The Fix
The radio cut through the music again.
“…repeat, residents are advised to remain indoors until further notice…”
He changed the station.
Static.
Another voice, tighter this time:
“…violent incidents reported downtown—”
Click.
Classic rock flooded the car again.
He leaned back into the seat with a long breath, one hand resting against his jacket pocket just to feel the shape of the pills still there. Warm from his body heat. Real.
Finally.
The knot between his shoulders had already started loosening. The whole day had been spent trying not to get sick. Waiting for a text that may never arrive. Trying not to stare at the phone every five damn minutes.
Now the future existed again.
Outside the windshield, traffic crawled past flashing lights. Two ambulances screamed through an intersection ahead of him hard enough to make cars jerk onto sidewalks. People stood outside a convenience store pointing at something farther down the block.
He barely looked.
A laugh escaped him quietly.
“Y’all picked a hell of a day to lose your minds.”
The city always found something to panic about.
His phone buzzed once in the cupholder.
He looked down at 3 missed calls from Mom, letting out a sigh as he turned the phone onto Do Not Disturb.
“Not today, Mom.”
He tossed the phone back down.
A helicopter thundered overhead low enough to rattle the glass.
Up ahead, a man stumbled into the street between stopped cars.
He hit the brakes hard.
The horn blared beneath his palm.
“Move, asshole!”
The man didn’t react.
Head hanging strangely low, swaying slightly.
Blood soaked one sleeve of his hoodie.
The guy took a sudden crooked step toward the driver side door.
Not stumbling.
Reaching.
Something about the movement made the hair rise on the back of his neck.
The man’s mouth hung open strangely. Wet strings stretched between his teeth.
The driver jerked the wheel and accelerated around him.
“What the fuck…”
In the mirror the man turned immediately, following the car with twitchy, uneven steps.
He kept driving.
Didn’t matter.
Didn’t care.
Just get home.
By the time he pulled into the apartment lot, dusk had settled fully over the buildings. The parking lot lights flickered weakly against the gathering dark.
The radio was worse now.
“…National Guard…”
“…infection…”
“…if bitten…”
He shut it off.
Silence flooded the car except for his own breathing.
He sat there a second, fingers resting against the pills in his pocket again.
Safe.
Almost.
Near the apartment entrance someone stood facing away from him.
Tall. Gray hoodie.
His neighbor from 2B.
Perfect.
He sighed heavily.
“Great. Now I gotta stand out here listening to this guy talk about his life for ten minutes.”
He climbed out.
The neighbor stood unnaturally still.
“Hey man.”
No response.
He started toward the entrance anyway.
“I’d stay and chat but I was just on the phone with my mom when my phone died. I gotta go call her…”
For a second his brain refused to understand what he was seeing.
His neighbor looked wrong. He was flush red and swollen tight, as if his blood was boiling right beneath the skin. His eyes were wide, completely unblinking, and brimming with heavy tears that spilled down his cheeks. Thick, strings of saliva stretched in ropy webs between his teeth, pooling at his chin that he’d forgotten to swallow.
He looked like he was trapped inside a body that was torturing him.
The neighbor lunged.
He stumbled backward, slamming hard into a parked car.
“What the fuck?!”
The thing hit the side of the vehicle with a wet thud, clawing toward him with jerking, frantic desperate movements.
Fear erupted through him all at once. He ran.
Behind him came the sound of pursuit. Wind rushing past his ears a pair of feet pummeling the asphalt. Across the parking lot, a woman screamed. A crash answered her.
His keys shook violently, hitting the apartment stairs two at a time.
No thoughts. Just run.
He finally jammed the key into the lock and threw himself inside, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the frame. He made his way to the bedroom, chest heaving, still unable to process what he’d just seen.
They weren’t far behind . Maybe a dozen. Up the stairs. Groaning, clawing, thrashing down the hallway.
“Oh fuck…”
A body slammed against the wood of his door. The deadbolt trembled.
No no no no.
He looked around wildly for another way out. There wasn’t one.
The pounding outside intensified, more impacts joining the first. Wet, choking noises. Fingernails scraping wood.
The pills sat heavy in his pocket. A strange calm suddenly slipped over him. If that door came down, it was over. No gun. No plan. No chance. And he was not about to let those things tear him apart while he screamed and begged sober.
