Chapter 5

Fever Bright

Sanguiherbicidal pills are small and white, not bigger than a pinkie finger nail. They go down easy with water, but leave behind a bitter taste, right at the back of your throat where you can't reach.

Nat gets a tent, tucked into a crevice in the sandstone where it'll be safe from all but the worst of storms, and made out of a reflective fabric so that they aren't cooked alive by the shadeless desert sun. It's just one of their many preparations—another one being that they chart the weather for the next two weeks, a time frame that makes Nat's stomach turn. Who knows how long they'll stay here?

For as long as they've been traveling together now, ever since they left the rest of their group behind and everyone else scattered into different corners of the country, they've never slept apart.

But that night, Ron sleeps in the car.

It's a restless night.

Nat must've drifted off eventually, though, because they wake up to an odd rustling against the tent. Coyotes, probably. Nat groans, hiding their eyes behind a hand as they try to will themself up. Oh, their limbs feel like lead. The rustling comes again, louder this time, closer, too close. Way too close. Nat tears their eyes open and sits up—to come face to face with milky dead blue eyes.

"I thought you might want to ask me my name," she says, her cheeks gaunt, her skin grey, brown hair sweat-slick—and as she speaks, blood gushes out of the gash in her throat.

Nat hurls their pillow towards her with an air-shattering scream.

"Nat?" Ron calls out. "Nat, what's wrong?!"

They try to vault for the exit of the tent, towards him, but—

Nat wakes up to a gust of air, the desert wind howling as Ron leans in through the tent door. Nat jumps out of their bedroll and hectically looks around the stuffy space—nothing. Only the smell of plastic, and a dark orange tint over their belongings as the morning sun shines through the canvas.

"Nightmare?" Ron asks.

"Yeah," Nat pants. "Yeah, I guess so." They're all sweat-slick and hot, feeling it stick their clothes to their skin as they shift to face him.

Ron, for his part, draws back out of the tent, so far that Nat has to stick their head out of the entrance to see him sitting down in a camping chair, next to the starts of a fire. There's no second chair.

"Can you stay in there?" Ron presses the nose bridge of his mask down.

Hurt, Nat crawls back into the darkness of their tent and leans their back against the back wall. They curl up, crossing their arms around a knee. "Yes, whatever, I will stay over here."

Nat closes their eyes. A noise strikes up—rhythmic, a blade on wood. He's carving. The countdown to a cut finger starts. Nat curls further into themself and fishes for their phone, peeking sullenly over their knees to try and make it out in the dark.

They take two tries to unlock it, and heave an annoyed sigh at the third, uncurling so they can see better. And ah, hell. "We don't have internet here." Louder, they call out: "Ron? We don't have any fucking internet!"

"I know!"

Nat checks the available networks—"There's an open WiFi." Two bars, kind of weak.

"Don't fucking use that!"

They roll their eyes and cross their legs underneath themself, against the soft pile of their clothes. "I'm not stupid."

Silence falls between them again. Nat lays down so they can watch Ron as he sits there—his clothes are wrinkled from being slept in, and he's taken his glass eye out of its socket. He likes to keep it in if he thinks they're about to enter civilization, just because of the way people tend to look at him when he's without it. Makes the look of the scar running all the way through his eyebrow and down his cheek just all that much gnarlier when his empty eye stares back out of his face, veiny and pale pink. Looks like he's planning for a longer stay, then.

There's a piece of wood in his lap, right next to his whittling knife. His thumb is worrying over it, the way he does when something's on his mind.

"Where'd you get that?" Nat asks.

"Found it in the sand," Ron says, closing it in his fist like he's trying to hide it.

"Not a lot of trees around here, are there?"

"Sure aren't."

Nat fusses with the weave of their pants, digging their nails into a knot. "How... Did you sleep?"

"The way I always do," he says, "when I sleep in that coffin of a fucking car. Not sure what you want me to say."

Never before have they needed a hug this badly. Have they needed him to rub ointment on their aching skin, to fall asleep in his arms and wake up to snoring.

"Remember when you used to carve those jackals out of soap?" Nat tries.

He looks at them with something like suspicion in his eyes, and that hurts. "Are you angling to tell me they were shit again?"

