CHAPTER 36: THE PARTY — Part 1
[Suburban Seattle, Moore Residence — Late May 2015, Saturday, 1:00 PM]
The backyard was perfect in the way that suburban Seattle backyards were perfect — manicured lawn, weathered cedar fence, a patio with string lights that someone had hung with more enthusiasm than precision. The grill was gas-powered and oversized, the kind a father bought when his children were young and maintained long past the point of necessity. A folding table near the back fence held the charcuterie spread Don E had designed at 5 AM, and the spread was drawing a crowd.
"This is insane," a woman in her twenties said, pointing at the bresaola. "Where did you guys get this?"
"Local place," Evan called from across the yard. "Meat Cute. Jackson Street. The owner's a friend."
The word friend carried a warmth that landed in a specific place — the place where guilt lived, the place where the knowledge of what I was and what I'd inherited existed in permanent tension with the genuine connection that Evan Moore extended without reservation. He'd known me for two weeks. He'd eaten samples and debated music with Don E and called the bresaola incredible and invited the butcher to cater his party with the uncomplicated generosity of a twenty-year-old who hadn't yet learned that trust was a resource to be managed rather than a gift to be given.
I worked the table. The chef's brain managed the presentation — rearranging boards, refilling the coppa tray, slicing bread with the Laguiole that Jackie had sharpened that morning. The security brain managed everything else: exits (three — back gate, side gate, front of house), hazards (grill, deck stairs, the utility shed with the unlocked door), and Evan's position (currently northwest quadrant, talking to a cluster of UW friends, beer in hand, arm gesturing the way it did when he was telling a story he enjoyed).
Don E handled the crowd. His retail instincts — the same instincts that had turned a former drug dealer into a competent shopkeeper — translated to event service with the ease of someone who understood that all customer-facing work was fundamentally the same: make people feel attended to without making them feel managed. He circulated with sample plates, fielded questions about the shop, and distributed business cards with the quiet efficiency of a man who'd discovered his vocation at thirty-two in a butcher shop run by a zombie.
Jackie stayed near the van. Her stated reason was managing the backup supplies. Her actual reason — visible in her posture, the way she'd positioned herself with sightlines to the backyard and the street — was the same as mine: watching.
At 1:47 PM, the back gate opened.
Liv Moore walked through it.
She wore a sundress and sunglasses and the specific expression of a woman arriving at a family event with the intention of enjoying herself despite the list of reasons not to. Ravi was behind her — khakis, button-down, the messenger bag replaced by a canvas tote that probably contained wine and definitely didn't contain a brick of tainted Utopium. Behind Ravi: a woman I recognized from the show but had never seen in person.
Peyton Charles. Liv's best friend and roommate. Assistant DA. The woman who would eventually date the body I inhabited, in a timeline that was rapidly becoming fictional.
Liv's eyes swept the backyard. The sweep was social — identifying friends, noting the layout, finding the drink station. Then the sweep hit the charcuterie table. Hit me. Stopped.
Twenty feet of suburban backyard separated us. String lights, guests with paper plates, the sound of someone's Bluetooth speaker playing indie folk. And across that distance, two zombies locked eyes — the investigator and the investigated, the woman with the murder vision and the man who wore the murderer's face.
Neither of us moved.
The moment lasted three seconds. Then Evan appeared at Liv's elbow with a beer and a hug that was too tight and too long in the way that brothers' hugs always were. "You made it! Try the coppa — it's from that place I was telling you about."
"The butcher shop." Liv's voice was level. Her eyes stayed on me for another half-second before the social machinery engaged and redirected her attention to her brother. "The one on Jackson Street."
"Meat Cute. Blaine's here — he did the catering."
"I can see that."
The afternoon compressed into a series of observations maintained in parallel. The security brain tracked Evan — northwest to northeast to southwest, circulating, drinking moderately, the injury window open but no triggers visible. The teacher's brain managed the social interactions — answering food questions, accepting compliments, the conversational maintenance that a catering role demanded. The lawyer's brain tracked Liv — her movements, her conversations, the moments when her attention returned to me and the moments when it was genuinely elsewhere.
Ravi found me at the drink station. He poured a glass of wine with the deliberate casualness of a man staging an accidental encounter.
"Interesting venue," he said.
"Evan invited us."
"Evan. Yes." Ravi glanced across the yard to where Liv was talking to Peyton. "You know he's her brother."
"I know."
"And you're here anyway."
"I'm catering a party. It's a business function."
"It's a business function at the home of the woman who's investigating you, where her brother is your customer, and I'm standing next to you pretending we met at the wine table." Ravi took a sip. "This is profoundly complicated."
"Welcome to my life."
