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01.
“Good morning, Yelena.”
It was their first day hiding in Ohio. Yelena had once said she spent a happy childhood here. Bob climbed up from the broken sofa and walked toward the person lying on the bed with her back to him.
Her faded blonde hair was messy. Her green-brown eyes looked dark and empty. Yelena’s hands were tied behind her back with steel bars. When she heard his voice, her expression twisted. She suddenly sat up, baring her teeth and trying to attack the source of the sound.
Bob looked full of apology. He jogged over with a clean handkerchief and wiped her cheek during a pause in her struggle. Using a light, cheerful tone, he talked about his own bad past.
“Hehe, this reminds me of years ago. Every day I woke up to this, cleaning vomit and saliva all the time. But you look much better than I did, Yelena.”
The only response he got was a low, feral growl. Bob awkwardly combed through her rough blonde hair with his fingers, then slipped into the kitchen. He quickly heated some frozen food and found two cracked glass bowls with the smallest breaks.
When he brought breakfast back, he carefully untied the steel bars behind Yelena’s back. The next second, she lunged.
Not at the steaming mac and cheese, but at what she now seemed to love most: Humans.
Bob didn’t resist as he was knocked to the floor. Yelena snapped and bit wildly at his head, cheeks, neck, and shoulders. He wrapped one arm around her and used the other to protect the sharp corner of the bedside table.
Part of his mind was distracted with relief. At least Yelena wasn’t like other zombies—she didn’t drool too much when biting. Otherwise, he would run out of their limited bathing water very quickly.
02.
Today was the second Christmas after the apocalypse.
Bob put together the decent-looking plants he had collected over the past two days and placed them into a chipped milk bottle. Yelena, now untied, kept testing his body with her teeth, trying to find places she could damage. She grabbed his right arm tightly with both hands, growing angry at the lack of progress. Bob took the chance to wipe the water spot from the corner of her mouth and clean the dirt from under her nails.
“Merry Christmas, Yelena.”
Bob lowered his head and happily spoke to the blonde girl, who had started her second round of biting.
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
When he carried the struggling Yelena and flew to a nearby hillside—one he was sure had no other zombies—Bob heard something unexpected. Yelena made a confused, rumbling sound.
It was a wonderful Christmas gift to him. The sound reminded him of the noise she used to make when rolling her eyes.
He happily reached for her hand. Yelena was startled. She slapped his hand away, lifted her head at a strange angle, and let out a sharp, defensive howl.
Bob quickly stepped back to give her some space, the kind of safety distance she needed. Maybe Yelena thought her resistance had scared him. She suddenly lunged at him again and accurately bit down on Bob’s arm as he tried to catch her.
He gently brushed the blonde hair away from her mouth. Using the arm she was biting, he pulled her closer by the waist. They floated slowly in the air together, and while she wasn’t paying attention, he tucked leaves and small flowers into her dry, wind-blown hair.
03.
Bob stared helplessly at Yelena, who had grown tired from biting and was now resting in a dark corner.
In his arms was a washed gray hoodie he had found in another abandoned house. He was sure this was the kind of clothing Yelena liked. Bringing it back to their safe area was easy. Getting her to wear it was extremely difficult.
Bob ran through the steps of “changing clothes with telekinesis” in his head dozens of times. After failing the plan for the twenty-fourth time, he decided on a new approach: put the hoodie on first, then deal with the familiar agent suit underneath—either with scissors or carefully controlled heat.
When he finally gathered the courage to walk toward Yelena, he saw her hunched over, looking tired of everything, fiddling with a cabinet door with loose screws.
Bob burst out laughing. Ignoring her struggle, he hugged her tightly in excitement.
“You’re so amazing, Yelena,” he said in wonder near her ear, half joking. “Do you want to try changing clothes by yourself?”
Unable to break free from the hug, Yelena answered with two lazy growls.
In the end, Bob rolled the hoodie up from the bottom into a loop. He tilted his head and exposed his neck as bait. The bait worked in less than ten seconds.
Bob quickly slipped the loop over Yelena’s head. She was confused by all the movement. Then he gently pulled her wrists through the sleeves.
Oh God. He did it. Maybe he really was good at taking care of people.
“Hey, do you like it?” Bob asked happily, like a salesman waiting for customer feedback.
