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  He turned his worm-eaten body and aimed at a lady in her eighties. The old woman was waving her arms, as if trying to get the security guard's attention. Tanis caught the woman's eye, and the woman mouthed, Run. In her little immaculate suit and perfectly coiffed hair, she stepped into the line of fire so that others could escape. Tanis didn't look back as she ran, didn't look back as she heard the bullets, as she heard the old woman cry. She just ran.

  There was a row of empty desks in the customer service area. She climbed beneath one, hoping that maybe these men would go after the money and not waste their time on her.

  But she heard the screams as more shots were fired. She heard the laughter from the guards. They were loving the bloodbath. They were loving the sport of a massacre. Someone fell against the top of the desk where Tanis was hiding. Open, lifeless eyes stared right into hers. A trickle of blood dripped onto the floor.

  "Oh please, God," she prayed.

  The body was flung aside and Tanis screamed. The putrid face of one of the guards came into view as he peered down at her.

  "Ain't no God here," he said. He pointed his gun straight at her head. "I kicked him out."

  Tanis shrank back and braced herself, ready for the blow. This was it. She thought of Brett and how he never would recover. Of Dr. Jared and how she never told him that she loved him. Here she had a chance to live again, and now it was all gone.

  The security guard stood, laughing, delighting in her fear, pointed his gun…and his head went flying off his body.

  Tanis looked up. Everything was quiet. Not a single gunshot. Not a single cry. The security guard's body fell to the side. Standing there behind him was a tall, brown-haired man dressed in red flannel and blue jeans. His face looked like he had seen too much, like the guys coming back from the war. He was covered in blood, and in his right hand he held an ax.

  "My name is Matt Cahill," he said as he reached out to her. "Welcome to the world of the undead."

  EPISODE 2

  CHAPTER TEN

  Dallas

  His hand was rough and calloused. Tanis gripped it like a lifeline as Matt pulled her out of her hiding place. His ax hung easily at his side, silver covered in red. Red on the marble floors. Still bodies at awkward angles. Sprays of blood across the walls. Globs of pink and black charred meat splattered across the carpet.

  She just wanted it to stop. She just wanted the hallucinations and the reality, which was even worse, to stop.

  "They're all dead," she whispered, unable to look away.

  "But you're not," Matt reminded her. "In fact, I heard you don't like dying much."

  He acted as if this wasn't the worst thing a person could ever live through, as if this was something he dealt with every day. A fury rose inside her. She hated him for it. The security guard whose skull Matt had cleaved right off was bleeding on her shoes.

  She shook off Matt's hand and stumbled over the corpse, scraping her boots on the carpet to try to get the blood off. "Fuck you," she said. And then she tripped on something. She looked down. It was the security guard's head. "I'm going to be sick."

  Matt grabbed a trash can. He wouldn't even let her hold it. He just guided her to a chair and placed it between her feet. She leaned over, not sure if she was going to pass out or throw up first. He held back her hair and rubbed her back like she was some kid who woke up from a bad nightmare.

  "It gets easier," he said.

  She turned her head, resting it on her knee. She should have remembered to close her eyes. There was nothing here she wanted to see. Especially not the security guard's face, which was looking right up at her.

  She sat up. All the rot was gone from the head. The decay, the worms, the maggots. It didn't make sense. The security guard looked just like any other normal person. Everything…everything…it was all just a figment of her imagination. Dr. Jared was right.

  "It disappears when you kill them," Matt said.

  "What?" she asked, feeling as if he had just slapped her.

  Matt moved away and leaned against one of the empty desks. He picked up a piece of the bank's letterhead and started cleaning the gore from his ax like that was something a normal person did after decapitating a security guard.

  "The rot," he replied. "It goes away when you kill them."

  "How do you know about the rot?"

  "I've been seeing it for a long time."

  "They are just hallucinations."

  "They aren't hallucinations, Tanis," Matt said.

  She looked up at him sharply. "How do you know my name?"

  "You blog a lot."

  "Oh!" she said, the pieces starting to fit together, realizing who he was. "Oh! You're one of those crazy assholes who follows my blog, thinking that this is all just fun and games. What did you do? Stalk me online and then begin following me around? Is all of this"—she motioned to the carnage around her—"just some sort of punked joke you created so that you could fulfill your twisted little fantasies?"

  He rubbed his hand along his beard stubble as he shook his head with incredulity. "What is going on in your life where you could string together a series of thoughts and come up with that as a plausible theory? Tanis, did you hear me? I can see the rot, too."

  The anger felt good. When she was mad, she didn't have to look at the woman in her business suit slumped against the wall with her eyes open but half her head missing. "I'm sorry to ruin whatever little ‘we're BFFs because we're both the same brand of crazy’ you've concocted, but take it from me, the rot is a figment of your imagination." Tanis got up and threw the wastepaper basket under one of the desks. She stepped on something squishy. She didn't even look to see what it was. "God, I hate this."

  Matt stood. "I promise, it will get easier."

  "Why are you pretending you can see my hallucinations?" Tanis shouted at him.

  "The rot is real."

  "No, it is not!"

