Sally’s eyes are red rimmed. She stalls during the conversation. Something comes over her. Her date asks if she’s alright, why she looks so sad.

She responds and says that, “I’ve been crying all day.”But that’s not true, is it, Sally? She hasn’t been crying all day, but her eyes have continued to water. And it feels like crying, but there’s no emotion involved, no tender sadness. No warmth in her chest that rises up and pushes out the tears. Instead, they just flow, watering her irises.

Her throat scratches, and she wants to claw out the insides, turn them pink like salmon. She coughs. He asks again is she’s alright. She looks down at her square drink napkin and sees spots of blood.

“I don’t think I am,”she says. He pushes back from the table. Alert spikes his eyes. He checks his phone. Sweat breaks out across his forehead. Sally sees this, and she wants to soothe him, tell him everything’s great, this is just a minor set-back, but who is she kidding?

Spots of blood when you cough is the first sign.

* * * *

“It’s not too late,”Sally says.

Her date doesn’t nod and he just stares at her. It is too late. After the spots of blood erupt onto the napkin, or sleeve, or Kleenex, it is too late.

“That’s why your eyes have been watering,”he says. “It’s happening to you, too.”

“No, it can’t be. I got the vaccination. I should be fine.”

“The vaccination doesn’t sit with everyone though. There is still a small percentage that get the vaccine who still change.”

“I’m not in that small percentage,”she says.

Instead of responding, he slowly rises and says, “You are.”

The watering eyes. The scratching throat. She is. The scratching insides become the itching outsides. She’s seen the video on the news. People scratch their itching skin until it bleeds, and then they scratch until the skin is gone, and after that they continue to scratch past the sinewy tissue of the muscle, down to the bone. Then they bleed to death, but they don’t really die.

* * * *

“The heart starts to beat something else through the body, other than blood, and it keeps you alive,”he says. “That’s the third and final sign.”

He steps backward. “I haven’t had my vaccination yet,”he says. “I’m getting it tomorrow.”

“Maybe, then, we can meet up again?”Sally says.

“I…don’t think so,”he says. “You’re beautiful. You really are. And your laugh, there’s a lilt in it that makes me think of summer. There was a moment tonight when you looked at me just right and I got goosebumps. You know, the good kind.”

Her stomach drops. No one says things like that to your face, do they? She wants to reach out to him, to push the wisp of auburn hair from his topaz eyes and hold his cheeks in her hands and pull him close to her mouth. She wants desperately to kiss him. It’s primal, the desire she feels right now. It surges and she restrains, her muscles tense, as she stays put and lets him continue to back up.

“But, it won’t last,”he says.

* * * *

You know what else is primal, she thinks. Eating flesh. A spasm quickens down her spine, electrifying her nerves, and her eyes begin watering again. She dabs them with the restaurant napkin. This urge to kiss him is primal, but she’s seen the nasty news footage. The humane love a person feels goes away once the virus plummets the person’s body into ruin.

And after?

That primal urge becomes survival. The parasite begins to crave living cells, and the only cells that satisfy are cells with human DNA . There’s a reason those who walk the streets with rolled back eyes, cumbersome movements and hung-open, dry mouths are called Scroungers.

“I wish I could kiss you,”she says.

“God, I wish I could kiss you, too.”

He continues to walk backwards, his brown wing tips carefully placed one behind the other.

“Please, just…stand there, a moment longer,”she says. “Let me just watch you. It’s all that I have left.”

***

Evan Williams teaches journalism, but he pines to teach a creative writing and got sucked into “The Walking Dead” in which he scribed his first zombie-related ficiton. He can be found writing pieces of flash fiction while he hunkers down and works on editing the first draft of his novel. He can be found making fun of himself at www.mybucketofparts.com