Forget-Me-Not

This is all my fault.

The last thing I remember was falling face-first on the cold, wet grass. It was a rainy Wednesday in the middle of March. My partner and I, Eden, were running low on supplies. We needed food more than anything, but before I left, Eden requested any kind of flower I could find. Something about Eden I can never forget is her love for flowers. Even during the crazy times we are living in, she still finds love in the little things that are still alive. That's how I met her—2 years before the outbreak.

"Are these tulips?"

I heard her voice from across the counter. I was 19, working in my parents' coffee shop. Her voice was mellifluous; you could hear her genuine love for the flower through that one sentence.

"I'm not sure… My mom put them there…"

"She has good taste! Did you know that tulips mean deep love and new beginnings?" She said with the brightest smile.

"Do they? They look like just regular flowers to me."

"Are you kidding?! These aren't just any ordinary flowers!" This started a 2-hour-long conversation about her love and dedication to flowers.

Eden is a tall, red-haired girl with bright green eyes. She looks like a walking rose, which ironically is her favorite. She told me that day she was looking for any sign that her move to our little town in Temple, Maine, was worth it. She was an aspiring florist and knew this is what she was going to do. She just left her boyfriend; I think his name was Frank. From what she told me, her boyfriend and mom both wanted her to go into nursing. They saw her love for plants as a sign that she "wanted to help others" instead of seeing it as her passion. When she turned 18, she ran away from New York to start a new life here.

Eden is the best thing to ever happen to me. Meeting her completely changed my life. She would come in every day and get the same coffee order, an iced vanilla latte. Every day, I would make sure I had a different flower my mother had in her garden. She loved my mother dearly, and my mom loved her even more. We got married 4 years after, on the outskirts of Cape Cod. That day felt like a dream.

I was always a coward. I lived my days in fear, only having interaction with the customers we would get at the cafe. Eden's the complete opposite of me, a social butterfly with a big group of friends. Even when she moved here, she was able to make friends easily. I only had my parents and the kids who would come in and order coffee. People would make fun of me and call me a sheep, especially with how my parents are.

When I woke up, I felt… off. I felt thirsty but felt no fluid in my body. There was a gnawing, sharp pain that flowed through my spine all the way down to my feet. I could barely stand. The sky was slightly overcast, but I didn't smell any rain. Wasn't it just raining? I looked around; there weren't any puddles around me. Weird, there would be if it just stopped raining, right?

Eden. I need to get to Eden.

❀❀❀

"Stu, we may need to go and look for supplies..." She was right. 2 months after the first case of the outbreak, we were stuck in our home. Her garden was slowly starting to die. Eden would always go and water them every morning, but recently we have both been too scared to go outside. What if the outbreak were airborne? What if we got caught with… Whatever those things were? There was little information that was given to us before the internet went out. All we know is that it's not safe anywhere, because we don't know what towns are affected. The first case was in the southern part of the United States and slowly made its way up to us. We haven't had any kind of electricity in weeks. We survived off the leftover stuff my parents would give me from their gardens and cafe, but it wouldn't last forever.

"Hello? Earth to Stu?"

"Right… We barely have enough food to last us to Friday."

"That's my point. I can—" I cut her off.

"Don't even suggest going out in this. We can find another way…"

But what other way was there? One of us would have to go out and get supplies. We haven't heard from my family in days, and her family…

"I can go." Without even thinking, I suggested that I go outside for the first time in months.

I looked around at my surroundings. The backpack that I took with me was torn to shreds next to me. I looked down, and there was a pile of blood. I went to check the time on my watch and noticed the bite mark. Shit. Am I infected? Would I even know? What would that even feel like? Every thought crossed my mind. The little information we knew was that this outbreak attacked the brain, but no sources were able to identify how this started or how to catch it. I guess I had to learn the hard way; it was… biting? Was it the saliva? Or is this completely unrelated? From everything that's happened, it feels like I'm in a zombie movie. Wouldn't zombies be brain dead? If so, why can I still function and have these thoughts?

Before I left the house, Eden gave me a goodbye kiss and put a flower in my back pocket. She packed me a backpack full of the little supplies we had, plus a couple things we had that we didn't even realize we owned. My parents were always the type to be overcautious, always over-preparing for "The End," as they would say. I guess they were right, and we were very grateful for them in that moment. They hid a medical survival kit in our attic, and Eden packed it with the rest of the canned food we had. I asked about her, and she said she left a couple cans for herself, plus the food we still had, which wasn't much.

"Are you sure you'll be okay on your own?" I looked back and asked her once more. I must have asked that 20 times before even preparing to leave.

"Of course I will." She tried to sound as calm as she could, but I could hear the shakiness in her voice. "Now go, before I stop you."

The walk away from her was brutal. Every step away from her felt heavy; I felt cold. We have never spent more than a weekend apart from each other since we got married. I took out the map that Eden packed for me and walked towards our nearest grocery store. I didn't have much hope for it, since that's probably where everyone went first, but it was worth a shot. Thoughts about everything started to roam through my head. What if something tries to get into the house while I'm gone? Why didn't we decide to get supplies before all of this? We thought it would pass, just like every other "scare" out there. Why didn't we listen to my parents?

