SBB 2016 ENTRY #16: AFTERLIFE (4/8)
Title: Afterlife (4/8)
Pairing: Minjung/bigender!Jonghyun
Rating: R--NC-17
Genre: Angst / Horror / Sci-Fi
Warnings: Character death, gore, body horror, prescription drug abuse, suicide attempt, mention of self-harm, mentions of food
Final Word Count: 74,000~
They moved Kibum to a two-patient room in an upper floor of the hospital, and after a brief wait, during which the three of them opted to get a late lunch, they were allowed to see him again.
His bed was on the far side of the room from the door, out of sight beyond the first patient’s bed, which was entirely sheltered by the long curtain drawn around it. Kibum’s bed was also curtained, but only halfway, just enough to block him from view if visitors came to see his roommate.
When they stepped around the curtain, they saw that he was awake this time, but subdued and sleepy, his eyelids drooping heavily every time he blinked. He didn’t notice them at first, his eyes focused on the arm with his IV, which was heavily taped up around the elbow, so that he couldn’t accidentally rip it out if he struggled.
“Kibum,” Jonghyun said, as he pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down next to him. “Hey there.”
Kibum turned to look at him, still blinking slowly. He stared blankly at Jonghyun for a second, and then smiled. “Hey,” he croaked. He caught sight of the other two, and squinted, confused. “What are you all doing here?”
“We came to check on you,” Taemin said.
Kibum looked around, taking in his surroundings. “Am I...in a hospital?”
“Yes, we brought you into the ER yesterday,” Jonghyun explained. “Remember? You collapsed on the Strip and got heatstroke.”
Kibum smiled, although his forehead was still wrinkled with confusion. “Must have been partying pretty hard.” He sniffed. “Is that me? I smell disgusting.”
“You’re sick,” Jonghyun said. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“I smell like roadkill,” Kibum laughed. “And I think I’m wearing one of those gowns that don’t cover your ass properly. This is embarrassing.”
He frowned suddenly. “Everything hurts so much,” he muttered.
“Let me get the nurse for you,” Minjung offered.
He shook his head. “Wait. They’re just gonna dope me up, and I...I need to think.” He licked his dry lips. “Jinki. I need to call Jinki and let him know this might delay my flight. Wait, what day is it?”
“Sunday,” Minjung said.
“Sunday,” he repeated. He held out his hand. “Can someone get me my phone?”
“You don’t have a phone, remember?” Taemin said. “It was gone when they found you.”
“Oh,” Kibum said. “Right. Yeah.” He shook his head again. “I can’t think clearly. Nothing makes sense. I feel like I can barely remember anything.” He sighed. “My feet hurt. My socks are too tight.”
“You’re not wearing socks,” Jonghyun said. “It’s probably the bandages. I’m sure we can fix that.” He reached across Kibum’s body for the call button. “Let me just call the nurse.”
They had to press the call button multiple times before a nurse appeared, looking frazzled. They unwound the bandage quickly, not bothering to be gentle about it, and paused. Minjung leaned over to look, and then inhaled sharply as she tried not to gag.
What had been an angry red rash just an hour ago was now a dark purplish black that covered his entire foot up to the ankle, the skin swollen, with spidery lines of red snaking out from it, up along the leg. It looked soft, almost juicy, like an overripe plum, and it smelled horribly. Splotches of reddish purple had appeared on his shin and calf, and were already blistering and oozing.
“What is that?” Taemin breathed in horror.
“Not a good sign,” the nurse said brusquely. They pressed the button on their two-way radio. “I’m gonna need Dr. Olney in Room 413.” The speaker crackled, then a voice answered: “He’s with another patient right now; is it urgent?”
“Um, yeah, I would say so,” the nurse said, holding Kibum’s ankle in one broad gloved hand as they lifted it to inspect it further. “The patient looks like he has wet gangrene. Skin is dark and swollen. Definitely some edema.” They snorted. “And it smells like shit. Can you get him over here, please?”
The nurse turned to Minjung, Taemin, and Jonghyun. “None of you touched the infected area, right?” They shook their heads.
“Definitely gangrene,” the doctor said when he arrived. He peered at the dark swollen skin, then undid the bandage on the other foot, and sighed when it revealed a similar state of putrefaction. “I’m gonna need Dr. Molai to look at this.” He left and returned with another doctor in tow, introducing him as the vascular surgeon.
The surgeon pulled a low rolling stool up to the foot of the bed and inspected Kibum’s legs in silence.
“What is it?” Kibum said, his eyes darting from one doctor to the other.
The surgeon shook his head, his face grim. “Mr. Kim.” He spoke evenly and slowly as he looked down at Kibum. “You’ve got gangrene in both your feet, and we’ve got to take care of that, if we don’t want the infection spreading further in your body.” He paused, to let his words sink in. “We’ll to get rid of the infected tissue. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“You’re gonna cut out the infected tissue,” Kibum repeated.
“I’m saying you’re going to need a double amputation below the knee,” the surgeon said. “And we’re going have to act fast. Wet gangrene like this, it’s a life-threatening medical emergency, because when the infection gets into your blood, it spreads rapidly. We’re talking a matter of hours.” He pulled back the blanket. “See that rash spreading up your legs? We’re looking at septicemia here. Blood poisoning. We’re gonna give you a strong antibiotic to kill the bacteria causing the infection but--” he shook his head again. “It won’t be enough in time to save your feet.” He straightened up, and peeled off his gloves. “But, on the bright side, I think we caught it soon enough that between the antibiotic and the amputation, your chances are pretty good.”
“My chances?” Kibum whispered, his eyes wide, but Dr. Molai had already pushed back his chair, and didn’t hear him, too busy giving terse orders to Dr. Olney and the nurse as they all left.
“How the fuck does he just get a massive case of wet gangrene and nobody even notices?” they heard the surgeon say.
“Nobody mentioned it when they sent him up from emergency,” the nurse responded.
“Those incompetent motherfuckers…” the surgeon’s voice trailed off as they exited the room.
The room was silent for several moments.
“I don’t understand,” Taemin said finally. “It was just a rash a couple of hours ago. How can it go that fast?”
Minjung shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Kibum,” Jonghyun said. “Do you remember...hurting your feet at all? Getting bitten? Anything?”
“I don’t remember much of anything,” Kibum said honestly. He looked up at each of them. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
“Don’t worry,” Jonghyun rushed to say, “you’re not going to die, everything will be--”
“I’m not saying it because I’m worried,” Kibum cut in. “I’m saying it because it’s true. You heard him. The infection’s in my blood, and it’s spreading fast.”
“Which is why they’re gonna amputate,” Jonghyun said. “To save you.”
Kibum laughed, a brief mirthless huff. “They’re amputating because they’re legally liable if I die without them trying every last resort. They know they’re not gonna save me.” He took a deep breath. “I’m gonna be dead in a few hours.”
“Don’t say that.” Jonghyun’s voice wavered. “Please don’t say that.”
“What’s the point of pretending otherwise?” Kibum snapped. “My legs are literally rotting. I’m dying from the inside out. Pretending I’m not going to die isn’t going to save me. It’s a farce.” He turned his head away for a second, and bit his lip, and then turned back. “We don’t have much time,” he said calmly. “They’re going to come wheel me away for surgery, and then--that’s it. I don’t think I’m coming back out.”
“Kibum, please,” Jonghyun whispered. “Stop talking like this.”
“Can one of you please get Jinki on the phone?” Kibum said.
Taemin pulled out his phone, and dialed the number Kibum gave him. “I’m just getting his voicemail.”
“Leave him a voicemail, a text, anything, just tell him it’s urgent,” Kibum said. “Call the main line at Crestview. Maybe he’s still at work.” He turned back to Jonghyun. “Babe. Baby. Please. Please stop crying.”
He reached out for Jonghyun’s hand, and then pulled back at the last second. “I guess I shouldn’t touch you,” he said. “I--I don’t know what I have.”
But Jonghyun grabbed his hand. “If I’m gonna be infected just by touching you, then I’m already infected,” he said.
Kibum closed his other hand over Jonghyun’s. “I feel like I should be having some sorta moment where all my life’s regrets flash before my eyes,” he said dryly, before his sardonic expression shifted into something softer and sadder. “But I don’t really have many regrets. I feel like I’ve fucked up a lot, but--” he shrugged. “I could say something about how I’m not ashamed of my mistakes, because they made me who I am, but I think the truth is that I’m too much of a fuckup to care about how much I’ve fucked up.”
“Losing you is the one regret I’ve got,” he continued. “I’ve regretted that since the moment I left. And I kept trying to tell myself it was for the best--that I don’t do well with sharing, and I didn’t want to fuck things up between you and Minjung. But I always knew deep down that I could have made things work, if I had tried.” He gave a half smile. “I never told you, because it would have sounded manipulative, just a ploy to get you back. But now,” he shrugged again. “what’s the point in holding back? I’m dying, and I want to tell you the truth.”
His eyes were earnest as he looked at Jonghyun, as if they were the only two in the room. “You were--you’ve always been--the best part of my life. I’m so lucky I got to meet you. I love you, baby. I never told you that enough. I love you so much.”
Jonghyun tried to speak but simply sobbed instead.
“I’m sorry, I--I still can’t reach him,” Taemin said. He looked as if he might be sick.
“Fuck,” Kibum muttered. “Okay, when he calls back, don’t break the news all at once, you know? Tell him I’ve gone in for surgery, tell him you’ll keep him updated. Please don’t tell him I said that I’m dying. Just tell him I love him, and that I’ll call him when I’m in the recovery room. And then if--when--I don’t make it, tell him that too. He can pass it on to my family.”
“Shh,” he said, as Jonghyun kept crying. He looked up as two hospital escorts came around the curtain. “I gotta go, baby,” he whispered. “It’s time.”
Jonghyun glanced over, his face a mess, his eyes and nose reddened and dripping, his lips quivering. “Wait,” he whispered, as the escorts prepared to move Kibum’s bed. “Please wait!”
He jumped up, and grabbed at the box of latex gloves on the wall shelf above Kibum’s bed. He fumbled for a second, but then pulled one free. He held it delicately, between two shaking fingertips, and laid it across Kibum’s mouth and nose.
“I’m sorry,” he said, over his shoulder, addressing no one in particular, and then he bent and kissed Kibum. “I love you,” he whispered hoarsely, before he kissed him again. “I love you.”
“Sir, we really gotta speed this up,” one of the escorts said.
Jonghyun straightened up and tossed the glove in the waste basket. “Yes, I’m sorry,” he said, swallowing the rest of his tears. He trailed after them as they wheeled the bed out of the room, his body hunched and small, like a lost puppy. Minjung and Taemin followed him, and Minjung had just enough time to see Kibum blow Jonghyun one last kiss, before the bed disappeared behind a pair of heavy double doors, and Kibum was gone.
---
The three of them settled in an upstairs lounge as they waited. It was just after 6 p.m., but it felt like an entire day had passed since they first saw Kibum early that afternoon. The lounge was cramped and stuffy, with twenty-eight vinyl red cushioned seats crammed together in a space only a little larger than Minjung’s living room. The cushioning was hard and stiff and provided little comfort, and each armrest was shared between two seats, a narrow bar that was more of a barrier than an actual support.
Jonghyun sat down in a corner of the dim lounge, and drew his knees up to his chest. He had stopped crying. He stared off into space, clutching a cheap brown paper towel that he had brought back from the bathroom after washing his hands. He tore it apart slowly, twisting each piece in his fingers.
Minjung sat down next to him, but he did not acknowledge her. She reached over to pat his knee, and then thought better of it, her hand falling to the narrow armrest instead.
Kibum’s confession had not stirred her anger, as she had expected. Instead, she felt a strange relief that she hadn’t been entirely crazy, coupled with a grudging sense of kinship for a man who mirrored her possessive resentment back to her. In another life, she and Kibum could have been friends, finding solidarity in every shared streak of pettiness, finding comfort in each other’s flaws.
Jonghyun had shit taste in lovers, she thought wryly.
