The first thing to make its way back into his sensory world was Clint’s voice. “That’s how it works,” he was saying in a shout-whisper kind of voice.

“According to who?” That voice was Lauren’s. He loved that voice. Much nicer than Clint’s, very smooth and just a little bit musical. He smiled.

“He’s waking up,” Lauren said again.

And then there was a clicking noise of some kind.

“Clint!” Lauren was shouting this time. It made Victor’s head hurt, and he opened his eyes. Aside from the harsh light of a couple of flashlights, it was still dark. Clint was pointing a gun at him. It wavered mere inches from his forehead.

“Clint?” Victor tried. His words came fairly freely: His world was hazy, but at least he could still speak with ease. His shoulder throbbed, and he looked at it – still oozing, still caked with dust and blood and shreds of his cotton shirt. He hadn’t been out long.

“He’s not a zombie, see?” Lauren said, and at that she slowly reached for Clint’s gun and pushed it away until it was no longer pointed at Victor’s face.

“Not yet,” Clint said. And then he paused, and looked more closely at Victor. Victor realized that Clint’s eyes glistened. Was he crying? It was hard to tell in the poor lighting, but it seemed like it. That was bad. Clint didn’t cry, not about anything. “Victor,” he said. “I’m sorry buddy, but you and I both know that you’re going to turn into a zombie. If you don’t let me kill you now, you might kill Lauren when you turn.”

“Stop it,” Lauren said.

Victor nodded. “Clint’s right, I’m a dead man walking. Everyone knows it’s the bite.”

“See?” Clint said. “It’s how it works.”

“How it works?” Lauren said. “How it works according to what? According to Romero? According to video games? This isn’t a video game, and it isn’t a fucking movie.”

“Lauren,” Victor started.

“No.” She cut him off. “Nobody is shooting anybody.”

Clint shrugged. “Then he’s going to turn and kill us both.”

Lauren shook her head. “He and I will go into the bathroom, and I’ll help him clean that wound out. We’ll wait in there, we’ll stay up all night. If he turns into a zombie I’ll shoot him. If he doesn’t, then you were wrong, and you almost murdered him for nothing.”

Nobody said anything at that. Victor sat up slowly, thin sharp lines of pain firing through his shoulder.

While he was sitting up, Lauren was going through his backpack. He looked over at her.

“Granola bars, batteries, and a knife?” Lauren asked.

Victor shrugged, a regrettable gesture that transformed into a wince as pain from the bite blazed in his shoulder.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“No medical supplies at all, then?” This time the question wasn’t really a question. She closed his backpack and helped him up. She had his knife in her hand. “Meet me in the bathroom,” she said, and shooed him in.

He had trouble just walking the short distance, his head throbbing now from where he’d fallen, his shoulder bleeding freely, and sheer exhaustion in all of his limbs. Not to mention the heat. It seemed to make everything twice as hard. Sweat dripped into his eyes and he almost fell over halfway to the bathroom, but he made it in. He sat down on the floor, his back to the wall, facing the toilet. It was pitch black, and he let himself float in the dark, the absence of light a protective bubble holding him outside of this new world.

Lauren entered a moment later, his flashlight on and with the top unscrewed so that it shone more like a candle. She had a sheet from the room’s king-size bed, and she slipped the door shut behind her so gently he could barely hear the click of the latch.

“Is that for if you have to kill me?” Victor asked.

She smiled. That smile. “You’re not dying and leaving me alone with that psychopath that you call friend.” She unsheathed his knife and began cutting the sheet into long strips.

Victor wasn’t much of a talker, and she’d embraced that about him at this stage in their relationship. They sat in silence and it was okay. Good, even. Peaceful. She shredded the sheet and then started tying the shreds together to form one continuous bandage.

After some minutes of quiet she looked up at him and laughed. “I still can’t believe that you brought, what, a dozen spare flashlight batteries? But not a single tube of antibiotic ointment.”

Victor laughed too. “It’s not like I’ve done this before. School didn’t offer Zombies 101: Packing for the Apocalypse, when I was a student.”

Lauren nodded, and kept tying. When she’d finished, she looked up at him again. “Okay,” she said. “Shirt off.”

He grinned. On their third date, they'd gone to see a movie (it was an action movie with vampires, and he'd been smitten immediately: a beautiful girl who loved action flicks, what more could he ask for?) and she’d come over after. They were on his sofa, kissing. It had gotten hot and heavy, and moved into that gray area he’d always had trouble with. Was it time to move on to more? Should he let his hand wander down from her face, or did she just want to kiss? Ever since high school, this moment in the spectrum of physical affection had been awkward for him. Eventually, she must’ve picked up on his awkwardness, because she’d sat back, looked at him for a second, and said, “Okay, shirt off.” She spent the night that night, and most nights after.

He eased out of his shirt. When it got caught in the wound, she reached over and helped him out. Then she rose and found a towel. Fortunately, even though the lights were all off, the hotel still had running water, and she wet the towel, squirted some soap onto it.

It hurt, but slowly she was able to clean his shoulder out. When the pain got to be too much he closed his eyes, and bit down hard. Otherwise, he watched her. He looked at her brown eyes, shaded dark by the odd lighting of the flashlight. Though he couldn’t see them, he knew them well, knew the flecks of lighter amber near her irises, and he pictured them. This was enough of a distraction when she was scrubbing that he made it through the pain without passing out.

“Okay,” she sat back. “I think that’s as clean as it’s getting tonight.”

He looked down at it, and it was just a bite. He saw teeth marks, and a good chunk of flesh was missing, but it didn’t look like a mysterious dark force was surging through his body from that opening, and he didn’t feel like he was turning into a zombie. He felt alive and healthy. His head was clearing up. It was just a bite.

He moved off the wall and she began to wrap the sheet around his shoulder and chest. By the time she was done, it covered up a good portion of his upper torso and all of his wounded shoulder. It was a great job; something else, no doubt, that she’d learned from her marine father. Not for the first time, Victor wished that the man had been alive when Lauren had come into his life, so that they could’ve met.

She was behind him when she finished tying off the makeshift bandage, and she wrapped her arms slowly around his chest, rested her head on his good shoulder. Her hair tickled his ear, and her shallow breathing made his skin tingle. “Don’t die,” she whispered.

He put his hands on hers and closed his eyes. “I won’t,” he said. I hope.