A moment later, Yelena started tearing at the gray hood hanging down her back as a complaint. Bob nervously clasped his hands together and whispered, begging her not to destroy their hard work. His sincere prayer seemed to reach her. Attracted by his quiet rambling, Yelena stopped pulling the hoodie apart and staggered back to the broken cabinet door.
04.
The first time Bob helped Yelena brush her teeth, he held a flashlight in his left hand and a toothbrush in his right hand. Only then did he realize he had no free hand to hold her chin still.
Two minutes later, Bob let out a soft glow that would not upset Yelena and lit up the bathroom. Maybe curious about the light source, Yelena tilted her head and looked around. Bob followed her movements with the toothbrush, like feeding a baby, and opened his mouth, making an “ah” sound to show her what to do.
When that clearly did not work, he muttered to himself and tried using bait again.
Back in the present, he skillfully pinched Yelena’s cheek lightly. Her jaw showed faint veins, and with her dark red eye sockets, she looked like a perfect heavy metal band member. Just give her a microphone or an electric guitar. Bob hummed the opening of 《Immigrant Song》 and gently moved the toothbrush left and right with the rhythm.
If the weather was nice, after brushing teeth and eating something (Yelena would compromise and eat some smoked ham), Bob would take her flying to a small hill a short distance from the house.
He would share embarrassing stories from his teenage years in California and Southeast Asia. Yelena would keep biting as usual, following her routine from cheek, to neck, to shoulder, to arm. Bob would laugh softly and use his free hand to tidy her slowly growing blonde hair.
One cool afternoon, they went to the hill again. Bob picked up two flowers of different colors and challenged Yelena, who was standing there with her head tilted.
“Do you remember my name? White means Bob. Pink means Robert.”
Without hesitation, Yelena grabbed both flowers from his hand. Bob shrugged, thinking that probably still counted as a correct answer. Suddenly, hoarse growls came from not far away, a group of zombies.
A wave of endless disgust rose in Bob’s chest. He clenched his fists as the heat built up. His vision sharpened, and every sound became painfully clear with his anger.
For a moment, he didn’t know if he was more afraid of Yelena being taken away, or heartbroken at the thought that she might respond to the other zombies. He gave up sorting through the mess in his mind and decided to simply pick her up and fly away.
The next second, Yelena staggered forward and wrapped her arms around him, as if trying to hide him.
Inside the embrace, Bob’s reddened eyes stared into her cloudy yet still beautiful green-brown eyes. He didn’t dare blink, afraid his tears would blur his vision.
The growling faded away. Yelena loosened her hold and bit his shoulder once as he finally broke down and cried.
Bob wiped away his unstoppable tears. He seemed to understand her meaning.
Mine, Yelena said.
05.
Her vision had been blurry for a long time. She didn’t know how long.
She had no sense of time. She only knew she wanted to put something in her mouth, or bite something hard, preferably something with a tasty brain.
Luckily, there was always a living human beside her. Unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried, she could not bite through this human. She tried again and again and again. She realized she might be a zombie who gave up easily, so in the end, she could only toss away everything the human handed her.
Sometimes she was too lazy to fight back. She would just growl a little, and the human would happily grab her hand and swing it around.
She didn’t understand why this place was sometimes bright and sometimes dark.
When it was bright, the human would move around her nonstop. When it was dark, the human would hold her hands and lie down beside her. During some moments between light and dark, the human she couldn’t bite would curl into a small shape and make soft sounds, a bit like the noise she made when her mind went empty.
Whenever she heard that sound, a sentence would suddenly appear in her messy head: “Bob, are you okay?”
Bob? What was that?
She stared at the ceiling in confusion, then turned behind the human and tried biting him again, for the hundredth time.
That day, when the human stood in front of her holding two small things, familiar sounds appeared not far away. Her first thought was that there were other zombies here. Her second thought was to stare at the human’s back.
She knew zombies liked biting humans.
She knew those zombies would come and bite this human.
Oh. Suddenly, something felt wrong.
After all, this was her human. She had kept him beside her for a long time, and she still hadn’t managed to bite him properly. If other zombies succeeded first, she would! she would…she would feel uncomfortable.
She couldn’t accept that. So she stepped forward and hid the human, watching him widen his eyes and make a series of strange short sounds. After the zombies left, she turned back and lightly bit his shoulder.
