Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

It was a quarantine room.

Steel door. No windows. No clocks. One bed. One bucket. One light that flickered just enough to make you wish it wouldn't.

They told us it was only for 72 hours.

Standard infection protocol.

But 72 hours turned into four days. Then six. Then we stopped counting.

There was no knock. No food. No answers.

Just me.

And her.

Her name was Naomi.

She'd been bitten on her leg—a clean gash, not a deep one, and already cauterized.

She said it wasn't from a biter.

She said she tripped on a rusted fence.

I believed her.

Or I wanted to.

She was pale. Feverish. Shaky.

But still beautiful. Still there. Still trying.

I was assigned to monitor her symptoms.

A stranger turned cellmate.

A man who had to decide whether to love her or end her.

We talked. That's all we could do.

She told me about her dog, Chewie.

About the seaside town she came from.

About how she lost her parents on Day Zero.

I told her about my ex-wife.

How I failed her.

How I was still failing.

Naomi laughed once—really laughed—when I admitted I missed coffee more than I missed people.

Then she cried when I said I missed trust even more.

On day nine, she stopped talking.

Her eyes went distant. Her skin turned clammy.

I held her. I held her even when I was terrified.

She whispered, "If I turn… do it fast."

Then added, "But not until I say goodbye."

I didn't sleep that night.

I just watched her breathe.

Counting the seconds between each rise and fall.

And then... she opened her eyes.

Clear. Focused. Hers.

"I think I'm okay," she said.

And I believed her.

We started carving messages into the wall with the sharp corner of the bucket lid.

Messages for whoever might come after.

"Still human."

"Still hoping."

"Still here."

We shared the stale crackers we found under the bed.

Sipped from the same cracked thermos.

Laid back-to-back on the thin mattress to keep warm.

We didn't kiss.

Didn't make love.

But somehow, we were more intimate than lovers.

We were each other's only witness.

On the twelfth day, the door opened.

A man in hazmat stood in the light.

He looked at Naomi. Then me.

"Negative," he said. "You're both clear."

But I wasn't sure.

Not of the virus.

Of what we were now.

We stepped outside into a camp we didn't recognize.

Different guards. Different flags.

But the sky was the same.

The silence still a little too loud.

Naomi reached for my hand.

And for the first time since quarantine began…

…I pulled away.

Because outside the room, we were strangers again.

And maybe the room was the only place where love like that could survive.