Eighteen - Day 40

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It was the middle of the night. The batteries for the flashlight in my backpack had failed a while ago. Somewhere during the chaos of the day, Shawn had lost his pack, so the only light we had came from the moon. Our progress was stalled out along the side of the road, the trees all around making it too dark to keep going.

We were maybe half way back to the school. It was hard to gauge exactly how far we had managed to walk.

Walking back to our group had been the first argument we'd had after the car sped off without us. I had wanted to find somewhere he could rest for a day or two. Shawn had insisted we get as close to our people as we could while he was still capable of watching my back. The second argument was over his not wanting to take the granola bar I'd tried to hand him sometime before the sun went down. That disagreement I'd won.

My prickly disposition was not helping anything. I knew that, but I held on to the anger. As long as I was angry, there was less room for other emotions.

There were so many reasons I was angry. I was mad at Shawn for volunteering for this stupid mission. I was mad at myself for not knowing that all of the noise we'd made in that fun house would have drawn the second zombie.

I was mad that this was how the world was now.

Why couldn't I have met Shawn in that gym below my work. I did have a complimentary membership, and brand new running shoes that had never seen a treadmill. If the zombies had never happened, if I wasn't so inclined to binge on chips and watch Netflix, we could have still made a connection. I had to believe that the world going to h3ll was not the only reason we had gravitated toward each other.

But most of all, I was mad at Marcus. If he had waited for us, stood watch from the top of the funhouse, or even waited somewhere on the ground, we would have had warning that another zombie was too close. Thinking about his cowardice kept the fire simmering in my veins.

"Bri," it had been long enough since he tried to talk to me that I startled a little.

"Yeah?"

He didn't immediately say anything more. After a long pause, I turned from the section of dark forest I'd been watching, and looked at him.

He was standing a few feet away, Rex laying near his feet. Their shadowy forms were indistinct in the night, but I could see that Shawn looked on edge, his posture tense. Sighing unhappily, I stepped closer so I could see him better.

"I want you to promise me someth-"

A violent motion from my hand stopped him from finishing that thought. We were not having that conversation. Taking another step, I brought a hand up to feel his forehead. I frowned and readjusted our skin contact.

It didn't feel any different. His face felt cool to the touch. Completely normal.

I let go of his face and grabbed a hand. It felt the same, maybe even a little too cool. The night air was decidedly more chilly than it had been on previous nights.

"How do you feel?" Even I could hear the note of hope in my voice. It was faint, barely there, but for the first time since the moment I saw that horrible bite, I felt something other than darkness.

"Um, ok, I guess." Now he had a thoughtful frown on his face too.

"For real? No aches, or chills, or anything? You're not just saying that?"

He shook his head slowly. "No. I mean, my arm is starting to really hurt, but I don't feel sick."

Letting go of his hand, I whirled around. I couldn't look at him and think. How long after she had cut herself had it taken Carrie to get noticeably sick? A few hours? So much had happened since then that the details were lost. I knew that I had noticed the fever as soon as I touched her. I was sure that it had been much longer since Shawn was bitten, than it had taken Carrie to have symptoms.

My sneakers scraped over the road as I began to pace. No one really knew for sure, but most of us thought that the flu shots had somehow created the zombies. No one who had gotten the shot seemed to still be alive, and all of us who were still alive had skipped the shot. Maybe we were dead wrong, but it was the only idea anyone could come up with that wasn't completely crazy.

Way back at the start of all of this, Evie had gotten the flu shot over her lunch break. She was still fine when I got home from work, but was sick a couple of hours later when she came in from her date. I couldn't have been more than eight or nine hours from when she was infected, to her showing symptoms.

There was no way to know for sure, but I thought that we had been walking for at least that long.

I whirled back around, "I don't think you're going to get sick!"

He didn't reply. I hurried back over to him so I could see his face. The expression on his face had created tiny lines around his mouth and eyes, and looked like it was causing the healing cut across his jaw to pull painfully. He did not appear to share my sudden enthusiasm.

"Bri..." He stopped, took in a ragged breath, and tried again. "Look, I don't think we should get too excited yet. Everyone who gets infected has the same outcome."

It felt like he'd dumped ice water all over my optimism. "Don't you want to be ok?"

"Of course I do! I just think that it's not a good idea to... ugh!" Now it was his turn to start pacing. He ran agitated fingers through his too long hair. "Bri, we need to plan for the worst. You need to get back to the others in one piece. If we let our guard down, if we expect that I'm not going to get sick, that might not happen. There's still a long walk between here and there."

He came to a stop directly in front of me and put a hand along my cheek. I leaned into the touch, reveling in the lack of heat. "Ok," I suddenly didn't want to fight any more.

* * *

The rest of the night had passed painfully slowly. I must have reached out to test his temperature a hundred times. Each time, my hand encountered blessedly cool skin.

We ended up sitting much like we had on the roof at the carnival, back to back. It had been a long, stressful day, and I fought to keep my eyes open. I craved the peaceful oblivion of sleep, but that was not an option.

When the sky began to lighten in the east, I rubbed tiredly at my gritty eyes, and pushed unsteadily to my feet. Shawn climbed to his feet too, stretching. He yawned.

"Still feeling ok?"

This time he couldn't contain the smile that twitched the corners of his mouth. "Yeah," the expression bloomed into a full on grin. "Yeah, I feel fine."

It was the answer I'd been expecting. I'd spent the night absorbing the very normal body heat he was giving off, but his answer still caused a giddy noise to escape me. I launched myself happily at him.

I didn't see it coming. I was just so happy that the sun was coming up on a new day, and Shawn did not have a fever, that my normal inhibitions were gone. I was so happy that, somehow, he was not going to die from that zombie bite, that I grabbed his face and pressed my lips to his.

I must have caught him by surprise, because  my heart had time to beat twice before I felt his hands go around my back, and his lips began to move with mine. He pulled me closer, one hand moving up into my hair, as he changed the kiss from something wild and frantic, to slow and sweet.

By the time he ended it, I was panting just a little, and that ache in the center of my chest was back. He kissed my forehead and straightened up, not letting me back up an inch. I really didn't mind, and settled against his chest, content to stay that way as long as he wanted to.

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