“Fuck that," he muttered. "I can kill myself. I don’t need you assholes doing it for me.”
With purpose he followed a routine he knew instinctively no effort was wasted.
He dumped the pills onto the nightstand with trembling fingers. More than enough. More than he’d had at once in a long time.
Outside, wood splintered. His chest tightened hard with fear then loosened.
He prepared the shot carefully despite the shaking in his hands. Muscle memory carried him through every motion. Another crash echoed through the apartment. Closer now.
He tightened the belt around his arm.
For a moment, he listened to the chaos outside: screaming, pounding, breaking glass, something dragging itself across the floorboards.
Then he pushed the plunger down.
Warmth spread through him almost instantly. The fear softened at the edges first. Then the noise. Then the world itself.
The pounding outside grew distant. The room swayed, disappearing into the dark. He couldn’t say he was happy, but at least something today had worked out.
One final impact rattled the apartment, hard enough to shake the walls, but he was already gone.
His body screamed at him to move, to kick, to thrash, to claw himself out of his own Cold sunlight stretched across the bedroom floor.
He blinked, sprawled in a corner of the room he hadn’t moved all night.
…
For a moment he just lay there breathing hard, waiting for the hallway outside to erupt again. Waiting for the splintering wood. The teeth.
...
The apartment sat in a dead, awful silence.
Out in the living room, the front door creaked softly on its ruined hinge, moving back and forth with the breeze.
They were gone.
A bitter wave of anger hit him immediately.
“Are you fucking kidding me…”
His stomach dropped.
The shot.
No!
I dumped the whole bag.
He scrambled upright too fast, the room lurching violently around him. His hands tore through his pockets, then across the nightstand, panic rising fast enough to choke him.
Nothing.
Nothing
Plastic crackled beneath his fingertips.
He froze.
Tucked into the tiny coin pocket of his jeans sat the ripped-off corner of the baggie. Inside: four chalky pills.
Even with the apartment coming apart around him, even with death pounding on the door, he still hadn’t been able to use it all.
A pathetic little safety net against the morning.
His breathing slowed.
Four.
Yesterday, four wouldn’t have even gotten him out of bed.
Today, they were everything.
He made his way carefully toward the broken front door.
The hallway outside looked abandoned. Smears and stains dragged along the carpet. One apartment farther down hung open completely, the inside dark except for a television flickering blue static against the wall.
No voices.
No sirens.
No people.
He stepped back in his apartment over the overturned coffee table to the window.
The outside seemed as wrecked as inside.
Cars sat abandoned in the middle of intersections. Some idled silently against curbs with doors hanging open. One had crashed through the window of a laundromat.
Smoke drifted somewhere downtown.
Movement..
People were outside but he didn’t dare draw their attention.
Ambling they wandered starting and stopping with no reason they didn’t seem to notice each other.
A door slammed from somewhere deeper in the complex startling him and sending him back into his room
His breath caught in his throat.
Yesterday.
The radio.
The neighbor.
The city really did lose its mind.
He searched his pockets for the third time so far
Maybe he’d missed one.
A piece of one.
Dust even.
Nothing
Four pills.
That it.
The world had done what he couldn’t
More noises this time much closer momentarily silenced his thoughts
Think.
The bathroom.
Small door.
No windows.
Easy to block.
thoughts immediately shifted into numbers.
Four pills.
If I rationed them maybe I could hold on long enough for the city to get under control
If I barricaded myself in the bathroom and only took a ¼ every twelve hours I could last… eight days
He’d still get sick.
Bad.
But maybe not the worst of it.
Eight days.
He could make eight days.
The government would have this under control by then anyway. Military. Quarantine. Something.
People didn’t just let the world end.
“Okay,” he muttered shakily. “Okay… okay…”
He pulled the necessary supplies from the kitchen and placed them in the bathtub crackers soda and a old pedialite someone had left
He stared down at the pills sitting on the sink counter.
His eyes shifted toward the hallway dresser he planned to drag across the bathroom door.
The thing weighed a damn ton.
And already his legs felt weak.
I can’t move that shit sober.
The thought slid into his head so naturally it barely even felt like a decision.
Building the barricade was going to be the hardest part so taking more made sense it would ensure the barricade was built right
That isn’t getting high.