  "Why do you say that?"

  "My doctor told me so!"

  "Your doctor doesn't understand."

  "Oh, I think he understands more than you do, you freak."

  "Tanis," Matt said. He waved at all of the bodies in the bank. "This is real. The rot you see is real. It's on the faces of people who have been corrupted to the core of their soul. It makes them do stuff like this. And you and me and a couple of others can see it. And we can stop this sort of carnage before it even begins."

  Tanis waved at the exact same spots Matt indicated. "Well, looks like you're doing an excellent job with that!" She looked at the little old woman who had given her life to protect Tanis and the others. She forced back the choking feeling in her throat, the one that wanted her to crumble instead of shout. "You might want to work on your timing."

  "I know," Matt said, his eyes sad, his face human and vulnerable for just a moment. But then he looked up at the clock over the main counter and the hardness returned. "We need to go." He walked away.

  Tanis called out after him. "Go? Are you kidding me? Excuse me. We need to wait for the police. There was a massacre here, and you, personally, happened to lop off someone's head."

  "You're going to want to keep a low profile, Tanis. Trust me on this," Matt said, pausing with his hand on the door. "You died, Tanis. But now you're alive. Come take a walk with me and I'll tell you why."

  And then he left.

  Tanis stood there. All the corpses were looking at her, looking at her like they were waiting for her decision. She tried to turn away, but their lifeless eyes and blank faces were everywhere. Waiting. She screamed in frustration and spun back. Matt was still there, just outside the door, his back to her. Tanis hated him. And hated him for knowing she was going to have to follow.

  She strode towards the door and slammed it open with her hands. She wasn't going to let him think he won. "Fine," she spat. "Tell me how the fuck I was able to come back to life."

  Matt began walking with huge strides, and Tanis had to half walk, half jog to keep up. The sound of sirens wailed in the distance. They
turned the corner onto a sterile street of cookie-cutter businesses and perfectly manicured hedges where the sirens weren't as loud.

  Matt slowed down. His ax swung softly in his hand. "I don't know how it happens," he finally said, "but I died, just like you. And I got a second chance, just like you, too. And for whatever reason, when we were brought back to life, we were given a gift. We have the power to see evil. There are more of us. People like you and me. And there are other people, people with special powers…"

  Tanis let the contempt roll off into every word. "Special powers? What? Were they dropped into nuclear waste and now can walk on walls or something?"

  "I know. It sounds crazy," said Matt staring up at the sky like it might hold some answers. "You're looking for a logical reason why all this happened and why it all happened to you. But I am here, as someone who knows, to tell you there isn't a logical reason. What I can tell you is that you can't hide from it." He stopped, gently put his hand on her arm to stop her, too. He looked straight into her eyes. "This sort of violence started happening all the time to me. You have no idea what I have seen. I had to try and stop it. You are going to have to try and stop it."

  "Excuse me?" she said.

  "Because now that you can see it, evil will follow you wherever you go."

  There was something about the way he said it. Something in his voice. He was telling the truth. She didn't want him to be telling the truth. She pulled away from him. "I'm sorry, what? I get in one car accident and suddenly I'm some sort of an evil magnet?"

  "There is a…man…except he isn't a man. His name is Mr. Dark—"

  "Mr. Dark? Are you kidding me?" She hung her head back and forced a laugh. "If you say his name three times in front of the mirror, does he come out and turn off your nightlight?"

  "He's killed a lot of people I care about," Matt said sharply. "He's going to try to kill people you care about, too."

  "This is bullshit," she replied.

  "Want to hear something else that’s 'bullshit'? Something I never would have believed except that it happened to me? There is a university that wants to use us to unlock the secrets to eternal life."

  "I have a freeway they can take a flying leap from if they'd like to try my method."

  "This university will come after you, too."

  She threw up her hands and gripped her head. This man was talking crazy. "That's ridiculous. Why would some university come looking for me? What are they going to do? Offer me a scholarship?"

  "They're going to torture and kill you," Matt replied. There was not a single ounce of humor in his voice.

  Tanis shifted uncomfortably. Matt seemed like he actually believed what he was saying. "How would they even find me?" she asked dismissively.

  "The same way I did."

  Tanis didn't have a comeback.

  "Join us, Tanis. I came all this way to talk to you, and when I finally found you, this was going on. This is just the start. It is only going to get worse. Come with me. Help us so that we can help you."

  She pointed her finger at him and started walking towards him. "Or maybe, if you are the evil magnet that you say you are, all of this happened because you brought it with you."

  This time, it was Matt who didn't have a comeback.

  "You're telling me you go around killing people and you want me to do it, too. Excuse me, I'm not a murderer." Tanis held up the check she’d originally gone into the bank to deposit, the check that put her in the wrong place at the wrong time. "I just got a second chance at life, a huge settlement from that accident I was in, and if anything, this has shown me you may never get a second chance."

