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thetomorrowshow · 18 days ago

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Whumptober 28 - Denial

title: just one bite

fandom: secret life smp

cw: violence/gore, very unsafe/gross food practices, vomiting

Jimmy’s barely stepped out of the Cherry Blossoms’ Nether portal when—

“What? Hey—!”

Someone jumps on him from behind, shoving him almost to the ground. He staggers forward several steps, trying to toss them off—he catches a glimpse of red hair swinging in his face—

“Gem—” Jimmy grunts, shoving her backward against the edge of the portal. “Get—off—”

She growls in his ear, tearing at his shoulder (between his neck and his armor, a small patch covered by his shirt and usually his jacket, which he had shucked for his trip to the Nether) with her teeth, both hands occupied by holding onto him.

Her weight is heavy on his back, too heavy with how he’s still out of breath from dodging a ghast on his way to the portal, and he shoves back again and this time her grip loosens.

“Someone, help!” he shouts out of frustration, glancing around for anyone as he bucks, finally throwing Gem to the ground.

She scrambles up almost immediately, and for a moment, Jimmy’s certain she’ll jump him again (there’s a glint in her eye, something red that he really doesn’t like), but Scott comes sprinting out of a building, and Impulse comes down the hill from their tower, and Gem backs off, slowly wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

“Everything okay?” Scott asks, stopping at a safe distance away, keeping a suspicious eye on Gem. Gem moves closer to Impulse, and the two of them have some moment of communication—she nods toward Jimmy, gives Impulse a significant look. He nods back.

Jimmy huffs, clutching his chest. “Jeez, Gem, give a man a heart attack! She jumped me on my way out of the portal!”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have come through our portal,” Impulse suggests, voice . . . flat, less joke-y than Jimmy would have expected.

Right.

“Well, I’ll just be going,” Jimmy says loudly, backing away toward the stairs—

Only to get bumped into by another person, sprinting on past like they didn’t even notice him.

Bdubs makes a beeline for Gem, where he stops and she . . . nods, again, at Jimmy.

He looks back.

Bdubs is Red, now, Jimmy saw that pop up on his communicator, but when did he throw in with Gem?

And why is the look he’s giving Jimmy almost . . . hungry?

Jimmy doesn’t like this.

He doesn’t like this one bit.

“Sorry, Jimmy,” Gem says, thoroughly unconvincingly, her voice devoid of emotion. “We’ll see you soon.”

And, erm.

That was.

“That was ominous,” Scott laughs nervously, and Jimmy has to agree.

Then he leaves, not quite turning his back on them.

There’s something strange going on there, no doubt. Probably best to let it be and focus on his own task.

When Jimmy gets back to Baxter (not back-to-back at Baxter, Martyn isn’t there and he really isn’t sure that he trusts Martyn, anyways, as the man is now the only Red and Jimmy thinks he might jump at the chance to make them both Red), he strips off his armor to replace his jacket and notices the tear in the shoulder of his shirt.

He frowns, tugs down the collar of his shirt, checks out his back in the tiny mirror that Martyn had found.

Okay, not bad. Where Gem had gotten him through his shirt, his skin is a little red, some small bruises sure to bloom soon enough. There’s a bit of blood with the fading imprint of Gem’s teeth, only two or three of them deep enough to actually pierce his skin.

Why on earth did Gem bite him? He can’t taste that good. What kind of task would she, a Yellow, have that would make her attack (and bite?) another Yellow?

Weird. It’s all weird.

Well, he has a minute, and he’s already at Baxter, so Jimmy pulls off his shirt and sets to fixing it up real quick, messy stitches pulling the hole closed.

That’s life. Sometimes your friends ambush you and bite your shoulder. Usually it’s their dog that bites you, of course, but sometimes they need to cut out the middle-man.

So really, Jimmy doesn’t pay it much mind. It doesn’t feel strange compared to some of the things he’s done in the past, honestly. Not normal, not necessarily, but not weird.

What possible bad effects could it even have, anyway?

“Timmy! Get in here!”

It’s that evening, and Jimmy was just stopping by the Roomies’ base to ask for a trade (his pickaxe just broke, he’s short one diamond to make another) only to find the place seemingly abandoned. He’d wandered around for a bit, knocking on doors and glancing about, but he’d finally assumed that nobody was home and decided to go try Pearl instead (though she did die earlier today, and he isn’t sure how amenable she’d be to trading).

But right as he was about to head out, a whispered shout got his attention.

Jimmy looks around again, frowning.

“Grian?” he asks uncertainly. “Are you here?”

A long sigh, and a couple of meters away, a trapdoor pops open, hidden by surrounding grass. Grian’s head pokes out, and he frantically waves Jimmy toward it.

“This isn’t suspicious at all,” Jimmy says. “Is this part of your task?”

“Forget the tasks, get in!”

Which is very unlike Grian.

So Jimmy lowers himself through the trapdoor, follows Grian down a ladder and then a thin, rough-hewn tunnel, then up another ladder until they come out . . . in the Roomies’ base.

“Why couldn’t we use the front door?”

“Trapped,” Cleo says shortly, coming down the stairs, Etho right behind her. “Grian? I thought you said that we weren’t letting anyone in?”

“It’s just Tim,” Grian waves her off. “We need someone we can use as bait.”

“Bait?!” Jimmy sputters, taking a careful step away from Grian. “I’m—I’m not bait! Bait for what?”

What’s with people and having tasks that seem to directly harm him?

Grian, Etho, and Cleo all make dark eye contact. Eye contact that Jimmy doesn’t trust, not one bit.

The front door’s trapped. He can try to go back the way he came, but he can’t get down a ladder faster than someone can drive a sword through him. His pick broke, so he can’t mine out.

“Have you noticed anything . . . weird . . . going on?” Grian asks after a moment, and Jimmy scoffs.

“Weird? Other than you luring me here to use as bait?”

“They’re zombies, Jimmy,” Etho says ominously, and Jimmy blinks.

“What’s zombies?” he asks, assuming they aren’t talking about normal zombies. Everybody knows that.

