- - - - - - - - - - - - -
They revived her, treated her, said she was fine and sent us home. She’s sleeping right now. I want to look away but I can’t.
Lips still purple, face still ghostly pale.
They said she was fine.
She finally wakes up. She seems fine. She doesn’t seem to notice her new appearance. She picks on me for being worried.
“I’m fine! Just swallowed a lot of water. But you guys saved me. I’m fine now.”
And she seems it. She really does. Except for the colors.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
She wears makeup to look alive and continues about daily life. No one seems to notice, no one but Nathan and me. Nothing seems to change and after a while I stop worrying so much. It must just be some kind of permanent damage, I tell myself, though I know that makes no sense. But what else am I supposed to think?
She’s strong. Oddly strong. Says she’s been going to the gym. She doesn’t seem to sleep anymore. But she seems fine. She says she’s fine. She lives life like she’s fine.
That is…
I come home one day to the strangest feeling of danger. She’s in the kitchen cooking dinner. I check the apartment and find nothing. I go back and prepare to help her. Nathan should be home any time now.
“Hey, whatcha makin’?”
She turns. Her mouth dripping with ground beef. Raw ground beef. Her eyes… her eyes are bloodshot, deep caverns around them. The contrast is shocking.
I gasp, frozen in the moment. What is going on?
“Wh- what are you doing?”
She lets out a sound that I know is supposed to be words but could only be described as a hiss. I back up, not sure what to do or what I’m even seeing. I keep going, all the way to the bathroom, where I close the door and splash my face with the coldest water the faucet will allow. I watch myself in the mirror, half-mumbling half-talking myself into making sense of what I’ve just seen.
The front door opens and slams shut. Nathan.
I cautiously dash to greet him.
“Please tell me I’m going crazy.”
He gives me the oddest concerned look. I say nothing more, just lead him to the kitchen. She hears us approach and turns with another hiss. He lets out a shriek and looks at me with eyes wider than I’ve ever seen.
What do we even do?
We shut the door and regroup in the living room.
Call 911?
Call the police?
Call someone, surely.
But who?
Next thing we know, she comes out looking like her now-normal self, asking what we’re doing, aren’t we gonna come eat dinner with her?
We anxiously follow her back to the kitchen, stealing glances at eat other while somehow never taking our eyes off of her.
I swear 15 minutes ago she was here eating ground beef out of the package. Now there’s a whole meal. Cooked and ready.
“C’mon guys, what’s your deal today?”
We just look at each other.
“You-“
“Harper. You were just in here eating raw meat. I saw you. Nathan saw you.”
She laughs. “You guys are wild. Grab a plate, I wanna go finish that last episode!”
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Next couple weeks, nothing happens. Maybe we need to see a doctor.
Week three - to the minute, I think - it’s suddenly worse. She’s in the back alley eating fresh meat. Fresh, if you catch my drift.
Same thing happens.
What do you do with something like this? If anyone knows it’s not Nathan or me. Google is obviously no help. Anon internet posts mostly turn up nothing but hypotheticals and jovial discussion or even heated debates on the lore of zombies. Except one response. A private message.
This sock account, it looks like, actually has something interesting to say. Completely uncredible, yes, but what other options do we even have. The message reads:
I’ve seen this before. You’re not crazy. Call this number. They can help.
I’m not one to call random numbers but fuck it, I’m apparently living with some kind of real-life manifestation of a zombie.
Someone picks up immediately, clearly using a voice changer. Nothing about it feels right. But then again, nothing about anything feels right anymore. She’s gone from colorless to eating raw meat to eating live rats to eating stray dogs. How she comes out from that unscathed I don’t even want to know.
How did you get this number.
“Hi, I’m living with someone who’s… gone crazy? I don’t know, she was in an accident and th-“
How did you get this number!
“Someone gave it to me. I don’t know who. I posted online and they private messaged me.”
Wrong number.
“Wait, please!! She drowned except she didn’t and now she’s eating live dogs.”
A pause. Did they hang up?
She what?
“I don’t know. She drowned but she’s alive but not really. She turns into this… other thing… eats live animals in the alley… then acts like nothing happened. Like we’re playing jokes on her.”
The person on the other end reads an address. Meet me there at 1am, sharp. Just you. Bring anyone, tell anyone*, and you’ll never reach me again. Got it?*
I repeat the address.
1am. Sharp.
Click.
