Great, right? I throw up my dinner just like Nogla probably did. I tried to be quiet about it, but a) I cannot throw up quietly and b) Max has bat ears. He was kneeling next to me as soon as he heard me retching in the bathroom. Good stuff. Anthony must have heard too because, surprise surprise, Marcel came bustling in with the exact same drugs that we found the day before. Or was it just earlier in the same day? Who knows. I kind of didn't care about anything other than the fact that I was dying.

"What happened?" Marcel asked. What did happen?

I painfully heaved up nothing while Max explained, "A close call with a zombie." Oh yeah, those gashes all over my neck and chest.

"Adam, I need you to sit up for a moment." Marcel was trying to be soothing. I forced myself upright with shaky arms while he pulled my shirt off. So not only was I being embarrassing and throwing up everywhere, I was now shirtless and bandages and skinny, protruding bones and ugly, red hot skin. Wait, isn't that a sign of infection?

"This is infected." Marcel started to unwrap the tape Max had wound around me.

"I cleaned them out as best I could," Gonzalez replied. I finally regained control of my stomach and sat there, shuddering, while Max flushed the toilet and Marcel finished removing my bandages. It hurt in the little kid kind of way when you exposed a new cut to water. But there wasn't any water around.

"Okay," Marcel pressed a couple of capsules to my lips. I swallowed them dry—my mouth was so, so dry—and watched Max's hands shake. "I'm not sure if this is Cholera or the infection. I guess we'll find out if those antibiotics work or not," Marcel finally finished, "Get him to bed and make sure he stays hydrated." He pushed himself up, knees popping. "If he gets worse come tell me." He breezed out of the bathroom, leaving us a bottle of pills.

"Yeah, I will." Gonzalez nodded and pulled me up to sit on the now closed toilet seat. "Can you walk?" He frowned. "I guess Marcel wants to leave your chest uncovered."

"Yeah, I can walk."

Max ended up carrying me to his room. He made sure that I was comfortably wrapped in about eight blankets and then pulled me close to him. Did I mention I was running a massive fever? Everything was so dry. I was the human equivalent to a desert.

"I'm fine," I protested. I wasn't really fine. My dinner was down the toilet, I was burning hot, and everything was dry dry dry.

"You need this fever to break."

"The blankets can take care of that."

"Yeah, they can," Max knew what he was doing. I didn't really mind. "Just—please don't die," he whispered.

My fever never really did break. I can remember little snippets of Max gently shaking me, of Max himself gently shaking, Marcel and Sark huddled over me, Evan somewhere in there, Tyler screaming at Evan, a strange silence for a time, and then not much of anything. I was swimming in tar, burning hot and consuming me even though I was nothing more than a dried out husk. I was always running the same fever, blankets or no blankets. Maybe Evan and Tyler had a fistfight, now that I think of it. And I think Anthony just straight up disappeared. Either way, I was out. For days, maybe.

Now, before I magically wake up, I have to tell you what actually went on. Because I'm the one writing this and I can do what I want with my autobiography. Or journal. Or whatever this is.

Anyways, while I was comatose and practically (un)dead for three days or so, a lot happened. None of it good.

Max woke up in the morning to me completely still and barely breathing, so he did the typical Max thing and tried to fix it himself before he asked for help. That was what I remembered of him shaking me. I kind of blinked and looked at him like, yo, I'm alive, let me be, then went back into my coma. He asked me to please wake up, please say something, and then Anthony came in. Chilled did his Chilled thing and went and got Marcel while Max forced me to drink some water. Sark showed up too. So Marcel and Sark did their thing while Max wandered the apartment complex with nothing better to do. My two medics decided there was nothing they could do, so they went to 801 and announced the bad news.
Things kind of went to shit from there. Geez, my storytelling is crap.

"Adam is dying," Marcel just flat out said it. Delirious probably fist-pumped. Craig probably had a heart attack.

Evan, always the opportunist, said: "Then we need to leave. It's obvious Nogla's disease has spread and we can't stay here. We'll all die." I guess everyone kind of agreed with him on the disease part.

"But we can't just leave Adam here," Tyler retorted, "he's one of us. What if he wakes up or whatever and we've deserted him?"

"And what if he wakes up and we're all dead?" Fong shot back.

"I vote we give him some time," Sark stepped in. "Two days."

