"I'm sorry to inform you, but you're HIV positive."
"HIV POSITIVE"
Two words… two words that had dismantled his entire future. Two words that turned his family into strangers who stood at the doorways so as to avoid being infected.
It was just a few months ago, when Ray was on a clinical posting trying to withdraw a blood sample from an HIV patient.
Suddenly, the woman grabbed his wrist.
Before he could react, the needle, filled with her blood was stabbed straight into his arm.
This little mistake had cost him his future, his dream to become a professional surgeon, but worst of all, it had cost him his sexual life. And now he has to spend the rest of his life trying not to die or infect others.
…
…
Tick Tick Tick
The heart monitor beeped steadily beside Ray's bed, each electronic pulse marking another second of a life he no longer wanted. He stared at the ceiling tiles, counting them for the hundredth time.
Eighteen white squares, same as yesterday, same as the day before, same as the day the doctor had sat down with that carefully rehearsed expression of sympathy: the one he had also been taught in medical school, alongside how to stitch wounds and set broken bones.
His father had visited today, straight-backed in his expensive suit, forcing warmth into his tired eyes while his stepmother clutched her purse like it might protect her from contamination.
His step-siblings were the worst as they repeatedly checked their phones every thirty seconds, counting down to the time they eventually left the place.
Then a knock interrupted his thoughts. The sound was faint, almost hesitant. Ray turned his head toward the door as it slid open to reveal a young woman in an oversized hospital gown.
Her shoulder-length hair was messy and her expression was caught somewhere between embarrassment and desperation. Her left hand was wrapped in blood-stained fabric, gripped tightly as if she could squeeze the injury away through sheer will.
"Sorry," she whispered, stepping inside cautiously. "Do you have cotton wool or antiseptic? I got bitten and I can't find the nurse anywhere. She's assigned to this ward, but strangely, she's nowhere to be found."
Ray straightened slightly, years of medical training firing instinctive responses before his brain could catch up with the strangeness of the situation. "Bitten by what?"
She hesitated, lifting her injured hand slightly. "A rat, I think. A strange one. It looked sick. Almost like it's dying."
Something cold trickled down Ray's spine at those words, though he couldn't have explained why. He gestured toward the chair beside his bed. "Sit down. Let me take a look."
Relief flooded her features as she crossed the room and sat carefully, watching while Ray reached for the medical tray beside his bed and pulled on gloves with practiced efficiency. Since they were both HIV patients sharing this isolated ward, neither felt the usual hesitation about proximity.
Ray unwrapped the bloody cloth gently to examine the wound beneath. The injury was shallow but jagged, torn sideways in a way that didn't look like any rat bite he'd ever seen or read about. It looked wrong, somehow, though he couldn't articulate exactly why.
"That rat must've had sharp teeth," he muttered, reaching for the antiseptic solution and cotton wool.
She watched him work with quiet curiosity. "I guess the nurse got tired of being stuck with us," she said, attempting lightness that didn't quite reach her voice. "Can't blame her, really. This place is depressing, even for me."
Ray chuckled softly, attempting to defend the nurse. "I doubt that's the reason. She's probably busy somewhere else. Medical staff are always stretched thin, especially in wards like this."
He then paused for a moment as he observed the lady before him. "You handle this pretty well for someone who just got bitten by a sick rat."
"You handle wounds like you've done it a hundred times," she countered, studying his movements. "You're in the medical field, aren't you?"
He hesitated, then nodded. "Student doctor. Or I was, anyway."
"Oh." The realization settled between them, heavy with unspoken implications. She offered a small, understanding smile. "I'm Thea by the way."
"I'm Ray." He secured a fresh dressing around her palm, his, muscle memory carrying him through motions he'd performed countless times in clinical rotations that now felt like they belonged to someone else's life.
"You should avoid using that hand too much for the next day or so. Keep it clean, change the dressing if it gets wet."
"Doctor's orders?" she teased faintly.
"Future unemployed doctor's suggestion," he corrected dryly.
She laughed softly, and for a brief, almost magical moment, the ward didn't feel quite so suffocating. Ray found himself smiling back, a genuine expression that felt foreign on his face after weeks of hollow politeness and empty reassurances.
Thea opened her mouth to say something else, probably another attempt at humor to fill the silence, but whatever words she'd been about to speak were swallowed entirely by—
BOOOOOOM!!!
The explosion slammed through the building with violent force, shaking the walls and rattling the medical tray beside Ray's bed. Glass vibrated in the window frames.
Thea grabbed Ray's arm instinctively, her bandaged hand pressing against his skin as both of them froze in place, hearts hammering.
"What was that?" she whispered.
Before Ray could respond, another explosion echoed through the city, louder this time, closer, and then the screaming started. Distant at first, then building, spreading, multiplying like fire catching in dry grass.
Ray pulled away from Thea's grip and moved toward the large window overlooking Black Water City, his legs carrying him forward even as some primal instinct screamed at him to hide, to run, to do anything except look at whatever waited outside. Thea followed anyway, her curiosity also piqued.
Below them, the streets had descended into chaos that Ray's mind couldn't process, nor comprehend. People scurried about in different directions, abandoning their cars in the middle of intersections, trampling on each other in their desperate attempt to escape something Ray couldn't yet see.
Smoke rose from multiple locations across the city, dark pillars climbing toward the sky like funeral pyres for a world that hadn't died yet.
