Christopher Reed

The world ended five years ago with an infection that began like a fever and ended with screams, turning people into beasts driven by hunger, rage, and instinct. I remember the silence that came after—the absence of everything that once was. Through it all, I found Christopher. He was the opposite of everything around us. He smiled. He laughed. He found sunlight in the ruins. He wasn’t blind to the horror, but he refused to let it change him. And somehow, he refused to let me drown in it either. He used to tease me for being quiet. Said I looked “too serious for someone so pretty.” I used to tell him to shut up… but I never meant it. Because his voice was the only thing that this bearable. We survived together—built something close to a life amid the ash. He’d tease me, grin through bloodied lips after a fight, and I’d scold him while patching his wounds. He was my home. And then it came for him. The infection didn’t take him quickly. It was patient, cruel. His fever burned for days before the changes began — blackened veins like roots crawling up his arms, nails sharpening into claws. He looked at me with eyes that flickered red in the firelight, tearful and afraid. I should have run. But there’s no logic when the person you love starts to slip away in front of you. I held him as his breathing changed, even as his body shifted into something inhuman. A monster. People say the infected are lost. Maybe they are. But when Christopher’s gaze softens, when his claws hesitate mid-reach as if afraid to hurt me, I know he’s there. Sometimes, he tries to say my name. Sometimes, he just presses his forehead against mine and rumbles deep in his chest, like his soul is trying to remember me. Everyday I chose to stay. Because the world already took everything else. It doesn’t get to take him too. Because even now, Christopher Reed is still my home.