The eyes open. It is… blue. It is blue but there is white and green… what happened? The eyes aren’t helping.

The body. There is something hard on the back. Nowhere else. Something is in the hand. Moving is… hard. Is moving supposed to be hard? The neck hurts but the eyes can’t reach the pain. There is no memory of injury. There… there is no memory at all. Something is wrong. There is pain, there is fear, there is… hunger!

No. More than hunger. Hunger lives in the belly; this is in the entire body. This is everything. All is Hunger, Hunger is everything, questions can wait. There must be food. Where would it be? The blue does not seem to be food… the blue is up? Yes. The blue is up and the hardness on the back is down! The body must bend. The body moves but slowly, so slowly. The blue moves up, and the hardness moves to the feet, but so slowly. Why so slowly? No time for questions, there is the Hunger. Where is food?

The body does not know.

The eyes do not know what to look for. They see black beneath and yellow lines and grey steps and brown columns and red walls and figures moving slowly and figures moving quickly and green and blue and white above. Is any of it food?

The ears hear noises, noises without meaning. Wait… they are words.

“Run!” the ears hear. It is a word but… but the meaning is gone.

“No, what about John?” the ears hear. It sounds different but still, what do they mean? Something… a “John” is important, but why? The Hunger says it doesn’t matter. The ears tell the eyes that the words are the figures moving fast and growing larger, but is it food? What does the nose say?

The nose sees everything. Fire… oil… death… the nose is alive! The nose sees the concrete and tar it’s never seen before. The nose sees figures that have passed long ago. The nose sees food. The nose says that the figures with words are food. The hunger urges the body forward.

The body moves toward the food slowly, too slowly! The body wants to stop, the body just wants to not move but the Hunger won’t let it. If the Hunger goes away, maybe the body can stop. Please.

“Oh my god! John? John, are you okay?” Words fly past, meaningless. The body pushes forward.

“Shelly, look at his fucking neck! He is not okay!”

“John, we’ll get Morrie to look at you— patch you up. You’ll be fine! The body is getting closer, but not fast enough… the Hunger cries out. The body feels pain everywhere and lurches ahead.

“Like hell he’ll be fine! Christ, Shel, he’s dead!”

“Shut up!”

The figures split. The small one which makes the word “John” continues growing larger. The large one does not. Why? Is it because of the words? Words that have a meaning, but refuse to be remembered?

No matter. The nose remembers: the small figure is food. It is coming closer… the Hunger will go away and the body can rest. The hands reach out and… something is in the hand still. Something the hand does not want to let go of.

There is… there is confusion. The nose says it is food… the eyes disagree. The eyes say… what do the eyes say? Memories are… foggy. Dim. Far away.

“Shelly! He’s getting closer! We have to move!” More words. Have to… have to… have to…

“I have to!” I said, as I loaded a full clip into the pistol I found at the Romero Police Department the week before.

“You’re retarded.”

“Maybe. Maybe. But what’s that say about the dude coming with me?”

Jazz smiled and hefted a fire axe onto his shoulder. “That he should know better than to listen to a tiny little white accountant.”

We squeezed through the barricades. “Yeah, a tiny little white accountant who’s saved your big black steel-working ass how many times?”

Jazz pulled one of the communal bikes off of the rack in front of the hospital. “I dunno, none?”

“Try twelve times since the outbreak. And that was a month ago. You can’t shoot to save your life, Jazz!”

He laughed and straddled the bike. “Yeah, yeah. Hop on, sharpshooter.”

I stood on the rear pegs, ready to pick off anyone that got too close. We rode in silence, and fifteen minutes later we were at the jewelry store.

“So what’s the plan, Johnny?”

I pondered the situation for a moment. “Okay… okay! This block’s clear, I don’t hear looters, and down the street there are two zombies.” Jazz winced slightly. Nearly everyone did when I used that word. “They’re too far for a headshot and I don’t want to waste bullets, but they haven’t noticed us yet so we’ll ignore them for now. Store’s closed, door locked, window unbroken, so there’s probably no one inside. Smash the window though… I want all the light I can get, plus a quick and easy way out in case there’s a nasty surprise waiting for me.”

“But, dude. It’s close quarters in there. You suck at close quarters, and I suck as a lookout. I should go in.”

“But Jazz… I need to pick out the ring.”

