Bits and pieces of last night's victims spilled from a bucket over the edge of the roof. Tumbling to the ground went blue and brown eyes, bloody ropes of intestines, bones, and rejected flesh. My black boots inched closer toward the gutter as I looked over the roof's border to watch the meal commence.

The remains didn't have a chance to hit the frost covered grass before tattered palms were painted red.

The panic for spare parts had awakened the dead.

Like ants over fallen crumbs, decaying corpses huddled around the back porch before excited groans superseded what little quiet the start of the morning had brought. And I observed with an almost analytical eye, detailing how they didn't have to witness what was dumped to be attracted to it. For it seemed that they could detect human flesh. They were seduced and enslaved by hunger.

Oddly enough, there was something beautiful in the way that they were crafted; in the way that their primal urge to consume was designed.

To watch them feed was almost mesmerizing.

And as sickening as it sounded, I couldn't resist the smile that stole upon my lips as devourers pounced toward an amputated ear-- brawled over what remained of a hand or foot.

Enjoy it. Feast upon those who made you what you are.

"Are you so far gone that you're contemplating suicide now, Alyssa? If so, girl, you better hope that the fall takes you out before they get a hold of you."

My grin widened as tousled brown hair brushed over my shoulder to confront what remained of my conscience.

"Why bother? I have a feeling I'd wake up right where I am."

Quiet footsteps over roof shingles brought me to Camille's side. My body sank until coldness seeped into the seat of my jeans as I perched on the white windowsill beside her. "Didn't you get the memo? Hell is already walking the earth. Besides, even the dead would discard our tainted meat."

Camille's laughter sounded faint as if the disease had the power to weaken amusement.

In her moment of quiet reflection, an unavoidable routine commenced... a mental itemizing of my best friend's features, or should I say her beauty's decline. The arctic touch of winter blew through her tangled curls, some strands detaching to follow the wind's path. The sun stroked the proud tilt of her nose, the sharpness of cheekbones. It highlighted the paleness of brown skin.

How the color of mocha could fade, I would never know.

Her image seemed frozen in her own mutated form of deterioration.

"You think devourers came from hell?" she asked.

All enjoyment vanished. "No, I think humans did."

She grunted, her thin shoulders rising and falling beneath her ratty black hoodie. "You and your hatred of humanity."

Her head shook as if in awe of my detestation as she gazed out at what used to be a peaceful neighborhood. "News flash, Alyssa, not all humans are bad."

I shifted to behold the results of society's actions.

The sun's ascent caressed nature's destruction. Streaks of orange graced the backs of the decomposing souls that loitered upon my aunt's backyard. Splashes of yellow touched dilapidated structures that used to be homes, some lots simply mounds of debris. The light brightened the rust that decorated abandoned vehicles parked haphazardly upon empty streets while charred spots adorned cracked sidewalks like polka-dots. The darkened stains were a constant reminder of the eradication of dead loved ones to control the spread of the infection.

And if I looked hard enough, past the naked trees, beyond what bombing had left of distant roads, to just behind the soulless highway...

I could make out the faint outline of rubble that used to be my childhood home.

Or at least, I pretended that I could, for the area where my family died was demolished beyond recognition.

And that was what good humans did.

"You can say that after everything we've seen, after everything we went through?" I questioned.

"Yes, Alyssa." Camille's hand held mine until I faced her once more. "Open your pretty green eyes. The world isn't to blame for what happened."

Really? Could she still be that gullible?

Snatching my palm from her feeble grasp, I felt rage manipulate my features until true disgust was all that was visible. "Well, the world felt no reservations about eliminating the problem. Can you honestly sit there and tell me that you still believe that it was an accident that half the population drank infected water? That it was an honest mistake that, in a matter of months, a quarter of the world altered into variations of walking corpses while another twenty-five percent were reduced to ashes?"

"I'm saying," Camille uttered softly, "that over the decades, the world has seen much tragedy and has survived through it--" She continued over the sound of my snort, "--together."

"Together?" I grunted. "Then how is it possible that we weren't cursed collectively? Don't you find it odd that the fortunate souls that remained uncontaminated just so happen to be above the middle-class division?"

"Oh, here we go with your conspiracy theories." Camille rolled her eyes with a mixture of annoyance and disgust written on her face. "We don't know that all over the world, the poor were the only ones subjected to tainted water-"

"Did we not watch the news together every night? I don't remember seeing hundreds of board members and CEOs calling out from overcrowded hospital cots."

She openly chuckled. "Because the rich are easy to pinpoint out of hundreds, right?"