Taemin had not sat down since they entered the lounge. He paced in circles around the room, his head down, and his hands jammed in his pockets. He paused at the vending machine in the opposite corner, and pulled out his wallet. He fished out a crumpled bill and tried to stretch it flat, before sticking one end into the machine. He coaxed it in, and the machine took about an inch of it before spitting it back out. Minjung could see his sigh from across the room. He dug through his pocket, counting out coins into his palm, and then his shoulders slumped in disappointment. He fed the coins back into his pocket.
Minjung went to him before he could walk away.
“Tell me what you want, and I’ll get it,” she said.
“It’s okay.” He waved her off.
“No, really,” Minjung fed a five dollar bill into the machine. “Pick something.”
He selected a candy bar, and squatted to pull it from the base of the machine.
“Thanks, dude,” he said quietly. He tore the wrapper open. “I’m not even hungry, I just need something to do with my hands.” He took a bite. “Is he okay? I mean. Silly question. I should just...stop talking.”
Minjung nudged him. “How are you doing?”
He took another bite instead of answering her question. “All that stuff Kibum said about dying and everything, that’s all just exaggeration, right? Because he can’t think clearly? He’s gonna be okay, right?”
“I really don’t know,” she said.
He didn’t respond for a few seconds. “I didn’t say goodbye,” he said. “I couldn’t even think. Everything happened so fast. I mean, Friday he seemed fine, and now, he’s…” he trailed off. “Fuck,” he said at last. “I hate hospitals.”
He looked over at Jonghyun’s huddled form. “I don’t even feel like I should be here,” he said. “I mean, Jonghyun’s his ex, of course he’s fucked up. You’re with Jonghyun, and he needs you. But me,” he shrugged. “I’m just the guy Kibum fucked most recently.”
“You were friends,” Minjung insisted.
“Yeah, but,” Taemin gestured at Jonghyun with his half-eaten candy bar. “Not like that.”
He ate the rest of the bar in two large bites, and crumpled up the wrapper. “I think I’m gonna go outside,” he said. “Get some air. Buy myself a drink. I don’t even fucking know. I just. Can’t do this. I can’t sit in here waiting for some doctor to appear and try to find a polite and gentle way to tell us that our friend died. And I don’t want you or Jonghyun to feel like you have to take care of me right now.” He patted her arm. “You got enough on your plate.”
He walked away, and then turned. “I’ll let you know if Jinki gets back to me,” he said, and then he disappeared around the corner as he headed to the elevators.
Minjung returned to Jonghyun, and settled herself in the seat next to him. He was still curled up into a tight ball, withdrawn into himself, his eyes distant as they stared past her. She wanted nothing more than to gather him into her arms, but doubt restrained her. He wouldn’t want comfort from her, not about Kibum. Her brain flooded with guilt and shame. One voice inside her head kept insisting that she was responsible, that it was her anger that had put Kibum in the hospital, that it was her jealousy that was poisoning his blood. If Kibum got out of this alive, the voice said, she should let Jonghyun return to him. Let Jonghyun be happy. Without her. It was what he deserved. It was what she deserved.
No, a more timid voice insisted. Jonghyun loved her. He wanted to be with her.
But that was earlier, the other voice said. What about now? Taemin had the right idea. Better to just admit when you weren’t needed, and bow out.
Her internal dispute was interrupted by Jonghyun’s sudden movement, as he uncurled himself and inched across the seat toward her.
“Hold me, please,” he begged, as he leaned over the rigid armrest.
And so she did.
---
It was just before 10:30 p.m. when Minjung saw the surgeon approaching. Jonghyun had finally fallen into a light doze against her shoulder only moments before, and Minjung continued to hold him, her stomach sinking, until the man reached the lounge and squatted down in front of them. She nudged Jonghyun then, and he sat up, dazed.
Minjung knew what the surgeon would say before he even opened his mouth. A brief exchange of pleasantries, a short lead-in in which he described the basics of the procedure, and then--
“Unfortunately, he didn’t make it,” he said. “We did everything we could, but it was too little, too late. By the time we got to him, the infection had already spread beyond what we could control.”
The cause of death was septic shock, he explained. Kibum’s own immune system killing his body in its last-ditch attempt to save itself from the infection.
“Someone at the front desk can give you the contact information for the morgue.” He stood back up and frowned in sympathy. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Jonghyun stared numbly after him when he left.
“I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” he whispered. “Everything is like a nightmare, except I never wake up, and it keeps getting worse.”
He curled up again, putting his head between his knees, and clasping his hands behind his head. He stayed like that for a long time.
“Let’s go home,” Minjung said at last, touching his arm gently.
He unfolded his body and looked at her, eyes dry and dull. “Yeah.”
They found Taemin on a bench outside, drinking a bottle of Coke.
“Hey guys,” he said, trying to muster a smile when he saw them. “Never quite made it to a bar, but there was a vending machine in the lobby with a credit card reader.” He held up the half-empty bottle, the soda long since gone flat.
“Taemin,” Minjung began, searching for the right words, as he looked down and screwed the cap back onto the bottle.
“He’s gone, isn’t he,” he said quietly.
Minjung hesitated, and then nodded.
“I just got off the phone with his boyfriend half an hour ago. He was out and his phone died, so he didn’t even get my message until he got home,” Taemin said. “I--I told him what Kibum told me to say, and he started booking a flight while he was still on the phone with me. He’s packing now, I think. He keeps sending me texts to show Kibum, in case Kibum got out of surgery and woke up before he landed here.” He swallowed. “I guess I’ll call him back and tell him.” He glanced at them. “Unless one of you guys wants to.”
“Not particularly,” Minjung said, and Jonghyun shook his head.
“Okay, well, let me just--take care of that, I guess,” he said uncertainly.
“We’ll be in the car,” Minjung said, as she led Jonghyun away. When she looked back, Taemin was still sitting with his phone in his lap, his shoulders hunched as he stared down at the brightly lit screen, and did not move.
----
They drove Taemin back to his own home that evening, after he insisted.
“Are you sure?” Minjung asked. “You’re welcome to stay with us.”
Taemin looked at Jonghyun, who said nothing and continued to stare out of the windshield as if he hadn’t heard anything.
“Yeeaaah, I’m sure,” Taemin said, looking back at Minjung. “Gotta clean my room. Get rid of my sheets. Catch my roomies up on what happened. All that.” He shrugged. “Can’t ignore it forever.” His tone was casual, but there was a slight tremor in his voice.
When they parked, he leaned forward between the two front seats, as if he was about to say something. But then he just shook his head. “I’ll see you around, I guess,” he said weakly, and slipped out of the car.
Jonghyun did not speak for the rest of the evening.
“Come to bed,” Minjung urged, after her shower. She had a towel twisted around her hair, and she squeezed it with one hand as she walked into the living room.
Jonghyun was lying in a small heap on the sofa, his knees folded up to his chest, his arms hanging off the edge, as his hair, still damp from his shower, lay in limp strands across his face. He was barefoot. She thought at first that he hadn’t heard her, and then he sighed and shook his head.
Minjung was tired enough to doze off immediately once she settled into bed, but deep sleep eluded her, and she hovered at the border between wakefulness and sleep, her mind replaying the image of Kibum on that hospital bed, with his rotting feet, and Jonghyun leaning down to kiss him. You did this, the voice of guilt said in her brain, and she couldn’t remember what, exactly, she had done, but her limbs twitched in panic. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe--and then she sat up all at once, her heart pounding as she struggled for air.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and gripped her knees with her palms, forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply. It was almost 3 a.m. She got up and shuffled out into the kitchen, pulled a glass from the cabinet, and eased the tap on until it ran with a soft whisper. She filled the glass halfway and drank. She wasn’t thirsty, but she needed something to clear her head.
Jonghyun was asleep, still in the same position she had left him, except he had curled both his hands into fists and tucked them under his chin. The blanket lay unused on the back of the couch, and his bare feet were pressed together, the toes wedged between two seat cushions. The sight stirred something in her, something gentle, the only thing stronger than her guilt, and she stole back into the bedroom. She returned with a pair of Jonghyun’s socks and she knelt down by the couch and slipped them onto each foot. He stirred, and whimpered in his sleep, but then relaxed again, and she pulled the blanket off the couch and spread it across him, and rubbed his back.
She sat with him, listening to the even rhythm of his breath, until watching him in his sleep began to feel a little like trespassing, and she returned to her bed. This time, she slept.
---
When she woke, her partner was in bed next to her. It was already 7:30, too late for Minjung’s morning run. But not too late to make it to work, if she hurried. She squinted at her phone, her eyelids still heavy from sleep, and then, her mind made up, she got out of bed, her fingers already dialing the number as she left the room.
“It’s a stomach thing,” she said in her voicemail. “I was up all night.” She hoped that would be sufficient excuse.
She made herself a cup of black coffee, leaving enough in the pot for Junghee, who appeared in the kitchen directly after as if summoned, mumbled a brief good morning, and then disappeared back into the bedroom with her mug. Minjung poured herself a bowl of granola and shuffled over to the couch, still in her slippers and robe, and turned on the television.
She caught the weather first--the renewed heat wave showed no signs of breaking in the next week, and every day showed full sun, unobscured by clouds or rain. Then she flipped through the few channels they had until she got to the local news. An armed robbery at a local pawn shop, a parrot escaped from the zoo, and then--
“Well, we don’t know quite what to make of this next story,” the anchor said. “Last night, an assistant staffer at the Sunset Vale Mortuary captured this shocking video of what appears to be a body coming back to life, and attacking the morgue attendant. Let’s take a look.”
They played the clip, a twenty-second grainy cell phone video in portrait mode, of the attendant struggling with something on a tray extending from the refrigerator. They froze the frame, and zoomed in, and Minjung peered at the pixelated screen. The face was indistinct--she could only make out short dark hair, and the mouth, open as if to yell. But then her gaze traveled down its body. The cloth had slipped off in the struggle and she saw that the body ended just below the knees.
“What are you watching?” Junghee asked behind her.
Minjung jumped. “Nothing.” She turned it off. “Just the news.”
Junghee yawned and moved into the living room. “Turn it on. I wanna see.” She sat down, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with one finger. “I need a distraction.”
“The news isn’t a very nice distraction,” Minjung argued hastily. “Most of it is just drivel.”
“Anything is better than the inside of my brain right now,” Junghee said.
“There’s so much bad news out there,” Minjung tried again. “I don’t want you to feel worse.”
“I don’t think I can feel worse,” Junghee laughed. “Plus, at least it’s not my bad news onscreen.” She set her coffee cup on the table. “Come on, turn it on.”
“I really don’t want to,” Minjung began, but Junghee made a sudden leap, and snatched the remote.
“Junghee, don’t!” Minjung said, but it was too late. The television was on again, a ticker parading under the news anchor’s desk with the words “Zombies? In Vegas?!?”
“Zombies!” Junghee laughed in delight. “Yesssss. I live for this stuff!” She settled herself in the corner of the sofa, her eyes focused avidly on the screen.
Minjung felt sick. “I don’t want to watch this.”
“Come on, babe, why do you hate fun?” Junghee turned the volume up.
“...was working at the morgue the night of the alleged attack and is here with us this morning to share his experiences. Welcome, Alex!”
The anchor stood up, applauding, and then reached out to shake the hand of a scrawny young man with short red hair, and a smattering of freckles across his pale pink face. He bobbed his head at the anchor, and the gathered audience, and then sat down, his eyes darting around the room, his head turning abruptly each time to follow his shifting gaze, giving him the appearance of a skittish squirrel.
“Now, Alex, it isn’t every day that someone gets to have an encounter with something that seems...paranormal. Even supernatural,” the anchor said. “You wanna walk us back through last night at the morgue and tell us what you saw?”
Alex nodded and gulped. “I, uh...it was just a regular night at the morgue,” he began, in a line that was obviously coached. “I was working with my boss, and we were uh, putting one of the bodies in the, you know. Fridge. And all of a sudden, it starts. Moving. Making groaning sounds.” He twisted his hands together. “I’m new, but my boss said it was normal, you know? That dead bodies do that, sometimes. As they release, like, gasses and stuff. But I was like, man, I gotta record this, my buddies are gonna shi--I mean, they’re gonna freak out when they see this. So I’m like kinda stepping back like, trying to record this--” he demonstrated, leaning back in his chair, and holding an imaginary cell phone just under his chin “--and then the body sat up and like, attacked my boss!”
