The three of them were startled awake by screams and gunshots upstairs. Rebecca wasted no time in wondering what was happening and bolted straight to Atticus’ room. Before she could get there, the door shattered open as the naked prostitute covered in blood tackled a john who had just happened to be walking by. They both fell over the railing. Harold picked up his mug of beer to avoid losing it when they collided into his table. He almost found it comical. And he would have laughed if it was not followed by the worst thing he could imagine. That’s when the three of them heard a very particular sound. Rebecca froze when she finally saw inside Atticus’ room.
How much she would give to have one last moment with him. The regret of not talking to him after the crash only superseded the regret of telling him in the first place that she chose Samuel. What kind of burden did she put on him that led to this sequence of events? Rebecca could think of a dozen ways to blame herself as a doctor and as a woman, but they were to be put aside temporarily in order to deal with the awful sight in front of her.
The bed was soaked in blood with a lifeless body still lying in it. Rebecca walked into the darkness. She was getting used to this feeling. This notion, call it a sniff or a hunch, that when the people closest to her were in mortal danger she could tell, before even getting to them, whether or not they had survived. But for Atticus, she would give him the extra effort of checking for vitals. There was nothing of him left. Atticus was dead. She could hear more gunshots coming from downstairs but she didn’t care. Rebecca had just lost Samuel and Atticus in the same day.
After saying her goodbyes to Atticus she left the room and walked back downstairs. Rebecca walked down those stairs a completely different person from the last time she had to walk away from a patient zero. This time she was ready for what was to come. Karina crawled out from behind the bar while Harold was picking up a revolver from the dead townsfolk. Karina ran over to Rebecca’s side and asked her what they were going to do.
“Did you kill it?”
“She ran out before we could do anything.”
“If it gets anyone else we are going to lose control of the situation.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Karina was acting so nervous she stuttered when she asked, “Why do you keep c-calling it ‘it’?”
Rebecca took a cue from Harold and picked up a revolver off the floor from one of the dead, except Rebecca had to one-up him. She pulled the hammer back and squeezed the trigger, keeping the gun down, blasting the corpse’s head off. Harold and Karina followed her outside in awe over what had just happened. One afternoon of peace…was that all fate could afford them?
The sun was rising. The town was beginning to wake up with the roosters. Rebecca looked around for the missing lady of the night. It was time to multitask and search the small town while she explained to Harold and Karina what had just happened.
“Back in New York, when Atticus led us through the Lincoln Tunnel he had open wounds exposed to infected blood but he never turned. I assumed he was immune like we might be. I was wrong.”
“Wait, if he wasn’t immune, what was he?”
“He wasn’t just immune. He was a carrier.”
Harold finished her line of thought for her, “He passed it onto that whore and she turned in her sleep and killed him.”
“That’s awful!” Hamilton laid on his Karina impression thickly.
“He should have been more careful,” Harold dismissed him.
“What are we going to do?”
“We cannot… I cannot be responsible for another outbreak. We are the only ones who know how to fight them, so it’s pretty clear what we have to do.”
The dust kicked up after a gust pulled in from a northern front. Rebecca took her glove off and let it fall to the ground looking at her black hand. A boom from the town limits could be heard. There was no avoiding it. Her brown-brimmed hat cut the rays of the rising sun before them. She took the revolver out of her holster with one hand and caught her moonsword in the other before she replied.
“We kill every last zombie and save the world.”