☠️🕊️🚫🍴

(somebody's partner gets turned into a zombie and he tries to deal with that)

He had checked everything twice now. Every entrance was reinforced, and he'd replaced the boards that blew off in the storm. Without the work to distract him, worry took over- they should have been back by now. They'd never spent this long out before. They could have gotten into a fight with other survivors, or-

That wouldn't have happened. He tried his best to ignore his concern, searching for the optimism that had come so easily to him before it all went to hell. They could look after themself.

After another round of fruitless checks and unnecessary repairs, there was a knock at the door of the abandoned vet's surgery they had been using as their shelter. Their knock, the particular rhythm the pair had established to recognise each other. He raced to the door.

They looked tired when they came in, but offered him a bag heavy with supplies. There were more than they'd managed to get for weeks now. The trip must have been successful-

That line of thought was cut off when he looked back to them. They looked shaken, clutching their arm with the smile on their face that he had learnt hid fear.

They were bleeding. A cut, a scrape, surely. They had tripped, or something had fallen on them, or...

They shook their head when he asked, and snatched the wound away when he tried to see.
"I... I don't want you getting infected," they said, voice shaking.

The unthinkable had happened. He could do nothing but stare at the wound, a jagged rip in the meat of their arm. A bite.

It must only have been a few days since that happened, perhaps a week, but it felt much longer. It had disrupted his life, his mind, far more than the apocalypse had. At least with them he had stayed sane. He didn't want to think of that night- but his mind could give him nothing else. He sank into the memory again.

He had begged to try and treat the wound, ransacked every cupboard for some forgotten medical supplies left by the looters, but it was no use. They smiled as they told him so, tears in their eyes.

He knew that. Of course he knew. But he couldn't bring himself to think it. Eventually they got annoyed, pushed away the out of date paracetamol, stood up.

"I'm going to bed now. I think... I think it would be best if I didn't wake up," they said, looking pointedly at the gun that they had both elected to keep for self defence. He understood. They looked at him for a moment, frozen in the doorway.

"I would kiss you, but I don't want to infect you. Goodnight," they said and then, after another seconds pause, "goodbye."

They walked into the other room. It seemed horribly final. His gaze settled on the gun again. He knew what he was supposed to do.

The man stops remembering when he looks at them again. He can't help but feel a guilt when he sees them like this- he wasn't supposed to let this happen. It isn't them anymore; he knows that. But it looks like them, and that's a comfort almost as much as it is a horror.

The muzzled thing looks back at him, eyes cloudy and unfocused. It growls softly- he stopped feeding it, too focused on the past. He resumes sliding thin strips of bloody meat through the bars of the muzzle, watches it gnash its teeth, desperate for something more substantial.

He said it looked like them, and that's almost true. It's paler than them, a pallid, greyish colour. There's the eyes, of course. And the jagged wound spanning its forearm is almost green now.

The other thing is that it's always covered in blood, especially its face. He doesn't quite know how to wash it without removing the muzzle; and while he may be a fool he isn't that foolish.

It's finished eating now. Well, given the chance it would likely eat a lot more, but he's run out of food to give it. At least meat isn't too hard to come by now. Not cooked meat of course, or particularly clean, but it isn't picky.

He undoes the chain around its wrists, frees it from the wall, lets it lunge forward at him. He knows the hands grabbing at him aren't really an embrace. It wants to tear him apart, if you could even say it wants anything. He knows that the face rubbing against his neck isn't affectionate, that the muzzle is the only thing protecting him from its ineffectual bites, its hunger for his flesh. He can pretend.

He lets it paw at him, grab him, shove its face into him in a mindless attempt to bite. He holds it in return, this a true embrace, and he cries. It isn't them. But he can pretend.

Perhaps one day it will escape its restraints. He expects that's what will happen; he doesn't really think he can keep it restrained. He wonders, briefly, if it recognises him at all, if recognition is possible in its virus-addled mind. He wonders if it will feel anything when it tears him apart.