I guess I’m going to meet an anonymous stranger who’s voice I don’t even know alone in the middle of the night at some abandoned building in the middle of nowhere, all of which I’m doing because another anonymous stranger with a fake online account told me to. And yet it feels safer than staying here. I might be next. And she wouldn’t even know until she woke up. At least, I don’t think she knows.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
I arrive at the address. 12:51am. And wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
1:47am. Nothing.
2:19am. Nothing.
3:57am. Nothing.
4:03am. I feel an arm wrap around me and a cloth press tight against my face. At least it’s something.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
I wake up in a barn somewhere other than where I was. Where I am? Could be anywhere. 5:56am. No, pm. A bucket of water to my face.
“Come with me.”
The stranger blindfolds me and we get into a car. We drive for hours. When the blindfold finally comes off, I’m in a concrete basement. It might be better described as an underground military base. Heavy bolts on the door, heavy chain drilled into the wall inside of a heavy-duty cage, heavier weaponry. A single chain is cuffed on my wrist.
“Tell me about your friend. Tell me exactly what happened. Every detail.”
“We- we were hiking. There was this strange river and she dove in. She loves to swim. She disappeared for a while. I jumped in after her and lost all baring immediately but Nathan was able to pull her out and call an ambulance. I got out and we carried her down the trail-“
“The water. What was it like?”
“The water? I don’t know… strong, dark-“
“What was it like? How dark? Was it thick?”
“Dark. Really dark. It was daylight out and I couldn’t see a thing the second my head went under.”
“You went under??” He looks at me. Suspicious. Calculating. “Was it thick?”
“What do you mean, thick? It was strong-“
“Thick. Like grandma’s gravy.”
“Um. Yah. Yah, it was. I didn’t think about that until now.”
“And you’ve had no symptoms?”
“Symptoms? Like the stuff she’s been doing? No?”
“How do you know.”
And suddenly I realize. I wouldn’t know.
“I can call Nathan. He would know.”
“Did he go under?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m putting you in the cage. What’s the address.”
I give him the address of our apartment. He shoves me into the heavy-duty cage, locks me into the heavy chains, and locks the heavy bolts on the heavy door.
“What is all of this? Can you tell me something? Please. What’s happening to us?”
“I’ll be back.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
He returns I don’t know when with Nathan and Harper. Harper is screaming. He locks them in chains in the cage and locks the door again. Goes up the stairs and comes right back with raw meat of some sort. Sets it in front of the cage, just within our reach.
Harper goes wild. Just like before. But I’d never seen the start of it. She tears at the meat and practically swallows it whole. Nathan and I sit crunched in the farthest corner, eyes wide.
The man passes us a key. “Hurry!”
We unchain ourselves as he throws her another slab of meat.
“I’m about to open this door and as soon as I do you both get out as fast as you can. As fast as you can. Got it?”
We nod our heads, yes.
“I said, do you got that!”
“Yes, sir!” we yell, as if the stranger is our drill sergeant. I suppose he is.
He unbolts the locks and we leap passed Harper outside of the cage, just in time for him to shut and bolt it again. Harper turns and hisses again, at us. The meat is gone. She gets wilder than I’ve ever seen, struggling against the chains and the bars as her hiss turns into a hissing growl.
“We have to leave.”
We follow the stranger up the stairs. We wait. And then go back down again. She’s normal. Outside of the purple lips and white skin, she’s normal. Crying.
“What are you guys doing to me?” she hollers through deep sobs.
“How were you not infected.” The stranger is talking to me. “You went under. Yet you’re clean. How.”
“I- I don’t know? I don’t even know what this is. What’s happening to her?”
He signs. Finally takes off his hood. “I’m Michaela.”
“What’s happening to Harper?”
“She’s deteriorating. Zombie isn’t far off, or at least it’s as close to the truth as you can comprehend. That water was a cesspool. It wasn’t water at all. Whatever this is, it replaces running water with what we think is a bodily fluid that acts like a nest or breeding ground for eggs or parasites. We’re not really sure. We assume they enter through your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and latch onto your cells. Up until now we thought anyone who went under was done for. And then you.” Michaela looks at me. “Now I’m thinking maybe it waits until your heart is stopped. But no one has ever made it out before their heart stopped. Until you.”
“What do we do? How can we help her?”
“We don’t.”
“There must be some way.”
“I’m sure there is but we don’t know it. We’ve tried. Every time, they get worse and worse, stronger and stronger, returning to awareness less and less. Until the blood, organs, fluids, flow from every orifice and they die. Almost like their insides just… melt. And then…”
“And then what?”
