Eve

Chapter 33

Innara was wearing a Versace top and my cotton coat bought at Ross's Dress for Less around her body when she breathed her last breath. We were inside Bubba Gump Shrimp – the only building in the Santa Monica Pier that was still somewhat intact, and I was running my hand through her hair and she had her head in my lap when it happened.

We had been living on the pier for a week. The wound on her shoulder, which I feared might have been from a zombie bite she was hiding, was actually just a flesh wound from some tree of piece of metal or whatever. She didn't remember. But it was no zombie wound. It was, however, deep enough that it got infected, and it was only after her first convulsion, a couple of days after our bonfire under the pier, that I started worrying that maybe it wouldn't get better on its own.

Twice I left the pier in search for help. People. Medicine. Against Innara's wishes, I wondered the streets of Santa Monica up and down 3rd and 4th and the remains of the Boulevard. But there was nothing. No one. Both times I came back empty handed, and Innara would know from the look in my eyes – she was dying and I had nothing to offer her but silly jokes.

"It's all right, Eve," she said, the night after my second fruitless trip, her forehead bathed in sweat. "I think it's getting better."

My eyes went down to her shoulder. If it could talk, it'd say 'Dude, I'm not getting better. Help me, for the love of God.'

Bubba Gump was quiet and eerie on the inside, like a haunted house. We had our backs to the wall, a pile of broken wooden tables and chairs around us like a fort, just in case a zombie walked in.

Innara shivered by my side, her eyes rolling white under half-closed lids.

"How much was that top?" I asked, trying to keep her awake. "Innara. Innara!"

"What?"

"How much was that Versace top? I like it."

Innara's head went down to her clothes. She chuckled like the very idea of me liking a Versace top was ridiculous (which it was). "I don't know. I used my Dad's credit card for everything."

"What about... the boots?" I asked, as her eyes seemed to roll again.

"Eve, you don't have to keep me up forever. I'm not dying, I'm just falling asleep."

But she was, and she wasn't just. In that order.

The next day I said I was going out to try and find help again, but Innara said no.

"Innara, I have to go. There's gotta be more people around. Someone who can help."

"Stay, Eve."

I was up on my feet already. "I'm coming back. I'm just gonna try to –"

"Eve, please stay."

"It's not dangerous, honestly Innara, these zombies are so slow they –"

"Eve, please."

I crouched to her eye-level, my hand on her hair. "You need a doctor, Innara. I'll be fine out there on my own, I promise."

"Yeah, but I won't," Innara mumbled, her eyes red and pleading.

And it hit me. She wasn't going to get better. Despite all the vanity and dumbness I've attributed to her over the years, Innara had gotten it faster than I had – she was gonna die during the night. The only choice was between dying alone in a dark pier or with me by her side.

So I stayed.

I sat and I put her head on my lap, and we stayed like that, watching the ocean and the sky through the back window. All afternoon we sat like that, and Innara fell asleep, and I sat in silence until the last light died out in the sky over the Pacific.

Her breath started growing shallow around seven. She coughed a few times, but she didn't wake up.

I kept running my hand through her hair. I looked up. Out the window, the smoke trail of an airplane played Connect the Dots with the stars, so far away it might have been a dream.

And I thought, someone is still out there. Somehow that made me happy. Watching that plane cross from right to left the starry canvas of the window, much too far away to hear our cries for help even if we tried, I felt a little less alone. My mom and aunt dead behind me, Innara dying on my lap, I felt what little of joy I still had left to feel, watching that trail of smoke. Hello, airplane. You're still there, and I'm still here, and everyone around us died. Innit fun to live in zombie-county?

"Hey, look," Innara mumbled, startling me. "A shooting star."

"Yeah," I said, and we watched the plane disappear past the frame of the window, and the sky was empty again. Innara mumbled something I couldn't understand, then closed her eyes. I don't think she felt any pain. I hope she didn't, at least.

I waited for her breath to stop completely before I let myself cry.

In the morning I carried her body to the edge of the pier, sang a minor tone rendition of Paris Hilton's Stars Are Blind in her honor and rolled her over the edge. It wasn't exactly a proper funeral, but I couldn't just leave her body to the crows and zombies inside Bubba Gump.

"So long, you spoiled bitch," I said, watching her body sink under the waves. "I hate that I can't hate you right now."

I cleaned the tears with the back of my sleeve, sniffed and turned to face the pier.

What now?

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. The battery was at one percent. No signal. No internet. No Damian.

No mom. No aunt. No Innara. No one.

But I had made a decision, during the night. I wasn't going to give up. Hell, no. I had made it that far. Across state borders, through rain and fire and zombies left and right, and I had survived. The world had taken everything from me, but it hadn't taken my will to live. I was ready to face whatever was ahead. Ready to fight back. Ready to stand on my own two feet, and never, ever back down from whatever –

"Outch!"

I looked down. The zombie had crawled from the downstairs level of the pier through a set of side stairs I hadn't seen before. It had his jaws closed around my ankle, and blood was spurting between his teeth.

"Fuck!" I kicked his face. He rolled over and held on to the bars on the edge, his body dangling over the sea. I kicked him again and he let go, falling down to the water below.

I looked down at my ankle. The skin was ripped, sunken in the shape of the zombie's teeth. There was quite a bit of blood. I felt my mind going hazy and foggy and my legs growing weak.

"God fucking damn it. I'm a zombie."

I gave the finger to the drowning zombie, then collapsed on the wooden floor of the Santa Monica Pier.

When I woke up it was night, and I was hungry for people.