Debbie strode through the door, her long dark hair flowing over her shoulders. Alex's heart leaped to see her.
Debbie stopped short of Alex, and her eyes swept around the room. She clocked Christopher, Louis, and Yvonne, and even Ethan's corpse, but her eyes returned to Alex. She smiled, and warmth spread across his chest.
"Did I miss the party?" she asked in her melodious voice.
"Party?" Alex asked dumbly, then he realized what she was asking. "Oh! Party, right. Gotcha. Um, you did, but we survived. Barely."
Debbie looked over at the supersoldier, her brow creased with concern.
"Oh," she pouted, "you didn't need me?"
"Actually," Alex replied, "it's probably better that you weren't here."
Louis and Christopher exchanged a look, then turned to Alex.
"Uh, Alex?" Christopher asked. "Are you going to tell us why you let a strange lady in the house?"
Both men were eyeing Debbie with suspicion. Even the way she walked around a corpse drew Alex's eye, and he had to pull his focus back to Christopher.
"Sorry guys," Alex said quickly. "This Debbie. My girlfriend."
There came a loud, hollow clang as something large hit the floor. Yvonne had released the fire extinguisher from her grip, and was unsteady on her feet. Her hands were trembling, and she seemed about to topple over. Louis came to the rescue, and caught her just as she was about to fall. He guided her over to the sofa, where she sat with her head inclined.
"Yvonne, do you feel okay?" Alex asked, kneeling. "Do you need anything? An icepack? Do you need to lie down?"
Yvonne shook her head, but her gaze was still unfocused. Worry gnawed at the pit of his stomach. A glazed-over stare was one of the first signs of concussion. She had hit her head pretty hard.
"I'm fine," she said weakly, "I hit my head. It hurts."
"Get an icepack," Debbie said. "Now!"
Louis and Christopher scrambled to get an ice pack, and Debbie came to Alex's side. Christopher handed her a bag of frozen peas, and Debbie sat on the sofa, pressing the bag to the back of Yvonne's head. Yvonne jerked away, narrowing her eyes at Debbie.
After a moment, Yvonne grabbed the peas and pressed them against her head, grimacing at the pain.
"You're going to be okay," Debbie told Yvonne. "I'm sorry I wasn't here to help."
"I need a minute." Yvonne turned her head away sharply, then her eyes bulged and she let out a sharp gasp of pain. "No. Ow, god. Louis, Christopher? Can someone help me up to my room? My neck hurts."
The two men rushed over and helped Yvonne to her feet, and together they stumbled up the stairs, leaving Alex and Debbie alone.
Debbie smiled at Alex, and patted the spot next to her. "Plenty of room," she said.
Alex sat beside her, and allowed himself to get lost in her eyes. She was so beautiful that he wanted to spend the rest of the evening just gazing dreamily at her. A part of him was on the alert, aware that the door to the house had been broken open, and worried that more supersoldiers might be on their way.
But for now, there was only him and Debbie. The rest of the world could wait.
*
Upstairs, Yvonne flopped into bed, the pain in her neck radiating throughout her body. On the back of her head, where Christopher pressed the bag of frozen peas, she could feel the sharp pain pulsing in time with her heartbeat. She curled up into a tight ball and faced away from Louis and Christopher, hoping they would leave her alone.
She was beginning to get a sickly feeling in her stomach. One of the benefits of reading countless medical and pharmaceutical books was you learned just about every symptom of any ailment you could want to know.
Something was seriously wrong, and it wasn't just the disappearances. Yvonne suspected that something was amiss. It was like a thousand-piece puzzle with a handful of the middle pieces missing. Without those pieces, she couldn't see the whole picture. Having a concussion certainly didn't help.
She pushed herself onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. Louis's face loomed over her. He had found a small pocket flashlight and was shining it into her eyes.
"Pupils are responding normally," he said. "I don't think you have a concussion after all. Probably just some bruising on the back of your head."
"Tell me you're lying," she groaned. "Tell me I have a concussion so bad I need to spend the week in bed."
But Louis didn't respond. He and Christopher were already out the door. Yvonne wished that Alex was with her.
