The tank top was sufficiently stuck my skin, held to the tender flesh by dried blood. To loosen it, I dipped down lower, soaking it in water. The cold stung painfully on the wound, and I breathed in sharply through my teeth.

I stood back up, so the river was only hitting my hips. The fabric had loosened enough where I could lift up my shirt and inspect my incision. It wasn’t the worst one I’d endured, but it definitely looked like shit.

The black stitches were pressed tight against my puffy, red flesh. It was scabby, and when I touched it, fresh blood oozed from it. Since I had nothing better to clean it with, I splashed river water over it, wiping it off as gently as I could.

This was really my fault, and not because I did such a rushed job of stitching myself up. I’d been pushing myself too hard, and doing a hundred crunches last night couldn’t have helped it.

But I had to be stronger if I planned on fighting off zombies with my bare hands. Irritating a wound seemed like small potatoes compared with getting my head bitten off by a monster.

Once I’d cleaned that up sufficiently, I washed off the rest of my body, trying to remove the sweat and grime. When I went back to the shore, I glanced over to the other side of the bridge, where everyone else was still getting cleaned up. Nolita seemed to be enjoying a nice, long swim.

I crouched down to dig through my messenger back for clean-ish clothes when I heard something in the bushes at the base of the bridge. I stood up slowly, scanning for anything to defend myself with, but what came out of the bushes was something I wasn’t at all prepared for.

It was a zombie, but one so newly turned it still maintained all its human features, so it was instantly recognizable. It was Blue.

He had a few tell-tale marks that he was zombie, including a giant, festering bite wound out of his arm that he hadn’t bothered to wrap at all. His eyes were the same warm shade of gray I remembered them being, but now the whites were jaundiced and blood shot. Plus, they were completely maniacal and crazed.

Blue was definitely a zombie, and a young one, which meant he’d be hella fast and hella strong.

It took a second for that register, though. For a second, all I could do was gape at him and feel sick to my stomach.

Then he growled and charged at me, and I sprang into action.

I bolted, slipping on stones because my feet were wet, and ran toward the embankment. Blue gave chase, stumbling on the same rocks that had given me trouble, and I made sure to lead him away from the others.

Part of that was because I didn’t want to endanger other people, but it was more than that. For reasons I didn’t completely understand, I felt responsible for him. Blue was my zombie, and I would take care of him.

As I raced up the embankment, using my hands to pull myself up quicker, he was right on my heels. He actually successfully managed to grab one of my feet once, but I got him off by kicking him in the face. He let out a low death groan after that, and I prayed he wasn’t calling more zombies.

I made it all the way to the top and looked around for anything to use to defend myself. Part of a rusted muffler sat on the shoulder of the highway, a leftover from a time when people were still driving around. It had a nice jagged edge from where it had snapped off the car.

I ran toward it, and just before I reached it, Blue knocked me to the ground. He hit my back, and I tumbled face down in the dirt. I rolled onto my back, and when he tried to dive on me, I lifted my legs and kicked him squarely in the chest, knocking him back.

With only seconds to reach it before Blue was on me again, I crawled on my belly over to the muffler. My fingers had just wrapped around it when I felt Blue’s hands on me, like claws digging into my thighs and butt.

I flipped back over, and Blue grabbed onto my thighs, pulling me closer to him. As soon as I was underneath him, I jammed the sharp end of the muffler right into his jugular. I rolled to the side, narrowly missing a spurt of his blood.

He was fairly new, so the blood hadn’t gotten as thick or green as it eventually would, but it still didn’t look like a human’s. He clawed at his throat, trying to pull it out, and let out a garbled howl.

I got to my feet and kicked him in the side, so he fell to the ground on his back, still trying to get it out of his throat. I didn’t know how long it would take him to bleed out, and honestly, I didn’t want him to suffer. Somewhere, buried way underneath the zombie mania, was my friend Blue, and he didn’t deserve to suffer any longer than he absolutely had to.

I grabbed the muffler and yanked it across his throat. I wasn’t strong enough to sever his spine, and based on how rusty the metal was, I doubted the muffler was either. But I’d torn through both his jugular and his windpipe.

His mouth opened and closed a few times, reminding me of a fish out of water trying to breathe. But then he was still, his hands at his throat, and his eyes wide open, looking at the blue sky above us.

“What the hell happened?” Boden asked, jogging across the highway to me.

He was shirtless, barefoot, and his blond hair was dripping water onto his shoulders. But he had a gun in his hand as he approached. Behind, I could see Bishop and Daniels standing at the top of the embankment, looking to see what was going on.

“Just a zombie,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “But it was nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“I can see that,” Boden said. He stood next to me, staring down at the corpse at of one my closest friends, and he looked somewhat impressed that I’d taken out Blue myself. “Good job.”

“Thanks,” I said numbly and crossed my arms over my chest.

“You okay?” He looked over at me, and I realized dourly how little I was wearing.

He’d started out checking me out for wounds, but when he saw me, his expression changed. His forehead furrowed, and his eyes widened, and I knew exactly what he saw.

I was covered in marks. My inner arms were black and blue and loaded with track marks. My white shirt was soaked and nearly transparent, so all the scars across my belly were visible. I even had scars on my legs and shoulders from all sorts of other bizarre experiments. 

“What the hell happened to you?” Boden asked.

“They were trying to find a cure for the zombie virus,” I explained quickly. “They did whatever they thought they needed to do to find it. I was their test subject.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, just nodded, and then looked around. “Did you hear any other zombies?”