“The others,” says Grian. “Gem, Bdubs, Impulse, Pearl. We think it started with Gem—she killed Bdubs, right? Then Impulse. But—”

“She killed Pearl,” Cleo interrupts. “And I saw it. Tore her apart with her teeth.”

Jimmy’s stomach turns.

He’s not the biggest fan of violence, but he can get his hands dirty. Figuratively. He usually has to be at least a sword’s length from any death he causes, because he really isn’t a fan of blood and flesh and all that! It makes him queasy just to kill from a distance.

To imagine Gem, literally tearing into Pearl with her own teeth, blood and viscera dripping everywhere until Pearl eventually died in her arms?

Traumatizing.

Jimmy actually wants to vomit just thinking about it. He really doesn’t like gore.

The injury on his shoulder aches, just a little. He rubs it absently, trying to shake the horrible image from his mind. “So—so what makes them zombies?”

“They’re hunting,” Grian says. “Bdubs wasn’t allies with Gem, but now he won’t leave her side. Same with Pearl and Impulse. They’re all together, hunting every Green and Yellow left. They were after Scar, last I saw.”

“They look wrong,” Cleo frowns. “They’re stiff, and their eyes are . . . off.”

“They’re zombies,” Grian repeats, and Jimmy. . . .

Jimmy still doesn’t really believe them. Why—how would there be zombies?

“Sure,” he says, glancing back to the trapdoor. “Can I go now? I have a task, right, and—”

“It isn’t safe—”

“If you don’t want—”

“We need to find other people,” Etho says reasonably, silencing the other two. “Maybe Jimmy can go get Joel?”

“Or he can be bait,” Grian suggests again. Cleo nods.

“Well, now I don’t want to leave,” Jimmy mutters. “Prove that they’re zombies.”

“Right. Come with me,” Cleo says, pushing past Jimmy to head down the ladder.

Which is how Jimmy witnesses the hunt.

Cleo leads him across the map to the Secret Keeper, where they hide behind one of the boulders, poking their heads over just enough to see what happens. They make it there just in time for the hunt to cross past them.

It’s . . . disconcerting, if he says so himself. Four Players on horseback, chasing after Scar, who runs by, panting and exhausted, his hair damp with sweat. Scar climbs up the boulder they’re sheltering behind, shoots a couple of arrows at the pack that has stopped, waiting.

“C’mon, Scar,” Gem calls, and Jimmy hears it again. That odd emotionless quality, the feeling that, perhaps, she prefers not to speak. “You, of all people, will love it.”

“It’s right up your alley, Scar,” Pearl entices, and maybe it’s a trick of his ears, but she sounds the same way. Still Pearl, but . . . not-quite-right.

“No! No thanks!” Scar yells, voice jumpy and panicked and downright terrified. “I don’t want to join your little murder cult, thanks!”

He ducks as an arrow whizzes over his head, and Scar shrieks before running away again.

The pack follows.

Cleo stays frozen for another moment, head tilted slightly as she listens, presumably ensuring that they’ll be safe.

That. . . .

That wasn’t right. Like, Jimmy’s sure that he can justify it with relatively few mental gymnastics, but it wasn’t normal behavior.

“I need to get some stuff from my base,” he whispers, and Cleo shushes him, but doesn’t tell him no, so Jimmy scrambles down from the boulder and makes a break for Baxter.

What does he need? Some food, probably. A note for Martyn—hey M, zombies!!! bye -J—enough iron to craft up an iron pick if he never gets another diamond, a change of clothes, some other necessary survival-y things.

And when he leaves Baxter, he finds Cleo with Scar again, over at the Heart Foundation.

“Scar,” Cleo’s saying, looking down at him from a horse (when had she gotten a horse?) that seems to be very skittish around the quite new fire spreading up to the heart. That hadn’t been happening when he left. “Scar, the ones chasing you—”

It’s out of nowhere that Pearl and Gem ambush Scar, shooting at him as the man jumps away, fear fresh on his face—

Then Pearl leaps off her horse and sprints, faster than should be possible, diving into Scar and knocking him to the ground. Jimmy winces as the arrow in Scar’s back get twisted under her weight, but he barely has a moment to notice it before Pearl buries her teeth into Scar’s upper arm.

Scar screams, flailing, and Pearl pulls back, stringy flesh snapping free in a burst of blood, and goodness gracious Jimmy might throw up, his legs are trembling and his palms are all clammy—

Gem dives to Scar as well, and her teeth dig into his cheek—

A hand grabs the back of Jimmy’s shirt and he panics, kicking out blindly, he doesn’t want to die like that—but it’s just Cleo; she sits him in front of her on the horse and snaps the reins and off they ride.

Jimmy doesn’t watch. He doesn’t watch, but he can’t cover his ears. He can’t not-hear Scar’s warbling pleas for help, his agonized screams, the slow trail-off.

His communicator buzzes.

He doesn’t have to check it to know.

“I told you,” Cleo reminds him, and Jimmy swallows several times.

“I’m gonna throw up,” Jimmy manages.

“Not on me.”

That night, back in the new housing arrangement, Jimmy’s hand brushes against his own shoulder while changing and his breath vanishes from his chest.

No.

If the zombies is a real thing, and Gem’s the one who started it—

Jimmy doesn’t look at the bite. He can’t. Well, he can—Grian has a mirror, but he won’t. He won’t look and see if it’s progressed.

His skin is a bit warm under his touch, though.

Probably just because he’s had his hand on it for so long. He just warmed up his skin, is all. He’s fine.

It still hurts. It still twinges when he presses on it, his shoulder aching just a bit, through and through.

He’ll be fine. They probably have to kill him, right? He’s fine.

Jimmy pulls on his nightshirt, careful that the collar doesn’t slide down in the back, and opens the door to the bedroom, before pulling the rough wool blanket off Grian’s bed and laying it out on the floor, where he’s decided to spend the night.

Goodness gracious. He didn’t expect this to happen this week.

