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First came the pandemic. Well, it wasn’t the first thing that happened that year, but it was the worst. It spread from China like wildfire. Countries closed their borders; people were put in quarantine. This was what globalization had led to, and the world crumbled for a while.
It got better. They worked together. They shared information, equipment, and hope. Earth was starting to get back on its feet.
Then came the riots. Peaceful protest turned violent. The whole world was turned upside down. Some used the occasion to stir trouble. The ruling powers didn’t know how to handle it. The police panicked. Anarchy, mob rule. The governments had done all they could to protect the people. It wasn’t nearly enough.
Most believe that was what started the second wave. Nobody knew where the virus came from, just that it started in America. Some speculated that it was a new form of the cure they had been trying to create.
Rumours had it some scientists from a private company had found a way to spread the cure to even the most remote locations. Salvation in the form of another virus.
Something went wrong.
Nobody got near the infected long enough to find a cure. The countries were already in shambles. They had no way of creating a systematic search. Scientific evidence went out the window when people panicked.
Because it was a new form of the old virus, it acted much like the first one. It spread through touch and breath, it attacked the weak and old.
It was a game of chance.
There were stories about people standing in the middle of an infected crowd yet getting no symptoms themselves. Maybe they were the few lucky ones. Their bodies reacting differently than others. Some called them immune, most thought it was lucky accidents. The next time it would surely get them too.
At the beginning, rumours said it couldn’t survive in the cold. Then Russia and Norway got it. The next theory was that it transferred slower in the heat. Africa was made a wasteland because of it.
Hope crashed and burned.
The virus was different from the last only when looking at the symptoms. It wasn’t a harsh cold nor something similar to the flue.
Anger was often the first sign. Passion murders rose by thousands in mere weeks.
Then came the fevers. Burning hot and dangerous, but usually not deadly. It just made them sedated. Most patients were in another world when the fevers kicked in. Hallucinations made it near impossible to communicate with them.
Everyone thought the last symptom was fake news. The government confirmed nor denied nothing. The only reports came from social media. Angry, hallucinating people with no words for pain.
Later, right before everything shut down, a young doctor, an intern, told the world about what they had discovered but were not allowed to tell.
The virus affected the neural system. It wasn’t unheard of, but unusual, and it was not normal for a virus. The sickness made them feel no pain, it cut off the electric signals that were supposed to tell the human body when it was hurting itself. It didn’t make them lame or lose control on any body parts. It just made them unaffected by pain. Because there was no pain.
And there was no cure.
Except for maybe… the immune.
--------------------------------
She’s been by the gas station for a little too long when she hears him.
It’s not her fault, not really, when the toilet has running water in the sink and she swears she hasn’t washed her hair in a month. Maybe closer to two months, but who counts.
She has also been surviving on tampons her last few cycles and zero toilet paper. But there it was. A full package and a bunch of sanitary napkins. Who was she to resist?
She usually gets a feeling before something happens. Marinette didn’t know if that was something she developed, or something that had been imbedded in her DNA since the dawn of time. It sure as heck didn’t kick in before the pandemic though.
He walks carefully. That’s the first thing she notices when she can’t hear the grunts and moans the infected usually emits. He takes calculated steps, closing in on her and he doesn’t stink either. He reeks of nothing more than a healthy amount of sweat, maybe a little blood, but she’s not one to judge. He nearly smells… Normal.
She makes sure not to clench her muscles or stiffen up. He would probably realize she’s heard him and attack. She knows of the psychos out there; she’s just been fortunate enough not to meet many of them.
Then she hears something click and she swivels around, her sword resting to his throat.
He’s prettier than she thought. Not as grim and dirty as most people with souls these days. His hair shines, golden like a forgotten sun in a dark universe. He is almost clean shaven, just a few stubbles dotting his chin, but he looks tired. There are bags under his eyes, blood splattered on his t-shirt and he looks pale. Almost like he’s fighting the urge to pass out.
“Please don’t make me do this”, he whispers, gun trained on her head, and Marinette swallows.
“I’m just here for supplies”, she holds up her left hand trying to look less threatening, but it doesn’t really matter when her blade glints near his skin. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“I can’t let you.” She frowns at his choice of words.
