The Things We Cannot Change: A Zombie Apocalypse Love Story

by Kate L. Mary

  “So we focus on the things we can change?” I said.

  Trevor smiled, and even though it was small, it was the first time I’d seen him with anything other than a scowl or a look of determination on his face, and I liked it. It softened his features, made him seem like something other than a man I despised but found myself bound to. He looked like someone I could actually be friends with.

  “That’s right,” he said. “This is a new day, one we never thought would happen, but one that’s here regardless. Whoever we were before is gone. Dead. We’re new people in a new world, and from here on out we have to figure out how we’re going to survive. Together.”

  So that’s what we did. Outside more snow fell with each passing day while we focused on what needed to get done. Not just to get us to the next day, but to get us to the next month, the next year. It was something Trevor had been focused on since the day we arrived, and it was evident in the supplies he’d gathered for us. Not just food and water, but weapons—guns and even bows—fishing equipment, camping gear that would help us get through a life that was no longer aided by electricity and running water. He’d even gathered medical supplies, which impressed me more than anything else.

  “How did you know what to get?” I asked him as I sorted through the bottles and bottles of pills he’d stashed under the bathroom sink.

  “Took what I recognized mostly,” he replied.

  I glanced over my shoulder and smiled up at him. “You did good. Lots of antibiotics.”

  It wasn’t until that moment that I realized he had no clue I was a doctor, just like I had no clue what he’d been before the world ended.

  “I’m a doctor,” I told him. “An ER doctor.”

  Trevor’s eyebrows jumped up. “You would have been useful in the pharmacy.”

  “I know,” I said, standing. “I’m sorry.”

  He just shook his head. “I didn’t say that to make you feel bad.”

  I smiled up at Trevor, and the sudden feeling like we were really seeing each other for the first time swept over me. “I know.”

  I almost reached out to him then, but something about it felt wrong, so I held back. We’d been living together for weeks now, and had even had sex once, but the man in front of me was for all intents and purposes still a stranger, and I had no doubt that he felt the same way about me. We knew almost nothing about one another other than the few basic things we’d learned that first night. I’d told him that my husband was dead and he’d told me about his ex-wife and kids. That was the extent of the personal information we’d shared, and it felt so wrong that I was suddenly desperate to get to know the man in front of me. To allow him to get to know me.

  “I was on sabbatical when the virus hit. My boss made me take a leave of absence because of my drinking.” I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the next part. The part where I told the truth for the first time—and not just to someone else. “I came into work after having too much to drink.”

  Even after all this time I found that I couldn’t vocalize the whole truth, and it made me feel utterly pathetic. There was no point in hiding it now. All of that was gone and all the people who had been there to witness my demise were dead. More importantly, the man in front of me had no delusions that I was perfect. In fact, he had seen every one of my flaws highlighted in the weeks since we’d been here.

  I took a deep breath in through my nose, and then slowly blew it out through my mouth before saying, “I was drunk.”

  Trevor blinked, but that was his only reaction. There was no judgment in his eyes, no gleam that said he was dying to hear all the juicy details of my fall from grace. He simply blinked and waited for me to say more.

  “I swore to my boss that I wasn’t drunk. That I’d just had a glass of wine and my judgment wasn’t impaired. I told myself the same thing and I think I might have even believed it, but it was a lie. I told myself a lot of lies back then.”

  “Why did you start drinking?” Trevor asked when I gave him a chance to speak.

  “My husband died.” I exhaled again, hoping to blow out the pain. It didn’t work. “Nathaniel. A car struck him one day when he was walking home from the gym. He died instantly. I think a part of me died that day too, which sounds like such a cliché, but it’s really the only way I can explain the way I behaved over the next year. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stand being in our apartment. I started working extra hours, but no matter how long I stayed at the hospital I eventually had to go home. The drinking started slowly—a glass of wine before bed to help me sleep—but before I knew it, I was drinking a bottle every night. Then more. A lot of my coworkers knew, but I managed to stay professional during work hours. Managed to time it so I wasn’t still drunk when I dragged myself into work. It couldn’t last though, not drinking more than a bottle of wine every night and then working twelve hour shifts the next day. Eventually, I started showing up still drunk from the night before.” I frowned up at Trevor. “Then I was given an ultimatum. That night you found me in Central Park was the first night I’d had a drink in over six weeks. As you know, it went downhill from there.”

  “Thank you for telling me,” Trevor said softly, and the expression in his hazel eyes matched his tone.

  “I owed you an explanation after everything you did for me. Plus, I think it’s about time we got to know one another a little.”

  He nodded in response, almost thoughtfully. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

  After that we spent the night sitting in the living room, talking about our lives before the zombie apocalypse. Good and bad things, happy and sad times. There was a lot to discuss since we knew virtually nothing about one another, and I was happy to finally have a picture of who the man at my side had once been.

