Thank you for reading! No update next week due to holiday chaos, but I'll be back in 2019. Have a very happy and safe New Year!
The Utopium made the days go faster. Everything seemed far away, like someone else was behind his eyes watching as this sad, pathetic Major Lilywhite person went through his day. It wasn't really him at all, which was comforting. He spent hours in the Max Rager gym, where it was quiet and private, feeling like he was at least getting something back out of this deal with the devil he had been forced to make.
His night on the bathroom floor with Liv was just another postcard in time, a brief flash of another Major. Nothing more. There was no future there. It was forgotten.
Major took pleasure in the workouts, the Utopium increasing the endorphin rush. It was about the only thing left that made him happy. But the fly in the soup was the presence of Vaughn du Clark's secretary, Rita, who liked to drop by in the middle of a set. He wasn't sure whether she wanted to watch or torment him, or if she got off doing a little of both. Either way, she annoyed him—as much because she was hot and smart and ruthless as because she was genuinely annoying. And he didn't like it.
Today she had come, as she usually did, to hassle him about the list of people he was supposed to kill. Well, she could keep hassling him for all Major cared. He had already killed one person for them. That was enough for a lifetime. He had decided to just lie to them and tell them none of the people on the list were actually zombies, see how far that got him.
From the look on Rita's face when he told her he'd eliminated a name, it wasn't going to be far at all. That's when she told him that du Clark had initially planned to kill everyone on the list, including potentially their families and friends. It was hard to see murder, especially serial murder on such a scale as that list, as a benefit, but that's how Rita framed it for him. And underneath it, the implied threat—if he didn't get moving on the list, du Clark would. As Rita put it, "Does a patient man invent an energy drink?" Apparently not.
He was going to need a lot more Utopium.
Picking a name at random, Major took a hit and went on the hunt that night, catching the guy in the elevator, feeling the prickle in his skin and the racing heart that said this was a zombie. He had tried to forget the name, not wanting to know. It was easier if he could pretend they weren't people. Just more evil zombies. Like a movie. Not like Liv. No.
He waited outside the zombie's apartment building until it came out, going for a jog.
It had a dog.
Zombies didn't have dogs. Evil things didn't have dogs. Dogs didn't like evil things. This couldn't be evil if it had a dog.
But Major had to kill it anyway, so it had to be evil, and he had to believe he was saving the dog. That was the only way he could come up behind the monster while it was jogging and inject the drug into its neck that would drop it in its tracks. He would bring the dog along, care for him, until he could decide what to do with him.
The zombie woke up on their way to its final destination, calling out from the trunk, pretending to be human, but Major knew better. So did the dog. He reached out and yanked the tag off the dog's collar and threw it out the window of the car, and then he turned up the volume on the music. "Voices Carry." Good song, sang the Utopium in his brain. It drowned out the voice carrying from the trunk, which wasn't real anyway. So it didn't matter when Major hauled it out of the car and shot it in the head and dropped it in the river. It didn't matter in the least.
He left the dog at home. He didn't know what to tell Ravi, so he didn't tell him anything. And he went back to Max Rager with a bag full of Utopium, ready to hit his circuit and forget what he had done last night. What someone else had done. That couldn't have been him. This couldn't be him.
But if it wasn't him, what was he doing standing frozen in the Max Rager lobby staring at someone who looked like Liv would look if she fell out of a snooty catalog while Vaughn du Clark taunted him? Because if that was Liv, he was Major, and if he was Major, then he was a killer.
Of course, it wasn't really Liv. The feelings were hers, the hurt because he had been avoiding her, the eyes were hurt, the anger because she had found him here, of all places. But the words, the hair, the look … those were all zombie.
With Liv came Clive, Clive who hadn't yet given up on his idea—his totally correct idea, of course—that Major had something to do with the murders at Meat Cute. It crossed Major's mind to confess, to just tell the truth and go to jail and get it all over with. But Vaughn du Clark was behind Clive, smirking, and Major knew what would happen if he did anything to extricate himself from this nightmare. Liv would die. All of Liv would die, not just the part that was a zombie. And Major could no sooner let that happen than he could stop breathing.
So he let Liv yell at him, and he reminded her that he had no career any longer, and she slapped him, and then she was gone and he was alone here at Max Rager with a crazy man and a hot redhead who looked at him with smoldering eyes … and a bag full of Utopium to make it all better.
He had just taken another hit when the redhead walked into the empty workout room. Tight pants, loose tanktop over something with lots of tight straps, slow yoga moves, twisting her body in front of him. He should leave, he told himself. This was going nowhere good.
But she came up behind him as he was picking up his bag, and the Utopium was pumping through his veins, and why shouldn't he get something good out of this deal, anyway, and he kissed her. More than kissed her. He let himself go completely and explored every hungry inch of that well-toned body. And he didn't feel bad about it. No. Not at all. It was the Utopium, after all, and no less than he deserved.
He made it home later, feeling dirty and defeated as the Utopium receded from his system. There was one more hit in his room that had to hold him until he could get more tomorrow, and he wanted to save it for bedtime to be able to sleep and not lie awake long into the night trying to imagine how he could fix his life. So he was in no mood for Liv when the doorbell rang, and he was already practicing his cutting words when he threw it open—and saw Peyton Charles standing there.
"Hi, Major."
"Peyton? Do you still live here?"
She winced. "I guess I deserve that. I'm back, ready to get back to work, thought I'd drop by and see how you are."
"You mean how Ravi is."
"Yeah, I deserved that, too." The dog came trotting out from behind Major and she bent to pet it. "When did you get a dog?"
"While you were gone. Coming in?"
She stood up, giving him a wary look. "Sure, if you don't mind."
"Not at all."
"You kind of seem to mind."
"Sorry, I'm just trying to … It's been a long few months." He forced a smile. "I'm just a little grumpy, don't mind me."
"I'll try not to." She managed a smile, too, tentative and hesitant, and they settled into a circuit of uncomfortable questions and answers in which Peyton didn't mention Liv and Major didn't mention Ravi, and he tried not to think of the last hit of Utopium upstairs in his room.
Eventually Ravi came home, and the moment they saw each other was exactly as awkward as Major had imagined … and he felt like exactly as much of a third wheel. And with some relief he was able to excuse himself and leave them to it—maybe he shouldn't have? Maybe a good friend would have stayed and backed up Ravi and supported Peyton? But he wasn't much of a friend right now, was he? No. He was a killer, and killers didn't take care of people—and he climbed the stairs to his room and got into bed and took the last hit and drifted away into a dream world where none of this was really happening and from which he wished he never had to wake.