Love Charms

by Multiple

  What did this breakthrough announcement have to do with me? Was it another cell phone? I loved my cell phone as much as the next person, but the way they came out with new ones every year (and they always have new features that seem suspiciously like the old ones), I would never understand why people got so excited about those things. I wanted mine to work, I wanted to call people on it, and I’d like to be able to occasionally text someone and maybe check my email.

  The announcement wasn’t about a phone, though. I stabbed a potsticker with my chopsticks and nibbled on the edges while some NASA scientist explained their newest discovery.

  Hibernation, hypothermia, an isolated virus that could mimic these conditions at a safe level. Once they finished with more rounds of experimentation, they could use this knowledge for extended space travel. The goal was to induce a type of suspended animation in astronauts so they could travel to distant planets with minimal necessities.

  It sounded like a bunch of Star Trek mumbo jumbo to me. I’m not stupid, I graduated college with a marketing degree, but this had nothing to do with me. In a hundred years when people finally colonized Mars and someone built a restaurant chain up there, they could call me in to help figure out their branding, but none of this affected me right now.

  This was what I thought then. In four days, everything changed.

  *

  I wander through the city, confused. I am cold beyond belief and nothing I can do will warm me up. I try holding my hands tight against my chest and huddling on the ground, but it doesn’t help. I’ve tried putting on more clothes, but this doesn’t work, either. I’ve tried taking off my clothes, too. I go inside and outside, but no.

  My skin is a pale blue like the color of pure water. I feel sick and I know I should go see a doctor, but there are no doctors anymore; not for me or anyone like me. I am one of them and I am hated. I understand this, but I don’t want it.

  It’s hard to walk sometimes, but other times I manage it fine. I feel clumsy, as if I’ve had too much to drink at the bar, but I don’t think I’ve had alcohol for months. I can’t remember.

  And then it happens.

  As much as I feel it, I’m not alone. A majority of the people surrounding me are like me, but different. They give in to their urges or they think differently, or there’s something that separates me from them. I think it’s the fact that I can’t give in no matter what. I have a doctor’s appointment to go to next week, afterall.

  The others around me stand up and stumble forwards after the intruders. Men and women, regular, just like us except with peach-colored skin (or tanned, or darker, it makes no difference) rush through the city streets. They bash through a storefront window with a baseball bat. The crashing sound of glass makes me shudder.

  The others chase them with a speed none of us knew we had. I watch them run, legs creaking, frantic to catch the people breaking into the convenience store. The people in the store yell at each other, screaming.

  “Hurry! Grab what you can and go! We don’t have much time!”

  I don’t know what they’re grabbing, but I know why they don’t have much time.

  Most of them make it out fine. A younger man drags behind, though. When he went to jump out of the front window, he cut his leg on the broken glass and fell onto the concrete sidewalk. One of his group stopped for a second and looked at him, trying to decide what to do, but when the rest of his people run off to safety, he abandons the young man.

  The young man is stuck, limping. He won’t escape.

  I can’t watch and I turn away. It hurts; it’s painful. I know why they do it and I’m tempted to do it myself. The feeling of warmth and closeness like a lover’s embrace. Heat and intimacy.

  Except nothing they do is loving. They are ruthless and vicious and in their obsession for warmth they’ll destroy the man.

  I hear him scream and I want to cry but I run away as fast as I can. My feet slip on the sidewalk and I stumble, hitting against the side of a building, but I keep going.

  Why is it like this? Why?

  *

  After I ate a can of warmed beans, I felt better. It wasn’t hard to get the can of beans, but it was difficult to heat them. Fortunately, I knew of a place on the outskirts of the city in a wooded area where there was a house with a gas generator and a microwave. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but it suited me for now. If I used the generator sparingly and made trips to get gas in the middle of the night, I could sustain myself for awhile.

  That’s how I imagined it going, but it didn’t always work like that. The problem was that, while the warm beans slipped down my throat easily and warmed me up, filling my stomach with a soothing heat, it never lasted. While eating them, I felt wonderful, though. I felt human and alive, like myself once more. If I flipped on the TV—if there was anything actually on TV—and sat on the couch, propping my feet up on the coffee table, maybe I could forget about all of this for awhile.

  The beans kept me feeling warmer for half an hour or so, but then the chill crept in. I didn’t have enough energy or beans to keep eating forever, though. It also didn’t help that I felt like I’d eaten a Thanksgiving dinner after only half a can of the things. I could only eat once a day at most without feeling wretched and sick. Most of the time I ended up going two days in between meals.

  For now, for a little while, I felt nicer, though. I walked through the hallway to the master bedroom and grabbed a bathrobe off the back of the door, slipping my arms into the sleeves and tying it into place. Finding a book by Nicholas Sparks on the bedside table, I snatched it up and fell into bed. I slid beneath the thick blankets, hoping to keep warm for a little while longer, then opened to the dogeared page in the book and began reading.

  I read for a few minutes before the chill started. My feet grew colder and I started breathing slower, more shallowly. I felt tired, so tired, but I wanted to read a little more. I needed to know what happened to Ally and Noah. Did everything turn out fine? It was darker outside than I remembered, but I could still read. I needed to, desperately desired it, and yet…

  I folded the corner of the page I was on and carefully placed the book on the bedside table once more. Curling my knees up to my chest and closing my eyes, I lay in bed.

