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Aside from the top-notch medical care, quarantine felt an awful like jail. Alone in his plastic prison, Tommy was starting to get stir crazy. He huddled on the bed, his hands between his thighs. The opaque plastic walls hardly kept out the heat. He couldn’t be certain, but Tommy guessed they had him in a hangar. He didn’t know why they had to keep it so cold, though. Surely, the natural temperature should be somewhere closer to the balmy air of Cape Madre.
Occasionally, he’d receive a visit from a nurse or a doctor or a pathologist, all transplants from Atlanta. He didn’t understand all the lingo, but the word “parasite” was thrown around a time or two. The CDC took the threat of his affliction very seriously, but Tommy knew that they’d cured it. He could feel it. The longing. The frustration. It had all started to abate after the latest rounds of experimental drugs they’d pumped through his veins. The only things left were the overwhelming feelings of shame. At failing in his duty. At betraying Miriam when she needed him the most.
The nurses generally didn’t like to talk, but Tommy managed to learn that Miriam, Macy, and Stacy had all been released within twenty-four hours of their captivity. Tests showed no signs of the parasite in their brains or elsewhere. He could only assume that Tanner, Bark, and Newt sat freezing in their own plastic hovels somewhere nearby, but not close enough that they ever answered the random questions he’d flung into the open space of his cell.
Rustling plastic alerted him to an impending nurse. The first doctor that attended to him had been a man, but after that, he’d only seen women.
“Good news, Detective Wallace,” the stern looking nurse said as she appeared through makeshift flaps that acted as a door. “Looks like you’re all clean. You can go.”
Finally! Tommy stood from the bed, his cheap hospital gown scraping the rough sheets. He waited by the door while she unlocked it and fought back the urge to hug her when he finally stepped into the hallway. He didn’t even know her name. They didn’t wear name tags, and the nurses switched out every day. Still, he longed for human touch.
She led him along the hallway, through the chamber and into another enclosed room where a chubby cop stood holding a suit in one hand and a gun in another.
“Grabowski!” Tommy exclaimed. “Listen. I—”
“No need to apologize, sir.” Grabowski pushed the suit out in front of him. “They told us that you weren’t quite yourself.”
Tommy left the hanger in Grabowski’s hand, slipped off the pants, and shimmied them on under his hospital gown. “So, what’s going on out there?”
“Release day,” the young officer answered, helping Tommy to slip the shirt off. “Chief sent down a couple of squad cars to escort Bark and Newt back to jail. Asked me to tag along and bring you some clothes. And your gun.”
Tommy chuckled. “She that eager to get me back on the job?”
Grabowski laughed. “I think she wants to shove you into a bunch of press conferences, honestly.”
“Great. Sounds horrible.”
When he slipped the jacket over his shoulders, Tommy felt like himself for the first time in days. He took the gun, slipped it into the holster along his side, and clapped Grabowski on the shoulder. “Thanks, Grabowski.”
“No problem, detective. Just remember me when I apply for detective next year.”
“You got it,” he said, as the nurse motioned towards another slit in the plastic.
“Oh, Detective.” Grabowski jogged to catch up beside him as the nurse opened the way. “You might want to prepare yourself.”
The warning came too late. Tommy’s eyes were already fixated on the bulk of the hangar floor taken up by a huge, dead monster. Its tentacles stretched out in eight different directions, each one pulled to its max. Evidence markers constellated the area around it, indicating bullet holes and abrasions.
Its sheer size overwhelmed his senses, but he didn’t feel the same anguish for it that he had the day Miriam shot out its brain. Now it just looked like a comically over-sized octopus. Something he wouldn’t want to contend with in the depths of the ocean, but no scarier than a whale or a shark.
Portable air conditioners lined the walls, pumping cold air into the hangar and keeping the humidity of Cape Madre at bay. That explained the incessant freezing of the past few days.
“Welcome back!” said a voice behind him.
Tommy spun to see Jess Gearhart. It felt like ages had passed since the two of them studied the severed leg down at the lab.
“What are you doing here?” Tommy asked.
“I’m the ME,” he shrugged. “This is a dead thing.”
Dead, maybe. But hardly human.
“It’s just an octopus, man,” Gearhart continued. “I mean, a new one. There are taxological differences from the little ones we already knew about, obviously. But it’s not some inexplicable monster, really.”
“Well, it carries a terrifying parasite,” Tommy corrected, wondering how Gearhart could be so flippant in the presence of this thing.
