God Granted Me a Week

Warm sunlight hit my face and woke me up. I opened my eyes fully convinced I would find myself gagged and bound somewhere, with Art still trying to keep me from turning. Instead, I was staring at the ceiling of my apartment on 59th Street.

My hand immediately went to my right shoulder, where an ugly, deep bite should have been proof that the infected teenage girl had gotten me. There was nothing there. No wound, no blood, not even the burning pain that had been spreading through my body before I lost consciousness.

For a few seconds, I thought Art had somehow succeeded. Maybe he had actually found what he said John was working on to stop the complete downfall of civilization. But the longer I looked around my apartment, the less that explanation made sense. This place shouldn’t have looked untouched.

The same day Art found me bitten in that alley, raiders had broken into this building while we were still using my apartment as shelter. We heard them coming up the stairs, and my neighbor Mr. Presley managed to warn us before they reached our floor. We were lucky enough to escape through the fire exit and started making our way toward Tomi’s building on 100th Street.

Then Chloe complained that her feet hurt, so Tomi decided we needed a car. His attempt at stealing one lasted about thirty seconds before he triggered its alarm and sent the sound echoing through the neighborhood.

My phone started buzzing on the bedside table. Before I could fully process why it was even here when the last time I had seen it, it had been inside one of the duffel bags Tomi and Chloe stole from me, I saw the bastard’s name flashing across the screen.

“Hello?” I answered, still unsure what the hell was happening. Apparently some habits really did die hard.

“God, Patty, we’ve been waiting at Denny’s for more than fifteen minutes. Where the fuck are you?”

Denny’s.

I had only gone to Denny’s once recently, and there was absolutely no reason for one to be operating in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

“Denny’s?” I repeated.

That earned me several seconds of sarcasm and berating from the man who was supposedly going to love me enough to propose to me. If my memories could be trusted, that was exactly what today was supposed to be.

I nearly dropped my phone as I hurried to check the calendar.

September 5, 2026.

My stomach dropped.

This wasn’t just the day Tomi was supposed to propose to me.

This was the day John would be found dead with a pistol in his mouth.

The authorities had called it suicide. I had refused to believe them. At the time, everyone had treated that like the denial of a grieving sister who couldn’t accept what had happened.

But grief didn’t change the fact that John was left-handed.

I hadn’t even been allowed to have an autopsy done. By the time I got back to Rye, John had already been cremated. Then, two days later, I received that text from his number.

I blocked Tomi before he could call again. I would deal with him and Chloe later. Right now, I needed to get home and find my brother.

If this was some kind of premonition, then maybe I could still save him.

And if working one full-time job and two part-time jobs had finally driven me insane, then the embarrassment and judgment waiting for me afterward would be a small price to pay if there was even a chance I could have my brother back.

I started blowing up John’s phone while I packed. I had already made up my mind that I wasn’t running away this time. Whatever happened over the next seven days, I would do whatever it took to keep my family alive through the apocalypse.

By the time John ignored my fifth call in a row, the uneasy feeling in my stomach had turned into something much worse. I finished throwing what I needed into bags and carried everything down to my beat-up 2008 Corolla, trying not to think about what date it was or what I knew was supposed to happen today.

John still wasn’t answering.

That was when I realized I was being stupid. Art was in Rye, much closer to wherever John probably was, and if there was anyone John was likely to answer besides me, it would be his best friend.

The police had told me John most likely died around five in the evening, which gave me plenty of time to drive back to Rye. Still, the sooner I could get to him, the better. More importantly, I needed someone’s eyes on him right now.

Besides, Art had said he still loved me.

Then again, that had happened in whatever the hell I had just experienced. Maybe that Art had only been a product of my imagination, and I had heard exactly what I wanted to hear before dying.

But if it had only been a dream, how had I known about John?

In that dream, my brother had supposedly killed himself using the exact same method our father had. John had spent years swearing he would never touch a gun because of what Dad had done. He had practically sworn it over our father’s grave.

I threw caution to the wind and started driving. What I hadn’t anticipated was how quickly Art would answer my call.

I hadn’t even figured out how I was going to sell him on the idea yet. It sounded like the plot of a ridiculous horror movie. Yeah, right. The dead are going to start getting back up and biting people. That was the kind of thing that belonged in a George Romero movie, not something I could reasonably tell my brother’s best friend before breakfast.

“Hello?” his voice broke me out of my contemplation.

“Hey, Art. It’s me, Patty. I need to ask you for a favor, but please, no matter what I say, don’t judge me.”

I started unloading everything on him while I drove out of New York, talking so fast I barely gave him a chance to respond.