Then Ray spotted a barefoot woman in a torn hospital gown sprinting wildly through the street, her movements inappropriate as she chased a group of fleeing civilians, gaining ground with terrifying speed despite her bare feet on the broken pavement.
Thea leaned closer to the glass, her breath fogging the surface. "What is happening?"
Before Ray could answer, one of the fleeing civilians; a young girl, maybe twelve years old, still wearing her school uniform, tripped and collapsed onto the pavement. The crazed woman caught up instantly, both bodies tumbling onto the ground in what almost looked like an embrace from the distance.
From eleven floors above, it almost seemed harmless. Like she was hugging the girl. Or kissing her neck. Though the positioning was odd.
"Could it be her daughter?" Thea asked uncertainly, her voice small and hopeful.
Then the woman raised her head.
And dangling between her teeth, stretched and torn and unmistakably human, was a chunk of flesh ripped cleanly from the girl's neck.
Thea gasped sharply, stumbling backward from the window. Ray's stomach twisted violently, bile rising in his throat as he watched the woman dig her fingers into the girl's skull and bite down again, tearing into her head with horrifying force that sent blood spraying across the pavement.
The girl's body convulsed once, twice, and then went still, while the woman continued feeding and tearing with a mindless hunger that screamed inhuman.
Below, the gathered crowd erupted into horrified screams that reached the height of the hospital building. But their attention remained fixed on the gruesome scene before them, that they failed to notice the figures emerging from the alleyways and abandoned vehicles behind them.
Dozens of crazed individuals staggered forward, some with missing arms, some dragging exposed ribs behind them like grotesque accessories, all moving with the same unnatural hunger that drove the woman in the torn hospital gown.
It was only when a man's agonized scream rang out that the crowd realized the danger, and by then it was already too late.
The infected surged into them from all directions, biting and dragging victims down beneath the waves of bodies. Gunshots rang out as police forces arrived, officers firing into the crowd with desperate accuracy, but the bullets barely slowed the attackers.
Some took multiple shots but still kept moving. Some fell and simply rose again. Some of the wounded civilians on the ground stopped moving, and then started twitching with the same jerky movements that marked the infected.
"This isn't something the police can stop," Ray heard himself say, his voice sounding distant, like it belonged to someone else standing elsewhere in the room.
The building trembled again as another explosion sounded somewhere in the distance, closer than the last one, close enough that dust trickled from the ceiling tiles Ray had counted so many times.
Thea turned away completely from the window, her shoulders hunched as if she could physically block out what she'd just seen. "I can't watch anymore," she said.
There was something broken in her voice that made Ray's chest ache despite everything, despite his own terror and the growing certainty that they were both going to die very soon. He followed shortly after, pulling the curtains halfway shut as if the fabric could protect them from reality.
The silence that settled between them was heavier than any sound could have been, loaded with everything they'd witnessed and everything they couldn't say. Minutes passed and neither of them said a single word.
Until suddenly, Thea slowly walked toward Ray's bed as she sat at the edge. She stared at the floor for a while, at the scuffed linoleum tiles that had been walked on by countless patients and nurses and visitors who were probably all dead now or wishing they were.
Then she looked up at him with a very calm eyes, the kind of calm that came from accepting something terrible and making peace with it.
"Ray," she said quietly, and her voice was steady in a way that surprised him.
He looked at her, waiting.
"If we're going to die," she began softly, each word carefully chosen, "I don't want to die like this."
He frowned slightly, unsure what she meant. "What do you mean?"
Thea watched him carefully, her dark eyes studying his face with an intensity that made him feel seen in a way he hadn't felt in months. Then she took a breath, a deep one that seemed to steel her for something, and said words that shattered the careful distance between them: "Let's have sex."
Ray blinked, certain he'd misheard, certain that the stress and terror had finally broken something in his brain. "What?"
Her voice didn't tremble. It was steady, deliberate, absolutely certain in a way that terrified him more than the infected outside ever could. "If we're eventually going to die, I at least won't die as a virgin." She said it simply, as if stating a fact about the weather or the time of day.
His heart skipped, stuttered, beating at a faster pace that had nothing to do with fear. Thea stood slowly from the bed, her movements held nothing seductive, just honest intention stripped of pretense.
She didn't try to pose or pout or perform, she just stood there, a girl his age in an oversized hospital gown, looking at him with eyes that held no expectation, only hope.
"I don't want my last memory to be of screaming and dead bodies," she continued, stepping closer with each word until only a foot of space separated them. "And I don't want to disappear from this world without ever being wanted. Without ever knowing what it feels like to have someone hold me because they choose to, not because they have to."
Ray's throat felt dry, sandpaper dry, like he'd swallowed the smoke rising from the burning city outside. His medical training offered a thousand objections: the risk, the timing, the sheer insanity of considering this while the world collapsed around them, but none of them felt relevant anymore.
"You think this is the right time?" he asked weakly, the question more for himself than for her.
She gave a small, sad smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. "Is there going to be a better one?"
Silence fell between them, heavy with possibility. Outside, another explosion erupted, close enough that the building shook and something metallic crashed in the distance, probably another section of the hospital collapsing or another vehicle exploding or another piece of the world breaking beyond repair.
The lights flickered and Ray knew they didn't have much time before the power failed completely, before darkness joined the chaos outside.
He looked at her. Really looked at her, not as another patient sharing this isolated ward, not as someone infected with the same virus that had destroyed his future, but as a girl his age standing in front of him. Trying to hold onto something human before the world stripped it all away.
He exhaled slowly, feeling something release in his chest. "Okay."