Chapter 5
Ravi stands, turns his back to me. “This isn’t the right time to have this conversation. There’s…whatever is happening out there. Our friends are in danger. Tanya is…”
“Yeah. Right. Tanya.”
“You told me to move on. I moved on.”
“Good for you. Didn’t take you so long, did it?”
“Are you serious?”
“The anger thing can go both ways,” I say, taking my frustration out on him because I could use a break from beating myself up. Because there are scarier things than being honest.
“I’m not angry with you.” Ravi doesn’t raise his voice, but he can make it mean. It’s all about the delivery with him.
Me, on the other hand, I raise my voice. “You’re with someone new. She’s beautiful. She probably wants kids. And to live where you live. You should be thanking me. Instead, I get iced out.”
“How should I act? Like nothing ever happened? Like we’re cool?
Casual. Hey, what’s up? I thought we were going to be buried next to each other but instead you called off our wedding two and a half weeks before while my dad’s terminally ill, how you been?
How you liking your new place? How’s our cat? ”
“That is not…that is not fair.”
“Fair? You want to talk about fair? You know, you haven’t exactly been friendly, either.”
“I was following your lead!”
“How was I supposed to know that? Shit, Willa. Give me time. I need time. It’s still painful. Is it not painful for you?”
“Yes, it’s fucking painful! But you’re not making it any better by refusing to admit I did the right thing. Tell me I did the right thing. Tell me you see it. That we changed. That we wanted different things. That—”
Thud.
Thudthudthudthud.
Footsteps. On the porch.
I somehow forgot about the zombies, and by the look on Ravi’s face, he did, too.
I was being loud.
They heard me.
They’re here.
Ravi drops back down to the floor, and we crawl toward the couch on hands and knees, brace against it.
We’re quiet. Barely breathing.
Thudthud. Thudthudthud.
They’re still on the porch. I don’t know how many of them there are. If we stay silent, maybe they’ll give up. Move on.
You told me to move on. I moved on.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.
They’re pounding on the door. Breaking it down. Scratching at the wood. Splitting it. Screeching. Groaning. It’s a struggle to keep the couch in place. They’re pushing through.
They’re going to get in, and they’re going to eat us.
I know what it feels like to be stabbed between the eyes, to have my soul sucked out of my body, but I’m not particularly eager to find out what it feels like to be eaten alive.
“On three,” I tell Ravi. “We get up and run to the door to the left, to my room. Press the bed against the window, lock the door, hide in the bathroom. Okay? One…two…”
He’s up before me. I trail him to my room. Slam the door. Lock it. He’s got the bed against the window. It’s just a twin; it’s not big enough to cover it. The burlap curtain folds back, and I catch a glimpse outside.
It’s not Evan. Or Wyatt or Vicky or the cater waiter. I see Cass. I see Jace. I see Steph in her lavender gown. I see Danny. They’re all bloody faced, yellow-eyed, frothing at the mouth.
“It spread. It’s everyone.”
Ravi shoves me into the bathroom, closes and locks the door. He sits with his back against it, which I’m not sure matters, since it’s a flimsy fucking pocket door. He presses his finger to my lips. Shh.
There’s a crash in the other room. They’re in. They’re inside the cabin.
I sit on the floor next to Ravi, back against the door because I guess it can’t hurt. We’re touching; the space is too small for us not to be.
“The police are on their way,” he whispers. He’s shifted back into emergency mode. He’s composed. He knows we’re about to die, but he won’t admit it. Maybe he thinks I need him to be strong. To be brave. I’d rather he just be honest. Or crack a joke, like Danny would. “We keep quiet. We hang on.”
I nod.
“Help is coming. It’s only a matter of time,” he says. Tick, tock.
It isn’t. There’s no waiting this out. We’re going to die, and either that’s it, or I wake up tomorrow and do this all over again, get to face the new day knowing it’s going to be even more brutal than the last without any clue of how to put an end to it, to make it stop.
Without any clue of how to escape the loop.
Glass shattering.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.
