Sweet Romance11 min read
My Ex, the Zombie (and the Time He Got Publicly Humiliated)
ButterPicks10 views
I never expected the world to end between a bag of chips and an episode of a period drama.
"Turn the volume down, please," I muttered, chin on my knees, eyes glued to the television.
"Why?" Canyon Brennan asked, standing in the doorway with his arms full of cilantro like it was a bouquet. His hair was a mess, and he smelled faintly of something sweet and wrong.
"Because I promised myself a month of doing nothing," I said, crunching another chip. "No alarm clocks. No meetings. Just... this."
Canyon looked at me the way exes look at trophies they used to polish. "You look good doing nothing," he said.
I did not want to hear compliments from him. Not anymore. Not after the 1,314 red packet I found on his phone. Not after the way he'd said "it wasn't like that" while his thumbs still glowed in the dark.
"Get out," I told him, standing up too fast. "Just leave."
"Quinn," he said, and that was his old habit—saying my name like it was a password back to happier rooms. "Clara, open the door. I need—"
I watched his mouth along the door crack. I watched his hands. I told myself he was only asking for shelter. The city outside looked like spilled ash; the sky had washed its color out. I had a month's rice, a handful of cans, and the patience to be petty even as the world ended.
"Corny line," I added. "And stop calling me Quinn."
"Clara," he said. "I want to die with you."
"Get out."
He stood there, and a sound came from the stairwell. A wet, ragged noise, like something with a throat that forgot how to be a throat.
"Don't be dramatic," I said. "If it's a monster, just go."
He didn't move. The thing shuffled up two steps then froze, arms out. The light caught at its skin like old wax.
"Open—" the thing managed, a sound like someone trying to remember how to speak.
Canyon's eyes widened. For a second he looked like a man who knew CPR, like the man who argued about co-working spaces and used to fix my leaky faucet. Then the thing lurched.
"Get in!" I shoved the door.
He half-ran, half-stumbled over the threshold. The creature's hand slapped at Canyon's sleeve and, by some cruel geometry, tore the skin of his arm. Blood hit the floor like a slant of rust.
"I told you to go!" I yelled, and then I closed the door with my foot, trapping whatever fate had decided to bite him to the other side.
He leaned against the door like a man pretending to be tired.
"You dragged me here, Canyon," I said, sliding down the door to sit. "You did this. Now you're going to make me take care of you?"
"I... I'm sorry," he said. His voice had a scratch that didn't belong to him. It trembled.
"Sorry doesn't change the teeth marks," I muttered.
He held up his hand like a child caught with jam on his chin. The bite had already crusted.
"I should have told you everything," he said, voice smaller. "But I didn't. I was scared of losing you."
"You lost me when you typed numbers at midnight for someone else," I said. "You remember that? 1314."
"I didn't—"
"Don't lie," I snapped. "Not now."
He looked away like he always had when the conversation was grown larger than his courage.
"Sit there," I said. "Stay in the spare room. Don't come out until I say."
"Clara," he whispered. "Please."
The night settled into a rhythm of me cooking and him not attacking the furniture. He didn't bite me. He stared at the cartoons with the intensity of a person who had been replaced by a reflection.
"Do you smell that?" I asked once, pointing at the window where a cat pawed at a ledge.
He blinked slowly. "Smell?"
"Never mind." I laughed because laughing made the room smaller.
Days bled into days. He didn't become the monster from the shows. He tried to say words and got half a syllable out. He learned to eat at my pace. He could not, however, walk quickly or hold a glass steady.
"Go get the chips," I would shout when the cartoon loud music startled me.
He would toddle to the pantry and return, each movement a patient sculpture of slowness.
"You're still the slowest," I told him, poking his side.
He blinked. "I can't help it," he said. "I always... was like this."
"You're impossible," I said. "And somehow adorable."
He handed me a chip. He tried to hand me the small things he could do right. He brought the simple kindnesses back with two dead thumbs.