He made his fingers into claw shapes and mimed the supposed wild flailings of the body. “And I’m like really freaking out at that point, because I’m pretty sure I’m gonna die, right, that I’m watching zombies come to life right before my eyes, and I’m thinking--there’s a whole fridge of bodies down here, man, like are they all just waiting to pop out at us?”
“Wow, he is really trying to sell this bullshit,” Junghee commented, amused.
“But then my boss, he just slams the body back onto the tray and shoves it into the fridge and locks the door, and I just hear one more thump, and then that’s it.” Alex shrugged.
“Well, let me tell you, young man,” the anchor said. “Sounds to me like your boss is a hero. Really keeps his cool, so to speak.” He leaned over. “You tell him, from me, he has an open invitation if he wants to tell his side of the story.”
“Well,” Alex scratched the back of his head, and gave a nervous laugh. “I don’t think he’s interested. He told me I needed to stop making up stories about zombies, but I don’t know, man, I’m just sharing what I saw! It’s right there in the video!”
“Let’s roll that again, so our audience can decide for themselves,” the anchor said.
“We don’t need to see this,” Minjung said, reaching for the remote, but Junghee held it out of her reach.
“I’m not gonna cut it off right before the video with the supposed evidence,” Junghee laughed. “That’s always the best part in these stories!”
The clip rolled again, and Minjung watched as her girlfriend’s face rapidly shifted from fascinated amusement to confusion. The video froze on the same frame, with the mouth on the pixelated face opened in a silent scream, and the unmistakable stumps of two legs, amputated just below the knees.
Junghee shook her head. “That’s--that’s not--” she kept shaking her head. “I don’t understand--that’s not--”
The feed shifted back to the anchor. “...and don’t forget to go to our Twitter and answer our latest poll on whether what we saw in that video is just a natural, if somewhat creepy phenomenon, or if it really is one of the undead!”
The remote was lying unguarded in Junghee’s lap, and Minjung took it, and flicked the television off before the man could say another word.
“Baby,” she patted Junghee’s knee. Her girlfriend’s eyes looked very far away, but at last she turned to Minjung.
“Talk to me,” Minjung insisted, needing Junghee to say something, anything, instead of just looking at her with that awful emptiness in her eyes.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Junghee whispered finally. She shook her head again. “I don’t understand--” She pointed at the screen. “You saw it, right? That was Kibum in that video.”
“It was hard to see anything clearly,” Minjung hedged. “I’m sure it was just a coincidence.”
“Because there were so many dark-haired double amputees being put into fridges last night in Las Vegas,” Junghee said, with bitter sarcasm. “You’re right, I’m sure I just saw one of the other dead Kibum clones.”
She bent over and put her face in her hands. “He just died,” she said, her voice cracking, “and they can’t even let him be at peace in death, because some asshole thinks it’d be hilarious to use his body in some kind of sick prank. He was scared and in pain,” her voice rose, “but oh, sure, let’s make his death into a viral video! Anything to bring in viewers!”
She stumbled to her feet. “I’m gonna puke,” she said, and ran out of the room. Minjung heard the bathroom door slam, and then the harsh sound of Junghee retching into the toilet, followed by the flush of the toilet.
Minjung carried Junghee’s coffee into the kitchen, poured it down the drain, and filled a glass with water. She listened at the bathroom door, but it was silent, and she knocked once, gently, and then entered.
Junghee was kneeling with her head pillowed on the toilet seat, the water still swirling a little after the flush. “Hey,” she rasped. She sat up, and wiped her dripping nose on the back of her hand before reaching out to accept the glass of water. “Thanks.” She took a few tiny sips, and set it aside, leaning back against the wall of the tub and drawing her knees up to her chest.
“How are you doing?” Minjung asked.
“How do you think I’m doing?” Junghee snapped.
Minjung bowed her head, accepting the rebuke. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just worried.”
“Well, don’t be,” her girlfriend said petulantly. She hugged her knees. “People keep texting me this morning like, ‘How are you doing? I’m so sorry for your loss. Let me know if you need anything,’ and I just want everyone to fuck off and leave me alone. Stop assuming what I’m feeling, and stop asking me questions.” She shuddered. “I don’t even feel like a person anymore. I feel like I died too, the way people keep handling me so carefully, like I’m dry and brittle, and about to crack.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Minjung tried again. “About how you’re actually feeling, I mean.”
Junghee’s mouth worked, and Minjung thought she might rebuff her again, but then she spoke.
“I just feel like--when someone dies, there’s a way everyone’s supposed to do things, right? A role for everyone to play. The dead person--their role is obvious. Simple. They’re just dead. Their job is done. But the mourners, and the friends of the mourners--there are all these rules. The things you’re supposed to say. The things you’re supposed to do. The things you’re supposed to feel.” She shook her head. “And I--I can’t do it. I don’t know how to. I feel like I don’t know how to grieve.”
“There isn’t a right or wrong way to grieve,” Minjung said.
Junghee snorted. “See, everyone says that, but it’s not really true. There are a few right ways to grieve, but there are definitely wrong ways to grieve, and everyone knows it, deep down. Being really sad--that’s okay. Being strong and silent--that’s okay, too. Even being numb and apathetic is understandable. These are the kinds of grief that don’t get in the way of a good funeral. Because a funeral is a time for everyone to tell each other nice stories about the person who died, and for all the more distant friends and relatives to feel good about themselves for showing up in support. So people who grieve the wrong way--it’s inconvenient. It’s messy. It fucks the whole thing up.”
“Like me,” she laughed. “I’m just angry. And there’s nothing brave or noble about it. I’m not angry at the system, or at injustice, or something. I’m just straight up mad. In an ugly way. I want to take every dish in our house and throw it at the wall so it breaks, and then run at the wall and beat my head against it until I break too. I want to cut off everyone who tries to be nice to me, and make them all as hurt and confused and angry as I am. And I want to go back in time and break up with Kibum before he left me, so I could be the one to hurt him, and hurt myself, so I could be the one in charge, instead of the one waiting around, always loving him, always hoping he would return.”
She rocked back and forth for a long time. “There’s no meaning in his death,” she whispered finally. “It’s all ugly and senseless and unnecessary. None of this ever had to happen. He didn’t have to leave me, and he didn’t have to die. And now there’s gonna be a funeral, and it--it doesn’t feel real. That people are gonna stand up there and talk about how great of a person he was, how devoted of a son, a friend, a--a boyfriend.” She sobbed suddenly. “And they’ll cut out every flaw, everything ugly and fucked up about him, and then he won’t be Kibum anymore. He won’t be the person I loved. He’ll be gone--for good.” Her face crumpled. “I’m not ready.”
She shook silently for several moments, tucking her face between her knees, as she tried to swallow her sobs, and then she broke, and crawled toward Minjung. “I hate everything,” she whispered, as Minjung pulled her into her arms and rubbed her back. “I hate everything and everyone, and I wish I was dead.”
---
The video of the body at the morgue enjoyed a brief surge of viral popularity over the next thirty-six hours. Junghee opted to avoid the internet entirely, sticking to Netflix and cell phone games to occupy her mind, but Minjung monitored the story obsessively, as the clip was uploaded hundreds of times on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. YouTubers uploaded reaction videos, and careful frame-by-frame analysis of the clip, and Reddit hosted an Ask Me Anything with Alex, the now unemployed former assistant at the morgue. But eventually the story frittered away into memes, crossbred with other memes, as most people lost interest and moved on.
Kibum’s body was cremated, and the ashes sent back to his family in New Jersey on Thursday, and Junghee followed the next day. The funeral was Saturday afternoon, and Junghee flew back into Vegas that night. “Too many Catholics,” she had texted Minjung from the service. “There’s only so many I can take at once.”
“The weirdest part was seeing Jinki,” she mused, as Minjung drove her back home from the airport. She sighed. “I really wanted to hate him, but I just--couldn’t. He seemed so genuinely kind, and he just kept saying how he was so glad that Kibum had been with people like us when he died. People who loved him.”
She was silent for a bit. “He asked how he was. At the end, I mean. What our last memories of him were. What his last words were.”
Minjung glanced at her. “And? What did you tell him?”
“I lied, of course,” Junghee said softly. “I told him Kibum died thinking of him, that he’d kept talking about him throughout the visit.” She swallowed. “I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t tell him the truth. Nobody that kind deserves that sort of truth.”
-----
Two days later, Minjung was rapidly tallying pills, five at a time, separating them from the uncounted remainder with a deft flick of her small spatula across the counting tray, as she refilled prescriptions. The mundane task was soothing in its reputation. Pills were simple. They did not have feelings to hurt, and all she had to do was make sure that each bottle held the allotted number of the right kind. It was a relief to be back at work, doing the same thing that she had done for years. It gave her a sense of continuity with the past. Things had been good before. They could be good again. Kibum’s death was a wound that she could heal, day by day, knitting them back together to be even stronger than they were before.
What they needed, she thought, was some time away, just the two of them. Away from the heat and smell and clamor of Las Vegas. Away from their home, and all the mixed memories it held. Away from Kibum, and his death. A fresh start, with the promise of change.
Minjung had been steadily saving for a new car for half a year now, but this--this was more important. Maybe they’d go back up northwest, and stay by the river again, and they could drive out just a little further, to where the river met the sea, the brackish water swirling in eddies as the waves pounded the rocks on the other side. There was a long narrow spit of land there, at the meeting of the waters, covered in large rocks, and layered in pebbles and broken shells, and they could wander out on it, and look for shiny bits of sea glass. It would be bracingly cold out there, almost painful, with the wind over the sea, and the spray drenching them, but it would be the good sort of cold, the right sort of pain, the kind that would quicken the blood in their veins, and remind them that they were alive.
“Ms. Choi,” Holly was saying at her elbow, and Minjung reluctantly came out of her daydream. “Yes?” she said, in a weary voice that suggested that Holly was in fact the biggest imposition possible at that moment. She didn’t like her coworker to get too comfortable with her.
“Sorry but,” the woman was nervously wringing her hands together. “Have you seen this?” She pointed behind them at the television mounted on the wall. The text scrolling across the bottom of the screen was tiny; Minjung peered at it, and then stepped closer to read.
Mysterious Outbreak at Newark School, it read. The anchor was talking, her lips moving, but the sound was obscured by the noise of the grocery store.
“Where’s the remote?” Minjung said. “Turn it up, I want to hear.”
Holly scrambled for it, pressed a button, and the volume roared several decibels higher.
“Not that loud!” Minjung snatched the remote, and turned it back down. When she looked back at the screen, it showed a middle-aged balding reporter in an over-sized navy blue windbreaker, squinting his eyes against the misty rain as he talked into his mic.
“--standing here in front of Crestview Elementary,” he said, gesturing behind him at the school, “where the principal had a seizure and collapsed early this morning, and had to be rushed to the hospital. Those who interacted with him this morning said he seemed confused, and agitated, and that he kept complaining of a severe headache. Shortly afterward, a teacher fainted in front of her classroom, and began having seizures. Then two kids, in separate classrooms. Same symptoms: confusion, dizziness, headache, seizures. As a result, the superintendent has ordered all schools in the district to close for the day. Here with me is Superintendent Glass--”
Crestview Elementary. The name prodded at Minjung’s memory, and she pulled her phone out of her back pocket and googled the name of the school. She clicked on the school website, and then the page with the staff bios, fidgeting as she waited for it to load. When it did, her stomach sank with dread. There at the top of the page was the smiling face of Kibum’s boyfriend, his hair neatly combed to one side, his teeth bright and even. Jonghyun was right. He had a kind face.
