February 16, 2004

"Hey, wake up," Nick says, standing over me and gently shaking me awake. I sit up with a jolt, momentarily unaware of what is going on. I realize that I had accidentally fallen asleep on the couch. I let myself relax, although it's hard to with the ever growing pain in my back.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"We're all going on a run. Bethari is going to stay here with you. Will you be okay?" He kneels in front of me and places one hand on my stomach, which has continued to grow, but remains much smaller than expected.

I nod weakly, but disguise it so that he won't worry. Between the RV's shoddy engine, and the worry that the baby could come at any minute, everyone has been on edge. I watch the others collect their bearings and exit the RV, while Bethari takes a seat next to me. Her and I make small talk and watch the others disappear through the window.

It doesn't take long until I see them reappear, this time running at a full sprint. They bust through the door of the RV, Luke being the first to make it inside. "Huge fucking herd heading straight for us, biggest I've ever seen. We gotta go!" Luke manages to spit out in between labored breaths. Bethari and I nod, as there's nothing more that needs to be said. Pete nearly flings himself into the driver's seat, trying to get the RV moving as soon as possible. I steady myself on the couch, gripping the cushions until my knuckles turn white. With how bad the engine in the RV is getting, I expect a bumpy start.

"Fuck… Goddammit!" Pete curses, slamming his fists against the steering wheel. No one has to ask him what's wrong; we all heard the RV's pathetic sputters followed by a dead silence. I look between Nick and Luke, whose faces are both devoid of all color.

"We'll fix it, don't worry!" Nick tries to convince me that this terrible situation will work out. He rushes out the door with Pete and Luke following. I make my way toward the front of the RV to watch them through the window. The hood of the RV is flung open, so I'm unable to see much.

"Let's just sit down," Martha coaxes me toward the passenger seat. "They'll be done in a moment."

As more and more time ticks by with no positive progress, I start to nervously bite at my nail, something I haven't done in months. Bile rises in my throat as I begin to see the figures with rotting flesh emerge through the trees. Everyone else seems to notice the dead at the same time I do, prompting Nick and Luke to yell that they're going to hold them off. They begin their battle with the dead, slashing and stabbing their skulls. More and more lurkers infiltrate the area, and Martha and Bethari hustle toward the trees to assist in warding off our undead attackers. Pete stays at the hood of the RV, desperately prodding at the engine and battery, trying to find a solution to save us. I wait inside the RV, wishing I could do something to help.

"Damn thing is shot!" Pete yells from the front of the RV and has to evacuate the area due to lurkers surrounding him. "There's no fixing it!"

"Fuck, we gotta get out of here!" Luke shouts, hacking the side of a lurker's head with his machete.

More lurkers flow through the treeline on the opposite side of the road, flooding the area with mangled, staggering bodies. We're completely surrounded. I throw my backpack over my shoulder and prepare to make a run for it. Nick and Luke are yelling and trying to reach me, but lurkers nearly get them everytime they make any advances. An ever growing sea of lurkers is filling the gap between us. Their voices grow quieter and quieter until they're completely overtaken by the groans of the dead. I can't see a single living soul, and lurkers finally spot me standing in the doorway of the RV. I rush outside, slamming the door behind me in hopes that I can preserve the precious materials located inside. A tiny opening presents itself and I take the chance, sprinting as fast as I can through the gap. I make it around the RV safely. Several feet down the road, Bethari is taking on multiple lurkers at once. She struggles against one that got the jump on her, while three others are fast approaching. To save time I pull my gun from its holster and aim at the three swaying hunks of flesh, who have now turned toward me. I fire three bullets at them, effectively taking them down. The lurker Bethari was struggling against falls against her and sends the both of them falling. Bethari uses one hand to struggle for her gun and the other hand pushes against the lurker's face. I race to her aid, putting a bullet in her undead assailant's brain. She pushes its limp body to the side, and I use my free hand to pull her to her feet in an instant.

"What do we do? Where are the others?" She breathlessly asks.

I give a quick look around, but see nothing moving besides the many lurkers trying to swarm us. "I don't know, but we gotta go!"

I grab her arm and pull her into the direction I'm already running. We dart into the forest, neither of us having any idea where we're going. We dodge around lurkers hiding amongst the trees, as well as several that trail after us from the road. My feet ache horrible, along with my stomach and back, which are both holding extra weight. As we run, I feel kicks in my stomach. Instead of the lights taps and flutters I felt before, these kicks are harsh and almost painful. I push through the pain.

"There!" I shout, pointing to a house coming into view.

We come up to the house, and I try to twist the doorknob to no avail. Bethari grabs my arm and pulls me away from a legless lurker on the ground trying to grab my ankle. The attached garage has it's boxed roller door standing halfway open. Bethari and I duck under the door and enter the garage, causing a sharp pain to shoot through me from the sudden movement. Bethari slams the door shut, trapping the lurkers outside. Hopefully the door will hold.

