Today was going to be amazing. I made sure every nook and cranny of my wife and I’s little house near the lake was spick and span. The furniture, our old wedding pictures from the nineties, the signed tennis rackets her university club gifted her, and everything else was ready for Gabriella’s return.

  My fingers ran across my eye bags as I stood in front of the door with tired legs. Shaking the excitement off of me was impossible — especially when sunset was quickly approaching. That was when my wife told me she was going to return.

  Gabriella was a Research Adventurer — a subspecies of the Resource Adventurers that focused more on researching, noting down, and discovering things about the New World. It wasn’t a job many survivors were keen on doing. Why show interest in the things in this world that ruined everything in the first place? Finding resources just sounded more important.

  But that’s exactly why my wife was so awesome! To go against the general opinion and risk her life to obtain knowledge took balls many men I knew didn’t have. Nothing made me prouder than being her partner.

  I heard a knock on the door, followed by another soon after. My heart skipped a beat as a smile spread across my face. I didn’t bother checking the peephole. My hand was already on the doorknob.

  “Gabriella, hey!” I said, quickly opening the door. “Are you-”

  It wasn’t my wife.

  A tall man with clothes stained in blood stood at the entrance, staring down at me, a hockey mask covering his face. His breaths were heavy and hot on my skin, as if he just got done running a marathon. The machete in his hand was as bloody as his tank top and jeans, and I almost thought his weapon would pierce me next.

  Then I noticed the fresh gash on his chest.

  The man was probably attacked by an animal and escaped by the skin of his teeth. But the only one nearby was the wolf Gabriella tamed a while back. He wasn’t even too fond of me, so I could easily imagine him being easily spooked by a random guy showing up out of nowhere.

  There were other questions, but they were all placed on the sidelines once I heard the man speak.

  “Hun… gry.” He nearly collapsed on top of me, but held himself using the door frame.

  “Oh, ummm, you can have a plate of the soup I was cooking out back,” I offered. “But first, you need to be patched up. You look like a mess.”

  The masked man looked at his clothes, and then nodded.

  Taking that as an agreement, I led the man to my wife and I’s living room and laid him out on the carpet. It was a shame that blood was now painting the floor she’d spent hours cleaning, but a clean floor could be brought back.

  A dead man could not.

  The gash across his chest was ugly and an angry crimson — clear sign a person didn’t do this. If the wolf or another animal attacked him, then what we needed to worry about most was dirt.

  After grabbing all the necessary tools — cups of lake water, cloth, scissors, and antibiotic paste — I began the process. It was obvious the dude was an expert at working out, so I needed multiple cups to cover the size of his chest.

  I cut his tank top and poured the water over the cut. I expected him to hiss or arch his back.

  He didn’t do either, and stayed still like a statue.

  Blood washed away.

  I pressed down the cloth on his wound until the bleeding stopped. Once the red stopped seeping, I smeared a thin layer of antibiotic paste along the edges. If only there were stitches. Gabriella wasn’t allowed to take any the last time she went to work.

  I pulled the skin as close together as it would go and layered strips of cloth across it, tight enough to hold, loose enough to let it breathe.

  “Don’t move around or breathe too hard,” I told him, wiping the blood off my hands with tissues. “You’ll reopen your chest wound.”

  “I don’t need this,” he groaned. “I need food.”

  I pouted. “Is that any way to talk to someone who went out of their way to help you? I’m still expecting two little words first.” Playing around like this with a strange stranger probably wasn’t smart, but even if he planned to do something crazy, that injury wouldn’t let him.

  The man’s red eyes were locked on to me for a bit. I debated grabbing the scissors, preparing my body for the worst.

  That was until he spoke. “Thank you.”

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  The tension in my muscles eased. “Oh… you are welcome!” I smiled a little. “Since you’ve been such a good patient, you’ll be eating well tonight. Just give it another fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  After he gave me a thumbs up, I got up to finish my cooking. But not before I asked him one more thing.