“I can leave the toilet paper, but I don’t think you have much need of those.” She gestures to the sanitary pads, hands just barely shaking, and his gaze flickers down before it settles on her again.
“You don’t need to do this. Please. I just want to save her.” Marinette’s eyes widen at the desperation in his voice. She looks around them. There is no one there. They’re alone.
“Save who? It’s just us.”
“I don’t want to do this, father”, his voice breaks.
“Stop! Please!” he roars, and lunges forward. Marinette slips under his arm, her back hitting one of the isles while he tries to scramble up from where he sprawled on the floor.
A breath gets stuck in Marinettes throat. She doesn’t know how to react to this man. She has seen angry people before, right before they’re turned. This isn’t it. He is not angry, but he seems to be hallucinating. Hallucination before anger? That is rare, if not impossible.
Every time she tries to scare him with her sword, he doesn’t see it. Maybe this is something else, she wonders, a shiver running down her spine. Maybe this is the next wave.
But then he shoots somewhere to the right of her and collapses on his knees in front of her. Tears roll down his face, sobs wreck his body and Marinette feels sorry for him. She knew the infected. This was different.
She looks at the door, light flickering from the small opening, a clear path to freedom. Then her eyes turn back to him. He is so lost in his own world, she’s not even there. And she makes up her mind. It’s not like she’s got anything better to do anyways.
She clicks the safety back on the gun that earlier had clattered to the floor, shoving it into the waist of her pants. Tying him up as he cries almost destroys her a little. He seems so tiny, so innocent. So much like a child where he sits in a ball, not even reacting when she snaps cable ties around his wrists.
The undead are going to come swarming any minute after the gunshot, so she moves fast.
He leans on her when they walk back to the car, still mumbling about some past that would be better off forgotten.
Her past was, at least.
She puts the toilet paper under his head, settles a few blankets over his body and snaps another cable tie around his ankles. Just in case.
It’s a raging fever that makes him hallucinate. That is at least what she guesses, when she accidentally touches his forehead and almost gets burnt. Fevers are a known symptom, and everyone reacts differently. But Marinette can’t help herself when she looks at him. For what if it’s just a fever?
She has no one else to live for anymore either way, she thinks, as she runs back into the station, praying to God he’ll stay silent while in the car. The last thing she needed was a pack of undead hammering on her windows when she got back.
She fills two cans of water while constantly checking over her shoulder. As a last-minute thought, she checks the first aid kit behind the counter on her way out. It doesn’t feel empty when she lifts it, so she grabs the whole thing.
Marinette reaches her safe house a little after dusk. It’s not ideal, but she can live with it.
She checks if the man is still sleeping, and then grabs her flashlight, it’s running low on battery, but it still works, and slowly walks into the house. She locked it up when she left, barring all the windows and the door. She’s fairly certain she is the only living soul who knows a way into this place.
But as she creeps under the porch steps, and lifts the heavy homemade hatch, the darkness and shadows creeping just out of her sight still gets to her.
She opens the door from the inside, scolding herself yet again for choosing to bring a possibly infected man to her home, and starts unpacking the truck.
He is still sleeping soundly in the back seat. Marinette almost sighs at the sight. His hair hangs limply into his eyes, shifting a little every time he breathes. He looks peaceful, almost content, but Marinette watches as his eyebrow twitches and decides that he’s still sick.
She uses two minutes total on bringing the new supplies inside. Another fifteen goes by in trying to move the man inside and in her bed, while desperately hoping she doesn’t breathe in what he lets out.
The house is small. Just a cabin in the woods, far from the grand cities. When she first arrived there, she dragged three bodies to the swamp behind the house. Nobody had any time left to dig graves, and she had no idea who they had once been. She had gotten rid of the pictures, the things that made this place feel like a loved vacation place, and moved in.
This was the strategically smartest place to stay.
The man gasps beside her in his sleep, and Marinette wants to groan. Knowing that what she had done was the stupidest idea she’d had this far, Marinette gets up, grabs a cloth made from some scraps of a t-shirt, and dips it in the water she’d gotten at the station.
She dabs his forehead lightly, trying to make something out of the whispers he keeps spewing. Sometimes they sound like spells, but Marinette figures that’s just her imagination.