She tapped the back button to look at the main search results. Two children dead from reported spider bite. She clicked the headline out of morbid curiosity. The picture loaded first: two twin boys, with brown hair and brown eyes, and tanned skin. Miguel and Rubén, eight years old. They were smiling, wearing matching Crestview Elementary school uniforms.
She skimmed the article. The children had been found dead in the hallway outside their shared bedroom this morning, when their mother exited her bedroom to go make breakfast. Their little bodies were sprawled over the Legos they had neglected to clean up the day before, and their arms and legs were swollen purple and oozing. Necrosis, the article said, likely brought on by the venom of a brown recluse. The story continued for a few paragraphs before it was interrupted by an embedded YouTube video.
“I don’t understand how this happened,” the twins’ mother said, her voice trembling as she looked down and away from the camera. She clenched her hands in her lap as she sat on her faded floral sofa, next to her silent husband. “They were fine last night, just a little tired and headachey, but I just assumed that was the weather. I didn’t know a spider bite could even do that.”
She closed her eyes. “I heard them, last night, in the hall, crying,” she said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “They wanted me to let them in. They said they were having a nightmare. And--and see, I’m a nurse, I do shift work at the hospital, and I hadn’t had a good night of sleep in almost a week. And I thought, they have each other. They’ll be fine. Nightmares pass. So I pretended I was asleep, and they eventually stopped crying. I thought they’d given up and gone back to bed.” She darted a glance at her husband, who was staring straight ahead, his face expressionless. “I keep asking myself what would have happened, if I had just opened the door, if we could have still done something to save them.” She swallowed, bobbing her head back and forth. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
The video kept playing, but Minjung hit the back button rapidly, and closed out the browser window on her phone with a shudder.
She returned to her pill counting, but she couldn’t focus, and she found herself counting and recounting the same thirty pills over and over. She forced herself to finish and cap off one more bottle, and then she sat down on the nearby stool and idly flicked a cluster of gleaming white tablets from end to end of the counting tray. It made her look and sound busy, to anyone who wasn’t watching closely. And Holly would never watch closely.
The grotesque deaths of the twins played ceaselessly on an imagined reel in her brain for the last half hour of her shift, interspersed with the memories of Kibum’s feet going rotten in the space of a couple hours. She felt sick, and a little cold; she needed to get home, to hold Jonghyun and feel his warmth in her arms.
He met her at the door when she returned. Her distress must have been written across her face, for he took one look, and asked, “What’s wrong?”
She had wanted to tell him everything immediately, to exorcise her worst fears by naming them, to hear that everything was going to be fine, that it was just her anxiety overreacting again. But as he stood there in the sun-splashed entryway of their own home, barefoot, wearing nothing but a large green T-shirt that came down to just above his knees, everything she would have said died on her lips. He yawned; he had just been napping, perhaps. She was achingly aware in that moment of just how vulnerable he was, and how helpless she was to protect him from everything in the world that would try to harm him.
But she could protect him from her own anxieties, and she could delay the news about Jinki for a while, to extend this moment of relative peace and safety. To give him room to breathe.
“Just a stressful day at work,” she said. “And I missed you.”
He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, tucking his head under her chin, and she let him hold her, the tender security of his hug helping her to breathe a little easier. He rubbed her back. “Babe,” he said
“Mmmm,” she replied, still soaking up the warmth of his arms around her.
She felt him take a deep breath. “Did you see everything in Newark? With Jinki’s school?”
Belatedly, Minjung heard the muted murmur of the television on behind him in the living room. Her stomach sank. “Yeah.”
“It’s fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
His arms tightened around her waist. “It all matches up with Kibum’s symptoms. The dizziness, the seizures, everything. And then those two kids. I can’t believe that was a spider bite. What spider could cause that level of damage in such a short time?” He swallowed. “I think it’s connected.”
“It could be a coincidence,” she suggested, with no conviction in her voice.
“You don’t believe that,” he returned.
“No,” she admitted.
Neither of them had much of an appetite that night, and they split a can of soup instead of attempting a more full-fledged dinner. Afterwards, they tried to pick something on Netflix, but nothing seemed appealing -- the comedies and romcoms too crude or saccharine, the darker stories too maudlin, or too close to home.
“I’m gonna just go to bed,” Jonghyun said, on their third scroll through Netflix’s paltry offerings.
Minjung sighed. “I think I’ll join you.”
They crawled into bed together, and Jonghyun wriggled over to nuzzle against her. Then he stilled.
“I can’t stop thinking about those twins who died,” he said. “How scared they must have been, as they watched their own bodies rot in just a few hours.”
“Don’t think about it,” she whispered fiercely.
“Do you think they understood what was going on?” he said. “Or did they think it was just another nightmare, and that if they screamed loudly enough, their parents would come and wake them up, and it would be over?”
“Jonghyun, stop,” she said, her voice shaking.
He traced the hollow between her collarbones. “I hope they weren’t conscious near the end.”
“Stop thinking about it.”
He looked at her. “I can’t.”
“I--I wanted to talk to you about something,” Minjung said, before he could continue on his morbid train of thought. “That vacation we’ve been saying we’re going to take for years. Let’s take it. Let’s pick somewhere and go. Northwest. Anywhere. Just somewhere away from here.”
He scoffed. “With what money?”
“I’ve saved up enough that we could buy two round trip plane tickets and rent a car, with some left over for hotel stays, if we’re not too picky about where we stay.”
“Babe, that’s the car money,” he said.
“I can go back to saving as soon as we return,” she said. “I’ll take on extra hours or something.” She stroked his hair back from his face. “This is more important than a car. Everything’s gone bad, and we need a break. We’ll get away, out of reach of everything. We’ll turn off our phones, we won’t get online, we’ll cut ourselves off from everything in the outside world if we have to. Just the two of us, together.”
“That would be nice,” he admitted. “I could use a week away from this hot dusty hellhole.”
“Let’s do it then,” she urged. “We can go week after next. I’ll take sick leave, or something. The airlines will be dropping prices if things get worse in Newark, because they know people are scared, but they still need to fill their planes. It’s the perfect time to book tickets.”
Jonghyun hesitated. “All right,” he said at last. “Let’s do it.” He took a deep breath. “I want to see the ocean again.”
---
The announcement of Jinki’s death the next morning was discreet, just a simple obituary listing forwarded by email, with a professional headshot, and a brief description of his life and career. Nothing about his death, or his final hours.
But the rest of the dead did not go so quietly. One teacher at Crestview allegedly got up from her deathbed at the hospital, after she had been pronounced dead, and pushed her startled family members aside, making it halfway down the hall before she was caught by two orderlies. An anonymous source identifying themself only as a nurse said they witnessed her struggling in the orderlies’ grasp, snarling and clawing at them, before she suddenly stopped, her entire body sagging heavily, and did not move again.
An old Italian widow who lived two blocks from the school ran out of her house, and into oncoming traffic, where she was flattened immediately by a large pickup truck. Her remains were a gruesome mess along the road, the liquified rot spreading across her old housedress.
“She came out of nowhere,” the driver insisted. “There was no time to stop.”
At first, Minjung hoped that the deaths might be contained to Newark, that the infection might peter out before it could escape the city. But that night, a middle-aged CEO of a mid-sized Newark rental car company was found dead in his hotel room in Minneapolis. A fellow guest called the front desk complaining that someone was screaming in the room next door, and that there was a repeated thumping noise against the wall. But when hotel staff investigated, they found no sign of a screamer. Just the man’s body, right inside the door.
“The cause and time of death is unknown,” an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune read. “He was found in an advanced state of decay, which would suggest that he had been dead for some time, except for the fact that the hotel had surveillance camera footage of him walking through the lobby just two days before he was found.”
“Texts that he exchanged with his business partner just hours after he checked in suggest that he was in a state of confusion, even paranoia,” the article continued. “According to the texts his partner shared with the Star Tribune, he had no memory of why he had come to Minneapolis, and he was convinced that someone, or something, was after him, and wanted him dead.”
The video of the body in the Sunset Vale Mortuary resurfaced, along with the theory that it must be zombies. The rotting flesh of the victims made the story almost too easy, and the internet soon ran wild with lurid accounts of the supposed undead: the way their flesh looked and smelled like something that had died days ago, the way their last fear-crazed screams gave way to hungry groans.
Biological warfare, others suggested. Population control. A secret government experiment.
The cause of death was most likely sepsis induced by gangrene, health officials countered, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the rumors of the undead. It was too early to confirm, a source at the CDC said, but the symptoms pointed to a highly contagious form of meningococcal disease, manifesting in both meningoencephalitis and septicemia, an infection of the blood. But existing meningococcal vaccines seemed to have no impact; all of the victims of the outbreak at Crestview had been vaccinated, and, when analyzed, the bacteria responsible appeared to be a new strain. The disease was dubbed necrococcal disease, named for the widespread aggressive gangrene that was its most visible trademark. Antibiotics seemed powerless against it, but that did not stop official health bulletins from recommending a strong antibiotics prescription for everyone who began exhibiting symptoms.
If you feel sick, don’t go to work, don’t go to school, the bulletins urged. Go to your urgent care for a prescription or check in at your local emergency room. Wash your hands after going anywhere. Wash your hands before touching your eyes, your mouth, your nose, your food. Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.
But such advice began to seem almost laughably futile, as the death toll rose steeply in the next few days, spreading out across Newark and crossing the Hudson River into New York City. The governors of New Jersey and New York ordered statewide quarantines, banning all travel in and out, and grounding all planes. But a combined population of almost thirty million was not so easily contained, and the state borders leaked like sieves, as every fleeing resident told themself that if they could just get away--up north, out west, somewhere with fewer people--they would be safe.
“I might be infected, but I don’t care. I’m leaving,” an anonymous writer wrote in an essay on Medium. “My family is probably dead by now, at home. I didn’t wait long enough to find out.”
She’d driven her husband and daughter to every hospital within a fifty-mile radius of her home, only be turned away every time because the hospitals were at full capacity.
“Some of you will condemn me as a wife and mother,” she wrote. “But put yourself in my shoes. They were dying. I couldn’t save them. Was I supposed to just sit by and watch as they turned into gruesome nightmares before they died? They would want me to live, so I’m taking whatever chance I’ve got, and I’m going.”
Her only regret, she concluded, was that she hadn’t been able to end it for them herself, to give them something to speed their passing.
Officials were finally forced to confront the zombie rumors when the Daily Mail published a story with embedded video footage allegedly showing a nurse in a Newark hospital being tackled by several infected patients in an overcrowded room. They backed her up against the wall, and she lost her balance, and went down. The infected swarmed over her body, blocking it entirely from view, as she screamed, and the video cut abruptly, switching to a self-taken video shot in a small apartment kitchen.
The person who took the video identified themself as a member of hospital staff. “I was just coming in to take out the trash, clean up a little, stuff like that,” they said. “They had like ten people crammed into a two-person room, and about half of them looked like they had already died, and a couple of them had that stiff neck thing happening, you know?” They demonstrated, craning their own neck backwards. “I went into the bathroom to clean it, and change out the trash bag. I closed the door behind me, because the fan always comes on with the light, and it’s pretty loud. So I couldn’t really hear anything as I was cleaning. But then I came out, and I saw that half the beds were empty. And I thought, ‘Wow, that was fast!’ because we’re so understaffed now that sometimes it takes a little while to clear out the dead bodies. But then I saw them: all five of them, just standing there, facing the nurse, staring at her.” They paused, and shuddered a little. “I don’t know what made me decide to stand there and record it. I should have gotten someone. But she went down so fast. There was almost no time.”
“I didn’t believe all that zombie bullshit when I first heard it,” they concluded. “But now--I don’t know. They all looked dead to me. And then, a few minutes later, they’re out of their beds attacking somebody. I don’t know what to think.”
The director of the CDC put out a new press release addressing the zombie rumors. “In some patients,” he wrote, “inflammation in the brain may trigger a temporary spike in adrenaline right before death, sometimes preceded by a short comatose period that mimics death, giving the appearance of someone rising from the dead. But it could more accurately be considered their final death throes.” The rumor that the near-dead craved the brains or flesh of others, he said, was just that: a rumor.