Nat snorts. "You were what, fifteen? Sixteen? Cut yourself some slack, they were great."

"Lost all of them in the crash," he sighs, and weighs the piece of bone in his hand. "And man, don't act like you ever liked them."

"I was trying to encourage you to do better!" Nat gestures, exasperated. "You don't value—" Anything they do, but they don't want to pick a fight right now. "Oh, whatever. No, I liked them. They were outsider art!"

Ron snorts dryly. "You can say that twice." He puts the tip of his knife to the wood and carves a long groove into it.

"What are you making?" Nat wants to know.

"Dunno," he mumbles. "We'll see."

They watch him work for a moment. He's being so short with them. "Do—" Their voice falters. He doesn't ask, just keeps carving. So Nat tries again: "Do you blame me? Right now?"

Ron startles. His knife slips, misses his leg by an inch. "Shit," he says, and sticks the cap back on the knife. "I mean. Dude, what do you even want me to say at this point? Is blaming you going to fix fucking... Anything about this? Literally any part?"

"I'm not asking whether you want to say it out loud." They sit up, closer to the entrance. The morning sun paints their shadow onto coarse sand. "I'm asking you how you're feeling."

Ron watches them, something deep and unreadable in his eye, warm light brown like mahogany. They've stuck it out with him for all of these years. They've laughed like hyenas together over the dumbest shit, cried it out over cheesy movies, held each other's hands as they fought their demons. They picked him, chose this life with him, those couple years ago when everything around them fell apart. He's theirs. And they aren't giving him up.

"What do you want to do after this?" Nat asks. He just shakes his head and starts to gather up the wood chips out of the sand. Nat watches him roll them up in wax paper with a growing feeling of dread. He has his moments, his tantrums. But when he stops talking, that's when it gets dangerous. When he's just sulking silently, that's when Nat starts to be afraid. Each time it happens, they think he's going to leave them again, the way he left them that one April month, when they'd fought over something so stupid that Nat can barely even remember it, and he took the car and just didn't come back. They never got closure for that. He was just back one day and they never talked about it again.

They can't let that happen. They need to pull him out of his head.

"Do you think—" Nat tries. No, that's the wrong way to start that. "So I've been thinking—" Ron twists the ends of the paper around the wood shavings, pretending to focus, but there's a crease between his brows that screams annoyance, and the movements of his sinewy fingers are too forceful, too chopped. "What if we buy a dog?"

Ron lifts his head abruptly. "What?"

"Well"—They've got his attention. Nat leans forward on a hand, eyes glinting. "You've always wanted one, haven't you? A companion for the road! Outside of me, of course. Think about it."

"Dude, since when do you like dogs?"

"Oh, I like them fine," Nat huffs. "Don't be fucking rude. We could make it a puppy, you know? Raise it together."

His eye flicks back and forth between Nat's for a moment, searching.

"Dude," he says slowly. "I don't know how to tell you this, but I don't think you and me should be raising anything."

"And why not?" Nat snips. "We got ourselves to adulthood just fine, no outside guidance needed. And we make an incredible team, don't we? We can raise a stinking dog! Hell, we could raise a kid if we wanted to!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa."

"What?"

"Are you trying to baby trap me?" he laughs, incredulous.

"Oh you absolute asshole!" Nat hurls a shoe at him and he ducks expertly. "You prick! Stop ducking!"

"Nat." He can't stop laughing, shaking with hysterics. "Fu— Bro—Holy shit, be fucking serious. A whole child?!"

"Tell me you don't think that we would make incredible parents."

"I don't think we would make incredible parents!"

"Ugh!" They flop down onto their side dramatically.

"And all the stuff around it aside, like the fact we're fucking constantly on the run, or the fact we can't even feed ourselves some days, or the fact that I can never decide which one of us is crazier—"

"That's clearly you—"

"We are literally," he exclaims, "so fucked right now! We are so goddamned screwed!!"

Nat stares up at him, sidelong.

"And," he pants, all of his laughter disappearing into sour smoke, "and we're not even dating. Isn't that kind of a prerequisite for the whole parent business? To be dating?"

"Oh, tomatoes tomahtoes," Nat flaps their hand vaguely in his direction. "Tell me that we aren't already practically doing that."