They’re coming in through the windows. They’re in the bedroom. I can smell them. The stench of their rotting bodies. Dead but not dead. Gone but not gone.
“Ravi,” I whisper. “I think we’re about to die, and maybe this isn’t the right time but I’m not sure there ever will be.
I want you to know that I am sorry. That I wish things had been different.
I look back on who we were at the beginning, what we had, and I wish we could have made it last. I’m sorry I couldn’t be who you wanted me to be, that I couldn’t give you the life you wanted.
Maybe in some other timeline, in some alternate universe…
I’m just…I’m so sorry I ended it the way I did. I’m sorry—”
THUD.
The door jolts.
“We’re not going to die, Willa. Don’t think like that.”
“Did you hear me? I’m sorry.”
He turns to me, silent tears streaming down his face. “There—”
THUD.
“There are no other timelines. No alternate universes. There’s only this.”
The force behind us is too much. I scream, pushing as hard as I can back against it.
“Hold on,” Ravi says. “The shower.”
“What?”
“I don’t think they like water. Remember? The deer went into the lake and then freaked out. Let’s go.”
He takes me by the arm and hauls me into the shower, closes the glass door behind us, turns the water on. It’s freezing.
We’re squeezed inside like fucking sardines. It’s too small. The two of us barely fit.
The bathroom door busts down, and three of them stagger in. Two of them I don’t recognize. The other is Tanya.
I see her before Ravi does.
“Don’t look,” I whisper.
But of course, he looks.
His lips quiver, part to speak. I press my hand over his mouth before he can make a sound. Before he can call out to her. His wedding date. His new love.
She’s somehow still beautiful dead. Or, I guess, undead.
Even as a zombie her skin glows, her hair remains in shiny, frizz-free waves.
There’s a gash on her neck; bite marks up and down her arms. Her dark lashes flutter despite the yellow gunk crusting in the corners of her eyes.
The blood around her mouth could just as easily be lipstick. The most glamorous revenant.
She shudders, takes a step forward, and then just stops.
Her head drops to the side, like she’s powering down.
She’s pushed back by the man beside her, who lunges at the mirror.
He claws at his reflection—confused. He smacks his face against the glass.
Again, again, again, again, again. His forehead splits open.
He knocks out his teeth. They drop into the sink—clink, clink, clink. Blood spatters.
Tanya fights her way forward to get to the blood—tongue out, screeching. The other woman—who I’m pretty sure is Steph’s cousin—throws herself at the shower door, hissing.
“Hold it,” Ravi whispers, reaching for the door handle.
The two of us grab on, but it’s slippery wet, and our hands are slippery wet.
The woman pulls from the other side, and she’s strong. Crazy strong. Wild and violent and unrelenting. Her eyes bulge out of the sockets; they look like they’re in danger of exploding. Froth spews from her mouth onto the shower door, fizzling, turning from white to yellow to green.
“What if we aim the showerhead out,” I say. “Toward them.”
I see Ravi’s wheels turning. I read his mind. What do we have to lose?
He moves quickly, squishing me into the tile to get to the showerhead. He adjusts it so it sprays out into the bathroom at the trio of zombies. They shriek and flail and run into one another, pull at their own hair, their skin.
And they leave. They retreat into the bedroom.
We stand in the shower, soaking wet, shivering, pressed against each other, his hair dripping into my mouth.
“It worked,” he says, incredulous. “It…”
We’re out of immediate danger, and he’s allowing himself to understand, to let the horror sink in. “They can’t all be…”
“No,” I say, maneuvering so I can hold his shoulders, hold him still. “No. No, this is…this isn’t…real. It’s not real. It’s just one version of today. They’re not gone. It’s not…they’ll come back. Tomorrow. Today. When—”
“Stop! You’re not making any sense. Do you know how you sound?”
“I…” Distant sirens.
Any relief I felt for not getting eaten by zombies drowns in the realization that if I live, there’s no telling if the loop will reset or not.
And if it doesn’t, there’s a chance that this is the reality I’m stuck in.