He really is gorgeous. A little worn, with scars littering his shoulders and back, a newer one chipping the top of his lip. And yet, for some reason that only makes him more enduring to her. Marinette tries to shake the thoughts away, but it really isn’t her fault that she had to get rid of the bloody shirt he was wearing. And no one can blame her for looking, just a little bit.
It’s the pale, almost greenish colour of his skin and the small drops of sweat dotting his forehead that reveals his condition.
She puts a thumb on his eyelid and lifts it up to see how his eyes react to light. She flickers her flashlight in front of him. They do react. They don’t seem dazed like the undead nor have they got the empty white layer of someone near death. She doesn’t know what it means, but she hopes it’s a good sign.
Marinette wipes his forehead again, then she stands to make a late dinner.
---
The whole night goes by before she sees any difference of his condition. He doesn’t wake up, but he shifts a little less in that restless way of his. He settles instead, leans his head to her legs when she tries to give him some water. Marinette wonders for the tenth time that day how she has survived for so long when a gesture like that could melt her completely. But she’s determined not to give in, so she goes to the sink, wetting the cloth again and wipes wherever pebbles of sweat appear.
Later she decides that she’s already doomed if he’s got it, and so she lifts his head up and settles beneath him so he can rest his head on her thighs. Damn that pretty face.
Two more days go by. She barely manages to pour some water down his throat. She thinks he might swallow on reflex, but one time he chokes, and she very nearly gets a heart attack, lifting him to the side so he can get it all up and out. She has to clean it up afterwards, but it’s fine. At least he’s not dead.
Then, in the middle of the night to day three, she wakes up from the unfamiliar way he moves in her lap. She’s been sleeping while sitting, his head in her lap ever since that first night. For safety, in case he turned, but also just to make sure he didn’t die while she slept somewhere else.
The second she looks at him, she’s certain that what she had been fearing was about to happen. His eyes held no pain, he just kept staring at her. Then he jolts up, as if waking from a daze, and frantically scrambles away from her, hands reaching for weapons she had taken away long ago.
“Hey, calm down”, she says slowly, and he blinks at her twice before he understands that she’s not one of the infected.
“Oh”, he whispers, eyes wide. He looks at their surroundings, and when he doesn’t recognize it, he looks at her. She recognizes the questions in his eyes and can’t help a smile because she was right. It was just a fever and she had possibly just saved a life.
“Come with me”, she nods for the kitchen. Marinette almost laughs with glee when he follows, albeit sluggishly, the adrenaline draining from his body.
She puts him in a chair, and he complies without a word, apparently too tired to complain or be suspicious. The leftover stew she was saving for this morning came in handy now.
She apologizes, sorry that she couldn’t warm it up. It would attract too much attention, and the man doesn’t need any explaining as to from whom. Watching him feels like meeting a celebrity crush, Marinette thinks, because she’s been looking at him for so long, and yet she had no way of really knowing him. Come to think of it-
“What’s your name?” she asks, not entirely sure if he saw her staring. The man puts the spoon down reluctantly, it seemed like cold food was more appealing when one hadn’t eaten for days. Marinette knew the feeling.
“I’m -uh-” he glances at her, and she remembers that he actually has no idea who she is. He hadn’t been conscious when she took care of him. Marinette almost slaps her forehead, and says,
“You don’t have to answer that”, she knows people have become more protective of their private life now, so she continues before he has the time to feel pressured, “I’m Marinette. I found you at a gas station north of here.” She nods in the right direction.
“You found me?” he asks, and Marinette reminds herself of the icky details. And the dumb ones.
“Yeah, you were hallucinating. I thought you were talking to me first, but then you shot in an entirely different direction so…” he looks uncomfortable, like he’s about to apologize, so she doesn’t stop.
“You kind of broke down, I’ve never seen an infected behave like that, so I took you with me.” She gestures to him eating, and smiles. “Turns out it was just a fever.”
The silence stretches for a few second, then he shakes his head with a laugh.
“That’s got to be the stupidest choice you’ve ever made.” Marinette’s breath hitches, and she grabs her dagger hanging by her waist. He’s going to kill her, she thinks, eyes sliding over his broad form. He’s going to kill her, and it would be because she made a stupid mistake. But then he takes her hand in both of his, a soft smile on his face as he swallows.
“I’m forever in your debt.”