Over the Edge

Trigger warning: suicide

Joshua was looking down from the roof edge. He watched the street so far below. It should have looked like any other street in the city. Broken and full of potholes.  

 Instead, it looked like some sort of strange ameba, growing and blobbing itself along. If he stood and stared long enough, he could begin to make out the faces of some of the people shambling restlessly down there. Teachers, lawyers, and bartenders. Bike-messengers and nurses. Parents. Gangsters. Children. People. People? That wasn’t the right word anymore. They weren’t people. They were dead now, or un-dead. So, the term people filled him with regret, as if he was somehow wrong for not being part of that herd. Wrong for still being alive 

 He was going to do it. He had made up his mind. He couldn’t come up with any sort of answer. Any sort of better decision besides this one. He was going to step off of this ledge and fall to a welcomed death. Just one step would send him down into the simple grasp of gravity. One breath in and one breath out. 

“Joshua, for Christ’s sake. Just get down. Please! You don’t have to do this.” 

“I keep hearing you say that.” Joshua didn’t want to look back. It would have been too easy for him to hop back down to the safety of the roof top. To the outreached hand of his friend.   

Thomas couldn’t understand. Thomas didn’t have children. He hadn’t lost the same things as Joshua, felt the same pains. Beyond that he wasn’t old enough to view this situation the same. He couldn‘t look at it through the lens of age like Joshua could. 

“My life was short Thomas. But it was good.” Joshua scratched at the ever-growing red stain on his left shoulder. “Anyway, we both know once you’re bit”, he took a deep inhale of the crisp morning air, “you’re dead, then you're not.” He finally lifted his eyes up from the zombies and the city below, not stopping until he was staring up at the clouds casting their shadows down on, potentially, the last two people on Earth. 

“It’s been good”, he mumbled to himself. 

At fifty-seven, Joshua was thirty-two years older than Thomas. He had had the chance to build a life before zombies. In his fifty-seven years he had married and raised two children, and was ever so blessed to have seen the birth of his first grandchild, before the world turned to hell. Thomas had never known that feeling. 

Both men had shared a lot with each other over these past fourteen months.   

When there is only one set of ears besides your own to talk to, well, you find yourself willing to open up a little bit. So, Joshua knew that Thomas had no family. Even back before there was a shortage of people, he had been alone.   

That is what made him such a resilient and reliable partner during this hell on earth. He knew how to survive. But, regardless of ability, that loner lifestyle had forced Thomas to not have a chance to experience family, or first love. So, there was no way, Joshua knew, for Thomas to be able to understand why leaping to an uninterruptable death could be welcomed.   

Having the chance to be there for the birth of his first grandchild, paled in comparison to knowing that that grandchild was dead. That it’s parents, his son and daughter in law, were dead and that everyone inside the hospital, where he had left them, were dead. Everyone was dead, and soon, in Joshua’s mind, he would be too. 

Joshua brought his gaze forward and stared at the skyline across from him. The sun had just moved up behind the opposing buildings across the street creating halos around their rooftops. “I’m not going to become one of those things”, he said flatly as he heard Thomas stamp his foot out of anger. 

“Dammit, Joshua, we don’t know what’s going to happen. As far as either one of us know, you got that damn cut from glass, or metal, or any one of the other million things we’ve ran through trying to get away from them.” Thomas was tired of this. He wasn’t going to lose the only friend he had really known in his adult life. Not to zombies and sure as hell not to gravity. “You act like you’re so sure of what you’re doing. Like this is the end or something”, he wasn’t going to let him act like nothing mattered,” but it isn’t Joshua! Now get down!” 

Thomas had been listening to every story and memory that Joshua had shared. When they had first met, neither man had trusted the other. Not only were the first three weeks of their partnership distrustful. They were also silent. Neither one of them had wanted to speak out of fear of attracting unwanted attention from their undead community. 

But, as they had entered week four of their duo life, Joshua had finally come to Thomas and properly introduced himself. From that moment forward they spoke in whispers to each other and shared their lives histories.   

