AM13 Outbreak Shorts

Crackdown - One

Suicide, I can't believe it!

I shake my head into my hands, feeling totally shocked at myself. I can't believe I actually held the gun against my head and I pulled the trigger. If there had been just one more bullet in that chamber I'd be dead now. It's shocking to think about, it sends bolts of ice cold terror right down to my heart.

"What's going on with you, man?" Enrico asks me sadly while shaking his head. "You're losing it, Oliver. I don't want to see you crack. Not right now. You've always been so strong, If you want to tell me what's going on then maybe I can help you."

I don't know how to answer that, I'm not sure when it all started going so wrong for me. I could say it's when I aimed my gun at that boy, I could tell Enrico it's when I pulled the trigger and ended the life of someone innocent, but if I'm totally truthful with myself it began so much longer ago. If I want to be truly honest, then I need to consider the moment my life took a different turn.

"Marie," I whisper sadly through the gaps in my fingers. "It all stems back to Marie."

Two and a half years ago, almost a lifetime when I think about what's happened since, I found my girlfriend lying across her bathroom floor, lifeless and totally cold. The strangled expression on her face while she lay in a pool of blood and empty prescription drugs bottles still haunts me to this day, it makes me wonder if she actually meant to die or if she realized that it was a mistake half way through.

I could never tell what was going through Marie's mind, and that remained the case up until the day she died.

No one knows about this, it's a part of my life that I prefer to keep secret because I don't ever want to be judged on it, but Enrico knows, I trust him with my life so I know he'll understand me when I open up just a little bit.

"You can't blame yourself forever," Enrico does his best to reassure me with a pat on the shoulder. "It wasn't you fault what happened."

But it doesn't matter what he says to me, I'll always hold some responsibility. If I was a better person, if I wasn't a mess back then, maybe Marie would've got the help she so desperately needed. Sure, she was an alcoholic and she dabbled in illegal drugs...I did too, it was how we met at a drug-fuelled party, but she never showed any signs of wanting to die. We'd just made a vow to one another that we'd change, that we'd put the life of petty crime behind us, we were supposed to be having a fresh start, it wasn't supposed to end in such a horrific way.

"Plus, you need to think about how much you've done since then. You've gone on to help so many people."

It wasn't easy to start down the road of becoming a police office when my imaginary resume didn't have anything worthwhile written upon it, but somewhere within the fog of grief I knew it was what I needed to do. I can't remember what I did after I found Marie's body, I don't recall a funeral, the time immediately afterwards is nothing more than a blur, but I can remember with absolute clarity that my life needed to go down a new path. I wanted to be an officer of the law.

I got my head down, I studied hard, I used everything inside of me to drive me towards my goal, and as soon as I achieved it, I felt good. I knew I was doing the right thing. The unpredictability kept me on my toes, it helped me never to get bored, I thought I would love my life forever.

Then the AM13 virus came along and changed absolutely everything.

"I'm just scared, Enrico," I tell my best friend seriously. "I don't know how much longer I can keep fighting this. I don't know how much longer we can all keep battling this. One way or another, it has to end."

The look Enrico gives me suggests that he's thought of that too, and that he doesn't fancy our chances against the virus either.

Perfect, just brilliant.