"Two days for all of us to get infected. I'm leaving, with or without you people." Evan muttered. Jonathan nodded his assent.

"We can't do that!" Craig exclaimed, "There's a chance that Adam just ate the same bad stuff that Nogla did. Not all of us are going to get sick! Max and Anthony would be sick by now if it was contagious. So would Sark and Marcel."

Speaking of Anthony, it was sometime during this conversation that he packed his bags and skipped town. Max never saw him hurry down the stairs and hook a right once he reached the street. Max never saw or heard any of this until he came back upstairs from wherever he had been.

So things, obviously, became heated. They always do when you put Evan and Tyler in the same room. A discussion became a shouting match, which is what I remember hearing. And then a shouting match became a fistfight. Evan tackled Tyler and Sark started yelling at them to stop and Jonathan drew a knife and Craig tried to grab him and Marcel started for the door. And somewhere in there, Delirious lost it. He stabbed Marcel. And then silence fell as everyone watched Marcel crumple to the ground, blood spilling from his chest. Jonathan's aim was too good. Jonathan booked it out of there, and so did Evan. Max came back upstairs to find that our nine had quite suddenly become a total of five. Delirious and Vanoss also skipped town, but never saw Anthony.

None of them noticed his absence until that night when Marcel's body was burning on the pyre we had set up in the alley behind our complex. Max wasn't present for the fire, either. He was curled up with my feverish body.

Give me a minute, now after everything is shit, to explain our group dynamic. Evan is our fearful leader who refuses to run out of water (?), electricity (?), and food (!). Delirious is his boyfriend who dotes on his every word and wrong decision and kind of causes lots of trouble. These two get along with no one. Not even Anthony. Chilled is our kind of tag-along. He hates being with us, but he has no other options (obviously he does because he left us. liar.). Nogla and Marcel were kind of our peacekeepers. They played pretty neutral and always came up with our compromises and kept fights from breaking out until Nogla died of Cholera and Marcel was murdered (wowie). Of course, then it didn't matter because everyone left anyways. Sark is our mother. He always made sure everyone was fed and happy, even when Evan was cracking down on us. And Sark was always the one to sacrifice. He's the most selfless person I know, without a doubt. Max is second, but he's mostly selfless to me. To the rest of the group he's pretty quiet but also defensive. Kind of like a cactus. Very nice to the owls who make their home inside his chest, but very not nice to the cats who want to eat his owls. I think. I'm kind of the owl, but no one wants to eat me. Instead they want me to feed them. Max and I are often not around to observe the fights and the peacemaking. Craig tries to be nice and neutral, but he's obviously with Tyler (when I went through their apartment, only one bed had been slept in. mmhmmm.). And Tyler himself is like our renegade leader who actually knows what he's doing. He and Evan do not ever get along. There are two sides to our group and a full spectrum of involvement, as you can see.

"Wait, did Anthony leave with Evan?" Craig spoke up.

"Is he not here?" Tyler glanced around the fire. "It's so easy to miss him half the time," he muttered.

"I haven't seen him since we checked on Adam this morning," Sark frowned.

"He must have left with Evan, then," Craig sighed, his breath blowing a cloud.

"Is it a good idea to stay?" Tyler asked his party of two. Sark shrugged and Mini was silent.

"I don't trust Evan or Jonathan. They'll come back for supplies and for blood." Craig finally replied. "Adam hasn't changed a bit all day. He's stuck in that coma, and he probably won't wake up."

"What about Max?" Sark looked up from the fire.

"He can come or he can stay. Max can fend for himself and we can leave him supplies. Jonathan and Evan aren't out for him," Tyler murmured. Always thinking ahead, that's Tyler. He's crazy smart when he wants to be.

"So we just give up on Adam like that?" Sark crossed his arms.

"Nothing else we can do for him," Wildcat sighed, "if you're coming, we'll leave tomorrow morning."

Sark shifted uncomfortably while the others stared into the fire. That fire had consumed two bodies in the past two days, and quite possibly a third one soon to come. "If he isn't any better, then I'll go," he finally replied. Tyler nodded and Craig patted him on the back.

"I know this is tough for you," Wildcat said, "but this is survival."

"Yeah, I know," the shorter man took a long breath. "I don't have anyone left besides him, you know? Hutch is gone, my family is gone, everyone. If he dies then I have no strings." I miss Sark.

