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Major came into the house feeling surprisingly good—he'd worked with actual clients today, avoided anything to do with Max Rager, and he wasn't a zombie. All positives on his list. His stomach was growling from having been too busy to eat, but there were chips and hummus in the kitchen ready to take the edge off until he could talk Ravi into ordering pizza. He was glad his roommate was home; they hadn't spent much time together recently, and their last two interactions, over the safe and the dog, hadn't been as friendly as Major would have liked. It was time to bro out, hard.

He came around the corner into the kitchen to find his roommate standing there. Good. Maybe Ravi hadn't eaten, either, and they could get right down to the pizza ordering.

"I should warn you," Major told him, taking off his jacket and dropping his bag, "I haven't been able to eat all day, and I am just crossing over from low blood sugar to downright crabby." He walked past Ravi, vaguely wondering why he was just standing there, unmoving, like a statue or something, until he noticed what was laid out on the counter.

Trank gun. Cans of spray paint. Oh, crap—Ravi had broken open his safe. He should have moved all that stuff as soon as he could, but he'd thought he had more time.

"Ravi," he said softly. He needed his roommate to understand, but what could you say? 'Oh, hey, I'm infamous and I've killed people but only some people and for good reason, so don't hate me'?

Shaking the book Major used to keep track of his progress down the list in the air, Ravi spoke in a carefully controlled voice that was somewhere between rage and betrayal. "It took me a remarkably long time to understand what this was."

"Y-you, you have to let me …" God, he wished he had been more prepared for this. He was so stunned, he didn't even know what to say. How stupid had he been not to anticipate that Ravi would eventually figure this out?

Ravi began to read from the book. "'Tim Ellis, Monday Wednesday Friday.'"

"I can explain."

But Ravi didn't stop. His voice got louder as he began to lose control over his anger. "'Drives kids to school, 7:30-8. Evelyn Morris, housekeeper, leaves at 4:30, no alarm.'"

"Ravi, please."

"You knew Colin Andrews went for a run with his dog in Seward Park every evening. 'Course we know where that dog ended up."

Major was starting to get a little angry himself, more so every time he started to explain and Ravi made it clear he didn't want to listen. "Why did you do this?"

Ravi lost his control, then, shouting into Major's face as he shook the book at him. "Because I have a right to know if I'm living with a murderer! I should know if my friend is killing people!" There were tears in his eyes.

"I'm not killing people!"

But Ravi took that the wrong way. "What, they're not people, they're zombies? So what's Liv to you?"

Major could feel his own anger boiling up, bolstered by the way his hunger had started gnawing at his stomach. With a serious effort, he tried to remain calm, to get Ravi to stop shouting long enough to listen and understand the situation, but it was hard to think. "Please. Ravi. You don't understand!"

"You stalk them, Major. You hunt them, and you drug them, and I am terrified to find out what you've—"

"Stop!" Major shouted. It looked bad, he knew that, but this was his friend, his best friend, if you came down to it, and he wasn't giving Major the benefit of the doubt or a chance to explain or a moment to take the edge off his growing hunger, or even a breath in which to think and know what to say.

God, he was hungry. He was so hungry. His stomach cramped, his heart racing, his breath coming short. Was he having a panic attack? He turned away from Ravi, trying to get himself under control, panting against the sudden pain.

That was when it happened. It was hard to say exactly when he turned the corner, but in the space of a heartbeat he went from being a living human who hadn't eaten all day to a member of the undead who was starving for brains. And he was angry, too. So angry. He wanted to turn and break into the skull of the body shouting at him, fill up on those rich pink brains, scarf them down, sate this overwhelming hunger.

He tried to hold on, his hands clenching tight on the edge of the counter—and then the world went black as blissful unconsciousness overtook him.