Channie stood with her hands on her hips as Steph stormed off in a huff. Channie knew she’d been sharp with her, but that was no excuse for Steph to call her names.
The nerve!
Channie was a straight shooter. There was no beating around the bush with her. It wasn’t Channie’s fault that Steph grew up privileged and didn’t even recognize it! It was about time somebody told her that she’d been living a life on easy mode and most people didn’t have it so lucky. Steph’s whole personality seemed to be built around her self-entitled small town upbringing.
Admittedly, Channie didn’t know Steph all that well, but the way she’d picked on Rebecca at camp was enough of a reason for Channie to dislike her. She was too worried about her mom to care about whether or not Steph’s feelings were hurt. They weren’t friends. Steph was just the mean girl at camp as far as Channie was concerned. If anyone deserved to have a crap day like today, it was Steph, not Channie.
No one deserves this craziness….
Channie sighed. She knew she was just diffusing her worries through her bristly attitude. She could tell Steph was crying when she turned away. Channie didn’t feel great about that. Steph’s fragility surprised her, though perhaps it shouldn’t have given the events of the day. She just didn’t feel like Steph had been through it as hard as she, herself, had. The Dreadnaught didn’t pry its way into Steph’s mind like it did with Channie. She’d been convinced she was about to die. There was still a lot for her to unpack.
The elevator dinged down the hall. Steph was off to find food. Channie’s stomach growled. She was too sick with worry to think about eating despite her stomach’s protest. It had been a long night and day since leaving camp.
Channie returned to her seat and sat back down. It had been awhile since she’d seen any hospital staff. She hoped someone would give her an update on her mom soon.
On the other side of the waiting room, a white boy in an orange reflective work vest walked in from outside. His gaze fell across Channie and locked on to her in an instant.
Channie narrowed her eyes as the boy hurried towards her. He was slightly older than her, and the first thing she noticed about him was that he was very strong. She bit her lip subconsciously as she observed his large biceps through his dirt stained shirt. The boy’s eyes held a strange intensity as he continued his hastened beeline in her direction.
The realization that the boy had a sword latched to his belt screamed cosplay nerd, but Channie wasn’t entirely not into it. Her curiosity quickly turned into concern, though, when the boy, still halfway across the waiting room, pulled out what looked to be a steak knife from under his vest and ran at her like a psycho killer!
Channie screeched in surprise and held her hands up in front of her as the boy lunged on top of her. There was nothing she could do to deflect his attack. She was in such shock that she barely felt anything as the blade drove cleanly through her palm and out the back of her hand.
The boy jumped back immediately after stabbing her, leaving the knife imbedded in her palm. He looked almost as shocked as Channie. “I’m so sorry,” the boy said, “I had to do that, you’ll understand later.”
Channie held her stabbed hand up to her eyes, dumbfounded as she stared at the protruding blade. The pain hit her a moment later, delayed along with her slow comprehension. “You stabbed me!” she cried out.
“Shhhh,” the boy had the audacity to shush her. “I know I did. It had to be done. You’ll be fine, I practiced for a long time so I could avoid all the tendons and arteries. You know, I didn’t appreciate how complicated the human hand is until I found out I had to stab you through yours without leaving lasting damage. You are Channie, right? I probably should have confirmed that first….”
“YOU STABBED ME!” Channie screamed once more.
“Again, very sorry about that. I’m Landon, by the way. Lewis’s friend….”
Channie could barely focus on the boy’s words. Her hand felt white hot and freezing cold simultaneously as her nerve endings fired off in a panic. The first drops of blood only now began to seep from the wound.
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The boy grinned sheepishly at her. The juxtaposition between his charming demeanor and the attack he had just committed against her was confusing for Channie, to say the least. With her fight or flight response triggered, Channie hadn’t fully been able to absorb what was going on or figure out whether or not she was still in danger. There was excitement in Landon’s eyes. His expression set off a chain of chemical events that lit an ember inside Channie. She tingled breathlessly under his gaze.
Landon reached out suddenly and gripped ahold of the knife’s handle. He pulled it from her in a swift movement that immediately hurt ten times worse than it had on the way in. Channie’s vision went white around the edges. The color changed to red as she squeezed her eyes shut.
When she opened them again, Landon was grimacing at her. “A time traveling journal told me I had to do that, and I always do what the journal says. It’s like a blueprint to get to the correct future where we don’t all die. So again, I’m very sorry about the stabbing.”