"And if he doesn't, I'm sure that Max will take care of him." Tyler pressed his lips together. "That's enough sappy shit," he said as screams rang out in the distance, "we need to get back inside."

And you, my brilliant reader, can guess what happened. I didn't improve! So cinco became dos, and only uno of us could function. The sending-off went something like this:

"We'll see you around, huh?" Tyler stopped at the top of the stairwell.

"Yeah, we'll meet again," Max nodded, "if Adam makes it or not."

"Hopefully the first option," Tyler replied. "Stay safe," he whispered, "and hide what you can. Evan and Jonathan will probably be back."

"Thanks," Gonzalez watched his friend turn and hurry down the stairs. He relaxed once the three figures disappeared at the end of the street.

And then my Max did the Max thing and made a feast (my Max? I'm getting way too possessive.). Tyler's group had taken their share and Evan had taken nothing, so we had a metric butt-ton of food. Sadly, it helped that we had lost so many mouths to feed. It's much easier to take care of two people than eight. But numbers are helpful, so it's a give-take kind of thing.

So Max ate and filled up on all the calories he had been deprived of by Evan's strict rationing. Maybe it could have been counted on a binge, but there's no such thing as too much food in the zombie apocalypse. And then he hid all the rest of the food in our apartment. Because he's a hoarder. And finally, he turned the heat on full blast and took a hot shower and washed as much clothing as he wanted to. We were going to live the life of luxury. Luxury being: a normal life before the Fall.

And once he was happy and warm he went the extra mile and wrapped me up in freshly cleaned and dried blankets. Because Max is secretly a mother. And I stayed in my coma for another four days. And he watched me and cared for me with very little else to do. Because he's Max. And Max loves me.

I woke up feeling much less hot and a tiny bit less dry. But also a lot warmer. But with a lot fewer blankets. Mainly because Max was curled up around me. It was pitch black but I could see white outside of the window.

"Is it snowing?" I asked.

Gonzales jerked upright and looked at me. "You're awake," he breathed. I ignored him and walked over to the window. Frigid air was leaking through, eating into me and working away at the heat Max had given me. What was practically a blizzard was coming down. I guess. I'm not used to snow, so it was probably just flurries. I turned away from the window.

"Adam?"

"You're glowing," I replied. A glow like sparks was coming from his chest. His heartbeat, I realized. I walked back to the bed and worked my way back under the covers.

"Adam, you're awake. You've been in a coma for, like, a week. What are you talking about?" He checked my temperature. "Your fever broke, too."

"Your heartbeat is glowing," I pressed my hand to his chest. He was the one that was burning up now. I wanted that light, somehow.

He glanced down and put his hand over mine. "You're not actually awake," his voice fell.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm awake. I'm aware. My fever is down and I'm not in a coma," I could see the glow even when I blinked, even through our hands.

"Are you hungry? Thirsty?" He clasped my wrist to check my pulse and frowned. "I'm not feeling anything," he felt my throat.

"No, I'm fine," my mouth was a comfortable kind of dry. All of me was, actually. I had no desire for food or water.

"Adam, I'm not feeling your pulse," Gonzalez checked the other side of my neck.

"You're not?" I reached up to feel. Two dudes just holding a neck. Nothing weird here!

"Wait, it's there," Max paused, "it's just as slow as it was when you were out, though." His fingers, warm and gentle, found the claw marks on the back of my neck. I felt nothing out of the ordinary. "They're healed," he pushed the blankets down and exposed my bare chest. In the dim light I could see purple scars and a dull ember on my chest.

"Wow, they are," I looked up at him when his hand found my waist and stayed there. No signs of infection here and a ridiculously fast recovery. I'm the Wolverine, guys.

"You seem different," he murmured. Other than the entire where's my heartbeat thing? Yeah, maybe. "Your eyes," he reached across me to the nightstand and turned on the lamp. "Your eyes are darker here," his thumb ran under my eye. "And you're cooling off now that we're not—or, I'm not—uh," he stuttered. Despite how hot I felt, I wasn't all that warm.

"Now that you're not holding me," I finished for him.

"Yeah," he finally replied. "Yeah,"

"Could I be a zombie?" I finally asked. "I kind of look like one by what you're saying."

He blinked at me. "Of course not, I'd be zombie food if you were infected."

"Yeah, but like, half zombie. Because of your heartbeat and my heartbeat and my eyes and I'm just different now. So, like, Danny Phantom. A ghost or something in a body but not quite connected?" I shrugged.

