Dead On Arrival ( supposedly thriller )

TWO

How do you feel when your dead? Surely not the same as before. Surely his head shouldn't be hurting if he was dead? I don't want to be dead, Alistair thought Am i dead?

It was hard to tell - he hadn't been dead before, so how would he know?

If he didn't fill in his name on the computer, perhaps he wouldn't be dead. Perhaps someone else would be dead, or perhaps no one would be. What if he filled in someone else's name? Would they be dead?

He looked around the room. No wonder it didn't look like a hospital ward. The other people in the room where dead: the old lady wasn't moving, a shape under a sheet. It was a morgue - he  was in a morgue. That wasn't good for someone who didn't want to be dead.

He had seen on CSI what happens to dead people in a morgue - how scientists make a y-shaped cut from the person's shoulders to their groin and take the insides out.

His palms went sweaty with panic. He had to get out of the morgue before someone came with big knives to cut him open.

Alistair's legs didn't want to move but he forced them to. He stumbled to the door, but something flapped about near his foot. He looked down. There was a label on his toe. He'd seen this on TV, too. They put a label on the toe of each dead person so they don't get the bodies mixed up.

He stooped to pull it off, but it was fixed with a plastic band like a cable tie. He had to hop on one foot and cut it off with scissors from the desk. He hid it in the bottom of the bin in case he got into trouble for being alive and taking it off.

He opened the door carefully, just enough to peek out. A hospital man in green scrubs was walking towards him. Alistair held the door still until the man had gone, then he looked in both directions.

To the left an arrow pointed to ‘Food Court‘. He'd been there once when Ben had had an operation. They'd gone to get some pizza because Ben didn't like hospital food.

Perhaps no-one would notice Alistair there. Perhaps no-one would know that he was supposed to be dead.

                                                             * * * * *

Ruby's stomach turned over and over. When Alistair hadn't turned up, Ben had texted him, but got no answer. He just thought Alistair had changed his mind, or forgotten.

"But he doesn't!" Ruby cried. "You know he doesn't change his mind or forget. Why didn't you call me?"

Even as she said it, she knew it was unfair to blame Ben. Ben stared past her at the wall.

"What should we do?" he asked "Shall we call the police?"

Ruby was about to say " Yes, call them" but then she was unsure. You can't just phone the police and tell them a vampire is missing!

She knew she wouldn't be able to get hold of their mum. She could call their vampire mentor, Florence? After they became vampires in Hungary, Ignace had assigned Florence to look after them both, as they got used to being a vampire. Maybe she should call Florence, Ruby thought. If Alistair didn't have any ProVamp capsules with him, then soon he would hunger for blood. But she couldn't tell Ben - they weren't allowed to tell people they where vampires.

"Um, no, not the police," she said. " Maybe he got mixed up. Perhaps he went to Jake's instead." It sounded lame and she knew it.

"Let me know, right?" Ben said, as he let her out.

Ruby hugged her arms around herself in the cold. At the end if the road she stopped. The police tape. She'd thought nothing if it on the way to Ben's house, but now it was scary.

She asked an officer taking photos what had happened.

"Hit and run," he said.

"Who?"

"Some kid." He sounded annoyed, as though he didn't like people asking about accidents.

Ruby's heart lurched.

"My brother - he's missing," she said. "What did the kid look like?"

The officer suddenly took an interest.

"I don't know, i didn't see him. They took him to the hospital. You should go there."

Ruby would have to go home, get money, wait for a bus. It was impossible that something so important, so urgent, should have to be done in the same way as everything else - as slowly as if she wanted to go shopping.

"Can't you take me?"

"No, i have work to do here. Don't you have parents?"

Not what you'd really call parents, Ruby thought.

"Yeah, I'll get a lift."

She went home to get bus money.