"I mean," Ron says. "Are we?"

For a long moment, they stare at each other.

Ron is the first one to squirm.

"But anyways." He pushes the wrapped candy shape that he made out of the wood chips underneath the pyre of sun-bleached desert wood, and gets out a lighter from a backpack leaning against the back of his camping chair.

Nat makes a noise of displeasure and props themself back up. "You always run from the difficult questions. You never just face things headlong, do you?"

"Hey man, don't start." He flicks the lighter once, twice, in vain.

"I'm serious, Aarón."

He flicks faster, frustrated. "And I'm making a fire so we don't starve. Nat."

"Aarón Odo—"

"Fuck off!" he shouts. The lighter hits Nat's temple faster than they can even see it leave his hands. Nat reels back with the impact, and Ron's eyes widen in shock. "Shit! Did I actually hit you?" He jumps out of his chair cursing, hands out like he wants to check the bruise, but he stops himself short, hand to his head.

Nat opens their mouth to say something, but Ron turns tail and runs.

The hours pass. It's futile to run after him when he's like this. He'll just run further. Nat lays on their back, the tent closed.

Eventually, Nat begins to write—about where they are, where they've been, about how far they've traveled and the people they've met. And about what is going to happen next.

Most people only know about as much as they need to about zombies. They know to track the horde movements like they track the weather, know not to go into the wilderness during seeding season. That infection happens through lungs and open wounds. That a mask will protect you, but it will not save you when a zombie has genuinely set its sights on you. And they know to sever the spine.

What is missing, between all those pieces, between what the news say and what parents say, what teachers try to instill in their cohorts, in the desperate hopes that this time, this time all the kids will make it to graduation—is what happens, really happens to a body, once it is infected.

And that is where Nat has the advantage. That is where they have the experience, the first hand knowledge to back it up. That is what they can contribute to the field, leave their mark, write it down.

Nat lays their phone down before they can type it, their hands shaking, and tries to get some more restless sleep.

Ron is back at the campsite two hours later. And, as predicted, he won't talk to them. Just looks at his phone, texting.

The thirst is just a small scratch at the back of their throat at first. Nat gets rid of it by sipping on their water bottle, but very soon the bottle is empty, and when they look up from their phone two hours later, coming out of their fugue state, it hits them that they're parched.

"Ron?" they call outside, their voice unsure and brittle. "Do we have more water?"

Rustling. The entrance of the tent opens and Ron passes one of their big water tanks through. Nat scrambles to grab it, and then the entrance is already shut again. There's that niggling fear inside them that, if they push far enough, he is actually just going to leave them here.

They roll over, feeling irritation gnaw at them as they flip to the next page of their old yellowed copy of Faust.

Nat remembers that they inhabit a body, and then, acutely, feels like their throat is lined with sandpaper. Half feral, they grab for the water tank, try to haul it closer. Has it always been this heavy? They grab their water bottle instead and fill it up, then drink it all in one go.

They stare down into it, right down to the silver bottom.

"Ron?" they ask again. How close is he? Can he hear them? "Are you..." Is he mad at them? What a childish thing to ask. Nat sinks back in the tent, their bottle in hand.

"What?" it comes from outside, annoyed.

"Nothing," Nat says, and itches at their wrist.

They start to only communicate for food. Lunch is taken in silence, Nat at the furthest end of the tent, Ron multiple feet away from the entrance.

At dinner, Nat feels like they're running a fever. Ron pushes the bowl with their heated up canned slop towards them, and Nat barely manages to pick it up. They withdraw into the furthest corner of their tent, curling up like a hurt animal, and hold the heavy bowl up with both hands.

"How are you feeling?" Ron breaks the silence, his voice muffled through a layer of fabric.

Nat curls up further, glowering at the entrance where they can only just barely see his elbow. "Oh, now you care?"

"Fuck off," he says. "Of course I care. You're just being a dick again."

"I am not being a dick." They itch their shoulder. "You overreacted."

Ron sighs audibly. "Seriously, Nat? Fine, yeah, whatever."

"Oh yeah," Nat growls. "Back down. You are such a good person. Always in the right. At the pearly gates, Saint Peter is going to eat out of your hand."