“There’s five of them, then,” Grian says, walking in and stripping off his sweater, left in his white undershirt. He stretches, briefly flexes his muscles (defined by the hard work that comes with joining a new server) in the mirror before throwing himself onto the bed. “Great. I really wanted to have to worry about a zombie apocalypse on top of all my other problems, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy chuckles. “I’ve got a task to do, dude!”

“I’m just surprised they haven’t got you, yet. You’ve cheated death way too many times already.”

Jimmy doesn’t touch his shoulder. He doesn’t even think about it. “Yeah. Guess I’m stuck with you, huh?”

Grian groans. “Tim, I really don’t want to babysit you this week. I’ve already got a dishwasher to keep an eye on, I don’t need two responsibilities.” “You won’t even notice I’m here.”

“Right. You’d better not betray me after this. I gave up space in my bedroom for you.”

Jimmy would never betray him.

He hopes.

It’s day two, and Jimmy’s feeling . . . fine.

Which is a relief, honestly. He skips breakfast to go on a walk, the early morning fog not-quite-cleared, around the back of the base and up the hill, where he stops on the bed monument and sits, the sheets a bit damp from dew.

He slips off his pack, massages his shoulder as he looks out.

He’s not spent much time on this part of the map. It’s nice, different from where he’s set up. It’s very green here, plenty of trees and scurrying animals and whatnot. If he looks to the left, he can see a bit of the mesa, and he briefly hopes that Martyn’s doing all right.

Who is he kidding? Of course Martyn’s doing all right! It’s Martyn, he’s been Red for ages and fine the whole time. And it isn’t like he could even become a zombie—he’d just be out of the game, wouldn’t he?

Facing forward, he can see the Heart Foundation, a grey drab of smoke still hanging over the remains of their heart. Jimmy can see them down there, Tango cooking something up in their open-air kitchen, Skizz feeding their horses.

It’s quiet, this morning.

Jimmy likes the quiet. He really, truly does. He complains about it sometimes, and he’ll be the first to admit that he can get a little loud, but some of his favorite moments in the Southlands had been those nights on watch, just him looking out over the wall at the rest of the world, thinking fondly of the friends who trusted him to protect them.

They should set up a watch, shouldn’t they? Sure, they’ve trapped the entrance, but that won’t stop a dedicated Player by any means. Especially not a team of five of them.

Has Scott been recruited?

(By which he means, of course, has Gem pinned down her closest ally, tearing chunks out of his face as he begs and screams for mercy, her loyal zombies descending upon him like a pack of hungry wolves.)

He left his communicator inside, hasn’t checked it since last night.

Scott could be down. Joel could be. BigB. Not Tango or Skizz, he can see them. Not Martyn, Red as he is. Not Grian, Cleo, or Etho. Not him.

Not him.

Jimmy scrubs a hand down the stubble on his cheek, resolutely ignoring the soreness in his shoulder.

This is just a task. A task that's turning a concerning amount of people Red, but a task nonetheless. If the aim of the task is to change everyone into a zombie, then they'll either achieve it or the time will run out.

They have to survive a week, all told.

They can do that. Jimmy isn't great at surviving in the best of times, but he refuses to let himself die.

He refuses to become a zombie. It makes him want to vomit, even as he pushes his imagination away from the idea of biting down on one of his friends, chewing dripping mouthfuls of—

Jimmy swallows. Twice. He won't throw up.

Then, from behind—the crunching of bramble, footsteps through the woods—

Jimmy spins around, and Joel freezes, sword raised.

“Are you—?” Joel manages, voice rough. He doesn't finish his question. He doesn't need to.

Joel looks like he's been living in a nightmare. His hair is unbrushed, leaves and twigs stuck in it. His hoodie is missing, shirt is torn and fraying at the edges, one long thread trailing down to his mud-stained knees. The shadows under his eyes are deep and oily, his eyes just the tiniest bit red around the rims.

Jimmy shakes his head. “A—a zombie? No, I—are you—?”

Quick as a flash, Joel launches into him. Jimmy barely has time to put his hands up, to do anything, he didn’t bring a weapon with him like an idiot and now he’s going to die—

Joel knocks them both to the ground (Jimmy’s shoulder lands on a stone and a whimper of pain escapes his lips), entirely on top of him, his sword thrown to the side, and Jimmy doesn’t have time to protest because he knows with sickening certainty that Joel’s teeth are about to rip out his throat and it’ll be so gross.

Joel’s face is right in front of his, suddenly, and Jimmy swallows. His wide eyes are fixed on him, unable to leave his face.

Joel is very close. Far too close. Jimmy doesn’t struggle, terrified as he is (though his face warms, blood rushing to it).

Joel’s breath is hot against his nose, his chest heaving against Jimmy’s chest, and Joel grins, teeth shining with saliva, and leans in even further.

“Me neither,” he whispers, lips practically touching Jimmy’s cheek, before rolling off of Jimmy and onto the dirt.

Jimmy swallows again.

“You should’ve seen your face,” Joel laughs, sheathing his sword. “You absolutely thought I was going to eat you, didn’t you?”

Jimmy shakes his head (less as an answer, more as a way to dispel the embarrassing lack of thoughts). “I just—well, anyone could be—”

Joel just laughs again, then starts picking his way down the hill. “Is Etho all right, then? I imagine you wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t someone here already.”

Jimmy rolls onto his side. He’d had bread in his backpack; hopefully it hasn’t been squished by his sudden slam to the ground.

He did not expect to get pinned by Joel when he woke up this morning.

And—not pinned, not—even if that’s what happened, it isn’t—

Right. No more thinking.

Jimmy rubs his shoulder, then follows Joel in.

It’s day three, and Jimmy definitely isn’t feeling quite right.

He’s fine, of course. He’s doing well, even. It’s really just the pressure of everything terrible that’s stopping him from feeling entirely perfect, and nothing else.

Martyn shows up around seven in the evening, and he stands outside of the barricaded wall built around the base with crossed arms as Grian looks down disdainfully from the top of the hill.

“I was Red last week, and you let me in,” Martyn shouts up at him. “It’s not fair! You can’t discriminate against me, just because I’m Red! I’ll file a report with . . . with somewhere, I’ll get you canceled!”

