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Major hadn't expected to sleep like a baby the night after he'd killed a man. He'd expected to toss and turn and beat himself up and try to find ways to get out of the devil's bargain he had implicitly made with Vaughn du Clark. But his mind and body had entirely shut down. The last thing he remembered was throwing that poor man's body off the bridge—and then he woke up in bed. He hoped he hadn't done anything else in between, but it was hard to work up the energy to care, really. This was who he was, now. Personal trainer, zombie detector, hired killer. That he had been hired to do exactly what he had been so proud of doing at Meat Cute no longer seemed to matter. The Meat Cute zombies had been thugs. Murderers, drug dealers, criminals. He'd been doing society a favor.
But now he knew that zombies were—Liv—people. Just like anyone else. This man had been a loving father, a good man … who happened to eat brains. It probably hadn't even been his fault that he'd been turned into a zombie. Which didn't make him any less dead now.
His morning routine was set in his brain. He didn't even have to think about it. Get up, get dressed, brush teeth, fix hair. Somehow he made it through that day, pretending to be just like everyone else. Pretending he hadn't killed a man last night, pretending he wasn't a murderer. Was a murderer worse than a liar? Was he worse than Liv now? Did he owe her an apology, did he have to forgive her? It was her fault he was in this mess, after all. It was to keep du Clark from killing her that he had taken a family's father and shot him through the head and dumped him in the river. Not that Liv knew any of that, of course, and not that he could tell her. She would try to fix things, she would go after Vaughn du Clark herself and get herself killed.
No, he couldn't tell Liv. Or Ravi, either.
All he could do was make it through the day, one foot in front of the other.
At home the second night, pouring a sad bowl of cereal because he couldn't face cooking or ordering or going out, he turned on the news. He had avoided it all the first day, the day of Major becoming a killer, not wanting to know, but now he couldn't stay away. He had to see what the news was saying. Part of him half-hoped he would be caught. It would serve du Clark right, for one thing, and prison at least would have to be easier. Three hots and a cot, right? A workout room, a prison job … all his questions about what to do with his life answered. Maybe he should turn himself in, lie about the zombieism and just say he'd gone crazy. With his history, they'd believe him.
The two kids were on the news. Their father was considered missing, his body not found yet. They were devastated, Major could tell, comparing the tear-filled face of the girl with the cheerfulness he had seen the day they'd met. Oh, god, did he have to go express his condolences? He'd only been there once in his capacity as personal trainer. Surely that would be inappropriate. It had to be inappropriate because there was no way Major could do it.
Looking down at the bowl, the mush in the white liquid, Major felt nauseous. He poured the whole thing down the drain, taking a dark satisfaction in the grind of the disposal cleaning it all up. He left the news running and went to his room.
And, of course, tonight was the night he lay awake staring at the ceiling, going back over every moment in his head, wishing he could take it all back. All of it. Before Meat Cute. Why couldn't he have left well enough alone? Jerome had been a street kid, disappearing was what they did. If only Major had never gone after him, he would never have known.
But he wouldn't have been a good counselor if he'd let Jerome go, and once he'd committed to finding Jerome, that trail led straight to Julian and Meat Cute and … Liv being a zombie.
If he had never sent her to that stupid boat party, he thought for at least the ten millionth time. If he had kept her home and they'd watched something stupid on TV, made love on the couch, and gone to sleep half-dressed in the living room, none of this would have happened.
Except that Blaine would still have been a zombie, and Jerome would still have disappeared, and Liv would have been in surgery, not knowing anything about it—and he would be dead. Would he rather be dead, Liv his widow?
it was a tough call.