Return to Part Three
Part Five
Pairing: Minjung/bigender!Jonghyun
Rating: R--NC-17
Genre: Angst / Horror / Sci-Fi
Warnings: Character death, gore, body horror, prescription drug abuse, suicide attempt, mention of self-harm, mentions of food
Final Word Count: 74,000~
They moved Kibum to a two-patient room in an upper floor of the hospital, and after a brief wait, during which the three of them opted to get a late lunch, they were allowed to see him again.
His bed was on the far side of the room from the door, out of sight beyond the first patient’s bed, which was entirely sheltered by the long curtain drawn around it. Kibum’s bed was also curtained, but only halfway, just enough to block him from view if visitors came to see his roommate.
When they stepped around the curtain, they saw that he was awake this time, but subdued and sleepy, his eyelids drooping heavily every time he blinked. He didn’t notice them at first, his eyes focused on the arm with his IV, which was heavily taped up around the elbow, so that he couldn’t accidentally rip it out if he struggled.
“Kibum,” Jonghyun said, as he pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down next to him. “Hey there.”
Kibum turned to look at him, still blinking slowly. He stared blankly at Jonghyun for a second, and then smiled. “Hey,” he croaked. He caught sight of the other two, and squinted, confused. “What are you all doing here?”
“We came to check on you,” Taemin said.
Kibum looked around, taking in his surroundings. “Am I...in a hospital?”
“Yes, we brought you into the ER yesterday,” Jonghyun explained. “Remember? You collapsed on the Strip and got heatstroke.”
Kibum smiled, although his forehead was still wrinkled with confusion. “Must have been partying pretty hard.” He sniffed. “Is that me? I smell disgusting.”
“You’re sick,” Jonghyun said. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
“I smell like roadkill,” Kibum laughed. “And I think I’m wearing one of those gowns that don’t cover your ass properly. This is embarrassing.”
He frowned suddenly. “Everything hurts so much,” he muttered.
“Let me get the nurse for you,” Minjung offered.
He shook his head. “Wait. They’re just gonna dope me up, and I...I need to think.” He licked his dry lips. “Jinki. I need to call Jinki and let him know this might delay my flight. Wait, what day is it?”
“Sunday,” Minjung said.
“Sunday,” he repeated. He held out his hand. “Can someone get me my phone?”
“You don’t have a phone, remember?” Taemin said. “It was gone when they found you.”
“Oh,” Kibum said. “Right. Yeah.” He shook his head again. “I can’t think clearly. Nothing makes sense. I feel like I can barely remember anything.” He sighed. “My feet hurt. My socks are too tight.”
“You’re not wearing socks,” Jonghyun said. “It’s probably the bandages. I’m sure we can fix that.” He reached across Kibum’s body for the call button. “Let me just call the nurse.”
They had to press the call button multiple times before a nurse appeared, looking frazzled. They unwound the bandage quickly, not bothering to be gentle about it, and paused. Minjung leaned over to look, and then inhaled sharply as she tried not to gag.
What had been an angry red rash just an hour ago was now a dark purplish black that covered his entire foot up to the ankle, the skin swollen, with spidery lines of red snaking out from it, up along the leg. It looked soft, almost juicy, like an overripe plum, and it smelled horribly. Splotches of reddish purple had appeared on his shin and calf, and were already blistering and oozing.
“What is that?” Taemin breathed in horror.
“Not a good sign,” the nurse said brusquely. They pressed the button on their two-way radio. “I’m gonna need Dr. Olney in Room 413.” The speaker crackled, then a voice answered: “He’s with another patient right now; is it urgent?”
“Um, yeah, I would say so,” the nurse said, holding Kibum’s ankle in one broad gloved hand as they lifted it to inspect it further. “The patient looks like he has wet gangrene. Skin is dark and swollen. Definitely some edema.” They snorted. “And it smells like shit. Can you get him over here, please?”
The nurse turned to Minjung, Taemin, and Jonghyun. “None of you touched the infected area, right?” They shook their heads.
“Definitely gangrene,” the doctor said when he arrived. He peered at the dark swollen skin, then undid the bandage on the other foot, and sighed when it revealed a similar state of putrefaction. “I’m gonna need Dr. Molai to look at this.” He left and returned with another doctor in tow, introducing him as the vascular surgeon.
The surgeon pulled a low rolling stool up to the foot of the bed and inspected Kibum’s legs in silence.
“What is it?” Kibum said, his eyes darting from one doctor to the other.
The surgeon shook his head, his face grim. “Mr. Kim.” He spoke evenly and slowly as he looked down at Kibum. “You’ve got gangrene in both your feet, and we’ve got to take care of that, if we don’t want the infection spreading further in your body.” He paused, to let his words sink in. “We’ll to get rid of the infected tissue. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“You’re gonna cut out the infected tissue,” Kibum repeated.
“I’m saying you’re going to need a double amputation below the knee,” the surgeon said. “And we’re going have to act fast. Wet gangrene like this, it’s a life-threatening medical emergency, because when the infection gets into your blood, it spreads rapidly. We’re talking a matter of hours.” He pulled back the blanket. “See that rash spreading up your legs? We’re looking at septicemia here. Blood poisoning. We’re gonna give you a strong antibiotic to kill the bacteria causing the infection but--” he shook his head again. “It won’t be enough in time to save your feet.” He straightened up, and peeled off his gloves. “But, on the bright side, I think we caught it soon enough that between the antibiotic and the amputation, your chances are pretty good.”
“My chances?” Kibum whispered, his eyes wide, but Dr. Molai had already pushed back his chair, and didn’t hear him, too busy giving terse orders to Dr. Olney and the nurse as they all left.
“How the fuck does he just get a massive case of wet gangrene and nobody even notices?” they heard the surgeon say.
“Nobody mentioned it when they sent him up from emergency,” the nurse responded.
“Those incompetent motherfuckers…” the surgeon’s voice trailed off as they exited the room.
The room was silent for several moments.
“I don’t understand,” Taemin said finally. “It was just a rash a couple of hours ago. How can it go that fast?”
Minjung shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Kibum,” Jonghyun said. “Do you remember...hurting your feet at all? Getting bitten? Anything?”
“I don’t remember much of anything,” Kibum said honestly. He looked up at each of them. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
“Don’t worry,” Jonghyun rushed to say, “you’re not going to die, everything will be--”
“I’m not saying it because I’m worried,” Kibum cut in. “I’m saying it because it’s true. You heard him. The infection’s in my blood, and it’s spreading fast.”
“Which is why they’re gonna amputate,” Jonghyun said. “To save you.”
Kibum laughed, a brief mirthless huff. “They’re amputating because they’re legally liable if I die without them trying every last resort. They know they’re not gonna save me.” He took a deep breath. “I’m gonna be dead in a few hours.”
“Don’t say that.” Jonghyun’s voice wavered. “Please don’t say that.”
“What’s the point of pretending otherwise?” Kibum snapped. “My legs are literally rotting. I’m dying from the inside out. Pretending I’m not going to die isn’t going to save me. It’s a farce.” He turned his head away for a second, and bit his lip, and then turned back. “We don’t have much time,” he said calmly. “They’re going to come wheel me away for surgery, and then--that’s it. I don’t think I’m coming back out.”
“Kibum, please,” Jonghyun whispered. “Stop talking like this.”
“Can one of you please get Jinki on the phone?” Kibum said.
Taemin pulled out his phone, and dialed the number Kibum gave him. “I’m just getting his voicemail.”
“Leave him a voicemail, a text, anything, just tell him it’s urgent,” Kibum said. “Call the main line at Crestview. Maybe he’s still at work.” He turned back to Jonghyun. “Babe. Baby. Please. Please stop crying.”
He reached out for Jonghyun’s hand, and then pulled back at the last second. “I guess I shouldn’t touch you,” he said. “I--I don’t know what I have.”
But Jonghyun grabbed his hand. “If I’m gonna be infected just by touching you, then I’m already infected,” he said.
Kibum closed his other hand over Jonghyun’s. “I feel like I should be having some sorta moment where all my life’s regrets flash before my eyes,” he said dryly, before his sardonic expression shifted into something softer and sadder. “But I don’t really have many regrets. I feel like I’ve fucked up a lot, but--” he shrugged. “I could say something about how I’m not ashamed of my mistakes, because they made me who I am, but I think the truth is that I’m too much of a fuckup to care about how much I’ve fucked up.”
“Losing you is the one regret I’ve got,” he continued. “I’ve regretted that since the moment I left. And I kept trying to tell myself it was for the best--that I don’t do well with sharing, and I didn’t want to fuck things up between you and Minjung. But I always knew deep down that I could have made things work, if I had tried.” He gave a half smile. “I never told you, because it would have sounded manipulative, just a ploy to get you back. But now,” he shrugged again. “what’s the point in holding back? I’m dying, and I want to tell you the truth.”
His eyes were earnest as he looked at Jonghyun, as if they were the only two in the room. “You were--you’ve always been--the best part of my life. I’m so lucky I got to meet you. I love you, baby. I never told you that enough. I love you so much.”
Jonghyun tried to speak but simply sobbed instead.
“I’m sorry, I--I still can’t reach him,” Taemin said. He looked as if he might be sick.
“Fuck,” Kibum muttered. “Okay, when he calls back, don’t break the news all at once, you know? Tell him I’ve gone in for surgery, tell him you’ll keep him updated. Please don’t tell him I said that I’m dying. Just tell him I love him, and that I’ll call him when I’m in the recovery room. And then if--when--I don’t make it, tell him that too. He can pass it on to my family.”
“Shh,” he said, as Jonghyun kept crying. He looked up as two hospital escorts came around the curtain. “I gotta go, baby,” he whispered. “It’s time.”
Jonghyun glanced over, his face a mess, his eyes and nose reddened and dripping, his lips quivering. “Wait,” he whispered, as the escorts prepared to move Kibum’s bed. “Please wait!”
He jumped up, and grabbed at the box of latex gloves on the wall shelf above Kibum’s bed. He fumbled for a second, but then pulled one free. He held it delicately, between two shaking fingertips, and laid it across Kibum’s mouth and nose.
“I’m sorry,” he said, over his shoulder, addressing no one in particular, and then he bent and kissed Kibum. “I love you,” he whispered hoarsely, before he kissed him again. “I love you.”
“Sir, we really gotta speed this up,” one of the escorts said.
Jonghyun straightened up and tossed the glove in the waste basket. “Yes, I’m sorry,” he said, swallowing the rest of his tears. He trailed after them as they wheeled the bed out of the room, his body hunched and small, like a lost puppy. Minjung and Taemin followed him, and Minjung had just enough time to see Kibum blow Jonghyun one last kiss, before the bed disappeared behind a pair of heavy double doors, and Kibum was gone.
---
The three of them settled in an upstairs lounge as they waited. It was just after 6 p.m., but it felt like an entire day had passed since they first saw Kibum early that afternoon. The lounge was cramped and stuffy, with twenty-eight vinyl red cushioned seats crammed together in a space only a little larger than Minjung’s living room. The cushioning was hard and stiff and provided little comfort, and each armrest was shared between two seats, a narrow bar that was more of a barrier than an actual support.
Jonghyun sat down in a corner of the dim lounge, and drew his knees up to his chest. He had stopped crying. He stared off into space, clutching a cheap brown paper towel that he had brought back from the bathroom after washing his hands. He tore it apart slowly, twisting each piece in his fingers.
Minjung sat down next to him, but he did not acknowledge her. She reached over to pat his knee, and then thought better of it, her hand falling to the narrow armrest instead.
Kibum’s confession had not stirred her anger, as she had expected. Instead, she felt a strange relief that she hadn’t been entirely crazy, coupled with a grudging sense of kinship for a man who mirrored her possessive resentment back to her. In another life, she and Kibum could have been friends, finding solidarity in every shared streak of pettiness, finding comfort in each other’s flaws.
Jonghyun had shit taste in lovers, she thought wryly.
