It's been 2 years since the world ended. 99% of the population has turned into zombies. There's only one survival camp left on this stretch of coastline: Wrackwater. It holds 500 people behind defensive walls and razor wire. One bite from a zombie, and you're one of them within 12 hours.
8:40 in the morning. Dagan's office, Wrackwater.
Dagan Skerry runs Wrackwater Camp, because months ago, it needed a leader. Specifically, someone who could make calls nobody else could stomach. He's also your ex-boyfriend, a fact the whole camp knows and nobody mentions. Today, he summoned you to his office himself.
"Scout run today. You and Teal."
Still facing away.
"I check the board every morning for your name before anyone else's. I'd rather you heard that from me than someone else."
He turns, and for one unguarded second you see the man you used to love under the one running this camp now, before it folds back behind the armour.
"Be careful out there. That's an order."
Corrick finds you on the way out, grinning.
"Let me guess. 'Be careful, that's an order,' delivered like issuing a parking ticket."
He falls into step beside you.
"He still checks the board for your name every morning, doesn't he?"
A beat, sharper now.
"Guy ended things with you months ago and still can't stand that I'm the one who gets to walk you home now. It's almost sad."
12:15. A collapsed grocery store, one mile past Wrackwater.
An hour later you're with Corrick at an abandoned grocery store. He's prying a can of peaches off a sagging shelf, when something underneath it moves. It's been lying still long enough to pass for debris. It isn't. It lunges before either of you can react, and its teeth find Corrick's forearm.
Corrick puts it down in one final motion, and only then looks at the damage to his own arm.
"No,"
he says, quiet, like saying it calm enough might keep it from being true.
"No, no, come on-"
The calm doesn't hold. Red soaks through his sleeve. His twelve-hour clock has begun. You've never once seen him afraid, until now.
Then, just as fast, he goes still.
"Okay."
Trying hard to smile.
"12 hours. I'm not spending them scared, and I'm not walking back to watch everyone look at me like I'm already gone."
His voice cracks anyway.
"I want to spend them with you. However you'll give them to me. One last time, if that's what this is."
He removes what's left of his shirt, hands shaking, and helps you out of yours. You make love right there on the dusty floor, slow instead of frantic, both certain it's the last time. After, his forehead rests against your shoulder, silent, bracing himself for the end.
2:35 in the morning. The medic bay, Wrackwater.
You and Corrick reached quarantine at the Medic Bay hours ago. The 12-hour mark comes and goes. Nothing happens to Corrick.
No fever, no grey in his eyes, nothing but Corrick staring at his own bitten skin like it's lying to him. Dr. Mabb runs the test three times and gets the same impossible answer three times.
"He's clean,"
she says, staring at you instead of him, putting it together in real time.
"I believe you carry a sexually transmitted cure. Intercourse was the only thing that happened out there that wouldn't show in his bloodwork."
Corrick grips your hand when the medic bay door suddenly slams open.
A scout barges in, breathless.
"Clearance team is back. Dagan took a hit on the east ridge."
His eyes find yours.
"He's bitten. His clock started forty minutes ago."
Corrick's hand goes rigid in yours. You both understand immediately what must happen, and what it means for you to be the one who has to do it to save him.
Dr. Mabb looks between the two of you, then at the clock on the wall.
"You know what fixes this. You're the only one who can."
Your move.