“The rules are clear,” Cleo calls down, standing beside Grian. Jimmy, up on the wall, grimaces an apology to Martyn. “No Reds.”

Martyn does the best impression of a kicked puppy that Jimmy’s ever seen, eyes huge and lip trembling.

“Please?” he asks, voice wavering. “I won’t do anything bad, promise!” “He’ll pee on everything,” Jimmy tells Etho beside him.

Etho raises an eyebrow.

Martyn ignores them. “Security wasn’t near this strict before,” he says, voice smoothly segueing into conspiratorial. “What’s with all the extra care? A couple of Yellows are feeling insecure?”

Cleo and Grian exchange a look. Joel, still working on reinforcing the wall, glances over.

“You . . . you know there’s zombies, right?” Grian asks slowly.

Martyn shrugs. “I mean, yeah? Every night. There always have been, I don’t know why this is news to you lot.”

“Other zombies,” Cleo clarifies. “There are. They’re becoming zombies.”

Martyn’s head tilts in confusion. “What’s becoming zombies? The horses? I thought that was established already.”

“No, it’s—it isn’t—”

“Is this someone’s task? Something to do with not seeing a single zombie all week?”

“Just let him believe that,” Grian says tiredly, as Cleo tries to continue explaining. “He’s immune, anyways. No real use trying.”

“Sorry,” Jimmy says, leaning over the wall.

Martyn clicks his tongue. “Timmy. What happened to the Big Dogs, huh?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you were gonna kill me this week. . . .”

“I would ne—well, I would do that, actually, can’t really blame you. Still, Baxter’s missing you. He gets lonely, up on that hill all by himself.”

Jimmy shrugs. “Sorry,” he says. Then, because he does feel a little bad about abandoning Martyn with barely any warning, adds, “I’ll be back next week, okay? It’s . . . part of my task.”

“Oh,” Martyn nods knowingly. “Infiltrate another alliance. All right, Tim, see you around!” He skips off, whistling a high-pitched tune, and Etho shakes his head and clambers down from the wall.

Cleo and Grian leave the hill, go inside through the secret tunnel, and Joel finishes up the part of the wall that he’s been working on and follows Etho in, and Jimmy’s alone on the wall, staring out after Martyn as he leaves.

He’s fine.

His hands are shaking.

“Jimmy, come get dinner,” Joel calls from inside the base, and Jimmy shouts back some sort of response but he doesn’t move.

They have to die to become a zombie, don’t they? His—it doesn’t count. He’s still alive, he’s still Yellow.

The aching pain in his shoulder doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a bruise. It’s a bruise that is taking a little too long to heal and that’s okay. It’s probably a bone bruise, honestly. That’s why it’s healing slowly. Bone bruises take forever.

He really, really doesn’t want to be a zombie. He hasn’t done anything for his task all week because all he can think about is this awful apocalypse. How on earth Grian’s managing to do whatever it is he’s doing with that Magma Cube is far beyond Jimmy.

He can’t die. If he dies, he might become one of them. Even if he only has the tiniest bit of zombie infection in his shoulder. If that’s even true. Which it isn’t. More likely, it’s just a normal injury that’s part and parcel of these games.

“Oh, Jimmy!”

Jimmy’s heart freezes in his chest.

At some point, his eyes had drifted down to his shoes, scuffed and dirty, but now he looks back up, dread sinking down his throat.

Scar, coming into view down the path, twirling a shining knife around (one that Jimmy knows, with horrid certainty, he won’t use). His voice is oddly flat, his pace somewhat jolting as he skips his way toward the wall. Behind him, on horseback, are Gem and Pearl. Impulse and Bdubs are nowhere to be seen—that gives them something of a better chance, at least.

But before Jimmy can feel any sort of relief over that, another group catches his eye—Tango, Skizz, BigB, all headed around the side toward the base.

Oh no.

No, they’re being flanked, aren’t they?

“Come on, Jimmy!” Gem yells. “You know you need to, let’s just hurry things up a bit!”

His tongue feels stuck to the roof of his mouth, his feet welded to the ground. They’re here, and this is going to prove once and for all that their defenses don’t work and then it’ll be a bloodbath and goodness gracious he wants to vomit just thinking about it—

“Hey! Leave them alone!” That’s Skizz’s voice, loud and spitting fire, storming over to stand between the zombies and the wall, and oh so they haven’t been turned, that makes things quite a bit better.

“H-Help!” Jimmy manages, given strength by the Heart Foundation’s stance, and they’re human and he can’t just abandon them, can he? “Grian! Joel! They’re here, help!”

He fumbles for his bow, leaning on the wall of the parapet—but his fingers feel weak and can’t quite grasp the string. He drops his arrow before he can fire it, and is he even allowed to fire it? He’s still on Yellow, after all—can he fire it?

His moral quandary is brought to an abrupt halt as Grian pops up from the tunnel, scaling the wall in a matter of seconds. He frowns down at the opposing groups below, then whistles sharply.

“BigB,” he says, and BigB, now beside Skizz, glances up.

“Oh, hey, G.”

Scar grins, his eyes glinting, and Jimmy takes a step back.

“What’s going on?”

Joel has shown up, pushing himself out of the ground, and Etho follows him, both already drawing weapons.

“They’re here,” says Grian grimly. Etho shrugs, stretches.

“Guess we’d better face them, then,” he says, resigned in an almost upbeat way.

“Is Scott with them?” Cleo asks, rolling out of the hole and onto the ground.

Grian hums. “Don’t see him.”

“We aren’t here for a little chat,” Impulse calls up to them. Pearl hums, practically drooling. “We’re hungry. You all get it, don’t you?”

Jimmy swallows. He does feel hungry—just a bit, in the pit of his stomach. But it’s probably because he only had a piece of bread for lunch and he hasn’t eaten anything for dinner yet. It isn’t—it’s not the same kind of hunger.

“Plenty of food on the server,” Grian says evenly. “If you wanted a lunch invite, you should’ve just asked.”

“Oh my gosh, they smell so good,” Scar stage-whispers, loud enough that Jimmy can clearly hear. “Can we please just go for them? I really want to sink my teeth into Etho.”

