"It's going to be ok, Levon," I lie, running my hand through his hair. "We're gonna be ok."
Levon's drifting -- somewhere between asleep and half-awake, his eyes going in and out of focus like crazy.
I remember when I got infected. The first few days are a nightmare of fever, incoherent thoughts and the sudden realization that you can understand zombies. Bad enough that you'd want to die even if you hadn't just found out the last safe haven on Earth is destroyed.
TUM.
I turn my eyes to the window, startled.
"What's that?" I ask, as fading, distant voices start oozing at us from the street bellow – yells and screams and grunts, mixed with the rattling sound of approaching footsteps.
Herd.
I turn to face Levon. "We gotta get out of here, Levon."
"I'm a zombie too, now," Levon whispers, his eyes closed. "It's fine. The cart. Read the --"
"No, Levon," I say, trying to pull him up. He barely moves from his spot, I'm so weak. "It's too soon, they'll still eat you if they –"
"There," Levon coughs. He breaks free from my grasp and slides back to the floor. His hand waves towards the metal cart to his right. "The log. On the cart."
"The what?" I ask, looking from the metal cart to his half-closed eyes. "Levon, we gotta go!"
"The log. Take it."
Getting up, I browse clumsily through the medical gear on the cart. "What log!?"
"The papers," Levon says, with difficulty. "Under the glove box."
I pull the box aside, uncovering a block of papers stuck together with a rusty metal clip.
"They're far, still," Levon says, as the voices slow but steadily grow louder out the window. "Read it. Read the log."
"Levon, we –"
"Just read it," he says, as firmly as his voice allows him to.
Trying to keep focused, I pull the cart away and take a step towards the window, letting moonlight shine on the first page of the document.
It's handwritten.
01
-The army's gone. The doctors are gone. There's no one here. Kyle told me to keep a journal, in case people...find us. It seems some kind of explosion compromised the place, down on the fourth floor. We are looking into it tomorrow.
02
-The boys have finished going through the Infectology lab. Everything's ruined. We're waiting for Scott to come back, he's searching the other floors, but, at least for now, it seems that whatever papers the army was logging progress on the cure have been destroyed by the explosion.
03
-Jared found ampules. A transparent liquid inside them, and they're all marked #41. We don't know what it means. Stacy's kid is getting worse, he can't write anymore, so we can't talk to him. He's not eating the food, either. Most of the time he just stands there, staring into nothing. Someone suggested we try to find him a dead body from outside, but no one wants to go back to the streets.
Stacy's reluctant to have her son be the guinea pig. We might not have another choice, though.
-Kyle got the radio working. Not that anyone's broadcasting anything.
04
-#41 ACTUALLY WORKS! Stacy's kid was talking and acting normal within five minutes of the injection and, so far, no side effects we can see. This should be better news, but we only have four ampules left. We have eight infected people. Including my daughter.
05
-Meredith used one of the ampules on her husband, behind our back. Jared was not happy.
- Three ampules left. And we have seven family members in need of help here, four of which are getting critical. Jared and Meredith had a fight, earlier. Jared punched Meredith. Things are bad.
06
-We found some food the army left behind. Cans and powdered protein. Most importantly, Scott managed to get a signal on the radio, and we got in touch with survivors in Nantucket. Waiting to see what happens.
07
-Nantucket has a functioning TAS, complete with a working chopper. They have close to five hundred survivors there. Kyle says they can pick us up on the rooftop in two days. Jared wants to bring at least one ampule to them, so maybe they can restart progress on the cure. This leaves us with only two ampules, and seven sick people.
-Kyle's cousin tried to attack Jared.
08
-Kyle has used one of the two spare ampules on his cousin. Jared is browsing through the other floors now. I don't want to be near when he finds out.
-There was an argument upstairs. Kyle is dead. We heard a gun. We think Jared shot him, but no one has had the courage to ask.
-No one talks. Jared has the ampules hidden, and won't tell us where. He says he'll work out who will use the spare one, and the last one goes with us to Nantuket. The infected ones will stay behind.
09
-I found the ampules. Everyone is asleep.
-My daughter is well. I can't put into words the relief. We have to go now, though. Jared won't let this slide. I hear steps outside. My daughter says she can hear voices, screaming and growing louder. All I hear are grunts. I wonder if the symptoms of her infection have still to wear out completely.
I finish reading, raising my eyes up to the rain beating the window outside. The voices grow louder, but I don't process it.
"They died before the chopper came," I say to myself. "And they had the cure. They had the –"
My leg twitches as I feel the pinch. Looking down, I see Levon on the floor, pressing on the base of the syringe with his thumb, pushing the translucent liquid all the way in.
"Levon!" I yell, widening my eyes at him. His hand slips and, breathing heavily, he collapses back to his pool of blood.
The empty syringe rolls away from us, stopping between the wheels of the metal cart.
"Found where old Jared was hiding the treasure, last night," he says, in a weak voice, shaking the empty ampule between his fingers. "I hadn't lost hope that you might show up. So I saved it."
YOU ARE READING
Eve
Teen Fiction-Featured Story -Wattys 2016 Winner Eve's a vegan zombie, and she really doesn't care what you think of it, so shush it. All she wants is to get by and find some pigeons or a fat rat - anything without a name she can eat before she starves to death...
