Tina knew when her sister first picked up the infection. Tammy tried her best to hide the bite, but it was no use. Somehow, Tina knew. She always knew. There was a strong connection between the pair, a bond that neither could explain. Once, when they were twelve, Tammy took a face full of softball, but it was Tina’s nose that bled, flowing like a hose before they finally plugged it. The doctors called it an unusual case of sympathetic pains, while managing to ignore the fact that Tina was indoors during a history class while Tammy was outdoors during PE. The twins didn’t need a fancy explanation, nor did they want one. They had lived with the phenomenon their whole lives. Knowing what the other felt or thought or craved was as natural as breathing.

Nonetheless, Tammy hid her bite well for a whole day. Almost.

“My leg keeps throbbing,” Tina said, “like I pulled a muscle or something. Did you pull a muscle when we wrestled that thing this morning?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tammy snapped.

“I’m serious. Stop acting like you don’t know what I mean. It’s not just bites we gotta worry about. How ya gonna fight them things if you throw out your back? Huh?”

Tammy shrugged off the question, which of course made Tina more curious. The sisters filled the quiet farmhouse with fierce arguing until Tammy dropped her pants, and the girls stared at the dressed wound in silence for almost five minutes before either of them spoke again.

“When did you have time to clean it?” Tina asked.

“Did it while you were burning the last corpse,” Tammy said.

“What are we going to do?”

“You know the answer to that.”

Tina did know, and the idea of it made her sick to her stomach. “But … I don’t want to do it.”

“You promised,” Tammy reminded her.

And yes, Tina knew that too. It was a simple enough promise, but now that the time had come, Tina didn’t think she could really do it. After the fate their parents suffered, the twins decided that neither could watch the other become one of those things. The girls made a solemn vow that if one were to become infected then the surviving sister would end the sick twin’s suffering.

Tammy went downhill overnight. Tina couldn’t believe the speed of the virus. That morning her sister was a healthy teenager, but by that evening, she barely had the strength to lift her head. Soon she would breathe her last, and it would be up to Tina to make sure it was Tammy’s last. The hardest part was looking at Tammy’s pale form, shivering and shaking under the sheet. Tina thought it was eerie to know that’s how she would look sick, how she will look. She wondered if other twins, around the globe, were experiencing the same thing, this feeling of mirrored impending doom.

“Promise me you’ll find other folks,” Tammy said. “Don’t fester in this house alone, little sister.”

“I won’t have to,” Tina said. “You’ll get better. Just wait and see. It’s like you said. You and me against the world. Remember?”

Tammy shook her head, her pale face scrunching up in disagreement. “Daddy was right. We should’ve never holed up here. We shoulda tried to find help a long time ago.”

“But you said it was just us.”

“Well, I was wrong. Now it’s just you.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Promise me you won’t do nothing stupid when I’m gone.”

“Why do you always think I’m stupid—”

Tammy cut her off. “Promise you’ll live our life the way we shoulda lived it. Promise me!”

Tina hung her head and whispered, “I promise.”

“I know you do. And you always keep your promises.” Tammy smiled with the thought.

Tina smiled too, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

Another hour passed in idle conversation; swapping memories, telling and retelling stories, trying anything to avoid talking about the obvious. All the while, their well-ignored elephant bore down harder and harder on Tammy’s chest, until she was left gasping for each raspy breath.

“I wanna be shot with Daddy’s gun,” Tammy whispered.

“Don’t talk like that,” Tina said as she mopped her sister’s feverish brow.

Tammy placed her trembling hand over Tina’s wrist. “I’m serious. I want it to be Daddy’s. I never liked Momma’s popgun. Couldn’t kill a squirrel with that thing.” Tammy tried to laugh, but ended up in a coughing fit instead.

It was all Tina could do not to scream and cry and try to beat the infection out of her sister. “Stop it! I’m not gonna shoot you. I don’t have to leave. You’re gonna get better. So just shut up.”

“Tina, I ain’t gonna get better. You know that.”

“Sure, I forgot you know everything about everything.”

“You know I’m right.”

“Whatever. We’ll just see who’s right this time.”

The girls fell quiet at that. After all, there wasn’t much left to say on the matter. Tammy continued her decline, moaning softly until she slipped into a troubled sleep. Tina crawled into the bed and curled up next to her sister’s squirming form, where she fell asleep to the rhythmic rattle of her twin’s labored breathing.