Yvonne was angry at Debbie for arriving so suddenly. She was angry that Debbie existed. She might even say that she was jealous, because Debbie had the one thing Yvonne found herself craving more than anything else in the world: Alex's love.
Gingerly, she turned onto her side and closed her eyes. Her neck was still sore, but the pillow alleviated some of the strain. She should have taken some aspirin before settling in for the night, just to dull the pain. Oh well, she would just have to deal with it for now. When she fell asleep, if she fell asleep, she wouldn't be aware of the pain anyway.
She thought of Alex, so strong and heroic as he fought off Ethan with nothing but a rolling pin. Holding back a laugh at the image, Yvonne curled up, thinking of how strong he looked. With the warmth that spread through her, also came the bite of reality. The dark figure in the doorway, with her perfect hair and pretty face. Debbie, who walked in on the heels of chaos and acted like it was normal.
It was too perfect. Yvonne furrowed her brow and rolled onto her back. She opened her weary eyes and stared up at the ceiling. A deep hole opened in her chest and a tear fell down her cheek. Whether or not Alex knew it, Debbie had to be up to something. Alex was too blinded by love to question the timeliness of her arrival. Yvonne knew that coincidences didn't just happen, and Debbie had stumbled in at almost exactly the right time. She had to be involved somehow.
A puzzle missing pieces. Debbie was one piece, her timing was another, and Ethan was yet a third piece. How did they all fit together?
Yvonne's mind whirred with questions that threatened to keep her up for the rest of the night. She closed her eyes, counted sheep, and all the age-old tricks. But she couldn't sleep, and it wasn't because of the pain in her neck. It was an entirely different sort of pain she was feeling.
It felt like hours before her thoughts finally cooled down enough to sleep. Her dreams were full of zombies, fire extinguishers, and a pain named Debbie.
*
Christopher looked at Louis, who had gone pale and was staring straight ahead, unblinking.
"That was absolutely the most insane night of my life," Louis whispered.
"Don't call it just yet," Christopher warned him. "If there's one, there are probably more."
Louis rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and looked at Christopher.
"I really don't want to think about that right now," he said. "I want a shower, and I want to forget that I saw Yvonne kill Ethan with a fire extinguisher."
"He kind of deserved it," Christopher said, shrugging. "Oh, don't look at me like that."
"What do you think of Debbie?" Louis asked suddenly.
The question surprised Christopher. He hadn't given the answer much thought, things had moved too quickly. Thinking on it now, as he kept his gaze fixed on the wall in front of him, he wondered about her. She had been so incredibly lucky to arrive after the attack, and not during it. Christopher couldn't imagine how Alex would have taken it if Ethan had killed her.
"If Alex trusts her," he said, "I guess I do, too. She can't be all bad, can she?"
Louis nodded his head in agreement. "I suppose. Can you imagine walking into someone's house and just seeing a hulking dead body just sprawled out over the kitchen floor?"
Christopher shuddered.
"Where did he come from?" Louis asked.
"Somewhere I don't want to know about," Christopher said, snapping his head toward Louis.
"Don't you want to know what happened to make him that way?" Louis asked in a strained voice. "Haven't you been thinking about it all this time?"
Christopher shook his head, wanting the conversation to be over and done with.
"Maybe he just wanted to say hello," Christopher suggested. "You know, swing by, say hi, try to kill us. Usual psychopath friend etiquette."
Louis blinked slowly, then his gaze veered off to the side as he thought. Christopher thought that he could see the wheels of thought turning in his head.
"Maybe he went to the gym and got really jacked," Christopher suggested. "Maybe he joined an amateur football league!"
He offered a half-laugh, making it clear that he was joking, but Louis didn't quite catch it. Instead, he scratched his chin and seemed to give some serious weight to the thought.
"I'm not being serious," Christopher said sternly. "This-"
"Maybe," Louis interrupted, "just maybe, he got abducted by aliens. And they experimented with his genetics. And the result was what's left of him downstairs. Or he's part of a secret society, where they worship some kind of insanity demon, and this was like his hazing ritual. The formulation! Maybe they perfected it and he was the guinea pig!"