We moved upstairs eventually. The building below had become a small war zone of hollowed-out cars and unfamiliar screams. We knocked on a door and found Mr. Fernandez—Thomas Fernandez—an old man with a paper atlas and a pocket of bread.
"Don't open the door," I said, voice small. "It's not safe."
He peered at Canyon like he would at a stray dog.
"He's okay," I lied. "He doesn't bite."
"You're lucky," the old man said. "I had a son. He left for food and never came home." His hands shook when he accepted a scrap of bread from me.
We traded what we could. We shared our small, painfully rationed trust.
Until the orange cat.
We watched through our window when it leapt at the neighbor's railing and the old man reached out a hand. It snapped. It turned.
He fell. The cat ran.
"I should have closed the window," I told Canyon. "I should have—"
"It wasn't you," he said, voice pale and steady. He held me. He let me cry until the cars outside sounded like a faraway storm.
When the day the building broke into a louder, closer howl came, Canyon took my hand.
"Don't leave me," I said. "Not like before."
He nodded. "I won't."
We ran up to the roof together when the doors crunched and bodies pressed like hungry hands. He shoved me ahead and screamed at the monsters like a man who still remembered how to be brave.
"Get up!" he cried, and the sound was so human I almost forgave him for the texts I found.
A gap opened, a ladder, a narrow ledge. He pushed me through. "Go! Go!" he urged.
He kissed me then—lips cold, thumb wiping my cheek like he wanted to remember the warmth.
"If we survive, will you marry me?" he asked, through tears.
"Will you stop lying?" I asked.
He smiled a crooked, dangerous smile. "I tried. I was afraid."
He held the door closed with his back as creatures slapped against the metal. I crawled through the iron gate, and for the first time in months I felt like the world had given me a break.
"We'll be okay," I told him, and I believed it the way children believe in rainbows.
Then the sirens came.
A line of trucks rolled under the building. Men in vests moved like a well-practiced chorus. They shouted into bullhorns: "Survivors! Stay put! We will evacuate!"
We were saved—no, rescued. Hands pulled us into a bright, clinical tent where volunteers asked for names and symptoms.
"Name?" a woman with a clipboard asked.
"Clara Rizzo," I said. "And... Canyon Brennan."
"You both infected?" she asked, eyebrow raised at Canyon's yellowing eyes.
"No," I lied. "He never bit anyone."
They took him to one side for isolation and tests. I waited.
When she came back, her face had the look of someone whose day turned into a story.
"Miss Rizzo," she said, voice gentle. "Sometimes, we process everyone's devices to reunite families and verify identities."
"Okay," I said.
A volunteer started to play a looped message on a screen. It was not about infection. It was a thread of text messages, a litany of late-night gifts, the number 1314 glowing like an accusation.
"Canyon," the woman said quietly, and then louder: "Is this—"
I flinched. The messages were from before the sky went gray. They were not small—they were a betrayal I had kept in a hard box inside my ribs.
"How—" I started.
The tent turned into a small stage. A group of volunteers and survivors drifted in, eyes hungry for any human drama that made the world feel less cosmic and more like the neighborhoods of before.
"Is this true?" a woman with a camera asked. Her name tag read Marina Benjamin.
He came forward slowly. He looked like the man who used to set a table for two, except his hands trembled and his pupils had a strange, watery film.
"I—" he began.
The crowd leaned. Phones were out. Someone shouted, "Show us his face before the bite!"
"Clara?" a voice from the back said. It was the old man, Thomas Fernandez, who had followed the ambulance like a worried grandfather. He watched Canyon as if he could weigh him by the light.
I stepped forward before I could think.
"Those messages," I said. "He—he transferred money, he lied, he... I found him."
"Show us," Marina said, thrusting the screen forward like one might point a sword.
The messages were there in cold pixels. Canyon had sent 1,314 in a flurry, then denied it; he had told lies about late nights and business trips.