He looked down at me and shook his head. “You are retarded, you know that?” He sighed, but he smashed the window anyway. I clambered through; there was one nasty surprise waiting for me, but he groaned when he noticed me, and I took care of him with two shots before he could get within ten feet of me. The first knocked him down, the second made sure he wasn’t going to come back up. I had never seen him before… small comfort.

A few minutes later I came back out with a 24-karat opal ring in what I desperately hoped was the right size.

“Think she’ll like it?”

Jazz shrugged. “Wouldn’t know. All seems kind of silly to me. Don’t see anyone getting married these days.”

“Yes. Well. That’s why it’s so important.”

There was a loud but distant rumbling of motorcycle engines. No more time to talk. “Let’s go,” Jazz said. He jumped on the bike and I climbed on behind him and… and…

And the memory clouds over again. The body has stopped.

“Let’s go.” Words… words have meaning, but the meaning fades away as soon as it appears. But the figure is… Jazz. The nose says it’s food, the Hunger insists it’s food. But it’s not true. It can’t be…

“John! John, hurry up!”

“He’s not coming with us, Shelly.”

“Jazz! He’s not one of them! He’s your friend, dammit!”

“Shelly.” Jazz uses words with a certain tone… the ears know this will be important, and they listen. They listen, even though the meaning slips away. “He was my friend, Shel. He was my best friend. If you think I’m any less upset than you are, you are wrong. But god dammit, Shelly, he was bitten in the fucking throat! Half his neck is missing! Christ! I know you two are all about pretending the world isn’t some sort of hopeless shit-hell, but it fucking is! What is rule one?”

The other figure makes a noise, but the ears cannot tell if it is words or not.

“What was that?”

“You stop, you die…”

“You stop, you die. And he stopped. I don’t know why. I’ll think about it tonight, I’ll ask what I did wrong, and I will punch a fucking hole in the wall because John is dead. But right now, we’ve got to get back to the hospital. I’m not going to make you shoot him or watch me take him out, but he’s not coming back with us. Do you understand?”

“I do.” The ears remember… I do… I do…

“I do!” she said.

“Then you may give her the ring,” Morrie announced.

After a moment, I said whispered to him. “The ring bearer hasn’t come out yet.”

The bits of Morrie’s face that were visible behind his grizzled white beard flushed red. “Sorry!” he whispered back. “I’m not a priest, I’m a doctor!”

Jazz suppressed a smile. “You’re the captain of this little group, you get the marryin’ duty,” he whispered.

Morrie paused, flustered. “Er… enter the ring bearer!” he announced. All eyes turned to the rear end of the hospital’s small but crowded non-denominational chapel. Jenny was standing next to the door, and she urged her son forward. He was six, and shy, so he moved slowly, clutching the ring a tightly as he could. As he came towards us, I took a good look around the room… forty men and women, dressed in the nicest rags they had. All of the survivors… the door was never supposed to be unguarded, because looters could get through the barricades, but Morrie had decided we could take the risk for an hour. He knew how important this was to us… to all of us. Little Frank finally reached the podium, and my Best Man Jazz took the rink from him and passed it to me. I put it on her finger… and it was too big. It rattled on her skinny finger and tilted to the side awkwardly. I bit my lip, but she smiled and whispered “it’s perfect.”

“You may now kiss the bride.” And so I did. I don’t know when it started, but when we finally separated, the room was cheering. Even Jazz, who thought this was all ridiculous, was cheering louder than anyone else. So loud… So loud…

So loud! There is noise! It makes the memory cloud over! The ears thought there was noise before, but they were wrong!

“Shelly! We got looters!” Jazz makes more words without meaning. No… there is a word… Shelly. What is a Shelly?

“Oh no… Jazz, get ready.” The figure grows smaller. The food goes away. The—

Shelly. It is Shelly. She is Shelly. She is important.

The Hunger will not quiet; it is louder than the noise. There is fear… what if the Hunger gets too loud, and the body cannot resist? It can’t happen to Shelly. It can’t ever happen to Shelly.

There are others. They are loud and they are fast. The eyes are too slow to see them. They point and there is more noise and the body becomes pain! The chest… the leg… the hand! There is no more hand! There was a something in the hand… the memory is gone but the something is important.

The body bends and the eyes and the hand look for the something… they find it. The hand holds it tight, safe. The noise fades… the others slow and stop. There are two. They smell of sweat and exhaust and food. The Hunger calls. The figures move, each splits in two parts, the part that smells of exhaust and the part that smells of food. The food moves toward Jazz and Shelly, pointing.