That’s survival.
That makes sense.
He fixed a shot taking the whole pill.
Twenty minutes later the dresser sat jammed hard against the bathroom door.
Sweat poured down his face. His arms trembled violently from exertion.
But the barricade held.
He leaned heavily against the sink, breathing hard.
Maybe this could actually work.
He hadn’t taken his ¼ for today and he had sweat out most of the earlier one I’ll do a ½ more and that’s it.
Minutes passed and he didn’t feel anything he was left staring at the two and a ½ pills on the counter he’d failed before it even started he couldn’t even make it the first twelve hours
A cold wave rolled through his stomach.
Even if he followed the plan perfectly now, he’d still run out early.
And after that?
He’d be trapped in here sick anyway.
He stared at the pills for a long time before realizing he’d already decided.
His hand moved before the argument fully finished.
Whatever I might as well take everything I’m going to get sick either way and I’ll at least get something out of it this way
That was what he meant to last eight days hadn’t made it one. He sat on the bathroom floor waiting for a rush that never came.
The first night dragged slowly. He dreaded what was coming.
Hopelessness held him still even as his body begged him to move. His skin burned, then moments later he was shivering hard enough to make his teeth chatter. He kept pulling the blanket over himself only to kick it away seconds later drenched in sweat.
His heel jerked violently, striking the base of the hollow tub with a sharp thwack.
He froze.
Outside, something stepped out of the hall and slammed into the makeshift barricade.
Another impact followed.
Then another.
His heart hammered so violently he thought they would hear that too.
Tears burned at the corners of his eyes as he shoved a towel into his mouth and bit down hard enough to taste blood. Another spasm rolled through him. His legs wanted to kick. His back wanted to arch. Every joint in his body screamed to stretch.
Instead he locked himself still.
A dry heave convulsed through him.
The barricade shifted under another impact before settling again.
Wood groaned somewhere deeper in the apartment.
He pressed both trembling hands over his mouth as another gag forced its way up his throat.
Not silent enough.
A guttural shriek erupted directly outside the bathroom door now.
Close.
So close.
He stared at the ceiling, vision trembling, every muscle rigid with terror. For a moment the sickness vanished beneath something worse.
Days ago, during that blackout, he had swallowed enough pills to die in his sleep.
Now, for the first time in years, he understood with absolute certainty:
He did not want to be eaten alive.
The pounding outside eventually slowed, then faded back into the apartment beyond, but he knew they were still there.
Waiting.
The silence afterward felt worse.
He sat curled against the bathtub taking tiny breaths through his mouth, terrified a deeper one would trigger another wave of nausea. Every few minutes another surge rolled through him, restlessness crawling beneath his skin so intensely it felt like his bones were trying to force themselves out of his body.
His body demanded movement.
Anything.
Kick. Stretch. Pace. Crawl.
Instead he planted his heel into the carpet and rotated his foot back and forth as fast as he could.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Barely audible.
Just to focus on something other than the feeling.
His fingers dug into the flesh of his forearm until crescent moons filled with blood beneath his nails.
Anything quiet.
Anything except screaming.
The sickness came in waves.
Another gag climbed his throat.
Another violent shiver tore through him.
At one point he nearly broke.
A sound escaped him. Small. Wet. Pathetic.
Immediately the apartment exploded again.
Bodies slammed against the barricade.
Something hit the bathroom door hard enough to crack the heavy dresser braced against it.
He clamped both hands over his mouth and held perfectly still, tears running silently down his face as his stomach twisted against itself.
Please no.
Please no.
Eventually the pounding faded once more.
Time stopped meaning anything after that.
He would swear hours had passed only to look at the dim phone screen and realize it had been thirty-five minutes.
Somewhere near dawn, exhaustion finally overtook fear.
Not comfort.
Not peace.
Just exhaustion.
Curled against the tub, soaked in sweat and trembling uncontrollably, he slipped into a dark dreamless sleep.
When he woke again sunlight leaked faintly beneath the barricade.
For one horrible moment he thought the sickness had finally broken him completely. He wanted them to come through the door. Wanted it over.
But the apartment remained silent.
Still alive.
Still trapped.
Still sick.
The second day passed much the same.
Different positions against the tub.
Different ways to sit without wanting to claw himself apart.