  “What’s your name, by the way?”

  “… My name is Jason.”

  That name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it did. But finding out the answer to that could wait.

  “My name is Hillary.” If he was going to be here a while, then I might as well get comfortable.

  When I came outside, the sky was already dark. Gabriella was supposed to be here by now. She was the one who was supposed to share the meal I made with me, but it looked like that time was going to be spent with Jason instead.

  I sat down on one of the logs near the pot of soup. My skin bathed in the heat of the fire used to cook the food, but it barely soothed me. Intrusive thoughts swirled in my mind — thoughts of my wife facing unimaginable horrors or experiencing excruciating pain.

  I smacked them out of me, holding out hope that she’d return any minute now.

  Twenty minutes passed, and I was still in the same spot.

  Alone.

  Jason came outside to change that.

  I wiped the tears from my eyes. The guy was either an idiot or a complete freak of nature to be walking around with that gash still fresh on his chest.

  I almost told him to go back inside and lay down.

  Then I noticed the picture frame in his hands. Its oval shape made my eyes widen a bit.

  “You’re not really good with manners are you, Jason?” I asked, sniffling. “Which out of my many photos is that?”

  “You have a nice wedding dress. You looked good in it,” the tall man complimented, approaching me.

  I gestured for him to sit down across from me. He obliged. “Thank you. You might not have the best manners, but you do know how to compliment a woman.”

  “When was this?”

  “1999,” I answered, smiling. “Well, it wasn’t a real wedding. Just something our friends and family cooked up for us. We had to wait until 2011 to officially say we were wife and wife.”

  “You waited over a decade to get married?”

  I chuckled. “We didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t really legal for, you know, people like her and I in this state until that year. So until then, Gabriella was my glorified girlfriend. That’s her name. Gabriella.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Eh, what are you going to do, right? That’s just how the Old World worked.”

  “No, what person or entity has the right to tell you what you can or can’t do?” He placed the picture down on the grass. “We’re humans who’ve been given freedom by this world, so we should be able to do whatever we want.”

  His words were like a soft cushion behind my head, replacing the spikes. “Yeah… thank you.” If I didn’t have anyone to talk to tonight, I definitely would’ve bawled until I passed out.

  Jason’s stomach grumbled, and that got a giggle out of me. I had totally forgotten to feed the poor man.

  “Sorry about that. I’ll have a bowl ready for you right aw-”

  He was already on it, grabbing a handful of the hot liquid from the pot. As I watched in shock while he drank the soup from his hands, I realized Jason was anything but normal.

  “Jason, do you have superpowers or something?”

  He wiped his wet hands on the grass beneath his red shoes. “Yes, but it’s not safe for me to talk about with you, so don’t pry any further.”

  Gabriella told me about the superpowered individuals in the Underground City like Daemon and Dante Williams — members of the Underground Radius. There were stories in the other towns about a talking zombie that actually saved humans instead of eating them.

  That last part sounded absurd, but no one would make a distasteful joke like that.

  My wife said that meeting any Underground Radius members was rare, and they didn’t like showing their faces much. Because of that, whether Jason was one of their members was a mystery to me.

  However, I wanted to respect his wishes and not dig any deeper into his past.

  I just watched him enjoy his much needed meal. “You know, she was actually supposed to return tonight. Gabriella, I mean. But it’s about to be an hour now, so maybe that isn’t happening yet. It’s not like I’m scared. I know what I signed up for when she became a Research Adventurer. It’s just that… it’s lonely being here in the house. All by myself.”

  “How long has she been gone?”

  “One month. It’s nothing new. She does it all the time. She said January 19th, and I’m still waiting though.” I laughed, but it wasn’t a genuine one. “Don’t get me wrong. I can take care of myself just fine. It’s just hard being without someone you love for so long.”

  He scratched his neck. “That’s understandable.”

