My Infected Love

one

Charlotte.

My one true love.

Even now as I watch her, her once glossy auburn hair still hangs down her shoulders, swaying with ease as she moves. I can still picture the sparkle in her dark green eyes and the way she would move like a graceful dancer; fluid.

Now, as she stares back at me, that glossy auburn hair I used to curl around my fingers is limp and greasy.

Dead.

Those dark green eyes are now sheltered and masked by the iciness that has awakened inside the depths of her soul.

Dead.

Her stance, now crouched over and hunched - her once elegant demeanor replaced by the slow, nonchalant creature she now is.

Dead.

She lunges forward, clutching the bars I have entrapped her in. Those icy eyes glaring at me with fury, anguish, and hunger.

My one true love, Charlotte, was bitten.

It was only hours ago, that if I reached out to hold her hand, her long, smooth fingers would wrap around mine. Now she would only attempt to clamp her teeth around my flesh and bite down.

She continues to groan and grumble as her, now zombified, brain cannot understand the concept of a cage - a cell, to protect her... and myself.

The memories are still flooding back to me, attacking my brain in an unholy wrath.

Charlotte.

Myself.

Hiding from the infected in an abandoned cabin.

The screams... oh, how I remember those shattering screams.

Charlotte was in the front room, watching the door. I can remember her calling out to me,

"They're here! We need to keep moving!"

Her voice still echoes in my brain. Cracking at my sanity. I never realised how desperate she sounded at the time, until now. My instinct was to barricade the cabin; keep us as safe as possible from the infected for as long as we could. Charlotte didn't agree with me, but we proceeded with my plan.

But it didn't go as expected.

Little did I know that spending so much time scouring the cabin for ways to protect ourselves, would only make the situation worse. The infected got closer.

It was too late to run.

The last I saw of Charlotte, the old Charlotte, was her sprinting outside; her hair flying behind her, like a magic carpet of silk, as she held a bat high above her head.