“How’s your leg, Sam?”
Drifts shrugged. “Hurts, but it’s bearable. You got Taylor and Marjorie out of here.”
Ramirez nodded. “Yep. Justin went with Three-Fourteen.”
“He’s a good kid. He’ll make one hell of a medic. Tell him I said so, Leo.”
Alarm bells went off in Ramirez’s head. “Why can’t you tell him yourself the next time you see him?”
Drifts looked up but his eyes were distant. “You were a good partner, Leo. It’s been a pleasure being on your truck all this time. Being your friend.”
Ramirez took a step closer. “Sam, why are you talking like this?” The veteran medic’s eyes focused on a chunk of flesh missing from Drifts’s forearm. “You were bit!”
Drifts eyes closed in a tight-faced-grimace as he nodded. He opened his eyes and looked at his partner with tears streaming down his face. “I couldn’t do it, Leo!” He shook his head and furiously wiped the tears away, “Well, I guess that’s not true. I did do it, but it was too late.” He indicated the girl lying peacefully on her back. “I couldn’t hit her. I knew she was dead and dangerous and running right for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her!” He shuddered. “At least not until she bit me. Then I finished her for all the good it did me! I might as well have let her make me into a fucking happy meal!”
Ramirez stepped forward. “Sam, come on, let’s get you taken care of.”
“No!” roared Drifts. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Leo. I don’t mean to yell at you. I just can’t live my life that way. All those meds. Fucking dialysis treatments. What would I do that for? A string of jilted lovers and job where the people we help will spit on you more so than say thank you. What do I really have to live for?” He shook his head. “That’s not for me. I’m sorry, Leo.”
Ramirez noticed the glint of something metal in his hand, “Sam, what are you holding?”
Drifts held up the pistol. “One of Johnny’s guns.” The shame in his eyes prevented him from meeting the older man’s. “It still has a bullet,” he added conversationally.
“Don’t do this, Sam!”
Drifts placed the pistol beneath his chin. “Goodbye, Leo. I’m sorry.”
“Sam, will you fucking stop!”
Drifts opened his eyes and looked at his partner. “You cussed at me. You never cuss.”
Ramirez glared at his partner. “You’ve never made me this damn mad before!”
Drifts looked at him. “I’m sorry, Leo, I just . . .”
Ramirez cut him off. “Did I ever tell you what happened to my son, Donnie?”
Drifts froze. “No. You’ve hinted that you lost him during the outbreak, but you’ve never said much else about him.”
“I did lose him in the outbreak,” Ramirez admitted, “but not till the very end.” He smiled. “My Donnie was so full of piss and vinegar. Cocky as hell, but funny too. Oh, the things that would come out of his mouth when he was talking to others use to keep everyone rolling.”
The older medic chuckled. “He was loyal to a fault, but he had a vicious temper too. Once when I came back to our safe house after a scavenging run, his face was all bruised. I demanded to know who did it. He said he confronted some men who were harassing his little sister. Then he laughed.”
“He laughed?” Drifts asked. “Why?”
Ramirez smiled. “He laughed because the three offenders were all still bed-bound in the medical ward.”
“It was so close to the end of the outbreak. Our community had cleared away more and more of the city. The horde of the dead was shrinking. There was a new vaccine that the reestablished government had air dropped to us. We were making plans to spread out and take the city as a whole.”
“Donnie had turned sixteen and was begging to go out scavenging with me. I was so proud of him and sure of his ability. So because it was exponentially less dangerous by then, I agreed to take him out with me.” Ramirez shuddered. “I wish I hadn’t.
“He took to scavenging like a duck to water. As the months passed, I became even less guarded, gaining confidence that he could take care of himself. Then one day, May, 16
th
he didn’t come back to our checkpoint. We always regrouped every half-hour or so at a safe place like the top of a building. Something that we could get to easily but the zombies could not.”
Ramirez paused as he shuddered.
“With that missed check in, I knew in my heart that something was wrong. I searched the building that he’d gone to and called out for him, but he never answered. I searched every building in a two block radius. I kept calling his name. Nothing for hours, until I reached an apartment building and a small zombie girl about ten years old came lumbering after me. At first I thought she looked an awful lot like my daughter, but I pushed the thought away and took her out with my crowbar.”
He sighed. “Once she was down, I realized that she was covered in fresh blood. I didn’t have time to think about much else then Donnie emerged.” Tears streamed down the veteran medic’s haggard face. “My Donnie, my boy that I’d spent all those years protecting, loving, and growing into a man that who twice the person I would ever be was now dead. His throat and part of his chest were torn out.” Ramirez looked down at April’s body. “He couldn’t harm something that looked like his own sister. That’s how he was better than me. I did it without a second thought.” Ramirez clenched his fist. “And as a result of his compassion, he was running at me with those same dead, hungry eyes.”
Drifts eyes bulged. “You took out your own son?”
“No,” said Ramirez.
“No?” asked Drifts.
Ramirez met his gaze. “Like you, I hesitated.”
Drifts looked back at him confused “What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” Ramirez grabbed the top of his left shirt sleeve and ripped it down.
“No fucking way.”
On the medic’s bicep was a dialysis shunt just above the deep scar of an old bite. “I’m reminded of him every day.”
“You’ve been concealing this for how many years?” demanded Drifts.
“Would you have been understood?”
Drifts looked down. “I guess not.”
“One of the reasons I like working with you, Sam, is that you remind me so much of my son. You both are funny, loyal, hard-headed, and brave, and I suspect that when he wasn’t around me, he might have been as vulgar as you are. Working with you allows me to imagine what he would have been like at your age. It’s why I invariably choose to work with you every year during shift bid.”