“You see the burn marks down there? You have to burn them.”
“What do we do?”
“Wait. And hope. I’m gonna make a few calls.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
More waiting. We wait for Michaela, for Harper, for anything that hasn’t been tried before. Medications, electro-shock, cutting out the bad parts. It might kill her but she’s already dead. Everything has been tried already but we try again. Someone joins us, one of the people Michaela called. He brings supplies - supplies to torture Harper and supplies for us to survive. And we wait.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Three weeks. We’ve been here three weeks. Or that’s what Michaela says. She crushed my phone and watch as soon as she kidnapped me. There’s that analogue clock in the bunker but that only tells half-time, no am or pm or dates.
Her friend kicks us awake. “If you want to say goodbye you have to do it now.”
I’m not ready.
“Now or never.”
Okay, okay. We get up and go back downstairs. I never wanted to see her like this. But she’s aware. Barely. She finally seems as sick as she looks. Maybe worse. Like she’s melting. Just like Michaela told us. She sits in a puddle of tears, sobbing, covered in wounds I can’t fathom.
“I don’t understand. Will one of you please tell me why you’re doing this to me! Please.”
“We have explained,” the gruff stranger throws his voice at us. “She can’t understand and she doesn’t remember. It’s always the same.”
We look at Michaela. “Go ahead, it’s safe. For now. Second her eyes start turning or her voice starts sounding like the tiniest hiss, you get away immediately. She won’t wake up again.”
Nathan and I rush to her side. We hug, we cry, we tell each other we love each other, that everything’s going to be okay. It’s not going to be but she doesn’t have to know that.
She looks up from our group hug into my eyes but it’s off. She tries to talk but her words are starting to slur just the slightest bit. The piercing pleading in her eyes starts to fade into a stare at our faces.
“Get back, now! Now!!”
The stranger and Michaela strong-arm us away just as Harper lets out a growling hiss and reaches at us with what I can only say are claws at this point.
The sudden burst of strength disappears and she moans and howls and hisses as her insides start melting through every escape her body offers. Which is a lot. It’s everywhere. It feels like hours but it’s more like seconds before she’s nothing more than a rank puddle of nothing-you-ever-want-to-see.
Then come the snakes.
Snakes, worms, jelly, I don’t know what but they’re huge compared to her small body and fast.
Before either of us can comprehend what’s happening, Michaela and the stranger are at it with flamethrowers. A minute or two before every last bit of the creatures are fried to a crisp.
“What the fuck was that?!” Nathan and I both exclaim at the same time.
“I told you, we have to burn them.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Nathan and I are in shock as Michaela and the stranger clean everything up and put us and themselves through chemical baths to rid any debris that may have found its way onto our bodies. They give us new clothes and burn everything we were wearing. Every bit of hair must go. I’ve never felt so disgusting and so horrifyingly clean in my life let alone all at once.
Eventually we return to a vehicle and they drive us to some warehouse building and then back to our place. An hour drive, tops. I guess the hours of driving was just a ruse. They clean apartment as well. Set us up new versions of everything they destroyed, or whatever they thought of and had available when we stopped at the warehouse.
And we go back to our lives. How, I don’t know. It’s like moving through a dream, no - through a nightmare. The worst nightmare. No one seems to notice. No one but Nathan and me. I guess we’re good at adapting.
We swear off meat altogether. The stuff will never be anything but vomit-inducing to either of us ever again.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
It’s been a while. How long? I don’t know. Long enough apparently, long enough that I can almost imagine what normal looks like. We’re even going out tonight. A dinner party for a new engagement between mutual friends. I’m almost looking forward to it. I didn’t sleep last night but I haven’t slept much lately. Trauma and all that.
The place isn’t vegan so we spend all day preparing ourselves to brace against the repulsive shit that will surely bring flashbacks. But after we order and food starts to arrive, it’s surprisingly not triggering at all. It almost smells appetizing. Maybe we’ve healed more than we thought. I look at Nathan to see if he feels the same. I’m not sure but I can’t wait. I flag the waiter and ask for a steak, rare.
It finally arrives and my mouth starts to water. Nathan looks at me - why’s he looking at me like that? There’s this weird buzzing in my head. I excuse myself and take the steak with me to the bathroom. I splash my face with the coldest water the faucet will allow but the buzzing stays.
That barely-cooked, nearly raw side of beef looks so good.
So good.
Blackout.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
I wake up in the same bathroom to Nathan staring at me and look in the mirror to see… why does my face look like this…