“Nobody move,” Grian throws behind himself, digging in his satchel. He turns his attention back to the intruders. “You’re out of luck, fellas! Nothing to see here. Nobody’s home, even!”

“Hey, uh, Grian?” Tango asks nervously. “You mind letting us in?”

“Don’t let Tango in!” objects Etho, striding toward the gate to get the man in his line of sight. “He died earlier, he’s one of them.”

“I—what? No, I’m—”

“Come on,” Pearl drawls, then everything is thrown into chaos.

Skizz lunges at the zombies, sword drawn, forcing Gem’s horse to stumble back and Pearl to slide down from her saddle, pulling out her axe. At the same time, Grian finds what he’s looking for and throws it at Scar—an Enderman spawn egg that cracks on the ground next to Scar, an Enderman folding up out of it.

And Etho, sudden panic choking his voice, says, “Oh—Grian, I looked at it—”

The Enderman vanishes with a vwoop, then reappears in the base, arms reaching out toward Etho—

Etho runs, shoving out the gate and across the thinning woods, Scar whoops and takes chase, Tango darts in through the now-open gate, and Jimmy leaps down from the wall and follows after Etho, the screaming Enderman, and Scar.

He isn’t sure what he intends to do—kill the Enderman? Stop Scar?—but he follows, struggling to get his sword out of its sheath.

“Get him, Scar!” Gem encourages, far too close, and Jimmy glances to his left to see her loping along on her horse, keeping easy pace with the train of runners.

She could kill him, no problem. She would just have to divert her course a little bit, slam an arrow into his chest, swing her sword as she galloped by.

The fact that she doesn’t is more disconcerting than anything.

Jimmy just keeps running, feet pounding against the ground, backpack bouncing on his back, air coming in gasps.

Etho is having a worse time of it—he’s dodging and weaving to try and keep away from the Enderman, but his detours mean that Scar is quickly closing the distance between them, his sword poised to strike.

Can Jimmy attack him if he tries to kill Etho?

Does he dare?

He can hear Etho’s heaving breaths, the stones on the beach of the lake scattering under his feet, and Etho’s sword clatters against those same stones as he tosses it to the side and splashes into the water, immediately slowed by the drag of water against his legs. Scar continues in after him, slashing out—the sword cuts across Etho’s arm, just missing his armor, and Etho grunts but keeps pushing until the water becomes deep enough to swim.

Jimmy slows to a stop as he approaches the beach, the burned Heart Foundation base a dark shape over the murky water. Etho’s trying to make it there, the water chopping loudly under his windmilling arms, but Scar strikes—

“Don’t—” Etho cries out, the sound half-drowned as his head sinks under the water—

And again—

And Scar takes a weakly struggling Etho and drags him up onto the Heart Foundation, ignoring his waterlogged coughs to straddle his legs and bite into his chest.

Jimmy does vomit this time.

He really, finally does, he falls to his knees on the rocks and just turns his insides out, hacking and coughing and trying not to hear Etho’s screams over his retches.

He fails.

He hears the flesh tearing from bone, squelches and creaks and horrible gurgling, and what’s even worse is that he can smell the blood.

He can smell Etho’s blood from here, where the stones dig into his knees and his vomit paints the ground—he can practically taste the coppery viscousness floating over on the air. It rests heavy on the back of his bile-flooded tongue; Jimmy bites the taste back (not swallowing it, not devouring it) and pushes himself to his feet, even as the last of Etho’s cries fall silent.

He couldn’t save him.

When Jimmy looks up, Gem is still there. Sitting on her horse, watching him.

She’s going to kill him, now. She’s going to lick her lips and leap for him, and Jimmy’s too shaky from puking to even think about defending himself.

She doesn’t move, though. She stays, and offers him a humorless smile, and raises an eyebrow.

“Ready?” she asks, and Jimmy isn’t sure how to respond.

Instead, he picks up Etho’s sword in the hand that isn’t holding his own and sprints back toward the base.

“I’ll be fine,” Joel reassures Grian, hitching his backpack higher up on his back. “They know I’m here, they’d never think I’d go back to my base.”

It’s the fourth day, and Joel is leaving for supplies.

Jimmy’s feeling. . . .

Well, he wouldn’t say that he’s doing well.

His entire arm is burning. All the way down to his fingertips, buzzy and painful and nauseating. He hasn’t eaten anything, his stomach churning near-constantly.

He’s been ignoring it for too long, but he doesn’t dare look at his shoulder in the mirror. He can feel it, feel the heat that radiates from it, how swollen it’s become.

He’s fine.

He’s fine, and he’s hungry, and he’s fine.

(He’s hungry, but the food that Grian cooks tastes like ash in his mouth, and his stomach is constantly rebelling, so he usually only manages a couple of mouthfuls before feeding the rest of the plate to Cleo’s dogs.)

(And Jimmy watches Joel go, and something in the pit of his stomach growls at the sight of his friend.)

Grian’s certain that the zombie curse is Gem’s task, that she has to turn everyone she can. If he’s right, then it should wear off when the new week starts.

Jimmy’s already made it four days. That’s over halfway through. He can do three more.

Joel, apparently, can’t.

It’s after lunch that day that their communicators buzz with a dreaded message. Joel’s fallen to Gem, which means he’s joined the zombie crew.

That leaves so few of them. Grian, Cleo. Skizz, Tango, BigB. Scott, presumably.

Jimmy.

Jimmy spends most of the day away from the others, gathering food in the surrounding woods. There isn’t much to scavenge, at this point—he finds some berries, an apple tree (nothing that looks remotely appealing). One of Cleo’s traps has a rabbit in it, but he doesn’t touch it.

The bloody fur and raw flesh is the first thing to look somewhat appetizing to him.

On second thought—

Before Jimmy realizes what he’s doing, he’s disabled the game trap and dug his teeth into the mangled fur of the rabbit, tearing into its flesh with wild abandon. His handkerchief of berries falls to the ground and he eats, congealed blood smearing onto his cheeks, it’s—but he barely manages three bites before he’s violently vomiting all over his hands and the carcass, dropping to his knees as his body spasms and rejects the horrid meal.