"Your life is exhausting just to observe." He leaned closer. The wine-table lean, the posture of two men sharing an observation about the music selection. "The Utopium analysis is showing what you predicted. The contaminant is a modified prion — self-replicating, protein-folding cascade. I've isolated the active component. Synthesis is... within reach."
The words landed like a detonation that produced no sound. Within reach. Ravi had the Utopium for less than two weeks and the cure was within reach. The man's brilliance — the quality the show had depicted across five seasons, the scientific genius that had cracked zombie biology from a standing start — was operating at full capacity with the one reagent it had always needed.
"How long?"
"Days. Maybe a week. I need to run replication tests and—" He stopped. Peyton was approaching. "We'll discuss later."
He moved away. Peyton arrived with a plate of bruschetta.
"Your food is amazing," she said. Peyton Charles in person was exactly what the show had depicted — confident, warm, the specific charm of a woman who'd been beautiful long enough to use it as a tool rather than an identity. "Don E said you make everything in-house?"
"Everything except the bread. The bakery down the block handles that."
"I'm Peyton. Liv's roommate."
"Blaine. The butcher."
She laughed. The laugh was genuine — the kind that arrived before the decision to laugh, the involuntary response of someone who found something funny rather than someone performing enjoyment. "The butcher. That's very... direct."
"I find it saves time."
She took a bite of the bruschetta. The expression — the brief closing of eyes, the slight tilt of head — was the expression of someone experiencing good food for the first time in a while. "This is genuinely fantastic."
Behind her, Don E stood at the charcuterie table. He'd seen Peyton's reaction. The beam that crossed his face was the beam of a man who'd made something good and watched someone enjoy it, and the satisfaction was so uncomplicated and so pure that it registered as a point of light in an afternoon full of shadows.
An hour passed. The party found its rhythm — the specific cadence of a suburban afternoon gathering, where conversations overlapped and laughter came in waves and the light shifted from direct to angled as the sun tracked west. I refilled boards, sliced bread, maintained the table, and tracked Evan through every movement with the attention of a man watching a clock whose alarm was set to a time he didn't know.
At 3:15, Liv found me at the table. Alone. The crowd had shifted toward the patio, where someone was setting up a game of cornhole.
"You're catering my brother's party," she said.
"Small world."
"No." She picked up a slice of coppa. Studied it with the attention she gave evidence. "Small city."
Two feet. The distance between us measured in the space that a charcuterie table provided between the server and the guest. Her eyes — brown, the specific brown that zombies maintained in their human form, the brown that masked the red underneath — held mine with a directness that wasn't hostile. It was assessing. The same assessment she'd performed at Meat Cute during the first visit with Clive, but different now. Layered. Informed by phone calls and partial truths and a musician's verification and a dead teenager named Jerome.
"The food is good," she said.
"Thank you."
"Evan likes you."
"He's a good kid."
"He's my brother."
The sentence carried everything — the possession, the protectiveness, the warning. He's my brother meant: whatever you are, whatever you've done, if you touch him I will end you with every tool I have. The investigator and the sister, occupying the same two-word sentence.
"Liv!" Peyton's voice from the patio. "Cornhole. You and me versus Ravi and the birthday boy."
Liv held my gaze for one more second. Then she set the coppa down — uneaten — and walked toward the patio.
I exhaled. The breath came out longer than expected — the specific release of tension that the combat medic recognized as a controlled decompression, the body's way of acknowledging stress that the conscious mind hadn't permitted it to display.
The afternoon continued. The light shifted. Don E tallied the positive reviews. Jackie leaned against the van with her arms crossed and her eyes scanning. And at 4:40 PM, the front gate opened and two guys in their twenties carried a cardboard box that rattled with the specific sound of things designed to explode.
"Fireworks!" one of them shouted. "Who wants to see some fireworks?"
The box hit the ground. Mortar tubes, bottle rockets, Roman candles — the illegal kind, the kind that Washington state had banned and Idaho state sold at every gas station within ten miles of the border. The crowd responded with the enthusiasm that suburban party crowds always brought to controlled explosions: cheers, applause, the specific regression to childhood that fireworks produced in adults.
Evan's eyes lit up. The twenty-year-old's eyes, bright with the particular excitement of a young man who'd been handed permission to play with fire.
"I'll set them up!" he said. He was already moving toward the box, already reaching for the mortar tubes, already positioning himself in the front yard where the trajectory would clear the roof and the neighbors' trees.
My blood went cold. Not metaphor — actual temperature drop, the virus responding to the adrenaline dump with a physiological shift that chilled my extremities and sharpened everything else. The combat medic's pattern recognition fired: mortar tube, unstable base, amateur handler, crowd proximity.
The injury mechanism. Not a scratch. Not a hospital incident. Fireworks. The timeline had shifted the mechanism but preserved the outcome — Evan Moore, injured, blood needed, crisis arriving in the time it took a fuse to burn.
I was already moving toward the van.
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