Once again, Camille shook her head in response as if I was the blind one. "Okay, let's try logic, Alyssa. Let's put aside your biased reasoning for why this started, and focus on your need to blame humans for everything that happened after the illness occurred."

She pointed at the horde. "Tell me honestly, if you were like them and amongst a crowd of devourers, a gun wouldn't be something you'd wish for?"

Beneath us, decrepit teeth ripped into pieces of discarded carcass until blood sprayed over rotten cheeks. "Well, thanks to this great nation and its advancements in science, the dead don't pine for me. So, I don't really have to worry about that, now do I?"

She snorted. "You're hopeless."

"And you're a bleeding heart. How can you preach forgiveness when they caused this?" I pointed toward the crowd, the derelict surroundings. "Then instead of displaying compassion, they bombed us! They bombed countless towns! Showed us sympathy with ammunition."

"Alyssa-" Camille attempted to interrupt; however, I couldn't help the bubbling of hatred that spewed from my lips.

"And as if that wasn't enough, our great leaders encased the privileged within the heart of cities behind great walls. They basically said to hell with the needy. Do you not see that the poor have become slaves?" I continued to argue. "Do you not see that the only options that they left us with were to become hidden survivors or a snack for the dead?"

I shook my head, repulsed by their callous actions, my eyes still on the feast below us. "But I'm supposed to have sympathy for them? I'm supposed to show concern to our enemy?"

"Enemy?" she repeated. Silence descended between us for a while before Camille finally broke it. "I worry about you, Alyssa."

I huffed, smoke spilling from my lips. "And why would you do that?"

"Because this isn't you. This isn't the girl I grew up with."

"It's the girl they've forced me to become," I seethed.

"It's more than the transformation." Camille paused before she took a measured breath. Her approach to our argument was strangely gentle in the wake of my anger. "You don't kill to eat, to survive. It's like you enjoy it, savor it."

Stiffening at the truth in her words, I replied, "And how is that any different than what humans have done to us? Do they not enjoy being able to take one of us down?"

"They murder out of fear." Camille's gaze met mine, her expression so solemn. "But you... you slaughter for vengeance, for the rush it provides. Alyssa, you kill simply for the satisfaction of ending one of them."

I shrugged. "I'm not hearing a difference."

"Yeah, and that's what scares me. Cause Alyssa, if that tiny shred of mortality dies, if that small voice of reason finally disappears completely, how will you be any different," she pointed to our demented companions, "than those down there?"

I paused, unable to think of a response because... she was right. My skin wasn't deteriorating; however, my heart had already begun to rot.

And the funny thing was, I truly didn't give a fuck.

I didn't care if my next meal was the old, the young, or even the morally bankrupt. To them, we were a part of the disease. We were a part of the infestation that needed to be exterminated. And to me, they represented everything I was and could never be again, and for that... I wanted them all to suffer.

How can I look at what has become of my best friend and not want them dead? Hell, even this conversation seemed to drain her.

This man-made disease, much like cancer, condemned everyone differently. For me, it slowly ate away at my compassion. It changed my outlook, my desires. It created this insatiable need to feed. But for my best friend, it weakened her immune system, invaded organs, and had slowly begun to consume everything that made Camille... Camille.

Needing a distraction to lessen my desire to kill, I shelved my real personality in favor of a false one. Pondering aloud, I questioned, "Do you remember the good ole' days when segregation was based on skin color rather than mutation?"

Nothing happened for several seconds then a gentle push was sent in my direction.

"Speak for yourself." That old spark of indignation returned to those tired brown eyes before Camille remarked, "Good old days, for who?"

Chuckling, the sound was almost foreign to my ears. With hands raised, I declared, "I meant no offense. I for one, know the plight of the black woman."

Camille's eye-roll only increased my amusement. "So, your Mom dipped her toe in the black race, and now suddenly, all of this," her hands gestured toward my figure, "isn't covered in Asian?"

"Even one percent makes me interracial."

She grunted, "Girl please, now do you see how Ancestry.com got everybody messed up?"

"Help!" The sudden bloodcurdling shriek immobilized us, for our bodies were trained to halt at that sound. Its screech smothered our small attempt at normalcy.

Reality is such a bitch.

"Somebody, help me!" came the screams wrenched from the middle-aged woman in the alleyway between our houses.

Torn clothing adorned this figure. Enticing splashes of blood decorated her skin while her expression reflected absolute horror. Her frantic dash was shadowed by a mob of ravenous cadavers. This streak toward safety was clearly spurred on by desperation. However, in this neighborhood, a human's pursuit of shelter was as fruitless as sprinting toward the horizon to capture the sun.

