Jorge shook his head. “This might be the first time I’ve ever been speechless. Stefano would like that. He always said I talked too much.” He knelt down and touched his friend’s forehead. I waited quietly for my turn. I didn’t want Jorge to see me rifling through the other bodies. After a moment more, he stood, resolved, and covered Stefano’s head with the other end of the sheet. Then he headed for the door and held it open for me.
I gave him a sad smile. “Sorry. I’m still looking for my friend.”
“Oh.” He gave me a compassionate look. “If you don’t mind, I’ll wait outside.”
“Sure.” Then the door swung shut, and ninety or so bodies and I were alone.
The freezers overhead were running at full blast, dialed down from chilling orchids to frozen dinners. Standing and looking at the contents of the room, I realized Raluca would have to use another freezer soon, or we’d have to start stacking bodies two-deep.
I didn’t know what person had started covering the corpses with the corners of their sheets; I’m sure they thought at the time it was kind, so that people coming in with new ones wouldn’t have to stare at so many dead sets of eyes. But now it meant I had to go around to every man wearing a blue suit, just in case.
I made my way to the first one in the farthest back corner, determined to make a scientific effort of it and go row by row. I had to pick out visible floor to step on in between the bodies, bouncing from patch of cement to patch of cement like a CrossFitter doing a monster-truck-tire-run. Eventually I found myself at the first contender and stood awkwardly on either side of his head. The older bodies had a layer of frost on them, like frozen dinners left in the freezer too long, and the sheet was stuck to the corpse’s face. Holding my breath, I yanked on it until I pried enough off to know that it wasn’t Asher. Just some other poor person. For all I knew, it was Rory’s dad.
The corpse’s chin waggled. “How’s it going, Edie?”
I gasped and fell backward onto my ass on the corpse’s cold chest, my hand unfortunately planting into the man’s crotch.
“Down here. And get your hand off my cock.”
“What the fuck—” I teetered to standing, wiping frozen-body-Popsicle off my hand.
I only knew of one entity that would think of joking at me from inside a corpse. I punched the body in the chest. “That’s not funny, Shadows.”
The voices coming from the mouth of the dead man laughed.
The Shadows were awful creatures located underneath my old hospital back home, where they lived off the pain and sorrow dripping down from above. I hadn’t seen them since July, when Asher’d been saved. After that, they’d offered me my old job back, and I’d refused them.