  *

  No one knew what exactly happened, and least of all Evan. He wished he knew, because maybe that would put some sense into all of this, but even if he did there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

  News stations reported an accident and a breakout. Contamination or something, but no one needed to act concerned. It was best if people remained in their homes and closed the doors.

  Of course, no one did that. Why should they? Well, Evan did it, because apparently he was an idiot. That’s what his roommate told him at the time before he rushed out of their apartment and into the streets.

  It didn’t matter if you left or stayed, though. It was something else entirely. He couldn’t say why it didn’t affect him or who it did affect, but it caused people to change. The virus released from the labs made people slow and stumbling. They could still talk, but in his experience they usually didn’t want to. Sick and pale, shambling around the city, looking like…

  Zombies.

  He laughed thinking about it. Zombies, really? That was some serious movie shit right there. People rising up from their graves, eating brains, hordes upon hordes of the living dead.

  This wasn’t exactly that, though. These people weren’t dead; they were sick. He tried to tell everyone that, but no one listened to him.

  “You’re not a doctor, Evan,” Alex said. “Just stick to hunting like you’re good at. We need someone like you. It’s safer if we stay away from the city unless we need supplies.”

  The city. That’s what everyone called it now. No names, no recognition. They didn’t want to acknowledge that the buildings in the city had names and history. There was no past; it didn’t exist. Maybe it was easier that way. Maybe it helped people cope with their losses and figure out ho
w to live in this screwed up place.

  Evan didn’t like it, though. He didn’t want to live in a fake city in the middle of the woods made out of tents. He didn’t want to act like none of his past life existed, and he didn’t want to treat anyone like a zombie.

  It didn’t matter what he wanted, though, it mattered what they did. And they—the zombies—killed people. There was some reason, some gut instinct told him so, but what? Why would they do it? What was their purpose?

  He wasn’t anyone important. He was just Evan, a man who’d grown up hunting, played football in high school and college, and worked a respectable job as an EMT while trying to save up money to continue on with medical school.

  Yeah, like Alex said, he wasn’t a doctor, but he would’ve been. And while higher learning had kind of gone out the window with the mass viral outbreak, if he had any say in things he’d still be a doctor some day. Maybe he couldn’t get an official degree, but he could study. He refused to let anyone stop him.

  *

  I’m walking through the city, confused. Why am I here? I can’t remember. I need to go to my doctor’s appointment, I’m sure of it, except where is my car? Do I have my keys? Reaching to my side for my purse, I realize I must have left it at home.

  My hand, my skin. I stare at my arm, unsure if what I’m seeing is real or not. My skin is a pale blue all the way from my fingertips and up my forearm, to my shoulder. It looks like I’ve painted my fingernails purple, but I never paint them that color.

  Then I remember everything.

  I can’t remember why I came here or what I needed to do, but I can’t stay. The others shamble around nearby or lay in a huddled mess somewhere in the shadows. No one wants to do anything, but I do. I must. Except what?

  Sometimes I find it hard to walk, but I know that I need to. If I focus on one step at a time I can act like everyone else; like I used to. Strolling through the street, looking at the storefronts, I pretend it’s just any other day. There’s a shop I like, a small custom-craft wardrobe boutique, and I stop in front of it and look inside. Someone’s broken the window and upturned the dress dummies that used to show off the owner’s most recent fashions, but it doesn’t matter.

  Reaching my hand out, I grab the hem of a pretty red dress and feel it between my fingers. It’s soft and comforting and I want to try it on. Walking to the door, I try to pull it open, but it’s locked. I could go through the window, but the broken glass might cut me.

  Not everyone cares. Looking around, I can see the shattered fragments of people’s lives on their bodies. A dark-blue skinned man has cuts all along his arms, probably from grabbing things out of broken-windowed shops or digging through the trash. A child nearby, motherless, stumbles through the streets with bruises all along her legs from falling too much. She almost looks like any other little girl except these bruises are large and angry, a thick purplish-blue color.

  A woman stares off into the horizon. I imagine she’s the mother to the child, letting her little girl play before they go home for the day and sit down to a nice family meal in their cozy dining room. I don’t actually think that’s going to happen, but it’s nice to think it.

  I used to attend college nearby, so I decide to walk there. A quick, brisk pace, no shambling or stumbling. One foot in front of the other, watching myself walk, forgetting about anything else. I walk with a purpose, with determined strides. At the front of the college, I stop for a moment and peer into the front gates.

  The gates are chained shut to keep the students in and unwanted intruders out. That’s how it’s supposed to be, anyways. Maybe I wasn’t the best example of a student, but we used to slip out of our dorm rooms late at night and climb over the campus walls. It wasn’t very safe, nor was it a great idea, but we did it anyways. Making my way alongside the walled off college campus, I head through an alleyway leading to the back of the building. Who knows why, but there’s a small park here with a couple of trees and a bench, hidden away in between houses and society.