"We- we should do something," Camille exclaimed, her panicked eyes shifting from me then back to the hysterical stranger.

I grunted at the useless concern in her voice. "We are. We're watching."

"Alyssa!"

Huffing at the indignation in her tone, I asked, "What? You want to scale the roof, jump down to join the horde's hunt?"

"It would be better than sitting here!" She rose onto unsteady legs, her fingers gripping what was left of her curls. "There has to be something we can do."

You can barely stand, is what I wanted to say. Instead, I simply pointed an outreached hand toward the idiot currently checking a locked door of an adjacent house. "Be my guest. But you and I know that once the dead find a meal, they will tear you apart just to get to her."

Without warning, the woman tripped. Dirty knees crashed harshly upon the pavement. Quickly, her red hair was shoved back only to witness another throng block the other end of the street.

I snorted. She's surrounded.

Enthralled, my head shook in sheer disbelief. Because I swear, the death of courage was illustrated at that moment. It was noticeable in the tremble of her lips, the shielding of her face, and the way she cowered.

I sensed, rather than saw, Camille slump down into her former position. We knew this woman's escape was over before it had even begun. The fight within her died. And in its absence, this stranger could think of nothing more to do than curl up into the fetal position.

Was she serious?

"Oh my god," Camille uttered clearly dismayed by the cries that began to eclipse all other sounds.

In a matter of seconds, the stranger's body was no longer visible under the colossal mash-up of limbs digging excitedly for a small taste of human flesh. The only portion that remained distinct was the spastic vibration of one shoeless foot and the river of blood beneath it.

"How stupid can you be?"

"What?" Camille asked once she could finally remove her sight from the makeshift banquet.

"Who screams in an area full of devourers? That was her first mistake." I grunted. "Not that tripping helped."

"Really, Alyssa?" Clearly devastated enough for us both, Camille lectured, "This isn't some movie, some joke. A woman just died down there."

"A woman who has clearly lived a sheltered life, unlike us. You don't survive this long without learning the basic rule of keeping your fucking mouth shut."

Camille simply stared at me as if she didn't recognize who I was anymore, before she stated, "I get it now."

"You get what?"

"I get you. You don't think it's real, do you?"

This existence?

What has become of our world?

Your unnatural reaction to an almost everyday occurrence? I was going to need more clarification than what Camille was currently giving me.

"What?" I asked.

"The cure?" Such hope, such need was etched into Camille's expression that I had to look away.

At my silence, she continued, "It's why you've given in to the anger, the apathy, the hunger." Clear indicators of health's decline surrounded Camille's misty eyes, and yet, that conviction remained hard to extinguish. "I mean, they've been working on it for months, almost two years. They have to be close to a cure by now, right?"

How could I kill that belief?

"Alyssa?"

How could I tell her that the cure was nothing more than one of the government's first lies? For how could one cure the dead?

"Alyssa?"

I couldn't. And like a coward, I remained silent.

With each passing day since the start of the infection, Cincinnati continued its decline. I sat by my best friend, reminisced, and still... I was unable to answer the one question that she repeatedly asked me.

"Alyssa?"

I froze.

Masking my expression until it was devoid of all emotion, I swiveled back toward my bedroom door. There at the edge of the entrance, stood Hailee. My cousin's small figure was already dressed in a blue and white uniform, clearly ready for what passed for school now.

"Yes?"

"Are you okay?" she questioned as that tiny hand let go of the doorknob. Black flats made the cautious path toward me while her brown eyebrows furrowed in concern.

As Hailee moved closer I couldn't help but notice how her normal splatter of freckles was covered with a coating of foundation. The coverup transformed her pale skin back to its former bronzed appearance. Concealer hid the darkness around her large eyes while brown contacts masked her almost white irises.

Yet, another side effect of being touched by death.

Her appearance's similarity to Camille caused my smile to emerge shakily. "Of course, monster. I'm fine."

"Then who are you talking to?"

My eyes moved back to the empty spot where Camille once sat, the ache of her death hitting me all over again.

My eyes fluttered shut as I waited until this small tinge of humanity within me that sparked this sadness was suffocated. And when my eyelashes unfastened, I no longer saw the warmth of a sunrise.

No, all I saw was red.

With my conscience no longer present, I visibly swallowed my anger. "No one. I'm not talking to anyone."

....................................................................................................................

Author's note:

I am constantly changing things. I need to learn to focus on the plot and block out opinions because I am a tad bit obsessive. So, my brain goes... maybe I should change that (smh).

Hope you liked it! Let me know what you think... or maybe not lol.