"I'm sure all of that happened," Christopher said. He leaned against the wall, feeling strangely energized. "I need something to drink."
He left Louis to his theorizing, silently thankful to be away from him. Christopher did not want to think about the things that could happen. Instead, he went downstairs. As he approached the bottom step, he heard something. Voices. It took him a second to recognize that they belonged to Alex and Debbie.
Luckily, they hadn't seen him. Or heard him, for that matter. His footfalls hadn't been that loud. He had thought that the two of them had gone to bed, and he didn't want to wake them up. Instead, it turned out that they were awake, and sitting on the sofa, chatting idly. Probably catching up about events in the city.
"I missed you," Alex was saying. "I've been thinking about you all day."
"You're so sweet," Debbie replied, placing a hand on Alex's shoulder. Christopher watched her give Alex a gentle peck on the cheek.
"It's so lovely out there," Alex told her with a wistful tone to his voice. "All the greenery and the foliage. I love going for a walk down the street in Baltimore, but being in the presence of so much nature is…" He paused for a moment, trying to think of the right word. "Enthralling!"
"Pretty big word," Debbie chided, playing with a lock of her hair. "Enthralling."
"You were out there," Alex pointed out, "you would have noticed."
"Yeah," she relented. "It is beautiful. You know, when I was on my way here, I saw a doe."
"Doe, a deer, a female deer," Alex sang. The two of them chuckled. Christopher gagged a little. This was more lovey-dovey nonsense than he could handle.
"Why did you come here?" Alex asked, with a strange, rehearsed quality. It sounded like he had asked it before. "I thought I was leaving you in a safe place. But you came. Why?"
Debbie pulled her legs up onto the sofa and hugged her knees. Christopher caught the hint of a smile, and the warm love in her eyes.
"I wanted to surprise my boyfriend," she said. "You work so much, and you worry so much, and you've been through so much. I wanted to remind you that there's still someone here who cares about you."
Of course, Alex's friends would care about him. They were his friends. But they didn't share the same level of intimacy he shared with Debbie. Debbie knew things about Alex, about how to help him relax when he was pushing himself too hard, that Christopher, Louis, and Yvonne didn't. A pit of guilt opened up in Christopher, and he started to question his integrity as a friend.
"I'd love to show you the woods properly," he heard Alex say. "There's so much to see and do. So much nature to be enthralled by."
Debbie chuckled. "I know a few spots I'd love to see already."
That excited Alex."yeah?"
"Yeah," Debbie responded.
From the creaking of the sofa, Christopher heard that he was changing her position. He looked at them again and saw that they were facing each other. Alex has a doe-eyed look on his face, and he was smiling broadly.
"There's this one spot," she said, gesturing with her hands as if she was trying to draw the path she was seeing in her head. "It looks a little treacherous, but I think we can find a nice path to it. An easy path. Anyway, it leads to a cliff."
A cliff? Christopher thought. Why on earth would anyone want to go to a cliff?
He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was beginning to think like Louis. All conspiracies and no logic to back them up.
"A cliff?" Alex sounded uncertain.
"Yeah!" Debbie said, excited. "I think you can see for miles around if you stand right at the edge."
Right at the edge. The words echoed in Christopher's mind. He leaned forward, trying his hardest to stay out of sight. He wasn't sure if either of them could see him. Then, he supposed that if they could see him, they probably would have said something.
Still, a cliff presented all kinds of hazards.
"Sounds kind of dangerous," Alex said, scratching the back of his head. "I'm not sure how I feel about going up to the literal edge of a cliff. What if I fall?"
Yeah, what if Alex falls? Christopher thought, panicked.
Or worse yet: what if Alex was pushed? That would be the end of their business venture. The end of everything they had worked for over the years. Riley would get what he wanted. Alex Ambrose would be nothing more than a rotting corpse at the bottom of the sea.
Christopher wasn't Louis. He wanted to trust Debbie. Debbie seemed like a nice person. Alex trusted her and that was the most important part of the equation. Christopher believed what she said: she was a girlfriend who had come here to surprise her boyfriend. That was all the confirmation Christopher trusted Debbie.
Debbie leaned in. "Don't worry. I'll be there."