"People want to know what kind of man you are," Marina said. She was not cruel. She was bored. "Tell them."
He walked to the center as if the earth had narrowed to the size of his shoes.
"I was scared," he said. The first word was small. The second got louder. "I thought—"
"That I would leave," I cut in, bitter and hollow. "That I would find out. You hid it."
"I didn't think—" he tried.
"Don't think," a woman behind me snapped. "Do you regret it?"
"No," he admitted, and the confession hung like smoke.
The tent filled with murmurs. The old man's hands pressed into his knees. The volunteers shifted on their feet.
"Then why did you risk us?" I asked. "Why drag us into a world you made lies for?"
He looked at me. The look that had once been tender was edged now with fear and with a new, helpless shape: the look of a man who might be sick.
"I thought I'd lose you," he said. "I thought if I gave something, you'd forgive me."
Laughter, small and shocked, bubbled out.
"That was the plan?" someone asked. "Buy forgiveness with numbers?"
He closed his eyes. "I was an idiot. I was—"
"An idiot doesn't bite people," a volunteer snapped. "An idiot doesn't leave his partner like this."
"Don't," I said, softer. "Don't degrade him."
"He's the one who did this," Thomas Fernandez said, voice breaking. "He left his promises to be eaten for speed."
"Look at him," Marina said suddenly, and the camera zoomed. "He looks like a story and a liar. Tell them why, Canyon."
He opened his mouth. "I wanted to be better," he said. "I wanted... I wanted to be worth your forgiveness." He paused, and his hands shook until the light caught tears on his knuckles. "I am sorry."
For a second, the tent was full of a single sound: breath.
"That's it?" someone said. "Sorry?"
"No," said the old man, and he rose, cane clacking. "No law will save people now. Only truth."
Someone in the back began to clap. A few people laughed. A young man recorded the whole thing. A woman spat on the ground, small and fierce.
"Stand in the center," Marina ordered, surprising us all by wanting a clean procedure. "Speak to everyone out loud."
He did. His voice shook. He told the room about the 1,314—what it meant to him, why he had done it. He said names. He said dates. He said he had been ashamed for years and had hidden behind petty purchases while real things rotted.
"Why?" an elderly volunteer asked.
"Because I was afraid," he said again. It was the same answer, stripped bare.
The crowd's mood shifted. "Shame him," someone muttered. "He should know what it's like."
"He's in pain," I said. "He is already paying."
"Pay how?" a woman said. "We all pay. But we need to remember what men like him did."
He staggered as if the words physically struck him.
"It was never about money," he said, eyes on my face. "It was about being not enough."
A man stepped forward, put his hand on Canyon's shoulder and then let it drop. "Your apology is cheap," he said. "Here, we have to survive by truth. Your lies are a danger."
"Take his supplies," someone else whispered. "All of them."
"They'll take more than supplies," Marina said. "They'll take responsibility."
He tried to say something, but the voices drowned him. His expression changed: from shame to disbelief.
"No," he mouthed. "Please."
"Please what?" Thomas asked.
"Please don't do this in front of everyone," Canyon tried. "Please don't—"
"It was public already," Marina said. "You made it private."
He collapsed to his knees like a man with no more defenses. Tears streamed down his cheeks and mixed with the yellow folds under his eyes. He leaned his forehead into his hands and let the crowd do as crowds do: bear witness.
Phones recorded everything. A woman shouted for him to kneel and tell us what he would do to make up for it. He promised to stop lying, to share his rations, to work. The volunteers decided he would be assigned to the lowest tasks for a month. They drafted a short “community labor” sentence on the back of a ration card.
"Do you accept?" Marina asked.
He said yes, voice broken, as if the word cost him milk and sleep.
The elder, Thomas, walked up. He looked at Canyon—no pity, no revenge, only something like gravity.
"You hurt a woman you said you loved," he said softly. "You used a trivial token instead of your time. You made selfishness a habit. There are people here who will watch you for that. Don't make it worse."
