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When the fog lifted, Major was in a car. He knew somewhere deep in him that he'd been dying, and for a moment part of him hoped that this was the modern-day version of Charon, driving him across a bridge over the river Styx. But then he opened his eyes, just a peek, to see Liv driving. And not his Liv, but this new Liv, this (zombie) Liv, with her white hair and her pale skin, and he knew instantly what she had done. What she had made him.
The hunger hit him almost as soon as the realization struck. And not just any hunger. Thick juicy steak? No. Spicy hot wings dripping with sauce? Nuh-uh. He wanted brains. Somehow his mouth knew just how they would feel, thick and chewy, and his stomach growled.
"We'll get you something to eat as soon as we can," Liv said in response.
He grunted and turned toward the window, ignoring her. She pulled up eventually in front of her apartment building, and he thought about making a scene, refusing to go in—but he didn't want to talk to her, didn't even want to look at her, and underneath it all was the stridency of his hunger. He needed brains, needed them badly, and without Liv, who could he go to? Ravi?
It occurred to him, as he was allowing Liv to lead him into her apartment and get him settled in her bed, that Ravi must know. Ravi must have known all this time. So while Major was raving at him about human brains and zombies, checking himself into the loony bin, Ravi had been weighing whether to tell Liv's secret. And Liv would have told him not to. Because, apparently, she could tell her boss, whom she'd just met, but she couldn't tell the man she'd said she loved. Peachy.
He lay there in bed, brooding about it, wanting the last five hours—hell, the last five months—back, while Liv did something in the kitchen. She came back in with a bowl of … something on a tray.
"You should try to get this down. It won't satisfy your … cravings, but it'll help you get your strength back."
Major kept his eyes closed. He didn't want to look at her. He didn't want to talk to her. He didn't want her food or her bed or her attention.
"It gets better," Liv said, sitting down on the bed next to him. "But it would be lying to say you get used to it," she added.
The bitterness bubbled up from his chest without thought. "Doesn't lying come naturally to you by now?"
She looked like he had hit her. He almost wished he could.
He shifted in the bed. "You're a zombie. Well, you've been a zombie since that night on the lake, and, instead of telling me the truth, you decided it would be easier to break my heart."
"Better," she said quickly. "Not easier. I know what you would have done if I told you."
"You have no faith in me." That was what hurt the most, that she hadn't trusted him. After everything they'd been to each other, she hadn't trusted him when it really counted.
"I have more faith in you than anyone ever. You would have told me that it doesn't matter, that you loved me anyway—"
Major looked away. He would have told her that, and he did love her anyway, even now. Even after the lies and the betrayal.
"And you would have sentenced yourself to a life without sex, without children. It's who you are," Liv continued. She was in serious doctor mode now, spelling out the truth as she saw it, and while he had always loved watching her in this mode, he had never liked having it aimed at him. "I couldn't ask that of you."
"You couldn't ask that of me—but you turned me into a zombie without my permission."
"Rather than watch you die."
"You know what I want? What sounds good to me? Brains. Human brains. So you—you—you eat them. Don't you? You must." Somehow it was hard to imagine her eating brains, hard to see her the way he had seen Julian, or Blaine, or the minions. But she was like them. Maybe she'd even bought brains from them. Or … maybe she ate them when they came in on the slab. Of course. Medical examiner. Well, it all made sense now, didn't it? "You eat the brains of people who come in the morgue."
"When zombies eat brains, we get the memories of the deceased, and I help solve their murders."
How generous of her. "So, that's what helps you sleep at night. Hm. What about me? What's the greater good for me?"
"Us?" Liv offered, hesitantly. "I hope. We can be together now. It's not how we imagined, but …" She reached for his hand, holding it in both of hers. How many times these last months had he wished to have her here, offering him what they'd had before, holding his hand? How many times had he needed her, and she had been hiding from him, lying to him, all along. "It's what fate dealt us," Liv finished, looking at him hopefully.
Major pulled his hand away. He didn't want this now, not this way. Couldn't she understand what she had done to him? To them? "It's not what fate dealt me, Liv. You did. The same person who let me check myself into a mental hospital, let me think I was crazy. When you had a chance to play god and decide whether I died or—became this, did you decide based on what you wanted, or what you thought I wanted? If it's what you thought I wanted, then you don't know me as well as you think you do." He rolled over onto his side, as much to avoid seeing the look in her eyes as to make perfectly clear that he wanted no part of her or her zombie-ism. What did he want? he thought. It had been so clear, but now … He couldn't see any future that offered him fulfillment or happiness. She should have let him die.
At some point, Liv got up, picking up her unwanted tray of food and leaving the room, and Major lay there trying to decide what to do next. He should get up and leave—but in this condition, he would be a danger to the next person he ran into, he was so hungry for brains. He should give Liv a chance to explain herself … but he didn't want to hear it. He didn't want to think about what it must have been like for her. He wanted to hold on to his hurt and the sense of betrayal that filled him, to blame her and her alone for everything that had gone wrong all this time. Anything was better than admitting that he'd been nothing without her, that he hadn't been able to move on because he still loved her, that he loved her even now, even as he lay here with the sluggish blood of a zombie moving through his veins because of her.
Lost in his misery, Major fell asleep at last.
He woke up to a sharp stabbing pain in his arm, turning his head sleepily to see Liv injecting him with … something.
"Whatever happens now, I hope you can forgive me," she said with a calm that he could tell was hard-won only because he knew her so well. "I doubt humanity's going to."
"What? What did you do?"
Her phone buzzed on the table near the bed before she could answer, but he felt it in the renewed beat of his pulse and in his sudden hunger for steak, or fried chicken, or anything that wasn't—brains.
Liv said into the phone, "Mom?" and then "Oh, god." And then she was rushing out of the room, shouting to Major over her shoulder that her brother was hurt. He was left there in her apartment, newly human again, with no idea what to do, where to go, or even who he was anymore.