  “I’m sure Gabi misses me too… but whenever she does come back and gives me these cool stories about her adventures, and all the people she’s met and helped, I get this bad feeling that… I’m holding her back.” I fake laughed again. “Maybe she’d be better off without me.”

  Back in college, Gabriella was the star player of her tennis team. She even had a chance to play in the Olympics.

  I ruined that. Not literally. Unfortunately, my dad passed away, and she ultimately decided to set her chance at fame aside to look after me. I always regretted that, even when Gabi told me not to.

  Was I repeating history?

  “You’re a nice person. You patched me up and gave me food — a dangerous looking stranger — when you didn’t have to. Your wife would be foolish to leave you.” He picked up the picture and gave it to me. “I’m sure she’ll be back by tomorrow.”

  I took the photo from him and stared at it for a while, reminiscing on all the good times Gabi and I shared. “Yeah… you’re right. Thank you, Jason. You’re a nice person too, even if you’re a little strange.”

  We talked about many things for the next couple hours, like our lives before the New World started and our favorite things to do. We talked until my eyes struggled to stay open and my brain struggled to come up with new things to discuss.

  I didn’t remember when I slept.

  But I did remember resting on something soft.

  Something comforting.

  *********

  Jason was gone when I woke up the next day, and that felt like a stab to the heart. I knew getting attached to some random dude definitely wasn’t safe or healthy, but it still felt nice talking to someone like that after so long.

  It would’ve been better if he stayed until his cut healed. Then again, a superpowered guy like him would be fine, I bet. After all, he even carried me up to my bed.

  There was this empty feeling in my stomach as I sat up. Jason devoured my cooked food before my taste buds could experience it too. I guess placing me in Gabi and I’s bedroom was the least he could do to apologize for that.

  I sighed. “I wonder if canned fruits could fill my stomach.”

  I wouldn’t have a chance to find out.

  A cold liquid touched my toes when I got off my bed, startling me. Did Jason spill water when he left the room? Although, normal water wasn’t red and didn’t ominously stick to my skin like glue.

  And we didn’t keep it in the closet either.

  A piece of paper was on my bed, though I didn’t look at the words just yet. My curiosity got the better of me, pulling me closer to the closet.

  The stench had just now crashed into my nostrils, forcing me to cover my nose. The bad smell of the world had been around for so long that it became the norm. If you smelled like you peed yourself, then no one shamed you for it.

  That was why this particular stench shook me this badly. The room was like a garbage dump, but instead of broken toys and expired food, it was filled with corpses.

  I reached out for the knob with both hands, trembling. I pushed against the overwhelming fear smothering me and yanked the door open.

  My wife was inside.

  She wasn’t hiding in order to surprise me. I really wished she was.

  Gabriella had been stuffed inside the closet, blood leaking from the many stab wounds in her torso. Her eyes were looking at me. There was no life, no soul in them. Just a deep and dark coldness that dragged me down with it.

  I sank, knees hitting the bloody floor. My body wouldn’t get up. My screams filled the room, and after I got tired of screaming, I thought about how this could’ve happened. But that was too much for me to do, so I cried instead.

  I cried, and kept crying for maybe an hour or two. I tried to find warmth in Gabi’s body, but that was already long gone.

  Answers might’ve been better to find, and that piece of paper I knew wasn’t there before had it. Once my body was strong enough to move, I crawled back to the bed and grabbed the paper with bloody hands.

  The contents left me frozen.

  “HELLO. THIS IS JASON!

  I HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD NIGHT’s REST!

  I’M THE ONE WHO KILLED YOUR WIFE

  OH, AND THANK YOU FOR THE MEAL! YOU’D MAKE A GOOD COOK

  ENJOY THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!”

  PS. IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER, I HAD KILLED HER BEFORE I KNEW YOU WERE HOME. SHE WAS HIDING IN THE CLOSET, FOR SOME REASON.

  “Jason…” I nearly tore the paper in half. “You… You!”

  And to think I fed him my fucking soup.

  “Jason!”