We sat quietly, amongst the mangled dead. Bodies lie in every direction. Daryl tried to keep himself busy, shuffling the corpses around in pile. I wondered why he was doing this. Maybe because the air was filled with ten tons of awkward. I looked at my hands, bloodied and red. It started to sink in. My friends were not just killed, but- eaten. I squated down in a heap, dropped my head in my hands, and sobbed lightly. I wouldn't let myself bawl. Not in front of people. It is weakness. But I wanted to.I had only once ever felt a sadness like this. Of course, not in the same way. I mean, I had seen that guy in Miami get his face bitten off, but I figured it was just the bath salts.
Lifting my head up to wipe the tears from my eyes, I noticed Daryl walking towards me. He dug in his front vest pocket and pulled out a rag. "You got a little somethin' on your face," he told me but never looked at me. I paused to look up at him. As I reached for the dingy rag, I saw that his head was turned but his eyes cut my way once and then looked away. Maybe he wanted to connect but-?
I stood on my feet and walked to the poolside. My face in the reflection was bloodied from holding my head in my hands. I knelt to dip the rag into the water but let the water in the pool settle to look at my face closer. As I wiped, a drop of blood fell onto the water and made a ripple that slowly spread out across the still water. I thought of the receptionist and her bandage. This thing, this disease, must have spread through a bite. Images of the bloody corpse in my face flashed through my mind. All at once I realized how I looked. I looked like one of those- things. It was then that I knew that I could not become that. I could not let myself contribute to the ripple effect. I had to live; I had to survive.
I got up from the edge of the pool and walked past the hoards of dead lying in the floor. I knew I needed to face this; to do what needed to be done. Daryl watched me walk across the floor to him, and he watched me take his knife from its holster. I heard his random expletives, but only faintly. I walked into the reception area where the horror all started for me and stepped over the bodies. I beheld the maimed bodies of my two former friends. Esma, and her many severed parts, lay next to a wall. As I moved closer, I noticed her head was still animated. Her hair separated from the nearly coagulated blood on the floor in stringy strands of muck as her head tilted my way. Her eyes fixated on mine. I heard a faint grumble from her lips as they separated. Her lips and her skin shone a blue-green tint and deep purple veins thrust their way just beneath the skin. My hands trembled but I clenched the blade tighter. I knelt next to the corpse. Her only attached arm reached for me but then fell limp once I drove my blade into her forehead. I rose and walked over to Lenna's lifeless body.
Her body had not yet animated but I thought a job still needed to be done. I began to tremble again. Her once beautiful body now resembled Esma's corpse. She was covered in her own blood and her clothes were torn and tattered. Tears welled in my eyes as I approached her slowly. She had been the best friend I ever had but now she was this monster. She was no longer who she had been. I knelt next to her. She was now just a part of this ripple, to which we all would eventually succomb. But not me, I thought, not today. I had this innate need to endure and continue on.
I brushed Lenna's blonde hair back. I tried to fight the tears but I could feel them streaming down my face. Gripping the knife with both hands, I raised it above my head. I swiftly forced the knife through her rotting head. As I pulled the knife out, blood splattered all over my hands again. I stood in the doorway. Daryl looked up at me from where he sat but said nothing. I looked at my hands and the knife. I walked over to the pool and began to wash my hands and his knife off, and felt a weight lift from my shoulders. The blood from my hands tainted the water below. It was then I realized that their death was not my cross to bear. And my burden, like the blood in the pool, was washed away. But it would not be forgotten.