She put her good hand on my cheek. She was bitten and her clock was counting down, yet still all her thoughts were geared towards comforting me.
God, I’m such a selfish prick. She was fucking dying, and she was comforting me. What kind of arsehole needs to be comforted by their dying friend? Damn it, Lockey, you’re such a useless fucking shit.
“I can feel it, Erin,” she said gently. “It’s like a poison spreading through me, taking me piece by piece. It’s cold, and it’s dark, and it’s speeding up.”
“No,” I sobbed, disbelief and denial giving way to the grim reality. “There’s got to be something we can do.”
Freya gave me such a gentle sympathetic smile, and it was like a knife to my heart. Still the caregiver, even as the darkness rose to swallow her.
“You know a bite is final, Lockey.” She never called me that. She always called me Erin, and I never minded. She had such a sweet, lilting way of saying it that it sounded like a name I wanted. “And because it’s final, I want a choice.”
“A… choice?” I didn’t grasp what she was implying, my mind too clouded by heartbreak and denial.
“You can’t let me become one of those things,” she breathed, fear creeping into her voice for the first time. “I don’t want your lasting memory of me to be a monster, a thing of the dark. I don’t want even the chance to hurt anyone.”
“What?”
“She wants you to end it for her,” said Nate quietly at my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him enter the kitchen. “Before she turns. Go out on her own terms, as a whole person, not a thing.”
Freya’s eyes misted with tears for the first time, nodding at Nate’s observation.
I was horrified. “You want me to… to… kill you?”
“I’m already dead, Erin,” she sniffed. “I can’t die at peace, knowing you’ll see me become one of those things. They turn so fast, Erin. So fast. What happens to someone who turns? What happens to their soul, if such a thing exists? Is it simply gone, swallowed by the dark?” She shook her head. “Please,” she implored, “don’t make me find out. Let me go as Freya, not the thing that used to be her.”
Even through my grief, I knew she was right. She was on a rapidly decreasing countdown. I could see her sliding away even as we spoke, her once radiant complexion sickening towards death, the life visibly slipping from her while we talked.
If this was the one thing she wanted from me, right at the last, who was I to deny her? All I could do was nod, and sob, “okay,” before her arms were around me.
I grabbed on to her, desperately mumbling some prayers to whatever force had cursed our world with the dead, begging it to take me in her place. The world wouldn’t miss a fuck up like me, but Freya was so… so good… it seemed a travesty, a tragedy, that she was taken this way.
Like all prayers inevitably do, they fell on deaf ears. If there was any God, he was either absent, or a royal fucking bastard for doing this. What kind of “grand plan” requires the death of such a gentle soul?
There is no God; this world of ashes and the dead is all there is. All that matters is the people you care for, and who care for you. We have to decide our own destiny, make our own way and look after each other, because we are all we have left now.
Freya finally let me go, smiling with unbearable compassion as she thumbed the tears from my cheeks, then stood and walked outside.
“Stay in here, all of you,” I heard Nate say. “Remember her as she was. I’ll go with them.”
There were murmurs of assent. No one wanted to see this. I didn’t want to do this. But Freya needed it, and I couldn’t deny her the only thing she’d ever asked of me. It was the one thing that would give her peace.
September 18th was a bright afternoon, but the dark clouds in the distance seemed symbolic, creeping ever closer, menacing, readying themselves to draw a dark curtain over the sun and pour their misery atop me. Freya walked regally, despite her weakening body, moving out of sight of the lodge’s kitchen. No one would see her final moments except me and Nate.
We embraced again and she nodded, saying nothing, her expression speaking volumes. She knelt, no fear on her beautiful face, my eyes glancing down at the angry crimson dressing shrouding her injured hand, and it was like seeing it for the first time again. Such a little thing, a bite to the hand, yet it was Freya’s death sentence, her recruitment to the legion of the undead unless I freed her from that obligation.
I could feel Nate’s eyes on me, watching every move as I slid the Glock from my hip, forcing a firm grip on the weapon, though my hand felt so weak. The weapon was live, deadly, and I couldn’t keep it straight in my head what I was planning to do.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked, desperate to think of some other way.
“There’s no other way, Erin,” she said, her voice feather soft. “I know this is a terrible thing for me to ask of you, but I need this, Erin. Don’t let me become a monster.”
Eyes burning with tears as hot as magma, I nodded, moving behind her. Glancing up, Nate’s features were expressionless, save for a tightening around his eyes. He was trying to lend me his strength to do what was needed, but I knew this was killing him inside. He was fond of Freya. The two of us had become like foster daughters to him in our short time together.