"What the fuck?" Ron gasps outside the tent. He has to have his back to it now, that's how close he sounds. "Where did that come from? You know I don't even believe in that shit, right?"

"Oh sure you don't," Nat says. "You can say that all you want, but Brazil is Catholic. You even used to have that huge Jesus statue! Even if you're personally an atheist now or whatever, when you grow up with it, it sticks with you. And it's not shit."

There's a clink outside of his spoon hitting the bowl. "Do you seriously think that a country having mostly Catholics means that everyone there is Catholic?"

At his tone, Nat feels defensiveness prick at their neck. "Of course not! I'm not a child."

"I even used to do card readings for you!"

"That was more of a party trick though, wasn't it?"

Ron heaves a groan. "So anyways. The catholic one is you, not me."

"Aha!" they exclaim. "You don't know the name of my religion either!"

"It's fucking Shrovetidian." Oh. "What's mine?" Oh. Um. "Yeah, you have no idea, because you never asked!"

"I figured you'd just bring it up yourself if you wanted to talk about it!" Nat retorts. "Each and every time I try to get you to talk about your past, you clam up!"

Ron falls silent. Only the clink of his spoon breaks the silence.

"Yes," Nat says, "exactly like that." They shovel a spoonful of slop into their mouth. Travel food. Keeps for months on end. Disgusting.

"...It's Spiritism," Ron says. "That's got a ton of different sub-streams back home. Thieves and street kids like me pass it on to each other. I did my first seance when I was eight."

Nat considers this. "And do you actually believe in all that?"

"Yes," he grumbles. "Though not as much anymore."

"Then what's up with your rosary?"

Ron falls silent. Nat direly wishes they could see his face. So they lean to the side, down on their elbow until they can. And he looks caught.

"Wait," Nat blinks. "Ron. What is up with the rosary you make a huge deal about not losing?"

"Don't you have mush to eat?"

"The mush isn't going anywhere." Nat itches their chest.

"Are you itchy?" Ron asks.

"Ron."

"Seriously. I asked you like ten minutes ago, and you still haven't told me how you're feeling."

"Feverish," Nat grumbles. "Itchy all over. And incredibly thirsty." In other words, not good.

"Damn," he says, hollow.

"Yeah," they say, and crawl back into the tent, having lost all desire to needle him about the stupid necklace.

He believes in an entire folk religion and he never even told them. Nat pokes at their food. What else hasn't he told them about? And are they going to live long enough to hear it?

They sleep like shit that night.

Nat doesn't really know what to talk about after that.

They don't talk when they wake up, and they don't talk as they eat their breakfast either, fried goat meat and beans on toast.

And Nat says nothing as they shut themself into the tent, the small oppressive space that's starting to feel more like a sardine can than a home and is starting to smell of sweat and plastic. Nor do they make a sound when Nat peels their clothes off to change into something fresh, and the beautiful dark red spider lilies on their shoulder come out of their shirt wilted. Nat presses a hand to their mouth as they take stock of the damage, rust brown spots all over the leaves, the edges of the spider-thin perpetually blooming flowers dried up and brittle.

It's the fight with the forget me nots—no. A first leaf has broken through their wrist now, bloody, framed by sharp-nailed red scratches, and the leaf bears the very same spots. So it isn't the fight, it's the medication.

Of course. It's a sanguiherbicide. It's a broadband. Their flowers are going to die.

Quietly, Nat cries into their hands.

And the next time that Ron watches them take a pill, they push it under their tongue, and spit it out into a worn sock when he isn't looking.

Their head starts to swim, the cold night air growing more and more painful against their skin. It starts to hurt to wear clothes, but they can feel more and more soft spots through their shirt, bulging through the fabric, and Nat doesn't want to look.

Ron starts to stay further away. He pulls the car back a good few feet, moves the camp. They miss him instantly. When they do talk, he pulls the mask on firmly, and Nat never sees more of him than his brown eyes and his black eyebrows.

By the end of the third night, Nat coughs into the crook of their elbow for the very first time, and when they pull their arm back, there's blood on their sleeve.

"Ron?" they call out. "R-Ron?!"

There's the sound of something knocking over and hard footsteps in the sand.