Some time later, in the early hours of the morning, Tina jerked awake and sat bolt upright in the small bed. A single word rose to her lips and, unable to contain it, she shouted, “Tammy!”

There was no reply. No recognition. No rejoinder.

Tina stared down at her sister, at the quiet form beneath the thin sheet they shared. She knew without touching the corpse that Tammy was gone. All at once, Tina felt halved, split, broken. It was as if part of her soul, that burning light deep inside, had ceased to shine. Left in its place was a black hole, an absence of light, a ceaseless unending darkness that sucked at what little half-light remained, threatening to snuff it entirely.

Tina’s eyes welled with tears. She struggled to find her breath between choked gasps. Her chest burned and ached, as if there were a hole in her very heart, one that would never (could never?) be filled again. Nausea swept over her, breaking against the rising waves of sorrow. Her grief came in fat, wet streams of frustration, rolling down her burning cheeks, past her quivering lips, until they at last soaked the sheet clutched in her shaking hands. Tina had seen so much death in the last few weeks, but this was different. When Momma and Daddy passed on, Tammy was there to help her. She was there to share the burden. But now there was no one. Tina was alone, Tammy was gone, and that was that.

Only, that wasn’t just that. There was the promise to deal with.

How long did she have before Tammy came back? Minutes? Less? Given a task to focus on allowed her to push away the pain and emptiness. She could deal with that later, there was work to be done now. Tina leapt to her feet and scrambled to find Daddy’s shotgun. Tammy wanted a face full of buckshot? Then that’s what Tammy would get. Tina thought she had left the gun by the front door, but it wasn’t there. Between the pistols and the shotguns and the other firearms their gun-crazy father had collected over the years, it was kind of hard to keep up with them all. Daddy’s favorite gun was always Tammy’s favorite gun. Tina realized Tammy must have had it last. So the real question was: Where did she lay it down?

Tina stood in the early morning sunshine of the kitchen, tapping her chin and contemplating where the gun could possibly be, when a bizarre sensation overwhelmed her, leaving her dizzy and fighting to stay on her feet. The experience was almost the opposite of what happened only moments ago. Where there was emptiness, there was now a sudden sense of wholeness. No, whole wasn’t the right word. It was more like a full feeling, or rather an embedding of sorts, as if something were trying to force its way into the gap of her weary soul. But not something pleasant. It was something alien. Something unwanted.

And Tina had a pretty good idea what that sudden something was.

She bounded up the stairs, two at a time, rushing to return to her sister’s side and mumbling a quick prayer all the while. The moment she reached the top step, a low moan rolled out of their bedroom, confirming her worst fear. While she was futzing around downstairs, sister returned. That explained the intrusive feeling. It was Tammy trying to come back, trying to reconnect with her. Or rather, Tammy’s corpse. Tina swallowed hard as she drew and readied her favorite pistol, the one Tammy liked to call Momma’s popgun. She would have liked to fulfill her sister’s dying wish, but it was far too late for that. Maybe she would bury Tammy with Daddy’s gun. Yeah, that would be better anyway.

Tina held the weapon at arm’s length, as steady as she could, trained on the gentle moaning and the squeak of springs that drifted from the bedroom. The sight danced and dipped in her trembling hands, making for a poor aim and an even poorer shot. But she took her time in her approach, trying to remember Daddy’s hunting rules and remain calm, but underneath screaming blue murder at the prospect of what lay ahead. Once she reached the door, Tina paused, drew a deep breath and steadied herself. Her sister’s moans were soft, interspersed between small bouts of shuffling and the occasional thump of things falling to the floor. Calm as she could manage, Tina rounded the corner through the door, into the room she had shared with her twin sister for many a year.

Tammy was indeed on her feet, with her back to the door, standing in a small patch of sunlight near the open window. The breeze-driven curtains fluttered about the dead girl, caressing her with silken tendrils that slipped and slid unnoticed around the swaying corpse. For a moment, for a brief hope-filled instant, Tammy looked quite alive, greeting the day as she always did, standing in the window, with the curtains whipping about, her face turned up into the warmth of the morning sun.

Tina lowered the gun, worried she had made a terrible mistake. Her voice laced with hopefulness, she asked, “Tam?”

