The last of the waves roll in and I know there’s nothing left to lose. So I let them take the boat. The death boat. Sharp smell of blood in a cramped cabin. Amanda, Max, John, Beth. I couldn’t. I couldn’t save them. No burials, I didn’t dare. Once the signs started showing, when they started pleading for their lives, I wouldn’t dare touch them. I was the last. Maybe the last on earth, the way it seemed to spread. Out of nowhere.
Just the roar of water on an empty beach, now. The waves, the rain; as Max’s beaten houseboat crests the gray horizon I stand alone. Soaking, breathing. Solid ground again and I crouch not to kiss the beach, but to rub my body with sand because the shower doesn’t calm my fears. I need to be clean, my arms and legs raw and bleeding when I’m done because maybe it’s in the skin, maybe that’s the secret—if I remove the skin I remove the infection. If I am infected. No one ever knew for sure. Not until the white spots appeared. All over the body. After that, the hair started falling out. Then the eyes glazed over—the cold, lifeless eyes, pleading, begging, oh god it’s happening, and then the veins bulged and the body convulsed. The blank eyes wide with terror until they burst open and the final screams ran out into a gurgle as the bodies fell.
I collapse. Wet sand is lodged in my wounds. I continue to rub it in and I scream as each handful sands away what’s left of the skin on my arms and legs. Then I flop and rub like a dying fish on the shore until I feel naked. Free of skin, free of disease. I start laughing. Because they’re out there, buried in their own blood and flesh and I’m right here. Still here.
I’m laughing. I’m crawling. Dragging my knees behind me. The beach is long and dark but the going is easy; I’m alive.
But then I reach for my next grip of sand and see it. On the back of my left hand, right on the hinge of my thumb.
A white spot.
My scream is drowned out by the wind and rain and in one swift motion I pull out the knife, the one I grabbed from the kitchen, the one I used against John when he tried to come near me with his glazed eyes leaking tears of pain and horror, pleading for me to help him. I use the knife, like I used it there. I use it and my thumb is gone and blood is on the sand and I don’t feel a thing because now I’m checking my arms, my legs. They’re everywhere, like bloated white moles and I keep slicing them off until sparks light up my vision and everything goes dark, but somehow I’m still aware of the crunch of sand when my head hits the ground, and the patter of rain on my face.
A second later a man in a raincoat approaches me across the beach. I decide to give it to him. When he bends over me I reach to touch his face, my thumb-less hand leaving a streak of red across his cheek as I try to kiss him and he pushes me down. I hear myself laugh again because I’m taking him with me. He doesn’t know what’s in store.
This is the end of the world.
He’s making a call. I can’t hear him over the rain and I just stare at my arms. The veins beneath my wrists are bulging, just like the others’ had.
I hear myself speak. “It wants to get out.”
The knife goes in again. The cut is deep; there is a red river on the sand. He grabs the knife and throws it away from me before I can fix the other arm and then I’m on my knees in front of him, screaming and clawing, telling him I’m going to die, we’re all going to die. And I collapse in blackness again.
Another second later flashing lights scatter over the beach. There are hands on me and I’m being lifted. A rumbling motor, and someone leans over me. I try to tell her about the white spots. I ask her to get them off me. She asks me what white spots I’m talking about.
A white room. White curtains. White bandages.
PCP, the doctor says. A large dose. The storm washed the boat into the marina—everyone dead. Multiple stab wounds. Traces of PCP in their bloodstreams as well. Twenty-five years to life.
As he tells me this with his white-spotted face hovering over me and his glazed eyes staring into my soul I know I’m the only one who knows better. And when he leaves I just sit back with my bandaged hands shaking. Numb.
I wait for my eyeballs to explode.
— C.M.
