[ WP ] You were the last human on earth after the zombie apocalypse destroyed civilization . One day , you finally get infected by a zombie , but after turning , you realize what you 've been missing out on .

When it happened, no one believed it could be true. We all thought we could be survivors. After all, we've watched all the movies and read all the books. 
 
 We were wrong. 
 
 For months, they avoided using the `` z'' word in the media, supposedly to keep people from panicking. Well, I guess it worked, because as I look out the window of my apartment, I notice that there's no panicking, no fires in the street, not like in the movies. 
 
 Instead, you see them, tottering along like a sea of gray-faced elderly folks, their heads bowed until they see any sort of movement that is quick, jumpy. 
 
 The movement of something alive. 
 
 I did n't used to live in the upstairs apartment of the two story duplex, but my upstairs neighbors killed themselves not long after the Internet stopped working, and I got tired of re-boarding up the windows and barricading my door downstairs. It sucked dragging the corpses down the stairs in bedsheets and throwing them into the dumpster, but I could n't stand the smell, and I wanted to give them a bit more dignity than dumping them out of the kitchen window, you know? I always kind of felt like that was a bit melodramatic to off yourself just because you ca n't watch Netflix any longer, but then again, I have something my neighbors did n't. 
 
 I have Danny. 
 
 He's four years old. He climbs like a monkey, loves his dinosaurs, and enjoys pretending to shoot the `` bad guys'' out the window with his Nerf gun. He thinks the potty bucket is hilarious because he has to hang his butt out the window to use it. I'm just glad that, for some reason, the apartment complex is attached to a well instead of a city municipal water supply. We still get water even though it's freezing cold and the electricity is off and I do n't dare light a fire in the apartment because I do n't want our haven to catch fire. I have another child- Anna. She's two and goes to preschool in town. My husband went to get her when the news broke for the first time, but he has n't returned. When I have trouble falling asleep, I imagine them driving out in the wilderness together, driving and driving until they're far from anything that can hurt them. On my bad days, I tell myself it's a lie, a convenient fiction to distract myself from the fact that my little girl is probably dead, that my husband is probably shuffling around out in the sea of gray faces, his mind no longer full of the memories of our life together. 
 
 There is a sense of disconnect in my loss. I know they're gone but I ca n't know that they're gone for certain, so I'm trapped with a low-level grief buzzing in my chest day in and day out. The phones went down before I could find out about if my sister survived the first wave of infection. For all I know, everyone in the world is dead except Danny and me. 
 
 So I get up and I try to survive. For the both of us. I destroyed the stairs after moving all of my stuff upstairs and use a ladder to go up and down. Danny knows not to come with me. Besides, he's my partner in crime. He's the one who plays Sweet Home Alabama on the iPod speakers through the kitchen window on the highest volume setting when I need to go out and get past the shuffling sea of death armed with a push broom and some hedge clippers, my body taped up with duct tape and black trash bags until I look like a freakish flying squirrel. 
 
 Oddly enough, they seem to like music, and if there's any in our driveway or around the side of the building, they all flock to the street when it plays. 
 
 My biggest fear is always other people like myself- desperate, willing to kill for what I have... willing to do other, darker things that make me less fearful of the zombies. This is why Danny knows to stay in the apartment and not to let the ladder down unless he sees me in my ridiculous outfit. 
 
 Luckily, I have n't seen another like myself or Danny for a long, long time. 
 
 I'm in luck today. There's a corner store three blocks away and I cut through deserted, overgrown gardens to get to it, feeling a triumphant grin rising on my face when I realize that the coast is clear and it has n't yet been looted. I've noticed that most of the zombies do n't stay where they turn. They tend to gravitate in large groups to the streets or open areas, congregating together. Sometimes I feel lonely when I look out and see them, their mottled, but oddly not rotting, faces staring blankly at the ground as though they're robots in sleep mode waiting to be woken up. 
 
 I smash through the window, not worrying about the sound. The zombies only care about proximity to their line of sight. Part of me wonders if they're like snakes, seeing infrared and smelling with their gaping mouths- but I am not interested in testing this hypothesis. 
 
