Wouter van Noort > Recent Status Updates

But it would just be me, all alone. I am responsible for no one but myself now. Which means I have very little left to live for.

I can't go anywhere. Rabids wander outside. People are hunting us down. Death is around every corner, as always.

"Tomorrow." I succumb, feeling a little like him not so long ago.
"Tomorrow, we'll leave."

I open my eyes and look up. But it's not him standing above me, painted in death. She pants, chest heaving. "What the fuck?"

The smile I didn't even realize I was wearing drops.
He went scavenging. Without me. I was lying here, half dead, and he was out there, risking death.

She shoves me back against the car, and pins my arm down so that when my hand splays out on the roof, she has an easier time slamming the hatchet down on my fingers.

The single bloody handprint on the back window reminds me that miracles these days are just the remains of other people's nightmares.

"Do you think underneath everything, they can understand us? Like, do they know who and what we are? Or who and what they once were?"

She could've killed me. I could've killed her.
One slip, and I woulďve killed her.

"We should talk about what we're going to do once we're on the road. It'll be risky." she says. "Everything is risky. Including staying here."

I never thought the disease they'd give cartoon animals via frothy mouths and wild eyes would become this. Maybe that was just my naivete. I never thought I'd be mutated into something so dangerous either.

I should get up. I should end this. If not now, by me, who knows when or how. And if I die in the process, at least I tried to save someone.

He paused, and smiled a little, "In fact, Dr. Scarpetta, you have not been as alone at some points as you might have thought."

The radio suddenly interrupted us with the loud blare of an alert tone, and then we were given answers that were even worse than any we might have feared.

He got out and subtly unsnapped his holster while I looked on in disbelief. I slipped out my pistol and dropped it in a pocket of my coat. "Keep your hands where I can see them at all times," he ordered the driver in a loud, authoritative voice.

This was not the first time I had autopsied people I knew, and most police and even the other doctors did not always understand. But he had worked for me, and in a way had died for me. I would give him the best that I had.

I tell you, there's too much meanness. Too damn much! I'm sick of it. You understand me? People just kill like it's nothing.

Come on. We got a crime scene to work here.
I hope that's all right with you.

Bright yellow crime scene tape stretched from post to post in a morbid parody of Christmas wrapping, its bold black letters warning the curious not to come.

I think we're talking about someone who had a mission. And when he got scared off, he came back, or somebody else did.

Lucy made salad, and for a while we worked in silence. When she finally spoke, she was not happy. "You've really gotten into something, Aunt Kay. Why does this always happen to you?"

I turned on the saw, and the room was filled with the high whine of blade cutting bone.

I was not sure which way to move, and tried going several feet to my left, where something brushed against me. I turned and met the dead man face to face.

"According to the Code of Virginia, the body is my jurisdiction, not yours or any other police, fire, rescue or funeral person's. Nobody touches the body until I say so."

What would I do for love? She was right about me.
Brave. I would do anything.

She is what she is. Solid. Kind. Crazy hot. And I swear to god, she smiles at me longer than she smiles at anyone else. Her eyes do that thing to me.

Her sweet eyes, the ghost of the hug she left on me. I beam block after block. I would break into a skip if the streets weren't so busy. Instead, I walk with the lightest body I've had in a long time, maybe since I was a child.