It was from this learned history that Thomas tried to figure out why his friend was ready to die.   

The anger and pain in Thomas’ voice finally broke thru to Joshua and forced him to turn his back on the city. Below him, on the rooftop, was a broken-down young man who looked more scared than Joshua could remember. 

“We both know what happens when you’re bit”, he said again as his face softened. The sun was rising ever so slightly higher and now, from the view point of Thomas, Joshua had acquired his own halo. “This is how it needs to be. We’re both tired of death. I’m tired of thinking. I’m tired of remembering. This is better.” Joshua locked eyes with the young man below him, “I will not turn into one of those things. I will not tear you apart. I’ve made up my mind, and I’m happy about it.” He could feel the open air behind him, like it was some sort of entity watching their exchange. Scratching at his stain again he turned back to the city and the giant zombie flood below. “I’m going to aim my head straight at the ground. I want stand up again and start walking like everybody else.” He looked back over his right shoulder, “when I die, I’m staying dead. I promise you that.” 

“Please stop!” Thomas’ voice was breaking. “Please.” 

Far below the high rise was the horde. Brainless and emotionless. Never sleeping, always hungering. It slowly moved like an ocean swelling up and flooding the land. It was unhindered in its existence and uncaring of the pain it had inflicted on this city and world. Occasionally one of these zombies would lean its head back and see the loan man standing on a building ledge. It would know that sight, food it would think. If thinking is what it could be called. Then it would let out a wail. Such a horrible sound would leave its throat that every other member of the flood horde would react in kind. Their wails would carry on for hours once they began. The sound was terrible. 

Joshua shut his eyes and prepared himself to step. He knew that once his foot began moving forward that would be it. In no time he would be leaving this ruined world. With his eyes shut, he blocked out the growing scream from the streets below. He spread his arms out to his sides as if to embrace the sky before him. Like he was going to hug it close like an old friend. He could see the face of his little grand-daughter behind the glass of a hospital nursery in his mind, and he could hear his son saying that her name was Rebecca. He could hear his own wife, as if she was right beside him saying, ‘isn’t she so beautiful Joshua’. This is what he chose to think of in his last seconds. He allowed himself to feel the warmth of the sun as it passed the height of the buildings before him. So, in tune with his choice and thoughts that he almost didn’t hear Thomas moving close behind him.   

“What are you doing?” 

“I want let you do this alone”, Thomas said as he rose up on the ledge beside his friend. “I’m not going to keep living in a world that you aren’t in.” He put his left hand on Joshua’s right shoulder and squeezed. “I don’t want to be alone again.” 

“Get down.” 

“No.” 

“Get down, dammit”, this was not what was supposed to happen. “You aren’t bit, you are at no risk besides our day to day lives. Get down.” 

Thomas just smiled and looked down at the mass below, which had begun to scream in earnest as another meal appeared on the building ledge. He was ready to die too. Joshua wasn’t the only one who was tired of remembering. “Head first sounds about right”, he said as he brought his eyes to the left to meet Joshua's gaze. 

“You don’t have to do this”, Joshua pleaded with, for all intent and purposes, his son. His face had lost all color, and for the first time since he stepped up onto that ledge, he actually felt fear.   

Thomas squeezed his friends' shoulder again, “I keep hearing you say that”, then he grabbed Joshua's right arm and stepped.   

The shock of it all hit Joshua in the gut and then the heart. The seconds that followed from that step slowed in time. Thomas never let go of that fifty-seven-year-old arm. Instead he pulled it in towards himself, as well as the man attached to it. Joshua was frozen in disbelief for what seemed like moments. But as he came out of his stupor, he hugged his friend close and shut his eyes. Thomas used his weight and intent to turn their bodies in the air. Joshua was right. They were going to stay dead. Thomas tilted his head up which was now facing down towards the horde. He didn’t shut his eyes as the ground grew closer. He didn’t scream out. He felt no regret.   

The horde reached up. 

“Thank you”, was the last thing Thomas heard.