Taemin had not sat down since they entered the lounge. He paced in circles around the room, his head down, and his hands jammed in his pockets. He paused at the vending machine in the opposite corner, and pulled out his wallet. He fished out a crumpled bill and tried to stretch it flat, before sticking one end into the machine. He coaxed it in, and the machine took about an inch of it before spitting it back out. Minjung could see his sigh from across the room. He dug through his pocket, counting out coins into his palm, and then his shoulders slumped in disappointment. He fed the coins back into his pocket.
Minjung went to him before he could walk away.
“Tell me what you want, and I’ll get it,” she said.
“It’s okay.” He waved her off.
“No, really,” Minjung fed a five dollar bill into the machine. “Pick something.”
He selected a candy bar, and squatted to pull it from the base of the machine.
“Thanks, dude,” he said quietly. He tore the wrapper open. “I’m not even hungry, I just need something to do with my hands.” He took a bite. “Is he okay? I mean. Silly question. I should just...stop talking.”
Minjung nudged him. “How are you doing?”
He took another bite instead of answering her question. “All that stuff Kibum said about dying and everything, that’s all just exaggeration, right? Because he can’t think clearly? He’s gonna be okay, right?”
“I really don’t know,” she said.
He didn’t respond for a few seconds. “I didn’t say goodbye,” he said. “I couldn’t even think. Everything happened so fast. I mean, Friday he seemed fine, and now, he’s…” he trailed off. “Fuck,” he said at last. “I hate hospitals.”
He looked over at Jonghyun’s huddled form. “I don’t even feel like I should be here,” he said. “I mean, Jonghyun’s his ex, of course he’s fucked up. You’re with Jonghyun, and he needs you. But me,” he shrugged. “I’m just the guy Kibum fucked most recently.”
“You were friends,” Minjung insisted.
“Yeah, but,” Taemin gestured at Jonghyun with his half-eaten candy bar. “Not like that.”
He ate the rest of the bar in two large bites, and crumpled up the wrapper. “I think I’m gonna go outside,” he said. “Get some air. Buy myself a drink. I don’t even fucking know. I just. Can’t do this. I can’t sit in here waiting for some doctor to appear and try to find a polite and gentle way to tell us that our friend died. And I don’t want you or Jonghyun to feel like you have to take care of me right now.” He patted her arm. “You got enough on your plate.”
He walked away, and then turned. “I’ll let you know if Jinki gets back to me,” he said, and then he disappeared around the corner as he headed to the elevators.
Minjung returned to Jonghyun, and settled herself in the seat next to him. He was still curled up into a tight ball, withdrawn into himself, his eyes distant as they stared past her. She wanted nothing more than to gather him into her arms, but doubt restrained her. He wouldn’t want comfort from her, not about Kibum. Her brain flooded with guilt and shame. One voice inside her head kept insisting that she was responsible, that it was her anger that had put Kibum in the hospital, that it was her jealousy that was poisoning his blood. If Kibum got out of this alive, the voice said, she should let Jonghyun return to him. Let Jonghyun be happy. Without her. It was what he deserved. It was what she deserved.
No, a more timid voice insisted. Jonghyun loved her. He wanted to be with her.
But that was earlier, the other voice said. What about now? Taemin had the right idea. Better to just admit when you weren’t needed, and bow out.
Her internal dispute was interrupted by Jonghyun’s sudden movement, as he uncurled himself and inched across the seat toward her.
“Hold me, please,” he begged, as he leaned over the rigid armrest.
And so she did.
---
It was just before 10:30 p.m. when Minjung saw the surgeon approaching. Jonghyun had finally fallen into a light doze against her shoulder only moments before, and Minjung continued to hold him, her stomach sinking, until the man reached the lounge and squatted down in front of them. She nudged Jonghyun then, and he sat up, dazed.
Minjung knew what the surgeon would say before he even opened his mouth. A brief exchange of pleasantries, a short lead-in in which he described the basics of the procedure, and then--
“Unfortunately, he didn’t make it,” he said. “We did everything we could, but it was too little, too late. By the time we got to him, the infection had already spread beyond what we could control.”
The cause of death was septic shock, he explained. Kibum’s own immune system killing his body in its last-ditch attempt to save itself from the infection.
“Someone at the front desk can give you the contact information for the morgue.” He stood back up and frowned in sympathy. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Jonghyun stared numbly after him when he left.
“I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” he whispered. “Everything is like a nightmare, except I never wake up, and it keeps getting worse.”
He curled up again, putting his head between his knees, and clasping his hands behind his head. He stayed like that for a long time.
“Let’s go home,” Minjung said at last, touching his arm gently.
He unfolded his body and looked at her, eyes dry and dull. “Yeah.”
They found Taemin on a bench outside, drinking a bottle of Coke.
“Hey guys,” he said, trying to muster a smile when he saw them. “Never quite made it to a bar, but there was a vending machine in the lobby with a credit card reader.” He held up the half-empty bottle, the soda long since gone flat.
“Taemin,” Minjung began, searching for the right words, as he looked down and screwed the cap back onto the bottle.
“He’s gone, isn’t he,” he said quietly.
Minjung hesitated, and then nodded.
“I just got off the phone with his boyfriend half an hour ago. He was out and his phone died, so he didn’t even get my message until he got home,” Taemin said. “I--I told him what Kibum told me to say, and he started booking a flight while he was still on the phone with me. He’s packing now, I think. He keeps sending me texts to show Kibum, in case Kibum got out of surgery and woke up before he landed here.” He swallowed. “I guess I’ll call him back and tell him.” He glanced at them. “Unless one of you guys wants to.”
“Not particularly,” Minjung said, and Jonghyun shook his head.
“Okay, well, let me just--take care of that, I guess,” he said uncertainly.
“We’ll be in the car,” Minjung said, as she led Jonghyun away. When she looked back, Taemin was still sitting with his phone in his lap, his shoulders hunched as he stared down at the brightly lit screen, and did not move.
----
They drove Taemin back to his own home that evening, after he insisted.
“Are you sure?” Minjung asked. “You’re welcome to stay with us.”
Taemin looked at Jonghyun, who said nothing and continued to stare out of the windshield as if he hadn’t heard anything.
“Yeeaaah, I’m sure,” Taemin said, looking back at Minjung. “Gotta clean my room. Get rid of my sheets. Catch my roomies up on what happened. All that.” He shrugged. “Can’t ignore it forever.” His tone was casual, but there was a slight tremor in his voice.
When they parked, he leaned forward between the two front seats, as if he was about to say something. But then he just shook his head. “I’ll see you around, I guess,” he said weakly, and slipped out of the car.
Jonghyun did not speak for the rest of the evening.
“Come to bed,” Minjung urged, after her shower. She had a towel twisted around her hair, and she squeezed it with one hand as she walked into the living room.
Jonghyun was lying in a small heap on the sofa, his knees folded up to his chest, his arms hanging off the edge, as his hair, still damp from his shower, lay in limp strands across his face. He was barefoot. She thought at first that he hadn’t heard her, and then he sighed and shook his head.
Minjung was tired enough to doze off immediately once she settled into bed, but deep sleep eluded her, and she hovered at the border between wakefulness and sleep, her mind replaying the image of Kibum on that hospital bed, with his rotting feet, and Jonghyun leaning down to kiss him. You did this, the voice of guilt said in her brain, and she couldn’t remember what, exactly, she had done, but her limbs twitched in panic. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe--and then she sat up all at once, her heart pounding as she struggled for air.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and gripped her knees with her palms, forcing herself to breathe slowly and deeply. It was almost 3 a.m. She got up and shuffled out into the kitchen, pulled a glass from the cabinet, and eased the tap on until it ran with a soft whisper. She filled the glass halfway and drank. She wasn’t thirsty, but she needed something to clear her head.
Jonghyun was asleep, still in the same position she had left him, except he had curled both his hands into fists and tucked them under his chin. The blanket lay unused on the back of the couch, and his bare feet were pressed together, the toes wedged between two seat cushions. The sight stirred something in her, something gentle, the only thing stronger than her guilt, and she stole back into the bedroom. She returned with a pair of Jonghyun’s socks and she knelt down by the couch and slipped them onto each foot. He stirred, and whimpered in his sleep, but then relaxed again, and she pulled the blanket off the couch and spread it across him, and rubbed his back.
She sat with him, listening to the even rhythm of his breath, until watching him in his sleep began to feel a little like trespassing, and she returned to her bed. This time, she slept.
---
When she woke, her partner was in bed next to her. It was already 7:30, too late for Minjung’s morning run. But not too late to make it to work, if she hurried. She squinted at her phone, her eyelids still heavy from sleep, and then, her mind made up, she got out of bed, her fingers already dialing the number as she left the room.
“It’s a stomach thing,” she said in her voicemail. “I was up all night.” She hoped that would be sufficient excuse.
She made herself a cup of black coffee, leaving enough in the pot for Junghee, who appeared in the kitchen directly after as if summoned, mumbled a brief good morning, and then disappeared back into the bedroom with her mug. Minjung poured herself a bowl of granola and shuffled over to the couch, still in her slippers and robe, and turned on the television.
She caught the weather first--the renewed heat wave showed no signs of breaking in the next week, and every day showed full sun, unobscured by clouds or rain. Then she flipped through the few channels they had until she got to the local news. An armed robbery at a local pawn shop, a parrot escaped from the zoo, and then--
“Well, we don’t know quite what to make of this next story,” the anchor said. “Last night, an assistant staffer at the Sunset Vale Mortuary captured this shocking video of what appears to be a body coming back to life, and attacking the morgue attendant. Let’s take a look.”
They played the clip, a twenty-second grainy cell phone video in portrait mode, of the attendant struggling with something on a tray extending from the refrigerator. They froze the frame, and zoomed in, and Minjung peered at the pixelated screen. The face was indistinct--she could only make out short dark hair, and the mouth, open as if to yell. But then her gaze traveled down its body. The cloth had slipped off in the struggle and she saw that the body ended just below the knees.
“What are you watching?” Junghee asked behind her.
Minjung jumped. “Nothing.” She turned it off. “Just the news.”
Junghee yawned and moved into the living room. “Turn it on. I wanna see.” She sat down, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with one finger. “I need a distraction.”
“The news isn’t a very nice distraction,” Minjung argued hastily. “Most of it is just drivel.”
“Anything is better than the inside of my brain right now,” Junghee said.
“There’s so much bad news out there,” Minjung tried again. “I don’t want you to feel worse.”
“I don’t think I can feel worse,” Junghee laughed. “Plus, at least it’s not my bad news onscreen.” She set her coffee cup on the table. “Come on, turn it on.”
“I really don’t want to,” Minjung began, but Junghee made a sudden leap, and snatched the remote.
“Junghee, don’t!” Minjung said, but it was too late. The television was on again, a ticker parading under the news anchor’s desk with the words “Zombies? In Vegas?!?”
“Zombies!” Junghee laughed in delight. “Yesssss. I live for this stuff!” She settled herself in the corner of the sofa, her eyes focused avidly on the screen.
Minjung felt sick. “I don’t want to watch this.”
“Come on, babe, why do you hate fun?” Junghee turned the volume up.
“...was working at the morgue the night of the alleged attack and is here with us this morning to share his experiences. Welcome, Alex!”
The anchor stood up, applauding, and then reached out to shake the hand of a scrawny young man with short red hair, and a smattering of freckles across his pale pink face. He bobbed his head at the anchor, and the gathered audience, and then sat down, his eyes darting around the room, his head turning abruptly each time to follow his shifting gaze, giving him the appearance of a skittish squirrel.
“Now, Alex, it isn’t every day that someone gets to have an encounter with something that seems...paranormal. Even supernatural,” the anchor said. “You wanna walk us back through last night at the morgue and tell us what you saw?”
Alex nodded and gulped. “I, uh...it was just a regular night at the morgue,” he began, in a line that was obviously coached. “I was working with my boss, and we were uh, putting one of the bodies in the, you know. Fridge. And all of a sudden, it starts. Moving. Making groaning sounds.” He twisted his hands together. “I’m new, but my boss said it was normal, you know? That dead bodies do that, sometimes. As they release, like, gasses and stuff. But I was like, man, I gotta record this, my buddies are gonna shi--I mean, they’re gonna freak out when they see this. So I’m like kinda stepping back like, trying to record this--” he demonstrated, leaning back in his chair, and holding an imaginary cell phone just under his chin “--and then the body sat up and like, attacked my boss!”