No. No, that’s—

There are probably bugs on it, maggots, even, he just started eating a dead, raw rabbit without even wanting it, and there’s fur caught in his teeth and his mouth tastes foul—

He has to get rid of the evidence.

He isn’t a zombie. He isn’t.

Jimmy picks up the remains of the carcass and starts sprinting, down to the lake, where he throws the rabbit as far as he can. It lands with a plosh in the water, sinking instantly, and Jimmy sticks his hands in the water as well, washing them of his vomit and the rabbit.

That was—

He feels shaky.

Of course he feels shaky, and it has nothing to do with his cravings. He hasn’t properly eaten anything in ages and he’s thrown up twice in the past two days, there’s nothing in his body to fuel him.

But how can he eat when nothing sits in his stomach?

He’s not going to become one of them, but if he starves himself it’ll be the same difference. He has to figure out a way to eat something. Something close enough to whatever it is he craves that it’ll stay down. And it has to be closer than a rabbit carcass, he thinks, shuddering.

He unstraps his waterskin and swishes some lukewarm water around in his mouth, spits onto the stony beach.

He’ll make it through this.

And he’ll get this horrid taste out of his mouth.

Cleo has a bucket of rotten flesh that she keeps outside the doghouse, used to feed her pets.

That’s where Jimmy gets his supper.

He feigns eating the porkchops that Tango serves, squirreling bites away in his napkin when no one’s looking. Then, when Cleo wakes him up for the second watch, he sneaks out to the doghouse and raids the bucket, taking whole handfuls of squishy, dripping flesh, flies buzzing away.

He eats it right there, leaning over the bucket, too hungry to be as disgusted as he wants to be. He stuffs fistfulls of stinking, green-tinged meat into his mouth, barely chewing as it slides wetly down his throat, landing in his stomach with a sensation that’s almost physical.

It isn’t quite what he wants, but it works. It doesn’t satisfy the craving, it doesn’t make his arm stop burning, but he starts to feel like he can think through the hunger again.

He stops himself before he can eat too much. It wouldn’t do to finally find something that’ll stay down, only to overstuff himself and get sick. And he can’t take enough that Cleo notices that her stock has depleted.

Jimmy washes his hands with a calm sort of detachedness, willing himself not to think of what he’s just done and how revolting it was. If he doesn’t think about it, he can ignore it.

And ignore it he does, until he’s patrolling up the hill, looking out over the server.

There’s someone out there, far off. Climbing around the Secret Keeper’s boulders. Martyn, hopefully. Martyn’s still out there kicking, somewhere, and Jimmy doesn’t want to think about what would happen if the zombies were up at this hour.

Then he freezes, every line of his body going stiff, as he feels something hard poke into the small of his back.

“Hey, babe. Been all right without me?”

Jimmy swallows, his throat gone dry.

The pressure on his back releases, and he turns around as slowly as he can manage, hands held up to show that he doesn’t have a weapon.

Joel’s there. Of course Joel is there. Jimmy had recognized his voice, flat and unaffected as it was.

His eyes glint dully with red, his skin pale in the moonlight. He sheathes his sword, sweeps back his dark hair.

Jimmy swallows again, the rotten flesh threatening to make a reappearance. Joel takes a step closer, his eyes boring into Jimmy.

“I—get out, I’ll wake the others—”

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

Jimmy clamps his mouth shut. Joel smirks, eyes lighting up.

“You are,” he says. “Gem told me you’re one of us. I didn’t believe her. How’ve you been hiding it this long?”

He’s not. He’s not hungry, he’s not one of them.

“You didn’t really eat much, though, did you?” Joel contemplates aloud. “I made you a sandwich yesterday, and you didn’t eat more than a bite. Are you really starving yourself over this?”

“I’m not starving,” protests Jimmy. “I’m—I’m fine.”

“When did you last eat?”

“I—half an hour ago.”

Joel raises an eyebrow. “So late? What, were you waiting to sneak raw meat? I’ve heard that raw pork is about as close to human flesh as you can get.”

“Rotten flesh is closer,” Jimmy argues, before he realizes what he’s just admitted. Joel chokes out a shocked laugh, just as flat as his voice.

“You—sorry, rotten flesh? Rotten flesh? Jimmy,” Joel says, voice dripping with astonished pity. “That’s probably the grossest thing I’ve ever heard. How could you—?”

“You don’t get it!” Jimmy bursts out, and now he can’t control the words spilling out of his mouth because he’s been on edge for days— “You don’t—I’m fighting every day! Nothing tastes good, I keep throwing up, my friends are dying all around me and then trying to kill my other friends, my arm hurts so bad—”

He cuts himself off, tears burning at the corners of his eyes. The rotten flesh had filled the gaping hole in his stomach momentarily, but the hunger is roaring again, stronger than ever. He can’t even think about it—just the idea of cannibalizing his friends makes him tremble in fear, but it seems so—

So—

“Jimmy.”

He shakes his head, eyes on the ground. “No. I don’t—”

“Just give in.”

“I can’t. I won’t.”

Joel places a gentle finger under Jimmy’s chin (when did they get so close?), tilts his eyes up to meet his. Jimmy’s breath catches in his chest; he stares at Joel, lips trembling.

“Just let go,” Joel breathes, eyes fixed on Jimmy’s. “Don’t you want to be satisfied? After so long of denying yourself?”

Jimmy’s tongue darts out, wets his lips. As much as it disgusts him, he really, really doesn’t want to be hungry anymore.

“Does it hurt?” he whispers. Perhaps it’s that, the fear of the pain, the fear of letting go, that’s been making him hold on so long.

Joel winces. “Yeah,” he says, voice still low. “It hurts. But after that . . . after that, it feels so good. Better than you can imagine.”

It does hurt, then.

If there’s anything that Jimmy doesn’t do, it’s pain. He hates pain almost as much as he hates violence and gore, getting anxious over the smallest anticipated harm.

He’ll hold out. The hunger hurts, but it’s a pain he knows.

