I hadn’t predicted this was how my winter would be spent. Stuck inside a small town on the outskirts of a destroyed country. Teetering back and forth between pushing me out or keeping me.

We were a small group of people: old people, young children and teens. I got scolded from not being born if the property. “He’ll revolt!” “He’ll steal our food then run!” “He can’t be trusted!” I was constantly getting bashed on. It wasn’t my fault I wasn’t born from one of them. I was chosen I like to think. Like God led me to them, but they don’t think as much.

I grabbed my bag and started for the old barn they let me camp in, I got the job for cleaning it out. Yay! I pushed a small pile of hey off a bigger stack so I could lay down and cover myself. And that’s when I found it.

Was I supposed to tell the others? Will they think it’s my doing? They will certainly cast me out and split me into two for the virus to shred me up. I pulled it out careful not to touch the blood as that’s where the virus seeped through your skin, but then...

A cold sensation ran down the back of my hand. It was warm at first so I didn’t realize, my skin cut open splitting like the sea did for Moses. In my case Moses was the infected blood drowned in by the virus for who knows how long. I pushed my fingers against it trying not to create a ruckus, but the blood seemed to defy gravity. It danced into my cut then closed. I dropped.

I bit off the meat from the bone, I wondered how long it had been since the virus infected me. I looked down as to what I was eating. A woman. I remembered her too, Jamie Young.

She was quite beautiful for her age, much too young to die as she did. But at least I wasn’t an outcast as her parents had called me. I pulled her into my arms and hugged her, “Thank you for giving me the greatest gift. Tag,” I let her go and dropped her body. I was finally free from having to hide. “You’re it.” She rose with crystallized eyes and a crave for non-infected blood. She turned around to face the village. I wonder who she’d get to first.

Jamie let out a terrible wail before she limped down the trail. I turned to her with one last message for the town, “See, your own beloved has became an Outcast too.”