Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Day 15

Andy, she wrote on the graveyard wall (sloppily, her hands still hurt,) and under that Tammy. They weren’t dead, so they shouldn’t have crosses—but she needed to mark what she meant for them. If she finally died here, something ought to indicate that they were remembered… she seemed to do nothing but remember them, miss them. And fear: if her infection flared up again, she knew, they would still be remembered. She'd hunt them down.

Encircling both their names, Alice prayed desperately that they would be kept as safe.

Then she drew another black cross, for Don.

“Oh, no,” Alice said, dusting her hands off, “he’s ‘dead to me’? That’s just so—" she interrupted: "I didn’t ask your opinion, you're not even real, I shouldn't be talking to you." Stolidly, "No, listen: I can’t leave it at that last day, I just can’t. Think of how much it must have torn him up inside, when the fear went away and he realized what he did. He must be sorry," Echoed, "Must be." Coldly: "...I need to give him hope for forgiveness. He deserves that, everyone does." A thoughtful gaze that was truly Alice, then guardedly expressionless again, "I need to tell him I love him, one last time…” and the other her's placid face, for once, gave way to a fey smile, “Then watch him bleed."

"What, spontaneously? That’s likely.” Alice flinched and massaged her stomach. Her insides felt like a violin played pizzicato as they untwisted. Was it over? Was she well? “And what do you think we deserve? Anybody can reveal their cowardice in a moment, but to plan...”

Her other self replied with a stony silence that Alice herself understood intuitively: We survived. Fighting, not running. Don’t be ungrateful for that.

"I am."

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Day 21

The full moon shone bright as a strobe through the boards blocking the window. It had been about a month, then, since she left the woods.

Those woods… gods, almost half a year of running scared, through the winter, struggling to get by, and then learning to beat Them. Figuring out how to hide, how to catch one apart from the rest, or set traps. And killing them, even if they were stronger, faster, vicious. Even if she knew their face. A split tree branch through the torso, or cracking their heads with a rock while their arms were caught in a lasso.

One night, when the moon shone like this one, she faced the last of the Infected. The sound of leaves rustling was too subtle and focused to be a group, and she stalked towards it.

The little boy she let in the day they were attacked, looked up at her: he was now red-eyed and drooling blood. She hesitated. It was almost fatal, but Alice dodged just enough that he missed her neck and caught his teeth in her left upper-arm instead. She didn't scream or cry out, half a year of this pushed her far past that. She simply woke out of her soft, civilized remorse (the boy raised his head and hissed) in a moment got her other arm around his tiny head and, with a grunt at the effort, snapped it around.

Her hands weren’t even shaking afterwards. Her expression, probably impassive. Yet high in her head she could hear herself thinking, Andy, do you know what I can do? Can you see what I’ve become? And she slowly, slowly clawed at her face in muted horror, staining red where she would otherwise look angelic in the light of the silver eve.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-- Dylan Thomas

Day 28

She hasn't moved since remembering. Worms fester in her untouched bowl of food, the attic dust falls and stains the sweat on her face, and she dreams one last time...

She’s on a train, but instead of landscapes outside it’s her memories. The good ones -- well, ordinary ones, that are treasured now but she took for granted then. She presses her hands against the window like a child, watching her life flash before her eyes -- calm, even happy. Then the lights go out.

The voices tell her she’s dangerous, the visions convince her she’s helpless, but it's the tactile memories (vivid enough to be hallucinated) that she can’t take any more: trapped, surrounded, hit, dragged, bitten— a blur of her own instinct and logic, and a bare-handed murder.

The lights flicker back on.

"Am I dead? If I'm dead, I'm not going to heaven," she mumbles as they pull into a station.

"The last stop is the city of Eden," a fellow commuter supplies helpfully, before stepping out and leaving her alone.

"Oh, good," she says. Her son is waiting on the bench in the station. She sees his face as he sees her, and knows: she doesn’t have to go anywhere.