  "Death spit you out, Tanis, and believe me, unless someone is really determined to end you, death doesn't want you back. When you become like us, you get third and fourth and fifth chances to set things right…"

  "Well, those people in the bank didn't get that chance." The silence hung between them. She could feel her legs starting to get weak. She couldn't let him see. Tanis spoke slowly so that Matt would hear and comprehend that she meant every word. "You're right. I have been given a gift. I have been given the gift of still being alive after all of this. All of this. And I'm not going to waste a moment of this second chance running around killing rotting people on some crusade with some stranger I just met."

  "Tanis…," said Matt, pleading with her.

  She couldn't. She just couldn't. Tanis started walking back towards the bank. "I am going to go tell the proper authorities everything that happened, because that is what a respectful citizen would do. Then I'm going to put this damn check in an outside ATM, which is what I should have done in the first place. And then I'm going to enjoy the rest my life. And, yes, by the way, thank you for saving it. Have a great day."

  "Wait!" said Matt.

  Tanis stopped, wishing he would just let her go and live her life.

  He pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and a slip of paper from his wallet. He wrote something on it and jogged over to Tanis. "This is how to contact me when you change your mind," he said.

  The paper had a phone number and a smear of blood from Matt's hand.

  "I won't need it," she replied.

  "I know you won't," said Matt. He gave her a grim smile and then walked away in the opposite direction. "I'll talk to you later, Tanis."

  "No, you won't!" she shouted after him. He didn't even look back.

  Tanis turned the corner. The bank was surrounded by police cars and fire trucks. Her hands started shaking. She slowed down. She couldn’t go back. She couldn't face that room filled with death. She couldn't. But still, she walked over to one of the officers.

  His face changed the moment he looked at her, like he could tell something wasn't right. "Ma'am?"

  She pointed at the bank. "I lived through that."

  Time became strange. Someone found a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, as if somehow that was going to make things all better, would erase the images burned into her mind that she knew she would never be rid of.

  She tried to ignore the police chief, who had a pock of brown decay eating into his cheek. The edges of it were crawling on his face like tentacles. She wondered what would happen to the spot if Matt chopped off his head. She wondered, just for a moment, if she could save someone from a massacre like this if she killed the chief now, if she slaughtered the people with the rot wherever she saw them. She wondered if eventually her face would start to look like theirs.

  Someone took her elbow. An officer who was saying something to her in calm, sympathetic tones. She didn't hear. He sat her on a bench and said someone was going to be there soon to take her statement. People kept handing her cups of terrible coffee. They introduced themselves with names she forgot as soon as they finished the sentence. A detective in a suit put a recorder on the bench and opened up a notebook. His pen stopped when she said the name "Matt Cahill." There was just a flicker of something on his face. Recognition of something he wasn't supposed to acknowledge.

  "What?" asked Tanis. "You've heard of this wack job?"

  He began writing again. "His name has come up before. In situations like this one. Thought it was just rumors, though. Heard he's saved a lot of people."

  Two investigators walked by, talking in low tones.

  "You're a really lucky girl," said the detective.

  "Right," she replied. She looked down at the check she still clutched in her hand. The paper was shaking. It was too quiet without her anger. Her mind flashed through the image of the security guard's rotting face leering at her, blocking out the light.

  A news van pulled up to the curb.

  She thought of Matt's words, the way he told her she needed to keep a low profile. She pushed off the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. "I need to go."

  The detective nodded and turned off the recorder. "We know how to get ahold of you if we have questions. Can we give you a lift home?"

  She shook her head. "No, I just need to go."

  "Let me escort you out
…"

  But she was already gone. She rushed away, daring anyone to stop her, and ducked under the police tape. She shivered, she felt so cold. She walked around to the back of the building to the drive-through. A car honked at her as she tried to pound her pin number into the ATM. Her hands kept shaking and couldn't hit the numbers right. She kept dropping the check. Her throat tightened. Everything got blurry and tears started pouring down her cheeks. She couldn't understand why she was having such a hard time putting in the check. She heard a wracking sob and then realized it was her.

  The driver laid on the car horn.

  "Fuck you!" she screamed. She ran over and kicked its bumper, feeling the impact of her foot against the metal vibrate up her leg. "Fuck you! Come out here and I will fucking kill you!" The eyes of the perfectly coiffed driver got huge and she threw the car into reverse. She drove away before Tanis could land another blow. "Fuck you!" Tanis shouted, chasing her out of the parking lot.

  She walked back to the ATM, rage pouring through her veins. Her hands were steady again. The machine took the check. She leaned against the hot metal, letting it warm her. She wasn't going to play. If this asshole, Matt Cahill, was telling the truth and there was some battle between good and evil and some power that wanted her to be its pawn, she wasn't going to do it. She looked up and wiped away her tears. She wasn't going to do it.

  She strode over to her brother's car and flung open the door. She revved the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. She liked the sound of the tires screaming. She drove straight to Dr. Jared's office. She stormed through the door, through the empty lobby, into his office.

  He was sitting at his desk and looked up as she burst in.

  "Oh my God, what happened to you?" he asked as he took in the blood on her clothes and her tearstained face. She was shaking.

  She ignored the question and asked one of her own. "Jared, you know that vacation you keep telling me I should take?"

  "Yes?"

  "Well, I have had a hell of a day and I finally figured out what I need."