Fester

It all begins with a fever, a fever you can't sweat out.

The fire between your skin and bones lasts for days. Before the hunger sets in, it's hard to sleep, after the hunger it's impossible.

Nothing can satiate it. Nothing without opposable thumbs, at least. As the hunger becomes you, the aggression pulls at your thoughts. You turn on the people you love before anyone else. Bite the hand that feeds, literally.

You become so fueled by anger and hunger that it's hard to think of much else. Then the fever breaks, and you're less you than before. Hard to imagine, I know. You're much colder, near freezing in fact. You develop the body of an anorexic 80-year old with bones just as fragile.

And that's the end of you, and all your friends who didn't have the guts to kill you.

There is no cure.

Over fifty percent of the population is dead.

The signs were there, we just didn't listen. Maybe if we had, we could've beaten this monster. But, we're past that now. Sorry, I'm past that now.

I was alone before I was alone.

Most of the people I know are dead. Mostly.

My mother's probably dead. But I haven't thought to check. I wouldn't want to check.

I was on the run before I had to be, before this all started. I haven't really lived much differently than before, except this time people don't look at me weird when I say I'm alone. That I have no home. Well, that and the weapons. And that I don't really have many people to talk to anymore anyways.

I was rummaging through someone's house when I saw her.

The Girl.

I was holding a photo between my fingers, scrutinizing like I always did. There was a sort of fascination when I saw family photos. They always look like they cared about each other. Even when they were acting like they didn't care. I wondered whether they cared about each other now. Did all this bring them together, or did it pull them apart like the rest of us?

Two parents, obviously loving. One child, smiling, uncomfortable. The dad was balding and what hair he had was wispy and grey. He wore a sweater, odd for the usual Texas heat. The mom was lovely, and her wrinkles did nothing to deter her beauty, blonde, brown-eyed, too soft for now.

The child, the Girl, was just a few feet away, standing in the walkway. She was nothing like her picture, she was evolved. Her picture was sweet, she was small, she didn't fit, she was clean.

The Girl herself was not. She was in her element. She was made for this world, and this world was not clean. She was small, but that didn't make the gun she held any less intimidating.

"Put that down." She waved the gun at the photo and I didn't stutter before setting it back on the fireplace mantle.

"Put that down," I said. I like her. We were on the same level.

She dropped her hands back to her thighs and we were silent for a moment.

"Where's your parents?" I wasn't expecting her to flinch at my question. It would've been insensitive Before. Not now.

"...Dead."

"Me too." That felt like a lie. I slipped further into the living room and sat on a couch, fake confidence, fake openness. She didn't move an inch. There was another silence and she seemed to relax.

"I don't mind if you do." She slipped her gun into the front of her pants.

"What?"

"Stay the night. But you sleep in here. Nowhere else."

I doubted that I'd sleep. I never really could sleep anymore.