  “I worked for an ad agency,” Trevor said over a cup of steaming hot chocolate. “Nothing thrilling, in fact I’m not even sure I liked my job, but I was good at it and it paid well. It gave me the life I’d always wanted. The one that had been ruined when my college girlfriend got pregnant.” He shook his head. “Looking back on it, I now realize what a stereotypical asshole I was. Seriously. I married Melissa because I felt like I owed her, but I wasn’t happy about it and I definitely didn’t try to be happy. The kids made things better for a while, but eventually, as my marriage grew worse, I started to resent them just as much as I resented her.” He stared into his mug. “If I could go back, I’d do everything in my power to fix it.”

  “We’re not supposed to focus on the things we can’t change,” I reminded him. “Only on the future. On what we can do now.”

  He let out a little laugh, and I found that I liked the sound. I’d never heard him laugh before, and even though it wasn’t a very happy sound, it was real. More importantly, it felt like a sign that we were getting somewhere. That we were no longer strangers.

  Trevor lifted his gaze from his mug, focusing on me. “You really think a person who’s lived every second of their lives selfishly has a chance at redeeming themselves?”

  “I think how you’ve helped me has proven that you can. You could have let me kill myself or left me alone. Could have dumped the alcohol out and let me dry out without doing anything to really help me. You could have held it against me. But you didn’t do any of those things. You forced me to do the right thing and you stood by me. That says something about who you are deep down. I think it sometimes takes an extreme situation for our true selves to come out.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he said, and this time when he smiled it looked more sincere. Almost hopeful.

  “Me too,” I said returning the smile.

  Only time would tell, but at the moment I had hope for the first time since before Nathaniel died. Hope that I could have a life again, that the broken pieces of me could be glued back together to create something whole.

  Chapter 9

  Trevor had been right to suspect that we were facing a hard winter. Once the snow started, it seemed to go on and on, almost as if it wanted to finish the job the
virus had started. We watched from the safety of the house, staring out over the lake as the landscape was covered in white one flake at a time. The days grew shorter and colder, and soon we had no choice but to sleep in the living room. It was the only place that had heat now that there was no electricity, but even the wood burning fireplace wasn’t enough to keep us warm most nights.

  The cold was what shifted things. It happened late one night in the middle of December. Trevor and I had been sleeping side by side on the floor for weeks, but that night I shivered for hours, unable to get warm no matter what I did. Behind me, I could tell Trevor was awake as well, even if his teeth weren’t chattering the way mine were. When he finally reached out and pulled me against him, I didn’t resist even if my heart did pound faster.

  “W-what are you—”

  “It’s the best way to keep warm,” he said, cutting me off before the question could get out. “I’m not going to try anything, I promise.”

  I nodded as I snuggled closer. He rearranged the blankets so more were piled on top of us, and then settled against me. My back was to his chest and his arms were around me, and within minutes I began to warm. My teeth stopped chattering, the goose bumps eased and then disappeared. I began to relax.

  It felt odd being in his arms even though we had already slept together, but it felt right at the same time. We had grown closer over the weeks following my forced sobriety, had spent hours talking, had become friends, and in his arms I slept better than ever before. The next night I didn’t try to resist when he pulled my body closer, or the night after, and soon it was habit, the two of us curling up side by side when we laid down to sleep, relying on body heat to get us through the cold.

  There was comfort in his presence. In waking up in the middle of the night, the house utterly silent other than the howl of the wind and the slow breathing of the man at my side. If he hadn’t been there in those moments, I felt certain that I would have been overcome with panic, because it was in those moments, as the fogginess of sleep ebbed away and the stark horror of real life made itself known once again, that I felt the most lost. I would open my eyes, anticipating the soft light my bedside clock had given off or the hum of electronics that had accompanied life before the virus, to be met with nothingness. There were no sounds that weren’t made by nature, no light other than the glow of the fire at our sides, and no hope that any of it would ever return. It was terrifying, being so clearheaded in the midst of this crisis, and if it hadn’t been for Trevor, if I hadn’t been able to feel his warmth and hear his intake of breath as he slept at my side, I felt certain that I would have gone mad.

  Life became a series of habits. Trevor and I spent our mornings curled up in front of the fire, drinking weak coffee as we got to know one another. Then, as afternoon came, we’d bundle up and head outside to chop more wood or gather snow to melt for drinking water. We worked during the warmest part of the day in hopes of staying strong and healthy, but would retire to the house once evening made an appearance.

  Occasionally we’d pile onto snowmobiles we’d found in the garage and head to the nearest towns or neighboring houses, gathering more food or other supplies. We hadn’t seen a single zombie since the snow began to fall, and it gave us hope that the winter had killed them off completely. Things wouldn’t go back to normal even if that were the case, but we’d at least have a better shot of starting over. Come spring we might be able to venture further away from the house without the fear of being bitten or attacked. We’d have hope of finding more people who might be organized and trying to start over.