❀❀❀

My parents would always make me watch a zombie movie every Friday night. It was torture; I hated horror movies because of this. I always thought the zombies were scary. For them, it was intentional to scare me. They believed aliens would come down and abduct us, our family would come back as ghosts, the wolves we would hear in the middle of the night were werewolves coming to get us, and so much more. My mom was the typical hoax believer. She believed anything the internet told her. It came to a point where when she would tell me anything as I got older, I wouldn't believe her. My dad was more sane, but he still believed in some of the things she would say. Zombies were the ones that really got him, mostly because he claimed he saw one. He used to work a lot of odd jobs before opening the cafe; he would do gigs no one else really wanted to do, but the weirdest one was when he worked overnight at a graveyard. I was 8 when he worked there. He came home one day after his shift, right before I was going to school, and just looked… off. All the color was drained from his face, his eyes were sunken in more than usual, and he kept looking behind him. He told my mom, and of course she fed into his delusion.

The walk to the grocery store was long. The path Eden and I would take was more dangerous than I thought it would be. I didn't realize how bad our area was—trees were on the ground, poles were ripped from the soil, and any sign of life was just…gone. It's like everyone who lived here destroyed everything and vanished. I didn't see anyone on my walk, which was out of the ordinary. I used to walk this path every Friday morning with Eden; we would see birds, butterflies, squirrels, and especially people. We would see our elderly neighbors on their morning walks, businessmen in a rush to their next meetings, and the yoga mom across the street going to the coffee shop my parents owned. Our house was close to our local town, where there was a beautiful path that led to a plaza. In that plaza, there was my parents' cafe (which they wanted us close to), a couple other locally owned shops, and the grocery store. I had to make sure to not step on or trip on anything, so I walked slower than usual.

Walking into the plaza, I decided to check on the cafe before going to the main store. I had no idea where my parents were. I thought the second the outbreak happened, my parents would be rushing into my home telling me that they were right all along. We didn't hear a word from them, and we were both too scared to go out and look.

Walking into the cafe, it was unusually eerie. The flowers that were on the counter were dead, which was to be expected. The thing that really felt off was that the cafe was still open. Were they… here? Did they decide to camp out in here? Why not go back home?? My legs and hands were shaking, and I called out to see if my suspicions were true.

"…Mom? Dad? Are you here?"

Nothing. I called out again.

"Mom…? You were right… I'm sorry I didn't try to find you sooner—"

I felt a sharp, cold hand reach out to me after that. I looked over, and I saw my father. But that… Wasn't him? His eyes were dull, almost completely gone. His face looked just like how it did when he came home that morning when I was 8. His skin was rotting away around him. I could start to see some parts of his brain on his forehead. I looked beside him, and there I saw my mom. She was torn to shreds; I could only tell it was her because her finger had her wedding ring still. I stood there in complete shock; they were… Gone. They became the thing they feared.

I ran. I felt my father's arm rip from his socket from how hard I pulled away from him. I could hear him starting to run behind me. From the stories I heard when I was younger, zombies were supposed to be slow, so I made sure to run. I was never known to be fast, but I thought I could outrun a zombie out of anything. I ran into the middle of the plaza, trying to figure out what to do. Do I go home? What if my dad follows me there… and I can't protect her? What if I outrun him and get lost? What if—

Before I could finish that thought, I felt something jump on me as I fell to the ground.

❀❀❀

The blood from my arms stopped bleeding after a while. I was too afraid to go and see if my dad was still there. I don't think I could handle it, actually. I decided to walk back to Eden to tell her everything that happened. I can't be infected, right? If I were, I wouldn't be thinking any of this, would I?

The walk back was a lot easier than the walk before. I was able to get back home faster than before, even if I was completely drained from the trip. When I walked into our neighborhood and into our driveway, our house still looked the exact same as before, but the front door was slightly opened. Oh no.

Walking into the house, everything looked relatively the same. The same flowers stood in the hallway that led to our living room. Everything seemed normal until I got to the kitchen. There was an opened can of beans on the counter that was spilt out of the pan. She never leaves her food like this. After cleaning it up, I looked around; there was no sign she was in here. I looked around the house more and noticed some things out of place. A knife was mysteriously out from our knife set, books that were neatly placed on the bookshelf were now on the floor in a mess, and the flowers weren't dying yet, but they hadn't been watered. All of this was so odd. I walked up the stairs that led to our bedroom. That's when I saw the blood. Blood ran from the top of the staircase into our bedroom. The bedroom door was wide open, and that's when I saw her. Her body was on the bed while a zombie was on top of her. I had no idea who this person was; I didn't see any other zombies on my way back home. How did it get here? Before I could think of anything, I took the knife that was now on the floor next to Eden and stabbed the zombie in the head. I pushed the zombie to the ground to check on Eden. Oh, my Eden… I thought if I could run back home, I could protect you.

This is all my fault. I was too afraid to protect them.