  I stand on the bench and reach for the lowest branches of the tree, pulling myself up. It takes awhile, but I manage, and in a moment more I have my leg up and over the wall. Then the other, pulling myself up higher, sitting, and…

  I jump down and land inside the college campus grounds. No one else is here since the gates are locked. I don’t think anyone knows how to get in here, but I wonder about that. It honestly shouldn’t be too difficult to break the chain or the lock since they aren’t the best quality, but I suppose no one really cares. Why should anyone want to go to college now?

  Because, I think, it’s nice. Quiet and alone, I walk down the pathways winding through the different enclosed buildings. I used to sit outside on nice days and pretend to study while watching cute boys walk by. And if I actually needed to study, the library was close to my dorm room. We had an elevator, but I liked to use the stairs, so I could just skip down them, out into the open fresh air, take a short walk, and there the library was.

  Through the large glass windows of the library, I see someone sitting at one of the tables reading a book. My feet stop, frozen in place. Is that really a person? What are they doing in there? Why would someone else come here besides me? The windows are tinted and I can’t see through them clearly, but this man doesn’t look like the others I’m used to seeing.

  *

  Evan knew Alex wouldn’t appreciate him leaving like this. He knew he shouldn’t do it, either, but he needed to. Just for a little while, and after that he’d go hunting for deer and bring back something for the camp to eat. Alex was a bit difficult to deal with sometimes since he was ex-military, but he knew what he was doing. If not for him, Evan probably wouldn’t have survived this long.

  Or, actually, he knew he could survive on his own, but the social interaction really saved him. You never realize how much you miss talking with people until there’s no one to talk with. He only had to deal with that for a few days before joining up with the survivor’s group, but those few days were some of the worst of his life. Confusion and chaos, hoping everything would calm down and return to normal, except it never did. Situations escalated, people panicked, droves upon droves of craziness.

  In the movies you always saw zombie situations dealt with using extreme force. Bombs and military blockades and things like that. Except this wasn’t that. Would anyone expect the military to go around shooting hospitalized plague victims? He doubted it, and he sure wouldn’t, though a lot of people he talked with now wished for that very thing.

  Anyways, better not to dwell on it, he thought. He needed to study fast. Sticking his nose into the copy of Robbins Pathologic Basis for Disease he found in the library stacks, he continued reading as much as he could as fast as he could.

  Something caught his eye outside, though. Looking out the window, he saw a woman standing in the courtyard. She looked back at him, blinking, eyebrows crinkled with a slight smile on her face; the sort of look that asks something like “What exactly are you doing here?” The glass was tinted, so he couldn’t see her too well, but she looked nice. A little ragged, but everyone looked like that now.

  Evan waved to her and gestured for her to join him if she wanted. Would she? He didn’t know. The offer was there, though. Smiling bright, wondering what kind of person besides him would come to a college campus during a zombie apocalypse, he set himself back to his studies.

  *

  The man in the building waves to me and gestures me inside. I don’t know what he’s doing there, but he seems different. Maybe I’m dreaming, and I don’t think it’d be the first time. If I came here for a reason, maybe he’s it, though. I do need to go to the doctor’s and I forgot my keys, so I should ask him for a ride. Is that weird to do? No one else is here, though. The worst he can say is no.

  I stumble on a rugged piece of the sidewalk while making my way to the front door of the library. It must be a nice day outside because someone’s propped the door open with a rock, letting the fresh air inside. The light wind bru
shes against my cheeks and sends my hair aflutter. Sighing, wistful, I step inside.

  I feel very cold, but I think it’s just the air conditioning they keep on in the library most of the time. It’s funny because sometimes during the winter the central air system would kick on by accident and chill the place to near freezing. It never happened for too long because the librarians called up the maintenance man in a huff, but whenever it happened it made me laugh.

  Is it winter now? It is very cold, but I don’t see any snow on the ground so I doubt it is. Autumn, probably, or a chilly summer day.

  I believe the man I saw must be a medical student; he was sitting in the health sciences section at any rate. No one’s sitting behind the front desk which is a little odd. No one is anywhere, though, I remind myself. I walk through the turnstile into the library, holding onto the railing for support, and notice the pale blue color of my hands.

  Everything changes.

  No, I can’t. The turnstile clinks behind me as I walk through and I pause at the other side, fearful and frozen in time. I don’t belong here, not with him. I belong outside with the others, somewhere far away. If he sees me, he’ll scream and panic. If he sees me, he’ll run, and if he can’t run fast enough they’ll catch him.

  Or maybe he isn’t as fearful as that. Maybe he’ll see me and become angry. Does he have a gun or a knife? I have no idea. All I saw was a book, but who knows what he had under the table. And, even a book hurts when someone repeatedly slams it against you. It’s hard to feel pain sometimes now, but I still know it’s there. I have little cuts and scrapes, scars, from when I first became like this and I don’t want to feel that way again. I don’t want to look at myself and know that I’m like this. I don’t want reminders of how horrible a situation I’m in.

  I want to go home. I want to eat something warm and steaming and lay in bed for my half hour of warmth while reading my book. I want to cry and know what happens to Ally and Noah and I want them to be happy and live together forever. Is that too much to want?