At the sound of her voice, the illusion shattered. Tammy snapped her face to the noise, and as she turned, Tina caught full sight of her sister’s empty eyes. All signs of life, all joy, all personality that once dwelled in those eyes were gone. Tammy was dead. Or rather undead. Those undead eyes narrowed as the corpse turned its full attention to the noisemaker. Tina intended on lifting the shaking gun so she could aim it at the snarling face that bore down on her. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

Instead she was struck with a pain in her belly, a literal gut-wrenching ache that brought her to her knees. The gun fell to the floor as Tina dropped along with it. Her stomach twisted and wrung, like a pair of nervous hands in the midst of an anxiety attack. Tina wrapped her arms around her waist, unsure of what this fresh hell could be, until she looked up to her twin again. Tammy staggered across the room, licking her dead lips, snapping her dead teeth, and with the sound of those clicking bites, Tina recognized the pain as hunger. A terrible, powerful hunger raged inside of her. A hunger for fresh meat. A hunger for human flesh.

Tina knew she was sharing Tammy’s hunger.

Sympathy hunger.

Just as they shared in life, so they shared in death.

Tina pawed at the carpet for the gun, but it had tumbled out of sight. She drew herself to her knees and tried to crawl from the room, but Tammy wouldn’t allow her prey to escape so easily. Howling like a wild animal, she flung herself at Tina, latching onto her sister’s back with a feral tenacity. Tina rolled and bucked, doing whatever she could to keep her dead sister from landing a single bite on her tender flesh. Tammy growled and chomped, howled and clawed. Somehow, despite the added weight, Tina managed to get to her feet, where she slammed her sister’s corpse into the dresser behind them.

Tammy clung tight for a few jolts, but then finally fell away. Tina lunged forward, not giving her attacker the chance to latch on again. In the middle of this madness, Tina spied Daddy’s gun lying beside the bed and dove for it. She hit the bed with a grunt that pushed the air from her lungs as she scrambled across the mattress to snatch the gun from the floor. Tammy was just getting to her feet when Tina leveled the weapon, cocked the twin hammers and prayed that Tam had left it loaded.

“I’m so sorry,” Tina whispered before she fired.

In the small bedroom, the report was near deafening. Tammy took the well-aimed shot right in the face, her snarl and empty eyes exploding in a haze of blood and bone. The weapon kicked Tina hard in the chest, guaranteeing a flower of black and blue for a few days to come, but that was nothing compared to the pain. The pain of dying a second death. For those few hours when Tammy lay in fever, succumbing to the infection, Tina felt nothing more than the empathy of a close sister. Yet now, as Tammy clawed at the oozing stump of her neck, slowly coming to grips with the fact that she was indeed dead this time, Tina screamed in agony. She grabbed her own head and shrieked, half expecting her brains to burst forth from her skull at any moment, the pressure was so great.

Then it was over. As quickly as it came on, the pain was gone.

Tina opened her eyes to find Tammy lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. Dead for good this time. No third chances. No coming back. Understanding this struck Tina with a cruel finality. She let loose a wail that emanated from every part of her being; pitiful, mournful, sadness in its purest sense. Experiencing Tammy’s death once was terrible indeed, but to have her return then depart again was just too much to bear. Tina needed Tammy right now more than ever. But Tammy was gone. For the first time in her life, Tina was alone.

She lowered a foot to the floor, her toes brushing against cold metal as they settled into the thick carpet. She lowered her eyes and found Momma’s gun lying just beside the bed. Tina threw a furtive glance to her twice-dead sister, then back to the weapon at her feet. Maybe she didn’t have to stay alone after all. She hated the idea of alone. Alone was a foreign word that tasted foul on the tongue and lay heavy in the stomach. Alone. Lonely. That was it, she wasn’t just alone. She was lonely. This sudden loneliness hurt worse than the shared hunger, worse than the terrible pain of a double death, worse than having to kill her twin sister. But Tina supposed if she broke her last promise to Tammy, it would hurt even worse.

Instead, she kicked the gun away, and wept and wept and wept.

****
Tonia Brown’s short stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies, such as Letters From The Dead, Eyewitness Zombie, and Hungry for Your Love. She is also the proud author of several books, including The Blooming, Lucky Stiff: Memoirs of an Undead Lover, and the erotic steampunk series Clockworks and Corsets. Tonia lives in the hills of North Carolina with her loving husband and an ever fluctuating number of cats. When not writing she splits her time between reading, loving said husband, petting said cats and dreaming of her next novel.