I steadily hunch over a bit and lean against a workbench, trying to calm my labored breaths and painful body. When I get myself stabilzed I turn to Bethari, who is still in the same spot she was when she slammed the door shut behind us. She's standing in a ridgid stance, facing away from me and producing only small, suppressed cries.

"Bethari…?" I ask cautiously and approach her slowly with and extended hand. "Are you okay?"

I've only closed half of the space between us, but she whips around abruptly. At first all I notice is her tear stained face, but then I see what she's showing me. Her hand is overturned and shoved outward, exposing her palm. Fresh blood-her blood-drips from her hand and onto the concrete floor below us. On her palm is an indentation shaped like a set of human teeth.

My heart shatters. At a loss for words, I bring her into a tight hug and hold her while her little cries grow into huge sobs. I rub her back in hopes that it provides a small amount of comfort, while I listen to the dead banging at the door. Suddenly, I want to personally bash every lurkers' head in two times over. How many innocent people's lives are these awful creatures going to take?

She finally silences her cries and pulls away with a sarcastic laugh, "Huh, I'm spending my last hours on Earth bawling my eyes out."

"Do you want a bandage? I have some in my backpack I think." I place the back of her bitten hand in my palm and examine the wound, which still has blood trickling out of it.

"No! Save that for yourself, or someone that actually needs it. Don't waste it on me."

"Would you like to sit down?" I offer. She meekly nods and allows me to help her lower to the ground against the garage wall.

"I saw someone get bit toward the beginning of this, one of my coworkers. It took him a day before he died, but he started feeling poorly very fast. I've already got a headache. He was in so much pain when he finally turned. I won't let that happen to me."

"What would you… like to do?" I ask, the words feeling dirty coming out of my mouth.

"Try to have a good time, as good a time as possible. And then when I'm ready… I'll end it."

As hard as this situation is on me, it's a hundred times harder on Bethari. I can't even imagine what she's going through. As sad as I feel, I put my full focus on her. "Tell me some stories, some happy ones."

"It's going to be hard to remember a lot with this killer headache, but I'll try. One that comes to mind is the first time I went to an amusement park with my family. That just wasn't my parents thing, and my sister was always way too invested with school to want to go to a place like that. I always wanted to visit one, and I finally did when I was sixteen and I went on a school trip. I had the best time, so I kept trying to convince my family to go to one with me. It took me a year, but I finally convinced them. We go, we get on our first rollercoaster, it starts to go up the first incline, and we stop all the way at the top. My parents had been terrified to get on there is the first place, so when we're stopped eighty feet in the air, my dad starts freaking out. He's yelling, "We're gonna die! We're gonna die!" It only took a few minutes for it to start back up again, but needless to say we left as soon as we got off that ride. I could never get them to go back." She finishes her story with a sad laugh. "I hope they're still alive, but if they're not, I hope I get to see them again."

"I wish I would've known you before all this," I respond. "I would've loved to go to an amusement park with you."

"My head is killing me. You tell a story," she says.

"My brother had this one girlfriend back in highschool. They only dated for a couple months, nothing serious, but she cheated on him. Anyway, he was all torn up about it because she was going around and telling everyone that they broke up because he smelled bad. Of course, no one actually believed that because it's ridiculous, but I still wanted to do something. So one day in the cafeteria I go up to her, and I exposed her for cheating on him. She was so pissed, and Luke felt a little bit better at least."

She stifles a laugh, which turns into a cough. "You say that Luke is the overprotective one, but I think you're protective of him in a way, too."

I ponder the thought for a minute and come to the conclusion that she is right. "You have a point, but at least I don't go overboard."

"Luke is quite the looker, you know. I didn't think I'd ever admit that, but seeing as I don't have have too much longer to live, might as well be honest," she says.

"Oh, believe me I have heard that a hundred times before. But I could see that coming a mile away. I cornered him a few times and asked if he liked you, and he'd never admit to it, but I knew he did. I even noticed you making him nervous a few times. He would never admit to that either, because he claims to 'have a way with women.'"

"Well, too bad I never acted on it earlier. Guess I was just too nervous. I never really dated a lot," Bethari says, keeping her eyes trained on the floor. "Do you think they made it out?"

"They had to, I know it," I state firmly. I feel guilty; I hadn't been giving much thought to them since I was entirely preoccupied with trying to make Bethari feel comfortable. But no matter what, I know they had to make it out of there. They had to.

We talk and tell stories all throughout the night. At one point I try to venture into the house to search for anything that might make her more comfortable, but the door is bolted tight, and Bethari tells me not to worry about. The lurkers knock and bang at the door, but as the night goes on, they start to wander off to find some more easibly attainable snack. I push away worries of my family and focus entirely on Bethari, whose conditions worsens and worsens as the hours pass by. She grows weaker by the minute. Her skin begins to grey, her movements slow, and she periodically encounters coughing fits. Some of these coughing fits include her expelling blood from her mouth, though both of us tend to ignore it. I've never watched someone go through the process of slowly dying from a bite. It's horrible to watch someone go through it, but it would be ten times worse living through it.