“Think about it,” Joel says softly, his breath warming Jimmy’s lips. “I’ll be waiting.”

He slips away, into the darkness of the woods. Jimmy stands there a moment longer, chin still elevated, until he can no longer hear Joel’s footsteps heading away.

Then he falls to his knees and sobs.

It’s the fifth day, and Jimmy can barely breathe.

He can’t look at any of his friends without craving them, without longing to sink his teeth into their flesh, and it grosses him out but he can’t stop thinking about it.

Grian’s skin looks so soft, especially the skin right under his chin, above his adam’s apple. Jimmy watches it move as they eat, scrambled eggs that squirm their way down Jimmy’s throat and will surely come back up later. He keeps his eyes fixed on Grian’s throat, pretending that he’s chewing that instead of eggs, and the imagined sensation of blood and skin filling his mouth makes the food almost bearable.

It also makes his hunger that much worse, though, so he abandons the breakfast table as soon as possible, hurrying out to check the game traps.

His arm is useless, at this point. It hurts almost as much as the hunger, has become a chunk of deadweight at his side, heat branching out from him to spread to the rest of his body.

For far too long, Jimmy contemplates just cutting it off and eating it, but would that count? Would it count to eat his own flesh, or does it have to be someone new?

Also, then he’d probably bleed out and just die anyway. That wouldn’t be helpful.

He ends up digging in the bucket of rotten flesh after he pukes up the eggs, shoving the gooey, stinking flesh into his mouth, shuddering and gagging with each piece he forces himself to eat.

It isn’t enough. It isn’t enough, but he can’t. He isn’t one of them. He’s human.

He’s sweating all the time now. The heat from his arm has started burning away at his body, carrying an incurable fever. It’s like his body knows exactly what he’s resisting and is determined to make him suffer about it.

“Jimmy, you doing okay?” Tango asks later that day (evening, the sun beginning to set, Jimmy’s head pounding and his stomach growling every other minute), as they feed Cleo’s dogs. Tango turns the bucket over into the yard, frowns as only a small pile plops out.

“Yeah? Why? Why wouldn’t I be doing okay?”

Tango shrugs. “I dunno, man. You look like you’re coming down with something. Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m—I’m great!” Jimmy blusters, tension flowing through his stomach in choppy waves. “I, I mean—maybe a bit warm, but—”

“Better than the zombies?” Tango quips with a grin.

Jimmy swallows. “Um. Yep.”

Maybe it’s speaking of them that summons them. Maybe they just can’t resist such succulent, intoxicating human flesh. Jimmy’s having enough of a hard time with it, and he isn’t even one of them.

But the zombies turn back up, jeering and chanting for them to come out and fight, and Jimmy heaves his chestplate on and picks up his sword to go meet them at the gates before remembering that someone should make sure they aren’t coming in from the back.

He pokes his head over the wall—Gem and Pearl and Impulse are there, but there’s no sign of Joel or Scar or Etho.

That can’t be good news.

“Grian,” Jimmy hisses, sidling over to where Grian is boredly listening to the zombies’ cries, his bow trained on them. “The back. Half of them aren’t even here, they might be coming in the back!”

Then, high on the air, a whistling sound—an arrow flying toward them—

Jimmy moves instinctively. He leaps onto Grian, pushing him down against the parapet, his nose buried into Grian’s soft hair, the hilt of the man’s sword jabbing into his stomach.

The arrow soars over them, landing somewhere on the other side of the wall—landing in Gem, if the answering scream has anything to do with it.

“Sorry! Sorry, I was aiming for Grian—”

Grian’s skin is so close to Jimmy’s mouth right now.

He goes still, breath catching in his chest. Wave after wave after wave of desperate hunger crashes into him.

He—

Then Grian pushes him off, and the moment is broken.

Right, right, Jimmy needs to get a hold of himself—

“Thanks,” Grian mutters, then rolls to his feet, turning his bow behind them.

Sure enough, Joel, Scar, and Etho are standing on top of their base, not far from where Jimmy had spoken to Joel just last night. Had that talk been Joel scouting out the area for a surprise attack? How could he have let it go on for so long without alerting anyone to Joel’s presence?

Joel—it looks like he smirks at Jimmy, though from this distance, it’s hard to tell. Jimmy turns away, raising his sword threateningly toward the zombies on the ground.

Down there, Gem is on the ground, trying to work an arrow out of her chest. Pearl and Impulse are beside her, swords raised against any further attack.

“Tango! Uh-oh, uh-oh—”

Skizz, on Grian’s other side, sprints past Jimmy, almost knocking him off the wall. He jumps off and runs toward the staircase up the hill, and Jimmy watches—Tango’s on the steps, fleeing the hill, panic in his eyes and an arrow in his shield—

Skizz doesn’t last long.

It’s mere moments before screams echo down the hill.

“Come on!” Grian yells, and Jimmy blindly follows him down and up the hill, joining Cleo and BigB already on their way. The four of them round the top of the staircase right as Joel pulls a bite of flesh away from Skizz’s arm with an awful ripping sound, blood spurting everywhere.

Grian leaps into action, forcing Etho to drop Skizz’s other arm and defend himself, even as Scar bites Skizz’s neck, blood quickly soaking Skizz’s shirt. Skizz screams and screams, free arm twitching up and back down, his lifeblood and chunks of flesh just falling to the ground as two zombies tear at him like they haven’t eaten in weeks—

Even as Cleo starts forward, Skizz’s tortured eyes roll back into his head and his body goes limp, dropping like a deadweight. Joel enjoys one more bite (and there’s something in his eyes, boring into Jimmy’s, something inviting and proud and gloating) before abandoning the body, running for the woods. Scar and Etho follow, Etho getting a good slash in on Grian’s upper arm before fleeing entirely.

Jimmy stares at Skizz’s remains, at how much red there is. Someone tore off his cheek before they got there, part of his jaw visible, redstained teeth eerily peering out at them. The air stinks with the scent of his blood, worse than any butcher’s shop, worse than any battlefield.

Jimmy’s stomach turns.