He made his fingers into claw shapes and mimed the supposed wild flailings of the body. “And I’m like really freaking out at that point, because I’m pretty sure I’m gonna die, right, that I’m watching zombies come to life right before my eyes, and I’m thinking--there’s a whole fridge of bodies down here, man, like are they all just waiting to pop out at us?”
“Wow, he is really trying to sell this bullshit,” Junghee commented, amused.
“But then my boss, he just slams the body back onto the tray and shoves it into the fridge and locks the door, and I just hear one more thump, and then that’s it.” Alex shrugged.
“Well, let me tell you, young man,” the anchor said. “Sounds to me like your boss is a hero. Really keeps his cool, so to speak.” He leaned over. “You tell him, from me, he has an open invitation if he wants to tell his side of the story.”
“Well,” Alex scratched the back of his head, and gave a nervous laugh. “I don’t think he’s interested. He told me I needed to stop making up stories about zombies, but I don’t know, man, I’m just sharing what I saw! It’s right there in the video!”
“Let’s roll that again, so our audience can decide for themselves,” the anchor said.
“We don’t need to see this,” Minjung said, reaching for the remote, but Junghee held it out of her reach.
“I’m not gonna cut it off right before the video with the supposed evidence,” Junghee laughed. “That’s always the best part in these stories!”
The clip rolled again, and Minjung watched as her girlfriend’s face rapidly shifted from fascinated amusement to confusion. The video froze on the same frame, with the mouth on the pixelated face opened in a silent scream, and the unmistakable stumps of two legs, amputated just below the knees.
Junghee shook her head. “That’s--that’s not--” she kept shaking her head. “I don’t understand--that’s not--”
The feed shifted back to the anchor. “...and don’t forget to go to our Twitter and answer our latest poll on whether what we saw in that video is just a natural, if somewhat creepy phenomenon, or if it really is one of the undead!”
The remote was lying unguarded in Junghee’s lap, and Minjung took it, and flicked the television off before the man could say another word.
“Baby,” she patted Junghee’s knee. Her girlfriend’s eyes looked very far away, but at last she turned to Minjung.
“Talk to me,” Minjung insisted, needing Junghee to say something, anything, instead of just looking at her with that awful emptiness in her eyes.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Junghee whispered finally. She shook her head again. “I don’t understand--” She pointed at the screen. “You saw it, right? That was Kibum in that video.”
“It was hard to see anything clearly,” Minjung hedged. “I’m sure it was just a coincidence.”
“Because there were so many dark-haired double amputees being put into fridges last night in Las Vegas,” Junghee said, with bitter sarcasm. “You’re right, I’m sure I just saw one of the other dead Kibum clones.”
She bent over and put her face in her hands. “He just died,” she said, her voice cracking, “and they can’t even let him be at peace in death, because some asshole thinks it’d be hilarious to use his body in some kind of sick prank. He was scared and in pain,” her voice rose, “but oh, sure, let’s make his death into a viral video! Anything to bring in viewers!”
She stumbled to her feet. “I’m gonna puke,” she said, and ran out of the room. Minjung heard the bathroom door slam, and then the harsh sound of Junghee retching into the toilet, followed by the flush of the toilet.
Minjung carried Junghee’s coffee into the kitchen, poured it down the drain, and filled a glass with water. She listened at the bathroom door, but it was silent, and she knocked once, gently, and then entered.
Junghee was kneeling with her head pillowed on the toilet seat, the water still swirling a little after the flush. “Hey,” she rasped. She sat up, and wiped her dripping nose on the back of her hand before reaching out to accept the glass of water. “Thanks.” She took a few tiny sips, and set it aside, leaning back against the wall of the tub and drawing her knees up to her chest.
“How are you doing?” Minjung asked.
“How do you think I’m doing?” Junghee snapped.
Minjung bowed her head, accepting the rebuke. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just worried.”
“Well, don’t be,” her girlfriend said petulantly. She hugged her knees. “People keep texting me this morning like, ‘How are you doing? I’m so sorry for your loss. Let me know if you need anything,’ and I just want everyone to fuck off and leave me alone. Stop assuming what I’m feeling, and stop asking me questions.” She shuddered. “I don’t even feel like a person anymore. I feel like I died too, the way people keep handling me so carefully, like I’m dry and brittle, and about to crack.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Minjung tried again. “About how you’re actually feeling, I mean.”
Junghee’s mouth worked, and Minjung thought she might rebuff her again, but then she spoke.
“I just feel like--when someone dies, there’s a way everyone’s supposed to do things, right? A role for everyone to play. The dead person--their role is obvious. Simple. They’re just dead. Their job is done. But the mourners, and the friends of the mourners--there are all these rules. The things you’re supposed to say. The things you’re supposed to do. The things you’re supposed to feel.” She shook her head. “And I--I can’t do it. I don’t know how to. I feel like I don’t know how to grieve.”
“There isn’t a right or wrong way to grieve,” Minjung said.
Junghee snorted. “See, everyone says that, but it’s not really true. There are a few right ways to grieve, but there are definitely wrong ways to grieve, and everyone knows it, deep down. Being really sad--that’s okay. Being strong and silent--that’s okay, too. Even being numb and apathetic is understandable. These are the kinds of grief that don’t get in the way of a good funeral. Because a funeral is a time for everyone to tell each other nice stories about the person who died, and for all the more distant friends and relatives to feel good about themselves for showing up in support. So people who grieve the wrong way--it’s inconvenient. It’s messy. It fucks the whole thing up.”
“Like me,” she laughed. “I’m just angry. And there’s nothing brave or noble about it. I’m not angry at the system, or at injustice, or something. I’m just straight up mad. In an ugly way. I want to take every dish in our house and throw it at the wall so it breaks, and then run at the wall and beat my head against it until I break too. I want to cut off everyone who tries to be nice to me, and make them all as hurt and confused and angry as I am. And I want to go back in time and break up with Kibum before he left me, so I could be the one to hurt him, and hurt myself, so I could be the one in charge, instead of the one waiting around, always loving him, always hoping he would return.”
She rocked back and forth for a long time. “There’s no meaning in his death,” she whispered finally. “It’s all ugly and senseless and unnecessary. None of this ever had to happen. He didn’t have to leave me, and he didn’t have to die. And now there’s gonna be a funeral, and it--it doesn’t feel real. That people are gonna stand up there and talk about how great of a person he was, how devoted of a son, a friend, a--a boyfriend.” She sobbed suddenly. “And they’ll cut out every flaw, everything ugly and fucked up about him, and then he won’t be Kibum anymore. He won’t be the person I loved. He’ll be gone--for good.” Her face crumpled. “I’m not ready.”
She shook silently for several moments, tucking her face between her knees, as she tried to swallow her sobs, and then she broke, and crawled toward Minjung. “I hate everything,” she whispered, as Minjung pulled her into her arms and rubbed her back. “I hate everything and everyone, and I wish I was dead.”
---
The video of the body at the morgue enjoyed a brief surge of viral popularity over the next thirty-six hours. Junghee opted to avoid the internet entirely, sticking to Netflix and cell phone games to occupy her mind, but Minjung monitored the story obsessively, as the clip was uploaded hundreds of times on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. YouTubers uploaded reaction videos, and careful frame-by-frame analysis of the clip, and Reddit hosted an Ask Me Anything with Alex, the now unemployed former assistant at the morgue. But eventually the story frittered away into memes, crossbred with other memes, as most people lost interest and moved on.
Kibum’s body was cremated, and the ashes sent back to his family in New Jersey on Thursday, and Junghee followed the next day. The funeral was Saturday afternoon, and Junghee flew back into Vegas that night. “Too many Catholics,” she had texted Minjung from the service. “There’s only so many I can take at once.”
“The weirdest part was seeing Jinki,” she mused, as Minjung drove her back home from the airport. She sighed. “I really wanted to hate him, but I just--couldn’t. He seemed so genuinely kind, and he just kept saying how he was so glad that Kibum had been with people like us when he died. People who loved him.”
She was silent for a bit. “He asked how he was. At the end, I mean. What our last memories of him were. What his last words were.”
Minjung glanced at her. “And? What did you tell him?”
“I lied, of course,” Junghee said softly. “I told him Kibum died thinking of him, that he’d kept talking about him throughout the visit.” She swallowed. “I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t tell him the truth. Nobody that kind deserves that sort of truth.”
-----
Two days later, Minjung was rapidly tallying pills, five at a time, separating them from the uncounted remainder with a deft flick of her small spatula across the counting tray, as she refilled prescriptions. The mundane task was soothing in its reputation. Pills were simple. They did not have feelings to hurt, and all she had to do was make sure that each bottle held the allotted number of the right kind. It was a relief to be back at work, doing the same thing that she had done for years. It gave her a sense of continuity with the past. Things had been good before. They could be good again. Kibum’s death was a wound that she could heal, day by day, knitting them back together to be even stronger than they were before.
What they needed, she thought, was some time away, just the two of them. Away from the heat and smell and clamor of Las Vegas. Away from their home, and all the mixed memories it held. Away from Kibum, and his death. A fresh start, with the promise of change.
Minjung had been steadily saving for a new car for half a year now, but this--this was more important. Maybe they’d go back up northwest, and stay by the river again, and they could drive out just a little further, to where the river met the sea, the brackish water swirling in eddies as the waves pounded the rocks on the other side. There was a long narrow spit of land there, at the meeting of the waters, covered in large rocks, and layered in pebbles and broken shells, and they could wander out on it, and look for shiny bits of sea glass. It would be bracingly cold out there, almost painful, with the wind over the sea, and the spray drenching them, but it would be the good sort of cold, the right sort of pain, the kind that would quicken the blood in their veins, and remind them that they were alive.
“Ms. Choi,” Holly was saying at her elbow, and Minjung reluctantly came out of her daydream. “Yes?” she said, in a weary voice that suggested that Holly was in fact the biggest imposition possible at that moment. She didn’t like her coworker to get too comfortable with her.
“Sorry but,” the woman was nervously wringing her hands together. “Have you seen this?” She pointed behind them at the television mounted on the wall. The text scrolling across the bottom of the screen was tiny; Minjung peered at it, and then stepped closer to read.
Mysterious Outbreak at Newark School, it read. The anchor was talking, her lips moving, but the sound was obscured by the noise of the grocery store.
“Where’s the remote?” Minjung said. “Turn it up, I want to hear.”
Holly scrambled for it, pressed a button, and the volume roared several decibels higher.
“Not that loud!” Minjung snatched the remote, and turned it back down. When she looked back at the screen, it showed a middle-aged balding reporter in an over-sized navy blue windbreaker, squinting his eyes against the misty rain as he talked into his mic.
“--standing here in front of Crestview Elementary,” he said, gesturing behind him at the school, “where the principal had a seizure and collapsed early this morning, and had to be rushed to the hospital. Those who interacted with him this morning said he seemed confused, and agitated, and that he kept complaining of a severe headache. Shortly afterward, a teacher fainted in front of her classroom, and began having seizures. Then two kids, in separate classrooms. Same symptoms: confusion, dizziness, headache, seizures. As a result, the superintendent has ordered all schools in the district to close for the day. Here with me is Superintendent Glass--”
Crestview Elementary. The name prodded at Minjung’s memory, and she pulled her phone out of her back pocket and googled the name of the school. She clicked on the school website, and then the page with the staff bios, fidgeting as she waited for it to load. When it did, her stomach sank with dread. There at the top of the page was the smiling face of Kibum’s boyfriend, his hair neatly combed to one side, his teeth bright and even. Jonghyun was right. He had a kind face.
She tapped the back button to look at the main search results. Two children dead from reported spider bite. She clicked the headline out of morbid curiosity. The picture loaded first: two twin boys, with brown hair and brown eyes, and tanned skin. Miguel and Rubén, eight years old. They were smiling, wearing matching Crestview Elementary school uniforms.