"What?" he pants. "What—what's wrong? Nat?"

"I'm coughing now," they sob. The tent is shut. It needs to stay shut. But they want to climb into his arms, want him to squeeze them and tell them everything will be okay. It won't be okay.

"Fuck," he breathes. They can hear his voice shake, and Nat can't help but wonder if he's more afraid for himself or for them. "You'll—you'll be okay. Just—sleep. Sleep it off. You've been sleeping like shit, right? That can't be helping."

"Sleep isn't going to fix this," Nat whimpers. They curl into a little ball and feel the deep itch in their lungs, the burning up their trachea, the desert dryness of their mouth. "Water," they sniff. "Water, maybe that will—it will help. It will fix this."

"I'll get you some," he says, and they hear him run. When he comes back and pushes it through the tent entrance, he's wearing gloves.

"There's barely anything left in this," Nat realizes with horror as they pull it closer, as the entrance to the tent already shuts.

"This is the last container," he fusses. "We're out."

"We're—"

"I have to drive," he says, "and get more."

"No," they snap in a panic, hugging the container tight. "No, don't leave me here. Not like this."

"What else am I supposed to do?" Ron whines. "I can't take you with me, dude, I'm sorry."

"You're abandoning me here."

"You and I both know that's not true," he says, with an edge of—Nat realizes they don't know with what. If only they could see his face.

"I'm gonna be back in a couple hours."

"It's almost sunrise already," they say. "Stay—stay the day. Then go."

"You've been drinking a shit ton of water," Ron says, "and not even pissing most of it back out. We're gonna die out here if I don't get more, you especially. Seriously. Fuck, man," he breathes, "I wish Haru was here."

"To do what?" Nat whimpers. "Yell at me? Make it worse?"

He doesn't have an answer to that. He misses his beat, quiet for too long, and Nat sinks their hot forehead against the cool metal of the water container, shivering. He has been talking to her, hasn't he? Nat can fully picture the advice that she's been giving him. He's going to go to the city and get medical treatment for himself. He's going to leave them, he is.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. I'm going. I have to go. I need to—just a couple hours. I'll be back in a few. I'll call you."

Nat chokes on another attempt to make him stay, out of words. So he leaves.

"Sixth day of being sick," Nat types into the notes app of their phone, then deletes it again. No, no. This has to be good. They can feel their lungs constricting, feel the fever crescendo. They don't have any time left. Not for subpar writing.

"On the interaction between devorator sanguinis lycoris, common name blood spider lily, and an as of yet unidentified subspecies of—" What did Laquita call it? "...Devorator sanguinis myosotis, a zombifying flower found in the depths of a water filtering facility in the north of the Sonoran desert, inside the human body." They bold it.

"Test subject has been planted artificially with sterilized blood lilies, done via surgical implantation of mature plants previously grown on growth medium. Medium unfortunately unknown. Likely non-human." Nat itches their shoulder. "Subject was infected with spores of the zombifying myosotis through an abrasion, as well as through inhalation, though the latter can't be confirmed. Incubation period was unusually long, nearly two months. Started up a week after subject caught the common cold. Hypothesis: Spider lilies likely had a protective effect on subject's immune system."

"Once symptoms of infection started showing, timeline started normalizing. First day, vines started showing on wrist. Second day, growth, no other symptoms. Third day, thirst and weakness started. Fourth day, itching, fever. As of this report, it is the sixth day. Thirst is unbearable. Unable to measure fever, unfortunately, but it feels high. Cough has started up. Productive and bloody. If the course of the disease follows conventional wisdom, the plant will soon reach my heart." They cough into the crook of their elbow and nearly fumble their phone. Nat's hands shake as they grip it tighter.

"The only unusual symptoms, as you'll note, are thirst and fever. Hypothesis: Lilies and forget me nots are fighting for dominance, affecting the immune system in unusual ways. The thirst—I don't know."

"Let it be noted here that I'm an amateur botanist and have all my knowledge from books and the internet. Let it be known here that I have still kept the lilies alive all these years, auto-didactically. Let it be known that I did this. I made it this far. And if the myosotis takes me out and my body is dissected, then the subspecies can and will be named after me. I don't care if it has a name already, do it." They wipe at their watering eyes.