Ramirez continued, “I’ve lost too much to the dead already. I will not give them anyone else without a fight. Not a homeless drunk, not a shot-up gang-member, and certainly not you!”
Ramirez held out his hand. “I know how strong you are, Sam, and I know you can do this.”
“What if I don’t know whether I can?” Drifts asked.
“This won’t slow you down as much as you think. Think about it. My condition doesn’t prevent me from being a bad ass.”
“That’s true. It doesn’t stop you, despite how old you are.”
Ramirez snorted and Drifts chuckled. Drifts looked at the gun for a moment then silently handed it to his partner. Ramirez took it and offered him a hand up. Just then several police cruisers and a firetruck came barreling down the street.
Ramirez shook his head smiled. “Better late than never.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Drifts said. With Drifts’s arm over his shoulder, he and Ramirez walked towards the sirens.
Drifts asked, “So will this affect my sex life?”
Ramirez chuckled. “Yeah about that . . .”
Epilogue
Later that Year
“Hey, Leo, what do you think of my new tattoo?”
Ramirez paused from stepping back up into the rig to look at his partner’s arm. Samuel Drifts grinned as he displayed the artwork under his sleeve. Unlike Ramirez who had prudently concealed his condition for years, Drifts displayed his zombie bite like a badge of pride.
Ramirez scrutinized the image. “Your tattooist certainly captured it very well. I like how the coloring is coming in.”
Drifts flexed his arm. The tattoo was of a beautiful little girl in a “PRINCESS” shirt. She held a heart-shaped balloon that encompassed the bite mark.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to find a tattooist that would even work with the bitten.”
“Yes, I would,” said Ramirez.
“Yeah, well, I guess you would know.”
Ramirez waved the comment away. “How did you find him?”
“He’s bitten too. Has a chunk missing out of his calf and a tattoo of the zombie who did it with the bite mark for its mouth. He said that was the most common design for the bitten to get.”
“Why didn’t you get that?”
Drifts shook his head, “A zombie’s just what she became, not who she was. I prefer to see her how she looked while she was alive.”
Ramirez nodded. “I like that. Do you still have his contact information?”
“You’re going to get a new tattoo, Leo?”
“I was thinking about it . . . something to represent my kids.”
Drifts stepped up into the rig and shut the door. “Cool, I can get you his number. Let me know when you’re going, and I’ll come with you. So how’s your family doing?”
“Everyone is okay.” Ramirez chuckled. “Maria just broke up with her boyfriend.”
Drifts looked over. “You mean the guy she brought to the barbeque who tried sneak a beer past you?”
Ramirez nodded. “The very same.”
Drifts smiled. “Good for her, she deserves better. That twerp was a grade A asshole.”
“Apparently she agreed with your assessment. He tried to put her in a comprising situation and she sent him running with a bloody nose and some swollen testicles.”
“Hah! She takes after her old man.”
“He’s just lucky that she didn’t get to her knife in time.”
Drifts’s door was flung open and Tracy stepped up into the rig to kiss Drifts. “Hey, sexy.”
Drifts grinned. “Hey yourself.”
She looked past the EMT. “Hey Leo, how’s your wife?”
“She’s good. Just trying to keep our kids in line.”
“I’ll bet.” Tracy looked back at Drifts and handed him a lunchbox. “You forgot your lunch at home.”
Drifts took it. “Thanks babe.” He placed his hand on the slight bulge on her belly. “How’s the little one treating you today?”
She placed her hand over his. “She’s doing well. Keeps wanting to eat Mexican for some reason.”
“You know it could be a boy.”
Tracy smiled. “You’re sweet. I think that we have a little Samantha on our hands.”
“God help me,” said Drifts. “I’d rather deal with worrying about one dick, not a million.”
Ramirez chuckled. “Welcome to my world.”
Tracy touched Drifts’s cheek. “It’s just karma, sweetie. You’ll get used to it.” Ramirez snorted.
“Hardy fucking har har.”
Tracy beamed. “Speaking of karma, have you boys spoken to your boy Justin lately?”
“Who has he slept with now?” Drifts asked.
“Justin Colbert?” asked Ramirez.
“Yeah, it’s more like who hasn’t he slept with now. His bedroom exploits have a couple of nurses at Memorial fighting it out and the rumor is that he already loved and left several more girls at the other hospitals.”
Ramirez cocked an eyebrow. “Really? He seemed like such a nice kid.”
“He is,” Tracy added. “Justin, plays that sweet farm boy persona to a tee. That is until he gets them into bed. Then he ditches them faster than you can say hayloft.”
Drifts waved it away. “You have to cut the kid some slack. Working here is his first chance at freedom since he left his ranch. Hell, it’s the first time he’s been around any available girl who wasn’t a part of his family tree. Give him time. He’ll come back around sooner or later. He just has to meet a girl worth settling down for.” He winked at her.
“Mmm, flattery will get you everywhere.” Tracy kissed Sam again. “I have to go. Joe will have kittens if I don’t hop in his truck ASAP. Promise me you boys will talk to Justin when you catch a chance? At the rate he’s going, he won’t live long enough to settle down.”
“Will do,” Ramirez said.
She shut the door and walked to her rig where Donnagan was tapping his watch. Drifts watched her walk away. He shook his head. “Damn! I am one lucky bastard.”
“Yes, you are,” Ramirez agreed.
Drifts looked at his partner. “Did you know that being pregnant makes some girls super horny?”