The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella Read Online Free Page A

they’ll only make it worse.”
    “Lift up your shirt.”
    He hesitates, then grabs and pulls. Embedded along his entire side is a bruise running a spectrum of colors, settled mostly around diseased phlegm yellow. I wave my hand for him to lower it, tell him, “I’ll take care of it.”
    “You don’t need to.”
    “We’re not savages.”
    “It would be better for both of us if you just left it.”
    I chew on that for a moment. He’s right. Sometimes I am very surprised that no one’s knifed him. Or me, over my decision to keep him alive.
    Silence hangs in the air like a sentient being, taunting us. I want to leave but feel compelled to stay. Not that he deserves my company, but the solitude seems cruel. Everything about this is cruel. I ask, “Do you want to die? You ask if I’m going to kill you, but you never ask me to do it.”
    He pauses. “I’m undecided, I guess.”
    “Sometimes I wonder if keeping you alive in here is the punishment I think you deserve.”
    He smiles. “That’s the most honest thing you’ve ever said to me. Still not the whole truth, but better. What’s different about today?”
    “Nothing, hopefully. I don’t know. Maybe everything.”
    “Is this about your wife?”
    I’ve never told him about June. I play it off like it’s nothing but I don’t do a very good job of hiding it, because my fist is clenched and shaking and he sees it. “My wife is not a concern of yours.”
    “This isn’t some trick. I overhear things. The way the sound travels in here, it’s amazing. I hear you talking to her, up on the roof. Sophia.” He presses his face through the bars, and they pull his white skin taught. “You’ve been kind to me. Kinder than I have any right to. I want to repay you. I want to help save your wife.”
    There’s an odd sincerity to his voice. Enough to drill a little hole in my skepticism. “And in exchange?”
    “Let me out. I’ll leave the island.”
    “And how do you plan to do that?”
    “Do I have your word?”
    If I let him out and off the island he’ll die. Whenever I go mainland I’m not convinced I’m coming back alive, and I can still run a mile without breathing too hard. This guy looks like he gets winded taking a piss. He’ll die before he even hits the shore.
    And I’ll have my Junebug back.
    Seems like a fair trade, even though it doesn’t feel right to make it.
    He reaches his hand through the black bars. His other hand is empty, so I’m reasonably certain he’s not going to pull me in and stick something sharp in my throat. I take the proffered hand and shake. It’s clammy, and leaves a thick layer of sweat mine. I wipe it on the back of my pants.
    “All you have to do,” he says, “is find a pet store.”
    “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s your answer.”
    He nods. “Pneumonia, correct? What antibiotics have you been using?”
    “Amoxicillin and penicillin.”
    “Good ones, but the strain might be resistant. You need to try a different kind, but doubtless the pharmacies have been cleared out. Did you know that fish antibiotics are the same kind as those used on humans, and you can buy them right off the shelf? No prescription necessary.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Quite. It’s one of those random bits of trivia that you file away and you figure it’ll never be useful, and then the apocalypse happens.” He laughs at himself, a high and unsettling giggle. “On Thirty-Ninth and Tenth there’s a specialty fish store. Not too far from the library. As long as no one else is as clever as us, it’ll have erythromycin and tetracycline and cephalexin.”
    He smiles again, turns and walks toward to back of his cell. “I’m tired. Godspeed.”
    I stand there for a little bit wanting to say something, wondering if I should thank him, but finally give up and head downstairs, where I catch one my deputies scurrying across the courtyard. I call him over and tell him, “Get up there and clean out his bucket.”
    “Not my job,