Shallow breathing.
Heel against carpet.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Waiting for the next wave.
By the third night something finally changed.
The nausea loosened first.
Then the restlessness.
At some point he realized he had been sitting still for nearly five minutes without fighting the desperate need to move.
The realization frightened him almost as much as the sickness had.
That night he managed real sleep.
Not unconsciousness.
Sleep.
When he opened his eyes again pale sunlight stretched across the bathroom floor.
He still felt awful.
But for the first time since locking himself inside the bathroom, he could finally see the possibility of surviving it.
Time passed strangely after the sickness loosened its grip.
Not good exactly. Just quieter.
The hours were no longer measured by panic or pain, only long stretches of silence broken by distant noises somewhere deeper in the building. A slammed door. Shattering glass. The occasional shriek drifting through the pipes.
Between them came boredom.
Real boredom.
He’d almost forgotten what that felt like.
He sat against the bathtub for a long time staring at nothing before finally pushing himself upright. His legs still felt weak beneath him, but steadier than before.
The mirror above the sink startled him.
His face looked hollow. Greasy hair mashed flat against one side of his head. Dried sweat crusted around his collar. His eyes looked older somehow.
Without really thinking about it, he turned on the faucet.
The water sputtered brown for a second before clearing.
Cold water splashed across his face. He stood there longer than necessary, rubbing at his skin with both hands like he could scrub the last few days off himself. Then he found a toothbrush in the medicine cabinet and brushed slowly while staring at his reflection.
Small things.
Normal things.
By the time he sat back down against the tub, something inside him felt different.
Not fixed.
Just awake again.
The first night, his blood had been singing, wired tight. They’d nearly broken the apartment door down trying to get inside. They’d chased him all the way to it.
Then things changed.
Looking for a way out, he’d taken enough to leave him cold and breathless on the floor, and they’d walked right past him.
That thought didn’t sit easy with him.
Eventually, he settled on the only explanation he could think of:
he’d been so far gone they mistook him for one of them.
Later, curled sick on the bathroom floor, he learned quickly that noise brought them back. Sometimes just a gag or a wet cough was enough to send something shambling toward the barricade again.
His eyes drifted toward the phone lying beside him.
Mom.
The thought came suddenly.
Not guilt exactly. Not obligation either.
For the first time in a long while, he simply wanted to hear her voice.
Not because he needed money.
Not because he needed to convince her he was doing better than he was.
Not because he was afraid she’d stop answering next time he called.
He just wanted to talk.
The realization felt strange enough on its own.
He picked up the phone and frowned immediately.
Do Not Disturb.
Right.
He remembered now. Sitting in the car while she kept calling over and over again.
Not today, Mom.
His thumb tapped the screen automatically, turning it off.
The phone buzzed almost instantly in his hand.
He froze.
A text message.
you looking?
hmu
He stared at the screen as the words slowly blurred together.
Then he laughed.
A dry, exhausted sound escaped him before he could stop it. It was too absurd not to laugh. He’d spent days trapped in this bathroom while the world collapsed outside.
And all he’d had to do was turn off Do Not Disturb.
For a moment he just sat there shaking his head.
Then the reality of it settled in.
That text was old.
Ancient, probably.
The world had ended since it was sent.
Even if the dealer was alive, there was no way he was still sitting around waiting on customers. And even if he was, crossing the city now would be suicide.
The thought should’ve died there.
It didn’t.
The quieter the room became, the louder the idea grew.
What if he’s still there?
His jaw tightened.
It didn’t matter how impossible it was. It didn’t matter how far he’d have to walk through the ruins or what waited outside the building.
The thought had already rooted itself too deep.
The city was dead, but he wasn’t. And for the first time in longer than he could remember, he wasn’t high and he wasn’t coming down.
He was completely sober.
And suddenly, sobriety felt unbearable.
His thumb moved before the decision fully finished forming.
omw
A long breath escaped him. Equal parts anticipation and defeat as he stood and walked to the barricade.
a thought slipped quietly through his mind, dark enough to almost make him smile:
a text message had just done what the zombies never could.
He looked toward the dresser wedged against the bathroom door, then back into the darkened bathroom he’d made his home over the last week.
For a long moment he sat perfectly still.
Then he stood up and reached for the barricade.