Pointing. The pointing causes pain. Shelly will be in pain. No!

The body moves… slowly, so slowly! The body can’t move fast enough— the harder it tries, the slower it moves. The body wants to rest, but no. It must not. Shelly is not safe yet. The body moves slowly… like moving through a wall.

Jazz reaches for a figure. There is a noise… there is red! So much red! Food! The wall breaks! The world moves fast, the body is speed! The first figure is here… it is making noise that aren’t words and the body becomes pain and then the jaws bite and there is red and the body stops making noise and the Hunger goes away and the figure goes down and Jazz reaches and the second figure goes down and there is more red and the Hunger returns and the food has stopped being food and the second figure is still food and the body moves and the second figure is here and the jaws bite and the Hunger goes away and the food stops being food and the Hunger comes back and Jazz is food and Shelly is food and NO!

The body does not want to stop, the Hunger does not want the body to stop, but it stops. The wall comes back… the body is tired again. So tired. The Hunger does not go away. But Shelly is safe. Shelly… the something in the hand is for Shelly! The hand reaches, but there is not hand there. The other hand reaches. Shelly is far… the body moves slowly.

The figures move. Shelly points at them. They stop moving.

“What are you waiting for, Shelly?” The words fly past.

“Just… wait a second. Wait.” Wait… wait…

“Wait! Wait you two!” I yelled, turning around.

They didn’t respond… they probably didn’t hear me.

I ran back into the little deli we had been raiding, or attempting to raid. “Stupid!” I said to myself. “Why are you doing this?”

My only answer was a groan from the three zombies we’d left behind. I hefted my pistol.

Bang!

Bang!

Click!

“Shit.” We’d never had a shopping trip go quite so wrong before, what with the zombies and the looters I was completely out of ammo, and there was a bite-happy obstacle between me and where I needed to be. I recognized him… I used to frequent this deli.

“Leo,” I said. “It’s been a while.”

He groaned and shuffled towards me. The deli was tiny; there was no way I could get to the tables at the back without pushing right past him.

“You know, there’s something I need to get to under that table there,” I said, scanning the room for anything I could use as a weapon. “It’s really rather important. It’d be nice if you let me pass.”

Leo groaned and waved his arms in my general direction.

“Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t be here alone. But Jazz wouldn’t come for something so silly, and Shelly…” I paused. “Leo, you can’t understand a damn word I’m saying. Why am I talking to you?”

Leo groaned and gnashed his teeth.

“You’re right. You are a terrific listener. And it’s not like we have a therapist in our little community.” I sighed. “Shelly would say: ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s just a thing. And in the world we’re living in now, we can’t be concerned with things. It’s all about survival.’ That’s what she’d say.”

Leo was just about close enough to reach me. And I was exactly close enough to whallop him in the side of the head with a two-liter bottle of soda. He was knocked to the side, shrieking, and the bottle erupted in a spectacular shower of cola as I sprinted to the back.

“But she’s wrong!” I shouted triumphantly. “It does matter! Things are important, and in the world we’re living in now, they have to matter even more, because dammit, if life is just about survival than what’s the point of surviving?”

Leo scrambled up awkwardly in the puddle of soda while I scrabbled under the table.

“Might as well give in, if it’s all about survival. You folks are terrific survivors! But… but to be human… that means you’re surviving for a reason. We have dreams and ideals and reasons for living beyond merely living!” I hit a vitriolic crescendo beneath the table just as I found it. “Humans have traditions, and rites of passage, and there are things… worthless baubles that are worth everything because they represent more than they are! Things are important, dammit, and so if you think I’m going to let my wife’s wedding ring sit in the dust under a table at a fucking deli, you’ve forgotten what it means to be a human being!”

I leapt to my feet, clutching the ring in my hand victoriously, only to see Leo standing much closer than was safe, staring at me hungrily.

“Oh,” I said. “You have forgotten what it means, haven’t you?”

Leo just growled. I wasn’t going to get an answer. He leapt and… and…

The memory goes away. It is not important. Shelly is important.

“John…” It is a word, and words have meaning, but the meaning is gone. “I’m sorry…”

The Hunger is strong, but Shelly is important and the body just wants to rest. The body just wants to rest. The hand opens. The ring falls. Shelly has the ring.

“… thank you. John… I love you. Goodbye…”

Shelly points at the eyes. There is pain, but then the body rests. The body finally rests.