Still unsuccessful.
Anyway, he was hers. She thought.
06.
“Yelena?”
She stiffly turned her head, half-lidded eyes looking with unclear understanding at the human whose eyes suddenly seemed to glow with golden light.
00.
When Yelena returned to the base holding a bottle of vodka with its label torn off, she brought with her a faint smell of blood.
Bob looked at her smile in despair, then at the bite marks on her arm that she was trying to hide.
No, No, no, no, no, no, please, don’t.
Bob stumbled forward. Even though everyone said his power of a million suns could do anything, at this moment, he could do nothing at all.
Yelena smoothly twisted the bottle open and took a big drink, just like always. Then she sat down on the broken marble table in front of her.
“…No.” His voice sounded terrible with despair. “Don’t.”
“Hey, Bob.” Yelena placed her uninjured hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want to share the last bottle with me?”
“Ava said they’re working on a cure!” Bob didn’t cry often, but in front of her he completely fell apart. “There will be a way!”
“Do you remember where I just came back from?” Yelena kissed the corner of his dirty eye. In the edge of his vision, he saw the wound on her arm, a deep bite mark, mixed with sticky red blood and dark purple-green bruises.
“I know this is hard to accept, but we’ve prepared for this many times, Bob.”
A year ago, the retired former Captain America suddenly appeared in New York. With his allies and the virus, he tore their normal lives apart. Every night, the survivors gathered together, not only to check who was still alive, but also to say goodbye in advance. Three months ago, Walker said a choking goodnight, and the next day he lost a large part of his leg protecting Olivia.
Bob was attacked while trying to save their son, and discovered by accident that zombies couldn’t bite through his skin. That was why Yelena chose to return to the base after being injured. She thought that at least she could have one proper drink with Bob before leaving this world.
“Don’t make me regret coming back here.” She pinched Bob’s cheek. She had once joked that if she became a zombie, this was the place she would want to bite first. “We should be happy that there’s still vodka to drink at the end of the world!”
“And after we drink it?” He grabbed her hand desperately, begging. “What will you do then?”
“Find a place with a nice view and jump while I still have my will?” Yelena glanced at the elevator that had been broken for a long time. “I’ve always wondered what it feels like to jump from the watchtower.”
“What about me?” The thought of losing the most important person in his life made every part of Bob ache violently. “What do I do? I can’t do anything without you.”
“Bullshit.” She lightly punched him, but her body swayed far too much. The virus moved fast, fast enough to be hateful, but Bob quickly steadied her. “You’re the Golden Guardian. Other people need you.”
Yelena looked into his gray-blue eyes, now glowing with gold from anger and disbelief. She took another big gulp of vodka, praying the alcohol might confuse the virus a little. The hand holding the bottle wrapped around the back of the brown-haired man’s neck, and she pulled him into a tight hug.
“Hey.” She felt her nose and eyes sting and decided to blame it on the virus. “I was lucky to take Valentina’s damn assassination job. It sent me to that basement. It let me meet you.”
“Yelena…” Bob tried desperately to press himself into the hug, but it always felt like something was missing. “I can’t lose you… I can’t…”
“It’s time to show our team’s strongest power.” She let herself kiss every inch of him that she loved. “You’ll be fine. I believe in you, always.”
At dawn, she gently freed herself from Bob’s arms. He had passed out from crying. Alone, she walked slowly onto the helipad, enjoying the wind and the morning light. She had done many things she regretted in her life, but she had also experienced many unexpected moments of happiness.
It was a little sad, but maybe she could find Natasha somewhere in heaven or hell. Yelena laughed softly into the wind, her messy blonde hair sticking to her face.
Bob. Bob. Bob. Bob. Bob.
If she could, she wanted to say his name a few more times.
Like a fearless warrior, she took her first step toward death.
******
He opened his eyes the moment she walked toward the spiral stairs.
People said he was the Golden Guardian. Yelena said countless people needed him.
He stepped outside. Morning light fell over the broken concrete walls. A faint whisper moved in the wind around his ears.
Yelena. Yelena. Yelena. Yelena. Yelena.
Like a selfish, greedy man, he answered her call on his own.
I only need you.
Just before that light fell, he flew forward and filled the missing space in the embrace.
END.