"Maybe," Max chewed his lip. "Since that zombie never actually bit you but I'm sure you got some form of the virus, so maybe," he paused, "it doesn't matter right now."

"No, not really," I mumbled. Gonzalez nodded, his gaze lingering on my lips. He quietly lay back down and looked at the window instead. "Yeah, it is snowing. I hope that the others are alright," he yawned.

Spoiler alert: the others were not alright. But I'll get to that.

Max eventually closed his eyes and went back to sleep. But I couldn't sleep for the life of me. Nothing in me was tired, nothing was in want. I swung my legs out of bed and left the bedroom. I felt stronger than I had in months. I paused outside of Chilled's doorway. The door was wide open, his drawers open and empty.

"Anthony?" I whispered, gently knocking on the doorframe. Silence. "Chilled, you here?" I picked my way into his room and saw that he had taken all of his things. Max was sound asleep in the other room; I couldn't wake him up to ask about where Chilled was. Sark or Marcel might know if they were awake. I quietly dressed myself and then left the apartment. The cold immediately hit me, but I wasn't cold. Well, actually, I was. I could feel my fingers like ice. But I didn't feel cold.

What immediately threw me off was the lack of noise. Even with our small group, there was always some kind of chatter or clatter. Even in the dead of night. And 801 was completely dark. Evan literally never turned the lights off. But the lights were out and the heat was off and all the food was gone. Snow drifted in through a newly shattered window. Dried blood covered part of the floor and led in a streak out to the hallway. I backed out of the apartment and hurried to 802. It was empty, but only Sark's things were gone.

I blinked when a spark appeared in the edge of my vision. Two sparks, actually. I grabbed a baseball bat that was sitting by the door and crept out into the hallway. The sparks were bright bright bright as they ran up the stairs.

I turned and raced for 804. The door slid shut behind me as they came to the top of the stairs. I froze. What the hell could I do with a baseball bat against two guys who were probably heavily armed and prepared for this? I locked the door as quietly as possible and set the bat down on the counter.

"There's nothing here!" I heard one of them shout. Delirious. "They cleaned it all out!" A bottle smashed out in the hallway. Beer, probably. Since Jonathan had kind of become a hardcore alcoholic after the Fall. His partner—Evan, I assumed—said something to him in a low voice that I couldn't quite hear.

"What the hell is going on?" I flinched when Max whispered in my ear, managing to hit my head on his chin.

"Don't do that!" I hissed, pushing him back, "Jonathan and Evan are here and I have no plan whatsoever." Two sparks moved from apartment to apartment, finally pausing outside of our door. I gave Max a panicked look and then went into full zombie mode.

Zombie mode not being eat-Max's-brains-out zombie, but howling and kind of throwing a shoulder into the door. Genius, right? What kind of scared me was how real my zombie screams sounded. Evan and Delirious both jumped back, their heartbeats flaring up.

"I knew Adam was infected," Evan muttered. I groaned again and slapped a hand on the door. "Max is probably dead too," he finished.

"Good riddance," Delirious grumbled, "who cares. We need their food."

"You really want to risk that?" Vanoss sounded doubtful. Max began to growl too, adding to Evan's doubt. "There's at least the two of them in there."

Both of them paused. I continued to make noise, searching for flesh to feast upon. Gonzalez shoved me against the door in his mad effort to reach the two outside, his body pressed against mine. Perv. Always had to get his share, even in a life threatening situation. Well, a half-dead-life threatening situation. For me.

"Come on," Evan finally said, "we can find other food." The two of them turned away and left. Just like that. Way too easy, if you ask me. They'd be back, but that didn't matter. Their sparks faded down the stairs and into the streets.

Max slumped against the wall and looked at me. "I'm going back to bed," he mumbled, glancing at his watch, "it's three-thirty. We can figure this shit out tomorrow, both your health and this Evan situation."

"Yeah, sounds good," I found myself craving more of Max's warmth instead of my icy skin. More of Max in general. How on earth did we get here? Two guys sleeping together (in the most innocent sense of the phrase) but still remaining "just friends." We were a mess. And yet, as I was having these thoughts, I followed him to his room and wriggled my way under the covers and closer to his heart. And I think he came just a bit closer to mine. You know, I might kind of like him in a more than friends kind of way. Don't tell anyone I said that.