“Oh yeah, that,” Gearhart nodded. “Yeah. That’s pretty special. The CDC are keeping that one a lot closer to the vest. Glad they found a cure, though. At least they think they did. You’ve got a lot of doctor’s appointments ahead of you, Detective.”
Tommy looked around the hangar, watching the dozens of people tending to the creature, busying themselves with clipboards and cameras. Tommy hardly recognized any of them. Spring Break was over by now, but it looked as if the circus would continue in Cape Madre.
“What about Miriam Brooks?” Tommy asked.
“Probably around here somewhere,” Gearhart replied. “She was pretty adamant that they let her poke around. Sometimes, I think she’s the one running the operation.”
Tommy’s stomach grumbled. He craved something unhealthier than the meals they’d been serving him in quarantine. Without Miriam in sight, he decided to look her up later, get out of the cold, and get back to his life. He pointed towards a small metal door, dwarfed next to the hangar doors.
“That my way out?” he asked.
“Yep,” Grabowski said, jumping back into the conversation. “Easy to get out. Hard to get back in.”
Tommy nodded, murmured his goodbyes to Gearhart, and crossed the expanse of the hangar floor with Grabowski in tow. He just wanted out, grateful for barely any inclination to gawk at the wonder of nature sprawled out beside him.
The sun hit his face as soon as he banged the bar on the exit door. Soaking in the warmth, he passed a line of guards, walked around a bank of metal detectors and out onto the tarmac of the quaint Cape Madre airport.
“I can give you a ride,” Grabowski offered. “Your old Crown Vic is down at the station.”
Tommy didn’t hear the offer. His eyes were fixed on the long form of the woman leaning against her car just a few feet away. A smile graced her face, as it often did, but Tommy knew that this one was genuine. The first he’d seen in a long while.
“I’ll take him,” Stacy said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Grabowski replied, quick to shuffle away to his squad car.
“So, you’re back!” Stacy crossed the distance between them with her long legs, threw her thin arms around his neck, and pulled Tommy in for a hug. Not that different from the same hug he got every week when he left her house, but this one felt more important. More urgent. Less sad.
“So I am,” Tommy said, releasing the hug and standing before her.
She looked him up and down, as if to take the measure of him. “You look the same. Thought maybe you’d be all heroic now.”
Tommy didn’t have the heart to tell her about what had happened after the ambulance whisked her away. Though he suspected that she already knew. He felt like he deserved some kind of blame — from her especially. For not taking Joe’s condition more seriously. For not being able to fight against the parasite influencing his brain. For giving into his fears and not jumping into the water to save her when it mattered most. Yet Stacy stood before him, seemingly comfortable and, possibly, even happy.
“Thanks for saving me,” she said quietly. “I thought Bark was going to kill me.”
“Yeah. Me too,” Tommy said. “I thought he was gonna kill us all.”
Stacy looked into his eyes, regarding him for a minute, and making him uncomfortable with her intensity. “When he threw me off that boat. And I didn’t know you were there. I thought I was gonna die. I thought I was going to drown just like Joe.”
Tommy didn’t know what to say, so he just stood there like an idiot, wanting to comfort her somehow. Her eyes finally tore away and scanned the pavement.
She continued, “I wanted to die. For months. Every day without Joe was a day that didn’t feel like it was worth living. But alone in the water, something snapped, Tommy. I don’t want to die. I want to start living again.”
He didn’t know how to take the confession or what it meant, but it felt significant. Shifting uncomfortably, he nodded and opened up his arms. She sank back into his hug again and he held her, not out of pity or guilt anymore. A forbidden topic crawled its way up from the purgatory he had pushed it to. He swallowed hard, unsure of what to do.
She broke away and eased the tension with a sharp laugh, “So yeah. Uh. Thanks for all the thrilling heroics and for saving the town from two monsters.”
“Miriam Brooks had a little to do with it,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess maybe she did a few things,” Stacy said. “I don’t know much about it, but they say maybe Bark isn’t culpable for his actions?”
“I suppose that’s for a jury to decide, but I can attest that whatever that parasite is, it does a number on your brain.”
Stacy cocked her head towards the car. “Wanna grab some lunch? My treat.”
Tommy’s stomach grumbled again at the mere thought of food, goading him into practically sprinting towards Stacy’s car. She followed behind, easily catching up and laughing that timeless laugh that Tommy thought she’d buried with Joe. Maybe something would happen between them. Maybe they could come to terms with what that would mean. But Tommy decided that they’d have to figure it out another day.
She slid into the car and laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes. Calamari?”
Tommy winced. “Too soon, Stacy. Too soon.”
