Living Dead (iZombie: Livwell)

Part 3

I knew I could easily defend myself from any real threat, but that didn't stop my palms from getting sweaty as I walked into the graveyard. I crossed my arms to keep myself from trembling.

I glanced at the grave stones as I walked past, seeing which ones were most recent. I tried to reduce the names and dates to emotionless statistics, just like I did when I watched videos of surgery online. Sometimes when you think of something in a scientific way, with as little emotion as possible, it just makes it easier to stomach.

I finally found a fresh grave. It was dated two days ago, which still wasn't ideal, but I doubted I was going to find anything fresher. I glanced around before kneeling next to the gravestone. I removed my backpack and unzipped it. The shovel I'd found in the garage was bright red and plastic and I hoped it wouldn't break. I didn't want to have to get my hands any dirtier than I needed to. That thought made me shiver.

I began digging. I don't need to eat this brain right now, I reassured myself. I just have to check if this is a viable source of brains.

There was a rustling in the bushes across the path and I froze. There was very little light, but movement could still be detected and I stayed absolutely still. This thrill of hoping not to be discovered triggered a memory. One which was not my own.

A racing heart. The demands of a police officer to "show yourself". The can of spray paint clutched desperately between sweaty fingers.

I blinked as I emerged from the vision and a familiar anger at Blaine hurtled through my veins. It took every ounce of self-control in my body to stay still until I was sure I was alone once again.
I knew where Blaine got most of his 'supplies', but every time I got a vision of a kid doing a flip on a skateboard or felt the urge to smoke a cigarette, I got angry at him all over again. Who was he to decide who was unimportant enough to be served for lunch?

Of course, he didn't only take people off the streets and slaughter them. When clients had specific requests - and offered specific amounts of money - Blaine would arrange to get them any kind of brain they wanted.

That was why he had his eye on Lowell and his friends. A client who had been into extreme sports when he or she had been younger wanted to relive the feelings of his or her youth. Which I thought was selfish. But then again, who was I to judge? I'd never been a bored, rich adrenaline junkie who doesn't have any respect for human life.

When I was satisfied that I was alone once again, I continued digging. This was turning out to be a lot more work than I'd expected and I began to doubt how sensible I'd been in venturing here in the middle of the night.

But luckily I was stubborn and continued with that tiny shovel until I hit something hard. I scraped away the dirt and found my flashlight. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the coffin was made of wood and dug in my backpack for a lighter.

When the fire caught, I couldn't have been happier that it hadn't rained very hard in the past few weeks. The smoke smelled earthy and I was glad that few people lived nearby.

The fire ate its way through the wood painfully slowly and I felt myself growing impatient. I started poking it with a stick, scooping bits of ash and charcoal out of the widening hole in the coffin. I was trying to dislodge a particularly stubborn ember when a sudden rustling right behind me made me jump, flinging the ember straight towards me. It hit me on the jaw and I yelped as it seared my skin.

I turned to see a cat scurrying away behind the next gravestone and tried to call my nerves, but it was too late. The pain on my jaw was sparking a greater pain inside me, a ferocious hunger that infiltrated every inch of my being.

Powerless to stop the beast taking over my body, I found myself scrabbling at the coffin, ripping it to splinters. The head of the inhabitant of the coffin came next and I whacked the skull against the torn edge of the wood. The sound of bones cracking was music to my ears and I popped open the rest of the skull like an eggshell, ready to devour what lay inside.

But it was empty. The skull had been cleaned out. A primitive fury drew a growl from my lungs. I stared at the mangled mess in my hands, breathing heavily as I felt the aggression draining from my veins. The moment I was back to normal, I threw the remains of the person's head back into the hole in the coffin and scrambled backwards until my back hit another gravestone. I collapsed against it, just staring at the mess I'd created.

I struggled to keep my dinner down as I reflected on what I'd just done. It wasn't the blood - I wanted to be a surgeon and blood couldn't be an issue for me - but rather the barbaric nature of what I had just done that made my stomach churn. The last time I'd gone into full-on zombie mode was when I woke up in a body bag on the beach, starving. Even then, Blaine had been there to feed me before I could kill anyone.

I managed to keep from up-chucking as I shoved everything back into the ground. By the time I was finished, I was filthy with mud and splatters of blood and exhausted, both physically and emotionally.

All the while, a terrifying choice loomed over me. Do I do what Blaine wants and be responsible for the deaths of five kids (and many more to come), or do I save them and spend the rest of my life in search of my next meal, on the brink of madness?

Either way, I'd be a murderer.