She skimmed the article. The children had been found dead in the hallway outside their shared bedroom this morning, when their mother exited her bedroom to go make breakfast. Their little bodies were sprawled over the Legos they had neglected to clean up the day before, and their arms and legs were swollen purple and oozing. Necrosis, the article said, likely brought on by the venom of a brown recluse. The story continued for a few paragraphs before it was interrupted by an embedded YouTube video.
“I don’t understand how this happened,” the twins’ mother said, her voice trembling as she looked down and away from the camera. She clenched her hands in her lap as she sat on her faded floral sofa, next to her silent husband. “They were fine last night, just a little tired and headachey, but I just assumed that was the weather. I didn’t know a spider bite could even do that.”
She closed her eyes. “I heard them, last night, in the hall, crying,” she said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “They wanted me to let them in. They said they were having a nightmare. And--and see, I’m a nurse, I do shift work at the hospital, and I hadn’t had a good night of sleep in almost a week. And I thought, they have each other. They’ll be fine. Nightmares pass. So I pretended I was asleep, and they eventually stopped crying. I thought they’d given up and gone back to bed.” She darted a glance at her husband, who was staring straight ahead, his face expressionless. “I keep asking myself what would have happened, if I had just opened the door, if we could have still done something to save them.” She swallowed, bobbing her head back and forth. “I’ll never forgive myself.”
The video kept playing, but Minjung hit the back button rapidly, and closed out the browser window on her phone with a shudder.
She returned to her pill counting, but she couldn’t focus, and she found herself counting and recounting the same thirty pills over and over. She forced herself to finish and cap off one more bottle, and then she sat down on the nearby stool and idly flicked a cluster of gleaming white tablets from end to end of the counting tray. It made her look and sound busy, to anyone who wasn’t watching closely. And Holly would never watch closely.
The grotesque deaths of the twins played ceaselessly on an imagined reel in her brain for the last half hour of her shift, interspersed with the memories of Kibum’s feet going rotten in the space of a couple hours. She felt sick, and a little cold; she needed to get home, to hold Jonghyun and feel his warmth in her arms.
He met her at the door when she returned. Her distress must have been written across her face, for he took one look, and asked, “What’s wrong?”
She had wanted to tell him everything immediately, to exorcise her worst fears by naming them, to hear that everything was going to be fine, that it was just her anxiety overreacting again. But as he stood there in the sun-splashed entryway of their own home, barefoot, wearing nothing but a large green T-shirt that came down to just above his knees, everything she would have said died on her lips. He yawned; he had just been napping, perhaps. She was achingly aware in that moment of just how vulnerable he was, and how helpless she was to protect him from everything in the world that would try to harm him.
But she could protect him from her own anxieties, and she could delay the news about Jinki for a while, to extend this moment of relative peace and safety. To give him room to breathe.
“Just a stressful day at work,” she said. “And I missed you.”
He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, tucking his head under her chin, and she let him hold her, the tender security of his hug helping her to breathe a little easier. He rubbed her back. “Babe,” he said
“Mmmm,” she replied, still soaking up the warmth of his arms around her.
She felt him take a deep breath. “Did you see everything in Newark? With Jinki’s school?”
Belatedly, Minjung heard the muted murmur of the television on behind him in the living room. Her stomach sank. “Yeah.”
“It’s fucked up.”
“Yeah.”
His arms tightened around her waist. “It all matches up with Kibum’s symptoms. The dizziness, the seizures, everything. And then those two kids. I can’t believe that was a spider bite. What spider could cause that level of damage in such a short time?” He swallowed. “I think it’s connected.”
“It could be a coincidence,” she suggested, with no conviction in her voice.
“You don’t believe that,” he returned.
“No,” she admitted.
Neither of them had much of an appetite that night, and they split a can of soup instead of attempting a more full-fledged dinner. Afterwards, they tried to pick something on Netflix, but nothing seemed appealing -- the comedies and romcoms too crude or saccharine, the darker stories too maudlin, or too close to home.
“I’m gonna just go to bed,” Jonghyun said, on their third scroll through Netflix’s paltry offerings.
Minjung sighed. “I think I’ll join you.”
They crawled into bed together, and Jonghyun wriggled over to nuzzle against her. Then he stilled.
“I can’t stop thinking about those twins who died,” he said. “How scared they must have been, as they watched their own bodies rot in just a few hours.”
“Don’t think about it,” she whispered fiercely.
“Do you think they understood what was going on?” he said. “Or did they think it was just another nightmare, and that if they screamed loudly enough, their parents would come and wake them up, and it would be over?”
“Jonghyun, stop,” she said, her voice shaking.
He traced the hollow between her collarbones. “I hope they weren’t conscious near the end.”
“Stop thinking about it.”
He looked at her. “I can’t.”
“I--I wanted to talk to you about something,” Minjung said, before he could continue on his morbid train of thought. “That vacation we’ve been saying we’re going to take for years. Let’s take it. Let’s pick somewhere and go. Northwest. Anywhere. Just somewhere away from here.”
He scoffed. “With what money?”
“I’ve saved up enough that we could buy two round trip plane tickets and rent a car, with some left over for hotel stays, if we’re not too picky about where we stay.”
“Babe, that’s the car money,” he said.
“I can go back to saving as soon as we return,” she said. “I’ll take on extra hours or something.” She stroked his hair back from his face. “This is more important than a car. Everything’s gone bad, and we need a break. We’ll get away, out of reach of everything. We’ll turn off our phones, we won’t get online, we’ll cut ourselves off from everything in the outside world if we have to. Just the two of us, together.”
“That would be nice,” he admitted. “I could use a week away from this hot dusty hellhole.”
“Let’s do it then,” she urged. “We can go week after next. I’ll take sick leave, or something. The airlines will be dropping prices if things get worse in Newark, because they know people are scared, but they still need to fill their planes. It’s the perfect time to book tickets.”
Jonghyun hesitated. “All right,” he said at last. “Let’s do it.” He took a deep breath. “I want to see the ocean again.”
---
The announcement of Jinki’s death the next morning was discreet, just a simple obituary listing forwarded by email, with a professional headshot, and a brief description of his life and career. Nothing about his death, or his final hours.
But the rest of the dead did not go so quietly. One teacher at Crestview allegedly got up from her deathbed at the hospital, after she had been pronounced dead, and pushed her startled family members aside, making it halfway down the hall before she was caught by two orderlies. An anonymous source identifying themself only as a nurse said they witnessed her struggling in the orderlies’ grasp, snarling and clawing at them, before she suddenly stopped, her entire body sagging heavily, and did not move again.
An old Italian widow who lived two blocks from the school ran out of her house, and into oncoming traffic, where she was flattened immediately by a large pickup truck. Her remains were a gruesome mess along the road, the liquified rot spreading across her old housedress.
“She came out of nowhere,” the driver insisted. “There was no time to stop.”
At first, Minjung hoped that the deaths might be contained to Newark, that the infection might peter out before it could escape the city. But that night, a middle-aged CEO of a mid-sized Newark rental car company was found dead in his hotel room in Minneapolis. A fellow guest called the front desk complaining that someone was screaming in the room next door, and that there was a repeated thumping noise against the wall. But when hotel staff investigated, they found no sign of a screamer. Just the man’s body, right inside the door.
“The cause and time of death is unknown,” an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune read. “He was found in an advanced state of decay, which would suggest that he had been dead for some time, except for the fact that the hotel had surveillance camera footage of him walking through the lobby just two days before he was found.”
“Texts that he exchanged with his business partner just hours after he checked in suggest that he was in a state of confusion, even paranoia,” the article continued. “According to the texts his partner shared with the Star Tribune, he had no memory of why he had come to Minneapolis, and he was convinced that someone, or something, was after him, and wanted him dead.”
The video of the body in the Sunset Vale Mortuary resurfaced, along with the theory that it must be zombies. The rotting flesh of the victims made the story almost too easy, and the internet soon ran wild with lurid accounts of the supposed undead: the way their flesh looked and smelled like something that had died days ago, the way their last fear-crazed screams gave way to hungry groans.
Biological warfare, others suggested. Population control. A secret government experiment.
The cause of death was most likely sepsis induced by gangrene, health officials countered, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the rumors of the undead. It was too early to confirm, a source at the CDC said, but the symptoms pointed to a highly contagious form of meningococcal disease, manifesting in both meningoencephalitis and septicemia, an infection of the blood. But existing meningococcal vaccines seemed to have no impact; all of the victims of the outbreak at Crestview had been vaccinated, and, when analyzed, the bacteria responsible appeared to be a new strain. The disease was dubbed necrococcal disease, named for the widespread aggressive gangrene that was its most visible trademark. Antibiotics seemed powerless against it, but that did not stop official health bulletins from recommending a strong antibiotics prescription for everyone who began exhibiting symptoms.
If you feel sick, don’t go to work, don’t go to school, the bulletins urged. Go to your urgent care for a prescription or check in at your local emergency room. Wash your hands after going anywhere. Wash your hands before touching your eyes, your mouth, your nose, your food. Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands.
But such advice began to seem almost laughably futile, as the death toll rose steeply in the next few days, spreading out across Newark and crossing the Hudson River into New York City. The governors of New Jersey and New York ordered statewide quarantines, banning all travel in and out, and grounding all planes. But a combined population of almost thirty million was not so easily contained, and the state borders leaked like sieves, as every fleeing resident told themself that if they could just get away--up north, out west, somewhere with fewer people--they would be safe.
“I might be infected, but I don’t care. I’m leaving,” an anonymous writer wrote in an essay on Medium. “My family is probably dead by now, at home. I didn’t wait long enough to find out.”
She’d driven her husband and daughter to every hospital within a fifty-mile radius of her home, only be turned away every time because the hospitals were at full capacity.
“Some of you will condemn me as a wife and mother,” she wrote. “But put yourself in my shoes. They were dying. I couldn’t save them. Was I supposed to just sit by and watch as they turned into gruesome nightmares before they died? They would want me to live, so I’m taking whatever chance I’ve got, and I’m going.”
Her only regret, she concluded, was that she hadn’t been able to end it for them herself, to give them something to speed their passing.
Officials were finally forced to confront the zombie rumors when the Daily Mail published a story with embedded video footage allegedly showing a nurse in a Newark hospital being tackled by several infected patients in an overcrowded room. They backed her up against the wall, and she lost her balance, and went down. The infected swarmed over her body, blocking it entirely from view, as she screamed, and the video cut abruptly, switching to a self-taken video shot in a small apartment kitchen.
The person who took the video identified themself as a member of hospital staff. “I was just coming in to take out the trash, clean up a little, stuff like that,” they said. “They had like ten people crammed into a two-person room, and about half of them looked like they had already died, and a couple of them had that stiff neck thing happening, you know?” They demonstrated, craning their own neck backwards. “I went into the bathroom to clean it, and change out the trash bag. I closed the door behind me, because the fan always comes on with the light, and it’s pretty loud. So I couldn’t really hear anything as I was cleaning. But then I came out, and I saw that half the beds were empty. And I thought, ‘Wow, that was fast!’ because we’re so understaffed now that sometimes it takes a little while to clear out the dead bodies. But then I saw them: all five of them, just standing there, facing the nurse, staring at her.” They paused, and shuddered a little. “I don’t know what made me decide to stand there and record it. I should have gotten someone. But she went down so fast. There was almost no time.”
“I didn’t believe all that zombie bullshit when I first heard it,” they concluded. “But now--I don’t know. They all looked dead to me. And then, a few minutes later, they’re out of their beds attacking somebody. I don’t know what to think.”
The director of the CDC put out a new press release addressing the zombie rumors. “In some patients,” he wrote, “inflammation in the brain may trigger a temporary spike in adrenaline right before death, sometimes preceded by a short comatose period that mimics death, giving the appearance of someone rising from the dead. But it could more accurately be considered their final death throes.” The rumor that the near-dead craved the brains or flesh of others, he said, was just that: a rumor.
Return to Part Three
Part Five