 I'm in luck. The shop has a bunch of plastic bags in the back even though the plastic bag ban went into effect over a year ago. Among the rotting food in the broken fridge wall and the melted ice cream, there's a lot of basic first aid supplies, bottled water and canned foods. I even grab some sweets for Danny. After all, I did promise him that I'd bring him something back, something good. I find a coloring book near the dusty front counter. It's the kind with four crayons attached to the front with molded plastic. I grab it, because why not? We only have so many puzzles that we can do and so many books we can read. As an afterthought, I grab the Farmer's Almanac on my way out. I'm terrible at gardening, but you never know. Maybe the zombie apocalypse will inspire me to develop a proper green thumb. 
 
 My trip back is uneventful, save for the sight of a couple of zombies a few blocks away traveling slowly down a parallel street. They do n't see me, thank goodness. 
 
 As I climb through the loose board in the side of the back fence to the property, I immediately know that something is wrong. 
 
 Something is lying on the asphalt. So, so still. 
 
 No. 
 
 Someone. 
 
 No. 
 
 Danny. 
 
 My heart stops and I vaguely hear the sound of my bags hitting the ground before I am moving, my body lurching forward unsteadily as I throw myself down to his level. 
 
 He's not breathing and his arm is twisted at an odd angle. But his leg is what prompts the horrified sob that I did n't know I was capable of making. 
 
 There is the perfect indentation of someone's teeth just above his ankle, red pooling points of blood rising in the bruised skin like a macabre smile. It's a deep bite, but oddly enough, there is nothing else, no rent flesh or innards spilling out onto the pavement like in the late night horror films I grew up watching after my parents had gone to bed. 
 
 His eyes are closed, and I pretend that I can feel the warmth of life in his rapidly cooling skin. My mind is trying to make sense of what could have happened. He knows not to go out onto the balcony. He knows not to try and climb down. He's only four, but he KNOWS. He knows. 
 
 I find that I'm voicing my thoughts aloud and I hate the sound of my voice, choked with guilt and loss. We were supposed to survive. Together. 
 
 Amazingly, the zombies do not come up the driveway to investigate my horrible, choking sobs. Like I said, I do n't think they can hear the way I can, even though they still do seem to enjoy the music. 
 
 The music... 
 
 I look at Danny's tiny, thin little leg. It's going gray around the bite mark, and I know, then, that he is changing, but my heart still leaps because I know that this means he's not gone. He's not dead. He is n't. He ca n't be. 
 
 I hear a pop and a crack, and his little arm seems to reform like magic as it turns that same cement gray as the rest of the zombies. I'm holding him in my arms, rocking back and forth, singing to him even though I have n't sung to him since he was a toddler. 
 
 It is only when I feel him nuzzling my arm that I dare to look at him again. His eyes have gone gray like his skin and he looks up at me as though waking from a deep sleep. He does n't moan. That's the main difference between the zombies of fiction and the ones that walk down the streets in the real world. They are silent except for the shuffle of their feet. 
 
 Danny's nose makes a crinkling sound against the black trash bag covering my arm and I know what he needs. 
 
 `` Here you go, baby,'' I say, ripping the plastic open with one arm, `` I'll never leave your side.'' 
 
 His bite is n't as painful as when he was teething and he drew blood on one of my breasts while trying to feed. In fact, it goes numb almost immediately. Everything does. My tears stop within minutes and my lungs slowly stop their ridiculous hyperventilating. Time slows and stops as I look down at my boy, my little baby, held safe in my arms. 
 
 He looks up at me, gray eyes eternally patient. 
 
 It does n't hurt anymore, not when it's done. 
 
 And when we finally stand, shuffling down the driveway hand in hand, suddenly it seems so ridiculous for me to have worked so hard to avoid such an inevitable state of being. There is no need for words any longer, and my heart feels as though it is full to bursting with peace. 
 
 My son is by my side. I am content. 
 
 The others are calling to us, calling us home.
