Survival

I grab her wrist & I twist her down the hallway. It’s dark, the light is shining through little slots in the overhead lights. The hospital has been rundown for some years, no clue how many. The sky is exposed through the fluorescents as we dash down the linoleum halls.

At first she runs with us, but she suddenly stops & turns her head, her friends are far behind. They’re goners at this point. She halts suddenly, and I falter. I’m not a large guy, so when she stops, I do too. I turn to see her looking back. It’s too late, I can see the silhouettes of the undead creeping toward us. Slow bastards, but there’s a lot of them. They’re dangerous in groups & small corridors, like the one we are in. I feel her grip loosen and my heart thunders in my chest. I know she’s a runner.

“No,” I mumble. She doesn’t hear me.

I grab her wrist tighter, and I move forward, she whips her head around, and tries to escape my grasp. I feel for her, but there’s no going back. If she runs, she dies.

I hold tight. She becomes desperate. People don’t understand how close we are to animals, how much we are animals, until we are faced with dire situations like this. I keep my head, but I can see hers is far focused in the past. I know she left her loved ones behind. I know she won’t let go without a fight, and by God, neither will I!

She tries to rip her wrist out of my hand, but my grip is unrelenting. She thrashes harder, putting more of her body weight into it. I mirror & pull back. I try to talk to her. I don’t want to lie, but I need her to come with me.

I tell her, as her eyes grow with intensity, “You need to be selfish!”

She isn’t listening as her once beautiful brown eyes redden, filled with more sclera than iris. Her wavy brown hair is straightened & sticking, wet with sweat and tears, to her red cheeks. I know how terrified she is, I feel my own heart in my throat.

I lean in close & with as much commanding as I can muster, I tell her, “Be selfish.”

She throws her head at me & I dodge.

She screams, “Let me go!”

“No!” I fight her.

She throws herself to the ground & I struggle to keep my balance, all the while my own friend is waiting for us to get up. She contorts her arm, I see her skin darken with bruise. She wriggles harder, screaming like a caught animal. I inch her forward, I don’t want to lose her! But she won’t cooperate. I feel my own terror prick at my eyes. I won’t let her go.

Her screams become weak & hoarse, but still she fights me. She throws kick after kick, I dodge a few & get a couple to the shin. I try to throw her in front of me. She swings like a ragdoll, but I can’t get her up. Finally, by some miracle I don’t see, we are both standing. I feel a feather of relief until it’s snuffed out by a quick punch to the face. I feel it instantly & I let her go. Just before she can run off, I blindly catch her hair. She falls back on the ground. I make a grab for her arm through blurry eyes. She bites my forearm & I’ve lost her.

I begin to run after her, but my own arm is caught by my friend. He tells me, “Let her go,” with the same commanding tone I thought I had…

With an ounce of hesitancy, I run out the last corridor with him, raspy echoes of a woman’s last screams surround me as we break into the daylight. The sun is low overhead, just past its peak. We don’t stop until we can only see the outline of the building in the far distance.

I huff & collapse on the yellow grass, furious. I let my tears fall & I want to fucking scream! L doesn’t follow suit, but he does step closer to me. Blood is running from my nose where she punched me. It hurts like it’s broken, but I think she just knocked the cartilage. My arm throbs dully, and my hands still feel her skin.

“A…” L begins. His voice is soft. He isn’t softspoken.

With a pursed bottom lip to halt the quiver, I stare out. My eyebrows are close and I look up at my friend. I am so angry.

“I just wanted her to live.”

L is silent. I know he doesn’t know how to say what he thinks. I can’t read his eyes either as they are low, fixed on the clean white bandages in his hands, pulled from the medkit in his backpack.

“Let’s clean your wound,” is all he says.

I hold out my arm. It was clear she hadn’t yet been infected with whatever it is herself… but a cut is a cut & can lead to many terrible infections beyond whatever they are now.

L reaches into the backpack he had slid from his shoulder & opens a plastic shot bottle of Vodka. He pours it sparingly over my wound. The Vodka pools in the teeth marks & I revel in the sting. I deserve it, and it comforts me like a kick to the teeth, or a razor blade used to.

L senses this. “Not everyone is like you.”

“Maybe they should be…” I mumble away from him.

With the gentle hands of a medic, he dresses my arm with the gauze. “Al, you can’t save everyone.”

His words are heavy, as they are the same in my head. Circling like demons. I know they mean well, my friend & my head… but I hear the words like a shrill childhood sing-song. It’s a curse, not a melody.

“I just wanted to her to live…”

I told her “You need to be selfish.” I thought it would be more reassuring. It wasn’t a lie like “It’s okay,” or “Everything will be alright” are lies. I didn’t want to kid her. I jsut wanted her to live. There’s so many dead… So many that will never be buried or have flowers brought to. So many that will go missing because loved ones will roam the Earth, spending all their days looking for someone who died long ago. Someone’s daughter or wife or friend that I couldn’t save…

She could’ve been someone. Eloped past the trauma of witnessing her loved ones dismantled & screaming in front of her, just a corridor behind safety & sunlight. But she chose to join them instead.

I guess I can’t blame her for that…

“We can pick some flowers for her,” L says.

I nod. He knows me well.

We spend the rest of the afternoon picking wildflowers & laying them in the grass we had been sat. There is no cross, no holy symbols of any kind, but there is a ring of flowers, dedicated to her, her memory & the friends she lost. We never knew her. We met her only before she left… but we knew her at all.

The sun begins to lay low, getting ready to rest its head on the horizon. The land is not yet golden with its glow, but it sparkles the dust as we leave the ring of flowers. A wind blows them gently. Hopefully she receives the scent.

Hopefully she is not alone. Hopefully she is happy, and surrounded. I hope she knows she is loved & mourned.

20.51

April 9th, 2026

🌘 Waning Crescent