"Personal note," they continue. "My companion is fetching more water right now. I wish I had a lab. If I survive this, the lilies are going to kill the forget me nots, but might leave some tissue behind that can be analyzed. If I don't survive this, well." Nat has to squeeze their burning eyes shut. Tears roll down their cheeks. Are they crying? They don't think so. Just dry.

"He's not a man of science," Nat types. "He doesn't get it. Might want to burn my body. If you only find this note and not my body, I will attach a photo of the plant. If Ron fucks this up for me and deletes this note, I am going to descend down from the heavens and haunt him, since he apparently believes in that."

Nat props themself up on an elbow. They reach for the water bottle again: empty.

"I'm probably not surviving this," they type. The screen burns against the pads of their thumbs. "Alone in a tent isn't exactly the way I wanted to go. I've always wanted to die in some sort of explosion, or on the battlefield, on the frontier. I revoked that chance when I left the military. My second choice would have been in Ron's arms. This is also out."

They wipe at their nose. It comes back red. Another jolt of fear shakes through them, their heart leaping painfully in their chest.

"If he gets the bright idea to go to a hospital instead of coming back to watch me die, it'll be the best one he's ever had in his life. When he left, I could hear it in his voice how scared he was. We don't know if he's caught it. He had this same infection two months ago, underwent treatment. Might or might not be immune. We don't know much of anything. I was told this is a cross breed with forget me not. New to science, I think. Definitely didn't find it on the internet. Repeat: Name this after me. If you have any faith at all, know with certainty that I am going to haunt your entire family tree if you claim this discovery for yourself."

"I am going to try to sleep now," Nat types. "If I wake up again, I will update." They shut their screen off and lay their phone aside, and take a deep, heaving breath.

"Woke up gasping and disoriented, but alive. Took me somewhere between five and ten minutes to remember I was writing here. Lungs are stable. Heart hurts. Not sure if from flowers or heartache. Companion still not back? It's been four hours. How hard can it be to fetch water? Extremely tired. Going back to sleep."

"Five and a half hours. Don't know if I slept, cannot tell. Dizzy. Nauseous. Fever running bright and hot. Touching anything hurts. I don't want to die."

"Seven. Hungry now? Ron has left me to die. I should've spent my precious time on someone else. Someone who genuinely wants to date me. Someone who wouldn't let me die alone in a shitty tent. Let me die in their arms. What did I do wrong? Hungry. Found a grain bar, smelled and looked gross. Basically inedible. Don't know why."

"Eight. Very stuffy in here. Cold. Hungry, thirsty. I scratched my chest bloody. When?"

"Nine. Ten? Counting is hard. So, so hungry."

"Blood red and petal blue. Poetry. Don't need Ron, or anyone. Never did. No one has my back. I have my back. My lilies have my back. Right—red and blue and red again, lovely beloved red. My anchor my rock my best body part. I am flowers with a person attached. They're wilting though. Shedding tears over them. They were the best thing about me. Here lies Nat, now compost. Not what I wanted to be."

The phone drops to the floor of the tent. Not what they wanted to be.

Noise, outside, says arrival. But their heart doesn't leap.

As they get up, they stagger. Open the tent. See. Sundown, it's sundown, orange purple pink, and the sand. As far as the eye can see, only sand, and car, and him. And he—he watches, sees. His face nothing, meaningless. Quirks of eyebrows? Widened eyes? Who cares. Stagger.

Ron, out of the car, raises his hands, defense. Dark brown hands neon green car, and his face. And the hunger. And then Nat wants, they want. Furiously. Red hot fury.

He left them, he did. And now he shows up. Expects that it's all okay. They'll take him back. It's not okay. Never will be again. Never will.

He left them. He'll pay.

Screaming, then. Iron. Red out of brown between white sharp teeth. And satisfaction.

There's pain, then—struggling, Nat claws at him. He hurts them, holds them back, no right, who does he think—forced to let go, they bite again, just air, teeth clack. He reaches—the knife? Does he dare? No, not it. He holds them hard, pain in their thigh, then, and the world tilts—

Before their lights go out, Nat has one last thought: Fucker carries tranq darts. Oh, the things they don't know about him.