The Bite

My clothes were already halfway off by the time Evie closed the door. Something about surviving a supply raid, thrusting yourself to the edge of death, always made me crave the most basic, primal release. 

"Zach, I have something to show you."

Oh my god. "Yeah, you do." I turned around, shirt off, pants unbuttoned. Evie was fiddling with the button of her fly. She looked tired and disheveled, her chestnut brown hair held loosely in a bun, a smear of ash streaking across her face. 

"You are so hot," I said and closed the distance between us in two quick steps. I grabbed the hem of her gore-splattered T-shirt and tried to pull it off her body, but she slapped my hands and pushed me away.

"Zach! Not now," she said, and for the first time, I noticed how pale she was, and that tears welled in her eyes.

The switch was sudden and unexpected. We had done this dozens of times. I took a step back, frowning. I’d only known Evie for a couple of months, at most. There was still so much I was figuring out about her, especially her moods.

"Is everything okay? I thought—"

Evie buried her face in her hands, and her body shook with sobs. 

In this new, awful world, you see terrible things every day. But you get used to it, and things that would’ve made you shit your pants before the world changed barely warrant notice. But seeing Evie break like this—I’m not going to lie—it scared me.

"Evie..." I put my hand on her shoulder, feeling the tremor in her body. I stood there awkwardly, unsure of what to say. After a minute, she heaved a breath and looked me directly in the eye.

"Zach, I have something to show you." 

The intensity in her eyes unnerved me. I buttoned my pants, pulled on my shirt, and sat on the foot of the bed. "Okay, yeah, anything."

Evie unbuttoned her pants, began working the tight denim off her hips, and I thought, Is this a game? What is happening? But then I saw the tears again, and the way she winced as she pulled the jeans down her legs.

"Shit! Evie, is that—"

A bite mark, like an angry crescent moon, stood out on her calf. It was red and swollen, and black streaks raced from the wound up her leg. I recoiled instinctively, crawling backward across the bed until I ran into the headboard.

Evie moved toward me, arms out, palms up, imploring. "Baby, it’s me, I promise, I’m fine. See, look, I don’t think it got me. Please, don’t tell anyone, baby. It’s me, I’m okay, it didn’t even bleed. See? Look."

She placed her foot on the bed and thrust the wound into view. I wanted to believe her, and for a moment I did, almost. The bite was mostly indentations of teeth pressed into the skin. But there was one place where a tooth—probably a canine—broke the skin. Just a little. And that was enough.

"Damn it, Evie," I said, "I’m so sorry."

"Please, please, please," she sobbed, "don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to die."

I’d seen this scene play out before. There was no cure, no antidote. Once you were bitten, it was a death sentence. Everybody knew that. Tears began filling my eyes. I wanted to comfort her, somehow, but my brain was already calculating how much time she had left, and I really wanted to get out of that room. The poison was already snaking its way up her carotid arteries and would soon reach her brain. And when it did, that would be that. 

"They’ll think you let me in," she said, "with a bite. You know what they’ll do to you."

"Shit," I muttered. She was right about that. Letting anyone in the house who’d been bitten was a guaranteed bullet in the head. Them’s the rules, as they say, zero exceptions. I quickly started pulling on my boots.

"Maybe, even if I turn, there’ll still be something of me left." She forced her words through clenched teeth. It was obvious she was experiencing a lot of pain. Suddenly she doubled over and squeezed her head with her hands, grunting against a scream.

I grabbed my pistol and took aim. God, I hated this part. But there was something about the shine of sunlight playing on her hair that kept me from pulling the trigger.

She lifted her head and looked at me over the barrel of the gun. The whites of her eyes were mottled with black, the irises turning a shade of bloody red. "I just…don’t…want to die."

Her voice, barely a whisper, broke me.

Evie collapsed on the floor and lay perfectly still. I had maybe thirty seconds, maybe a minute, before she would start to move again. I could hear a few of the others outside the door, their muffled voices unintelligible. I held the gun on Evie, knowing what I should do, knowing it was the only way out of the room, the only way I could stay with the group.

I don’t know if I loved her, but I just couldn’t blow her head open like a melon. Maybe love didn’t even matter anymore. Maybe just feeling something, anything for someone was enough. Hell, in this day and age, maybe that’s what love is.

I grabbed my pack and threw it out the window. I paused on the windowsill, legs dangling down, giving myself one last chance to do what I knew was the right thing. But I couldn’t, and just before I dropped from the sill onto the grass about eight feet below, I heard her stirring.

The sound made my skin crawl. I didn’t want to think about what was happening to her body, what she was becoming. I didn’t look back. I ran from the house. My lungs burned, but I kept running, heart pounding in my ears. I couldn’t be anywhere close when they found her. Or when she found them.

As I crested a nearby hill and the house disappeared behind me, I realized we weren’t going to survive this. Love would doom us all. That, and cowardice. Two things you just can’t afford in this world.