One where all my friends are dead, where Danny is dead, where I’m still carrying the burden of my failures, of Ravi’s resentment.
The sirens get louder. Closer.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t wake up to this day again.
Lose everyone again. Watch my friends die.
See their eyeless, bleeding corpses. Knives and hammers and evil fucking birds.
Slashers. Villains. The undead. I can’t spend another day anticipating the worst only for it to happen, to prove itself.
But I can’t stay in this reality. In this timeline. This can’t be my fate.
I step out of the shower.
“Willa!” Ravi reaches for me, but I slip from his grasp. “What are you doing? Stay here.”
“I…I can’t.”
“They’re still out there.”
“You’re not going to believe me, but I’m doing you a favor.”
“What? Willa! No. I don’t want you to die. Stop. I’m sorry. I’m sorry! You’re right. You were right. About us. About everything. Come back.”
“I really hope you mean that, but I have to go.” I take another step, and I’m out of the radius of the showerhead’s spray, out of the safety of the water.
“Willa!”
There’s a hand on my ankle. One tug, and I’m falling. My head hits the floor, and things go fuzzy for a second.
I blink into the haze. It’ll be over soon. Tick, tock. My time will be up.
My cheek slides against the wet tile, over the fallen door, the floorboards. Whoever’s dragging me lets me go, and my leg drops. I flip onto my back.
Tanya. She climbs on top of me, her red mouth wide, froth dripping onto my face. I feel it fizzing, burning like hot oil.
She hisses. Why does it have to be her?
And why can’t I shut my eyes, look away from what’s about to happen?
A shadow drifts over us. Ravi. He holds up the toilet tank cover, swings it hard at Tanya’s head. She bursts open like a November pumpkin.
Ravi drops the cover and stumbles back, hands shaking, staring at the brains covering his button-down. He backs into the wall. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t…”
There’s no time for shock or grief. The room is full of zombies and they’re closing in. One of them is Danny—his eyes sunken, cheeks hollow. No trace of his crooked grin. He growls at me, baring browning teeth with bits of skin stuck between.
Tanya’s body twitches on the floor beside me.
I’m still alive, still here, and so is Ravi, with our hopeful futures dead in front of us.
Gone. But I look at him, and I understand.
Not in this timeline. Not in this universe, not in any universe.
There’s no way back to who we were, what we had.
There never was. The damage was done, the rot too profound.
There was no resurrection, not one that wasn’t tainted.
It wasn’t possible. There was nothing I could have done to save us.
There was no cure for the relationship, no antidote that would grant us a life together, only apart.
There’s no question anymore. No creeping doubt. No regret.
I did the right thing. Maybe he’ll never forgive me, but maybe I don’t need him to.
My guilt recedes, but something else spreads to occupy the empty space. Something heavier, more formidable, more intense.
Heartbreak. It’s so big. It’s in me, is me. It’s all around me, painting the world with hopelessness in this harsh shade of blood. It’s everywhere, everything. The death of love.
The creature that used to be Danny is almost to me. His fingers graze my hair.
Do it, asshole.
The sound is nearly pleasant. A whizzing. Something fast swimming through the air.
Blood splatters on my face.
Danny drops.
It’s the police. Or maybe the military? There are men in hazmat suits with giant guns on the porch, shooting through the window.
They take out the other zombies—they hit the floor one after another.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD.
“Ravi,” I say, turning toward him. “Get—”
He is down. He’s down.
I’m confused, for a second. For a minute. For an hour, day, week, month, year, eternity.
He stares up at me with his big, beautiful brown eyes, and a bullet hole between them.
He’s dead.
He was my life, my whole world for so many years, and he’s dead. He’s gone.
I scream. It’s a scream of primal suffering, a sound I can’t fathom, born of a pain that I can’t fathom. “No! No! No, no, no, no, no! You shot him! You killed him, you fucking idiots! He was fine! He was alive! He wasn’t infected! You dumb fucking pieces of—”
That whizzing sound again.
Warmth. Darkness.
Nothing.