It always does. It always does, he can’t stand gore and violence, he can’t see it happen without bone-shaking terror and enough nausea to make a shipful of sailors hurl their guts over the railing, and right now is no different.

Jimmy collapses to his knees and pukes, two meals’ worth of rotten flesh coming up slimier than it had gone down.

“Timmy saved my life, really,” Grian says, slapping Jimmy hard on the back.

It’s the sixth day.

“Then puked on your shoes,” Cleo points out.

“Yeah, well. He knows I won’t forgive him for that, no use trying. But I think Scar’s arrow would’ve hit me off the wall if Tim hadn’t tackled me.”

“It’s good to have you on our side, Rancher,” Tango says proudly.

Jimmy doesn’t say a word.

He can’t open his mouth.

If he does, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to resist digging his teeth into Grian.

The man is right beside him, one heavy arm still weighing down his shoulders, and Jimmy is overly conscious of how close their cheeks are. He can’t think of anything but that, can’t think of anything at all except turning his head to attack Grian’s face, tear his skin from his flesh, eat and eat and eat until he can’t feel the starving fever that gnaws on his very bones.

It hurts so, so much.

He can’t continue like this.

If—a deal. A deal with himself. If Grian keeps holding on for ten more seconds, he’ll go for it. He’ll give in. He’ll finally give in. But if—if Grian lets go, then—

Before he can finish defining the deal in his feverish, disconnected thoughts, Grian hops away, off to the small kitchen in the corner, dishing up toast for everyone.

“Skizz will definitely come for me and BigB,” Tango says, taking one of the plates from the counter and sitting at the table. “This place isn’t working anymore—every time they get another one, they’ll just be one closer to totally overwhelming us.”

“So we need to hide,” nods Cleo.

“We need to get out of here,” Grian agrees. “I was thinking maybe the mesa? We can pay Martyn off to keep them distracted, maybe, and hide in the tunnels where we got the Warden.”

“Wouldn’t Etho want to check there?”

“Oh, right, that might be the first place. . . .”

“We could go to my backrooms,” BigB says.

“That sounds terrifying.”

“What? They’re totally normal!”

Sweat drips into Jimmy’s eyes.

The conversation blurs into background noise.

Grian’s not wearing any armor. Cleo already slapped on a chestplate, and Tango and BigB are fully kitted out, but Grian’s still just wearing his sweater and jeans.

He looks. . . .

His stomach is so empty. Jimmy’s stomach feels like it’s tearing itself apart. That’ll kill him. He’s starving.

Surely. . . .

Surely one bite won’t turn him into a zombie?

Just—just one bite, just something to ease the hunger pangs the slightest bit, something to tide him over until the end of the week. He won’t take any more than that, just that one bite, and then he’ll be quiet and do his job, he promises.

Just one bite, one bite of Grian’s mouthwatering flesh, surely he wouldn’t begrudge him one bite? Jimmy saved his life, after all. One bite won’t turn him into a zombie—after all, Jimmy was bit ages ago, and he’s fine!

One bite can’t hurt. It would just be to quell his shaking mind. He’s fine, he just needs one bite. Just one bite.

The sun coming through the window warms Grian’s cheek, a slight rose tinting his pale flesh as he laughs at something Cleo said. It looks delectable, melt-in-the-mouth, disgustingly delicious and it’s everything Jimmy needs, he just needs a little bit, just one bite, that’s all, just the cheek—or some other part, wherever is least inconvenient for Grian, wherever he wants it to be, just one bite—

“Don’t you think, Tim—”

Jimmy can’t hold himself back. He dives across the table with a crash that shakes the whole house, sending toast and plates flying, reaching for Grian, mouth already open—

“Jimmy!” “Hey, what—” He has to! None of them understand, he has to, Jimmy can’t survive any longer like this, he needs—he needs it—just one bite, he just needs a little bit, he just needs to tear Grian apart under his teeth, he needs blood and flesh in his mouth and sliding down his throat in satisfying chunks, he just needs—

Strong hands pull him back. Everyone is yelling, all around him, and Jimmy’s teeth snap down around nothing as Grian scrambles back, knocking his chair over and falling to the floor.

No, no no no, he just needs a bite—

“Just one bite,” he sobs desperately, tears streaming from his eyes as drool drips from his lips. “Please, any of you, just one—just one bite, I promise, I just need one, I’m so sorry—”

They don’t give it to him.

They want him to starve.

They pull him down hard into his chair, and Jimmy barely has time to struggle before they tie him down, heavy ropes pulled tight around his growling stomach and over his pounding heart. He writhes, tries to get at whoever is closest, but his mouth can’t quite reach anyone.

No, no, please! Please!

“Jimmy,” Tango says, and Jimmy manages to focus long enough on his face to see the shocked disappointment painting it. “Jimmy, how long?”

Jimmy takes in a shuddering breath, one that doesn’t fill the hole in his stomach. “Please,” he begs. He can’t take it anymore, he can’t, it hurts so much, he’s going to fall apart but he only needs a little bit to keep going! “Please, just one bite, please!”

“Of course!” Grian says angrily, tossing up his hands. “Of course it would be Tim, of course Timmy would hide that he got bit! You’re the person that everyone hates in zombie movies, Tim! You aren’t special, you moron!”

He doesn’t get close enough for Jimmy to even attempt to reach for, but his lips tremble as he stares at Grian’s flesh anyways, desperate for just a taste. He’s finally broken, he’s finally given in, but he doesn’t need much. Anything, please, anything.

They don’t give him anything.

They leave.

They leave, and they leave him there, and they show Jimmy Grian’s communicator—

<Grian> left you zombies a gift at the base

And he’s there alone.

Alone, shaking and starving, fever and pain radiating through him in waves, he just needed one bite. . . .

“Well. You know, we don’t usually have a taste for people like us, but. . . .” Joel smirks from the entrance, eyes fixated on the tears streaming down Jimmy’s face, at the reddened veins crawling up his neck from his useless arm, at the hunger etched deep into his fearful eyes.

Joel lunges for him, and Jimmy closes his eyes and hopes that he doesn’t throw up as he feels his stomach be literally torn open.

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