I shiver slightly as a draft blows through a crack in the window. I stupidly hadn't taken the time to grab my coat from the bedroom back at the RV. It hasn't been very cold recently, which actually would've been useful. If it had been colder, the lurkers would have slowed, and none of this would have happened. However, Pete has been claiming that the temperatures are going to drop again soon.

Bethari sees me slightly shivering, and she begins shrugging her coat off. Her slowed and painful movements cause a simple task to take several minutes. I try to convince her to keep it on, but she refuses. She finally slides the pink puffer jacket off and weakly tosses it at me. "Take it. You need it much more than I do."

I take it guilty, and put it on. Bethari slides a bit closer to me and says, "I know you were trying to keep the baby's name a secret until she's born, but since I'm close to my expiration date, do you think you could write it down for me?"

"I can just tell you," I assure her.

"No, no." She stops to cough into her hand. "Just write it down. I don't want to ruin the magic of it."

I reach into the contents of my bag and pull out a piece of paper, which I also have with me. I grab a pencil too and scrawl out the name. She takes the paper in her hands, her grip weak. She smiles a genuine smile, before folding the paper and tucking it into her pocket. "That's a beautiful name. You'll be a great parent, Nick will be, too. And Luke will be an amazing uncle, I'm sure."

The baby starts kicking again, but this time it's back to the little flutters and taps, not the painful ones from before. "She's kicking," I tell Bethari. "You can feel, if you'd like."

I help her scoot across the concrete floor, and she rests her head against her shoulder. Her forehead is cold the the tough and she's shivering, but sweat cascades down her forehead. She places her hand on my stomach and leaves it there for a long time.

"I'll tell her all about you," I say, trying my hardest to hold in the tear that's threatening to spill from my eye.

She doesn't respond. She doesn't have to.

Without removing her hand from my stomach, she looks toward the small window. Outside, orange and red swirl around the sky, creating a beautiful picture.

"I think… I think it's time," she says.

Her eyes find my gun sitting on the floor. "I don't… want to do it. I don't think I can do it. I hate to ask this of you…"

I realize what she is asking of me. She wants me to put her out of her misery. The thought makes me feel sick, but I know I have to do it for her. It won't be my first time putting someone out of their misery, but I sure hope it's the last time. "I'll do it," I tell her.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't you be sorry. You've done nothing wrong," I say.

"I know I didn't know you for long, but thank you for everything. When you see your family again thank them for me."

"All of us are incredibly thankful for you. You saved us. We could never thank you enough for that."

She gives me a weak smile. I take in her appearance: her greying skin, her eyes that are the slightest bit cloudy, the bit of blood on her chin, her defeated expression. This is not how I will remember her. I will remember her for how she actually was: her radiating, beautiful, light brown skin, her dark eyes that sparkle in the sunlight, her bright smile, how she was a great friend.

"Could you do it from behind, so I don't have to see the gun?" She asks.

She leans her back against me, and I grasp the gun tightly. I raise the gun to the side of her head, making sure that she can't see it. I can tell that her eyes are squeezed shut. "I'm ready," she says.

I pull the trigger.

There's a moment where life doesn't quite feel real. The bullet pierces her skull, sending blood splattering onto my face, and the noise leaving a piercing ring in my ears. Her body turns into dead weight that slumps against me. Once I gently lie her body on the floor, the tears start to fall. I mourn her. I mourn my parents. I mourn what lies ahead. Normally, I would try my hardest to not let myself cry, but right now, I allow myself to feel sorrow.

The noise draws lurkers. Within minutes they are banging at the door again. I try to ignore them as I cry, and for awhile I let myself believe that I have succeeded in ignoring them. But no matter how hard I try, I can still always feel their presence.

I'm not sure how much time I spend crying, but I know it's enough time for me to become utterly exhausted. I pick myself off of the floor and find a white sheet covered in dust on the top shelf of a storage rack. I shake the dust off as best as I can before placing it delicately over Bethari's body. I manage to do so without having to look at her face. I need to bury her, but I can't right now because of the mindless creatures outside.

My next goal is to get inside of the house, so that I don't have to sleep out here with Behari's body. It takes a long time, and a lot of effort, but I'm able to pick the lock with the help of a screwdriver from my bag. It's not a large house, so searching the premises for any hidden dangers doesn't take long, but I still make sure to fight through my fatigue and do a thorough job. As I search, I notice a large blood splatter on the wall in the living room. A used round of ammunition lies on the floor below it, right next to a discarded gun. It seems that someone else was put out of their misery in this spot. Where that person is now, I have no idea.

I collapse onto the first bed I find in the house, and I immediately let sleep welcome me with open arms.