Canyon bowed his head until the circles under his eyes kissed his wrists.
Then the worst thing happened: he begged.
"Forgive me," he whispered, the kind of plea that had lost all tools. "Forgive me, Clara."
"Don't look at me," I said. "I won't be your judge in crowds."
He looked up like a drowned man seeing land. "I will do anything," he said. "Even if—"
"Even if you have to be watched," Marina finished. "Even if you have to be sent out first."
"Yes," he agreed.
People left the tent in small knots. Some laughed. Some shook their heads. Some recorded little epilogues for the future scrolls: "Here, a man confessed."
When the volunteer handed him his first list of chores—emptying certain bins, cleaning certain tents—he cried again, a sound so thin and human it undid my anger into something softer and aching.
It was public. It was messy. It was not punishment by law, but it was the worst type: unsparing attention. The survivors watched him, wrote down his promises, and called him out when he stumbled.
"Why make it public?" I later asked Marina as she walked me to the medical tent.
"Because in a place with no police and no courts," she said, "we have to make our own rules. And sometimes the rules hurt. But we also learn from pain."
I thought on that as I walked back to the tent where Canyon lay on a donated blanket and coughed tiny dry coughs. The bandages on his arm smelled faintly of disinfectant.
"Are you okay?" I asked, kneeling beside him.
He blinked watery eyes at me, and for a moment he was the man who once tried on shirts for me and then left them on the floor.
"I am," he whispered.
"Are you? Or are you sorry because the crowd made you flinch?"
He looked at me with the same crooked bravery he had always carried. "I'm sorry because you deserved truth."
We sat in the gray light that followed the drama, hands clasped even if it was only to keep him from drifting.
"Do you want me to stand by you?" I asked.
He swallowed. "I want to be better," he said. "If you'll let me."
It was not a promise to marry. It was not the neat, redemptive ending my teenage heart once wanted. It was a sentence stretched across broken ground.
Later, when they processed us further, Canyon was assigned to the supply runs. He went out first. People watched him leave. Some clapped when he returned with bread. Some spit.
Thomas Fernandez tipped his hat once, and that was the first sign his forgiveness might become something else: a guarded truce.
Over the coming weeks, he worked. He kept lists. He did the small, ugly, necessary labor of someone trying to be better in public: he hauled buckets, cleaned blood from concrete, apologized to strangers. The punishment never stopped being public—because the survivors needed it to be a lesson.
"Why do they watch?" he asked me privately, once, when the moon was a pale coin above the trucks.
"Because it's safer to be honest in the open," I answered. "Because when you hide and something bigger than you comes, lies become a bigger hole."
"Then help me," he asked. "Don't abandon me here."
"I won't," I said. "But don't expect crowns."
He laughed a small, grateful laugh, and the sound of it was like a promise in the empty city.
On the day the convoy left, we stood at the edge of a platform and watched the trucks stack the living and the wandering into cages. The world was still terrible. The old man didn't rise from his cot. The cat was gone. The buildings were all wounds. But we had a small, strange kind of order.
"Will you ever forgive me?" he asked, voice so thin it could have been from a radio.
"I forgave you once," I said. "When you were still human. This is... different."
He nodded. "I'll show you."
He leaned his head on my shoulder, a tired, shaky thing, and I felt the thin thread of something like hope. It was not the neat fairy-tale of marriage. It was a complicated, careful stitch.
We boarded the truck together. People watched, but now the watching felt less accusatory and more like curiosity. They watched a man who had been cowardly become visible and then try to be brave.
I looked at Canyon's bandaged arm and then at the slowly shrinking city. A small, private ending settled into my chest.
"Promise me nothing," I said.
He smiled, scarred and sincere. "I promise nothing," he answered.
The truck hummed, and the fog cleared enough for a last look at the rooftop antenna. I kept one thought like a talisman: we had survived the bite, the lies, the cat, the crowd—one small, brittle day at a time.
The End
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