Whatever You Do Don’t Get Bitten

Three days into being chased around the neighborhood by familiar faces, I had stopped thinking of them as people I knew. Officer Bryant almost caught Tomi when he lunged at him from between two buildings, and I swung the metal bat in my hands hard enough to knock what remained of the officer sideways.

By the first day of the apocalypse, we had figured out that the dead stopped getting back up once you damaged their heads enough, so I hit him again. Blackish-red fluid oozed from the split in his balding scalp as I pulled the bat free and looked toward the fence ahead of us, where Chloe was already trying to climb over. Her pregnancy made every attempt slower, and she kept slipping back down before she could get enough leverage.

“Patty!” she shouted.

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed as I looked behind us, but several infected at the end of the street had already turned in our direction.

Four or five of them started moving toward us while another stumbled out from between two parked cars. Jumbo King shifted inside the backpack strapped against me and turned toward the alley Officer Bryant had come from, a low growl vibrating against my back.

Tomi was already on his feet again, but instead of helping Chloe over the fence, he crouched beside Officer Bryant’s body and started pulling at the gun in his holster.

“Tomi,” I said quietly, keeping my eyes on the infected coming closer. “Hurry.”

“I almost have it.”

Chloe slipped from the fence again, and I moved toward her while trying not to make more noise than necessary. The infected were already close enough that I could hear the wet, uneven sounds of their breathing. Tomi finally managed to pull the gun from Officer Bryant’s holster, then scaled the metal fence with much less difficulty than Chloe had.

“Patty, boost Chloe up,” he said as soon as he landed on the other side.

The dead were closing in, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I couldn’t climb over and leave a pregnant woman trapped on this side of the fence with them. I dropped to my knees beside Chloe and positioned myself so she could use my thigh and shoulder as a step.

“Come on,” I whispered. “Put your foot here.”

Chloe grabbed the top of the fence and stepped onto me. I pushed upward as hard as I could while Tomi reached through from the other side to pull her over. It took longer than I expected, and the infected closing in behind us did nothing to make my best friend move any faster.

By the time it was my turn, the dead were much closer than I was comfortable with. My boots kept slipping against the metal because I was still carrying two duffel bags filled with supplies, not including the backpack strapped to me where I was carrying Jumbo King, the only family I had left aside from Tomi, my supposed soon-to-be husband.

“Patty, throw the duffel bags over,” Tomi said.

His voice cut through the panic already filling my head. I looked up at him, and for one strange second, I had the thought that he wanted the bags so he could leave with Chloe.

“You need to lose the weight,” he said.

That made sense, so I moved quickly. I pulled one duffel bag from my shoulder and threw it over the fence, then did the same with the other.

Tomi caught the second one.

Then he and Chloe started backing away.

For months, I had been trying not to think too hard about Chloe’s pregnancy. I had been trying not to notice that the only man I ever seemed to see her around was my boyfriend.

Watching them take the supplies and move away from the fence finally made that fear impossible to ignore.

“Sorry, babe,” Tomi said as he backed away with Chloe. “But our baby is kind of the priority, you know. Don’t worry. We might name her after you.”

For a second, I couldn’t even process what he had said. Then Chloe, my best friend of four years, had the gall to mouth sorry and wave at me before the two of them disappeared into another alleyway with the supplies I had carried for all of us.

I kicked at the hands reaching for my ankles while I pulled the backpack from my shoulders. My fingers were shaking so badly that it took me two tries to loosen the opening enough for Jumbo King to move, but once I did, I carefully lowered him toward the safe side of the fence and let him drop as gently as I could.

If I was going to die here, then I was at least going to save the last member of my family.

That was the exact moment I regretted ignoring my brother’s warning. Five days before the virus reached Philly, I had received a text from John’s number, which was strange considering I had buried him two days earlier and gone home with custody of our mutt.

don’t trust what they say. it’s not under control. start with water, canned goods, arm urself, and whatever you do, don’t get bitten.

My brother had been a virologist. What department he worked for or what exactly he had been working on, I didn’t know. That was the price I paid for choosing a bad man over my only family. I had been stupid then, stupid and gullible enough to ignore a warning from my dead brother instead of asking myself how he could have known what was coming.

I tried to pull myself higher over the fence, but as if the universe had decided my luck wasn’t shitty enough, movement appeared from the alley Officer Bryant had come from. A teenage girl stumbled toward me, still somewhere in the middle of turning. Her skin had already begun discoloring and her movements were wrong, but tears were streaming down her face and, unlike the others, she could still speak.

“Help me, please,” she begged through a wet, gargled voice. “My whole body is burning.”