  Since that was something we wouldn’t know for sure until spring came, we did everything we could now to stay ahead, continuing the habits Trevor had adopted right after we’d arrived at the house. Gathering supplies, staying organized, and always thinking of tomorrow.

  Not a day passed that I didn’t long for a drink. It would come at the most random moments. Sometimes first thing in the morning, right after I’d opened my eyes and found my gaze drifting to the white world outside the house we’d taken shelter in. Other times I would be good all day, the need not making itself known until after I’d settled on the couch for the evening, the daily chores done and dinner in my hand. I’d take a bite of spaghetti and the sudden desire for a glass of wine would swoop in, hitting me so hard that it felt like it had knocked the wind out of me.

  The most common moments though, were when Trevor and I would talk about the past. Or worse, the future.

  “What will we do once spring comes?” I asked him one December evening.

  I knew Christmas had to be creeping up on us, but since we’d both given up trying to keep track of the exact date weeks before, I wasn’t sure exactly when it was. Not that I wanted to know. This world was depressing enough without acknowledging just how different things really were.

  Trevor sat on the other end of the couch, and our feet were touching under the blanket that was spread out across us. Mine were encased in fuzzy socks I’d liberated from CVS the last time we’d made a run to town, his tucked into a pair of thick wool ones he’d found in the master bedroom.

  He tilted his head to the side and I didn’t miss the way his hair flopped over his forehead at the gesture. It had grown since we’d first met on that dark night in Central Park, but no matter how many times I’d offered to cut it for him, he’d refused.

  “I don’t know,” he responded thoughtfully, as if he hadn’t entertained the question before now. “If the zombies are gone, we should head out and try to find other people. There has to be a refugee center or something out there. Maybe closer to Atlanta.”

  “Why Atlanta?” I asked.

  “The CDC.” Trevor shifted, stretching his legs out so they covered mine, as if he were trying to ward off a chill I hadn’t yet gotten. “If there’s anywhere in the country that’s survived, it will be the CDC.”

  I had to admit, he had a point.

  Of course, until that moment it had never occurred to me that we should leave New York, but what he was saying made sense. More sense than thinking about staying here where the winters could be so rough. We’d sweat our asses off down in Georgia during the summer, but up here we were likely to freeze if we didn’t stay on top of things. Then again, if the zombies did manage to survive the cold, if spring came and the snow melted and they thawed out, maybe staying north where the winters were longer would be better.

  “And if they don’t die off?” I asked, holding Trevor’s gaze. “What do we do then?”

  He let out a deep sigh. “I don’t know.”

  That’s when the need hit me. Hearing the strain in his voice, seeing the flicker of hopelessness in his hazel eyes. It made me long for the haze that would envelope my brain when I drank. For the way reality would fade until it was nothing more than a fuzzy memory at the back of my mind.

  I swallowed, trying to force the urge away, but it didn’t lessen.

  “Is it bad?” he asked as if reading my mind.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  Trevor shifted, and then moved across the couch until he was at my side. When he reached for me, I allowed him to pull my body against his, allowed my head to rest on his chest as his arms wrapped around me. I closed my eyes and focused on the thump of his heart against my ear, counting the beats. Telling myself that as long as I had him at my side I would be okay. I would be strong enough to beat this.

  We’d done this more and more often as the days had passed, and yet we hadn’t revisited the carnal comfort we’d indulged in the first night we’d met. When I thought back on what had happened between us, it didn’t feel real. Those people who had stripped themselves bare in the middle of Central Park and had sex in a desperate attempt to forget the gruesome reality the world had taken on were like strangers now, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it again and again. Only it was more because I could no longer comprehend the mental state I must have been in to do something so foolish and reckless. I had been drunk, but I must have been half out of my
mind as well. It was the only way to explain what had transpired that night.

  Like so many nights before, I fell asleep in Trevor’s arms. His warmth kept me cozy as snow once again began to fall outside, and when I woke on the couch alone, shivering and lonely, I felt his absence more than ever. It didn’t matter that I could hear him moving around in the other room because I missed the security his nearness brought me. Lately it had begun to feel like he was all I needed to keep going.

  THE WINTER DRAGGED ON, AND WITH EACH passing day I found myself longing for Trevor’s nearness more and more. In the beginning I tried telling myself that it was just loneliness, but it was a difficult lie to swallow when I didn’t feel the least bit lonely with him at my side. After that I worked to convince myself that the attraction was a simple matter of us being the only two people around. If there were other people, I wouldn’t feel like this thing between us was inevitable. I wouldn’t be close to him so often. If he wasn’t the only person to turn to when I needed someone to warm my body at night, or listen to me recount stories of the past, I wouldn’t want him. If we had other people to talk to, I wouldn’t be focused on him so completely.