A/N: This is not exactly fan fiction, as I do not include any canon characters and the storyline and setting are completely original. However I was inspired to write this by the Resident Evil series, so I wanted to share it.
(I realize that there is a character named 'Derek' in the RE franchise, but the 'Derik' here in my story has nothing to do with RE.)

I hope you all enjoy reading, and any reviews are greatly appreciated.

-Azrik

"Well, shit… Think we're infected?"

A survivor watches his comrades fall. I guess this time, I'm the one taking the fall.
Rather than a survivor, this is the story on the end of someone who was bitten.

Immune

I sat with my back against the uneven stone wall of the underground cavern. It was uncomfortable, but adjusting my posture wouldn't have made it any better, so I ignored the discomfort pressing into my shoulder blades and leaned my head back until it touched the rocks. I heard a chuckle in front of me to my left and, without moving my head, glanced at my partner sitting by the adjacent wall.

"Are you still laughing?" I muttered, not really caring for an answer.

"I can't help it," said Derik. "The way you said that back there, you seriously sounded like an old man who just misplaced his glasses or something. Are you really twenty-one? Every time I think about it I want to laugh again."

I didn't think it was that amusing, but I recalled the moment anyway.

It was pandemonium. Or had been. Despite the tumultuous cacophony of frantic shouting and gunfire in the caves just seconds ago, the air was now heavy with dead silence. Everyone's eyes were on the two of us, the density of their anxiety and uneasiness polluting the atmosphere.

"Well, shit." I broke the silence rather nonchalantly, sighing through the last word. I stopped eyeing the bite on my bicep to glance at my partner. "Think we're infected?"

The look of disbelief and shock vanished from his face as he met my gaze, slightly wide-eyed, and then a surge of laughter spilled from his lips before he could stop himself.

"Definitely."

I gave Derik a pointed look. "Just stop thinking about it, then."

He responded with a short laugh. "I'd oblige, but I'll be consumed by thoughts I'd rather not have, otherwise."

Understanding his sentiments, I forgave him, though I wasn't angry with him in the first place. "Glad I could be of service," I said with joking cynicism. "I'll let you keep the luxury of hilarity, given the circumstances."

"Thanks," he said with a smile. "Man, you're really something. How can you keep up that sarcastic commentary in this kind of situation? But then you've always been strong-willed like that."

"Strong-willed my ass. We've been together for all these years, you should know by now. Sarcasm's the only thing keeping me sane these days."

"Ha, touché."

"You're pretty impressive yourself," I pointed out. "The way you can smile and laugh like a normal person in this mess of a world."

"It's how I'm still sane," then Derik grinned. "Although it's always at your expense. Your snarky remarks are what fuel my humour."

I shot back half a grin. "Well gee, I guess you're pretty relieved that it was the two of us who were bitten then, and not just one of us staying behind."

"Now that you mention it, I might be," he paused. "You think the rest of the team made it out okay?"

"They better have." I quipped, staring at the stone ceiling. "Or else, to think that I stayed behind to clear out these stragglers for nothing," I turned my gaze to the bloody mess before us, the corpses of several zombie-like monsters strewn across the small chamber. "Yep, that makes me mad."

My partner tilted his head in agreement. "It does, doesn't it?"

The two of us fell into silence for a bit, and I was back to staring at the ceiling again until Derik spoke.

"Sorry that I couldn't protect you."

I suddenly felt a tide of irritation that was completely uncalled for. "What the hell are you talking about?" I said, slightly aggressively because I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

"Even though I managed to jump in front of you, I didn't shield you properly and you still got bitten. I should've pushed you away sooner."

"I repeat," I sighed. "What the hell are you talking about? If you ask me, you shouldn't have tried to save me in the first place. I would've been the only one bitten had you stayed away."

"What are you talking about? How can I watch my partner get attacked and do nothing?"

"In this world we live in, that's exactly what you should do. As a result of trying to protect me, we both got infected. I'm sure the rest of the team appreciates that greatly."

Derik abruptly became quiet, as if he'd even stopped breathing, and I realized my sarcastic nature let that out a little more harshly than I had meant to.

"Well, I'm not saying that it's your fault, because it's not." I was tripping over my words slightly, finding the act of apologizing rather unfamiliar. "I mean, even if I was the only one bitten back there, who knows, someone else could've been attacked afterwards anyway. There's no way to tell the future, after all." It wasn't quite a proper apology, as I didn't even mention the word "sorry", but my partner seemed to understand.

"Yeah… sorry."

I would have brought my hand to my face in exasperation, had my bicep not been stinging like hell, the rest of my body aching like hell, and all my muscles exhausted as hell.

"Don't be," I said. "Thanks for always jumping to my side in times of danger, buddy."

He shot me a smile. "You too,"

"No problem. How's the shoulder?" I looked at his bite, and then at him in general. I could tell he was getting slightly pallor in spite of the dimness of the caves, and I wondered how much longer we had.

"I'll live," he winced when his fingers grazed the wound. "Though I'm not sure I actually want to if I'm gonna turn into one of those things."

I laughed at the irony. "That's what we all save the last bullet for, no?"

He smiled weakly. "Right. Your arm?"

"Can't be much worse than you," I replied to the implied question.

As I continued to stare into space, I noticed him watching me out of the corner of my eye. "What's up?"

"I really think you're something, after all. You deal with all of this so well."