Blood poured freely from both sides of the wound. Channie whimpered a pained cry. Landon shrugged a backpack off his shoulders and fished out a roll of gauze that he had preemptively opened and gotten ready for the occasion. He wrapped it expertly around Channie’s hand and secured it with a metal clip.
“Why?” Channie asked between whimpers.
Landon swung his backpack back over his shoulder. “We need the bloody gauze to lure the zombie-vampire guys into following us back downtown to where time is frozen.”
“What ‘zombie-vampire guys’?” Channie scoffed.
“Several people already died from ghast bites. Once they die, they rise again and want to drink blood. You can ask your friend, Steph, all about them when she gets back up here.” Landon extended his arm, offering to pull Channie up from her seat.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve before accepting his assistance. Somehow, no hospital staff had been alerted by any of her cries.
Landon continued once Channie was on her feet. “Now the trouble is, once they bite someone the disease spreads. The bit person soon dies and then they turn as well, unless they can be helped the way Mr. Gray saved Rebecca, which they can’t because no more of that serum exists in our universe at the moment and the Agares have banned all travel to our universe from within the Beyond. We don’t want to have a zombie-vampire den in Edmonds, so we have to take them back to ground zero with us so we can take care of everything all at once. All clear?”
“Hol’ up, Norman Bates,” said Channie, anger growing inside her to mask the pain. “Why the hell am I roped up in all this nonsense? Why not get someone else to deal with the Agares? Like an adult. Call the police, or the military, or Chuck Norris, just not me. What did I do to deserve all this?”
“‘Why me?’” mocked Landon. “Are you really asking ‘Why me?’—have Lewis and Mr. Gray explained nothing to you?”
Channie glowered darkly at the rude boy.
“It has to be us. We are Chosen. And I don’t mean like Jewish ‘Chosen People’ chosen, I mean that cosmically we have been fortunate enough to be gifted with the power of choice. It’s rare, but some people like us have destinies that are not set in stone the way it is for most of humanity. We are the uncertainty in the universe. The Agares wants to Erase all of the Chosen people throughout history so that they can settle our timeline and then cut the cord entirely. Erasing us is like turning off the power before cutting an electrical wire. Can you walk and talk?” Landon gestured for Channie to accompany him towards the elevators.
Channie followed behind him dubiously.
“We can’t run from the Agares forever,” said Landon. “Better to face them head on. I know you want to run away, drive off to Spokane, or Mexico, or somewhere farther, but after all of the trouble the Parcae took to bring our little group of Chosen ones together, we really do owe it to them to follow the journal through to the best of our abilities. And if that means stabbing someone sometimes when the moment calls for it, so be it. I know you’re going to be mad at me for this for a while, but I stand by the decision.”
“We’re in a hospital,” said Channie. “There has got to have been an easier way to get zombie-vampire bait than by maiming me.”
“I’m not the QB of this game. I’m just following the plays as they’re called.”
They came to a stop in front of the elevator bank. A moment later, one of the elevators opened and Steph burst out winded and disheveled. “There are monsters in the basement,” she said, shaking as she gasped for breath.
“We know all about that already. I’m Landon, Lewis’s friend.” He extended his hand for Steph to shake.
Steph blushed as she took Landon’s hand in hers.
Channie felt herself quickly growing annoyed as she watched the exchange. Her throbbing hand didn’t help her suppress her emotions either.
Landon took his bloody knife back out and wiped it on another piece of gauze before dropping it to the ground. “Breadcrumbs for the monsters to follow,” he said. “Come on, let’s go, I have my scooter parked in a loading zone.”
No one tell Channie or Landon, but the real reason that stabbing needed to happen wasn’t actually to obtain bloody gauze. Channie was right, finding a bag of blood in a hospital isn’t that hard. In other timelines, that’s exactly what they do—Landon just grabs a bag on the go. No, the true reason the journal told Landon to stab Channie was so that she would be left with a gnarly scar to remind her of just how bad Landon is capable of hurting her. The way Channie goes into all of her future interactions with Landon is forever colored by this first meeting. She doesn’t really know what he is capable of, and that uncertainty makes Channie nervous. It’s not a great place for any relationship to start, but it’s all necessary for them to get to the end in one piece.
Keep vigilant,
-Mr. Gray