"I told you, it's the side effects of having a plethora of sarcastic wit stored in my hard drive." I was getting a little miffed by his friendly admiration. Although grateful, at the same time I knew we weren't on the same page. He thought I was great, but I knew I was scum.

"That's not what I mean," said Derik. "I know you don't really like talking about it, but you joined the forces because of your family, right? You told me they were glad to have you taken off their hands by the government. You never gave me the details, but you made it sound like you were scorned by your family. You had to have been upset for being thrown into this chaos, but you've held up so well throughout the years. You were so young, I'm surprised you're not pointing fingers and blaming them for sitting here infected now."

"You know, you're not that many years older than me. Stop speaking like I'm still a kid."

"Heh, sorry."

I pondered for a moment. "I never told you the details?"

"Nope."

"Huh, that's funny. To be honest, maybe I did feel a bit hateful, being forced into fighting monsters like these. I don't remember, though. Weirdly enough, I feel like I'm more thankful for what they did, now. Wanna hear about it?"

Derik grunted as he shifted his posture. "Why not?"

"Did I ever mention that I was adopted? Judging from that expression on your face, I'm guessing no. Well, now you know. When the outbreak happened seven years ago, my foster brother got bitten when he tried to save me from an infected. It just… happened like it happened to everyone else. I was the one who put him down after he turned. I guess it was all the anxiety and the terror, but my foster family grew to despise the fact that it was their child who died instead of me, someone who had no blood relation to them, and eventually that hate came to be directed at me. No matter the reason, I became a risk factor in their family, and they were only too eager to send me away when the government began looking for recruits."

I spared my partner a glance, and he seemed to have paled more compared to before. I had started to feel pretty sluggish myself. "You all right?" I asked, despite being able to see for myself.

He nodded. "So what happened that makes you think differently about them now?"

I shrugged. "Time passed. As I spent more time on the battlefield and came across cities without a single human still alive, I realized the chances that my foster family is still alive somewhere are pretty slim. I don't mean that I'm relieved they're dead, or think that they deserve it. I just think that, if I hadn't been sent into the forces and received all that training, I wouldn't be alive today. Besides, even if they weren't my real family, they're the ones who fed me and raised me all those years. They taught me to walk, to talk, sent me to school; showed me what it meant to have a family. And because of them, I found a new family in the team and in you…"

By this point I had been rambling with my eyelids shut. I felt so sleepy, the exhaustion having crept up on me without my realizing it. My mind cleared for a moment long enough to notice how cheesy I sounded at the end of my impromptu speech there.

"Ugh…" I made a half disgusted, half embarrassed sound in my throat. "Sorry," I groaned.

Derik chuckled quietly. "Thanks, partner. I'm glad it was you I was with these past seven years. Just saying, but you're a really good person, aren't you?"

I almost let out a harsh bark of laughter at that, but I scoffed softly instead. "Are you kidding me? Human beings," I paused for just a moment, thinking. "…are shitty creatures."

He said nothing, only the look of amusement evident in the slight quirk of his lips expecting me to continue.

"Why else do you think we're in this living Hell? There's proof enough from the fact that we try to engineer bio-weapons in arrogance of our intelligence, casting aside consequences and the safety of humanity. We're all shitty people, Derik."

"You might have a point there."

Our conversation died, and the caves were quiet aside from the occasional sound of something dripping—I didn't want to know what—and the gradual increase of laboured breathing.

"Man, I'm starting to feel really weak," said Derik. "Seven years, huh? We've lasted this long already; think it's about time we ended this?"

"You took the words right out of my mouth, partner."

We both picked up the handguns sitting by our sides and turned off the safety. This was going to end in one shot.

"Hey," Derik said as he inspected his pistol.

"Hm?"

"Maybe I've seen too many zombie movies, but—this is hypothetical, okay?—what if you discovered that you were immune to this whole zombie virus thing and you could be the cure, but you'd have to die in order to give the world a chance to save humanity; would you be willing to give up your life?"

My heart skipped a beat. "Why, you immune?" I asked, half jokingly.

"Nah, my infection's gotten that much worse in this short amount of time," he answered surprisingly seriously. "So, would you?"

"What kind of a weird question is that?"

"I did say, 'what if'."

I sighed through my nose. "You want my honest answer?"

"Of course,"

"Had you asked me that question outside of these circumstances, I'd probably have said, 'yeah', I would."

Derik raised a brow. "And now?"

"Hmm, I think I'll have to decline. Don't ask me for the reason; it's just how I'm feeling."

It looked like he was in pain, and his laugh sounded strained. "Just doing whatever you want, as always. Maybe you're not such a 'good' person, after all." He lifted his gun and brought the barrel of it near me.

I responded in kind with a chuckle of my own. "Like I said, we're all shitty people." I lifted my arm and tapped my weapon lightly against his. "Cheers."

"Cheers; see you in the afterlife."

"Even though we're already in Hell?"

"Sure, can't get worse than this, can it?"

"You got that right. I'll see you around, partner."

"See ya,"

We simultaneously pressed our guns against our temples, and with my free hand I touched the week-old bite on my calf hidden by my pants, inwardly laughing half-heartedly. I began to squeeze the trigger.

We're all shitty people.

It's hard to say, in that moment, whether or not there was the sound of gunshots. Does a felled tree really make a sound when there's no one standing in the forest to listen?