he was strong. i could see that much. and bitter, with a black-coffee way of speaking that kindled thoughts of fallen soldiers learning to walk again. holding fast to my blue plastic tray in true freshman fashion, my focus wandered to the red band around his arm, akin to the one encircling mine—always a symbol of the hunter, never the hunted. but i could not pay attention to this small detail for long; a gruff voice was asking me questions and a pair of sea eyes swept me away with the tide.

he was tarnished. i knew from the moment he took his seat, like an elderly man would, holding onto the back of the chair for support before lowering himself down. though it was easy to hide behind an ever-charming veneer, the fine wood was peeling at the corners, revealing the coarse plywood beneath. we talked of the living dead, zombies and zeds, planning attacks like star-ornamented generals as casually as two strangers meeting at a coffee shop. we never touched, and a bridge was building on our crumbled foundations.

he was beautiful. an army assembled under his command. and with myself at his side, we were breathtakingly terrifying. breathers defended the air that had held them thus far like a secondhand cradle, yet we were the vacuum that ****** it directly from their lungs. the ruthlessness of it all stirred up carnal instinct in me that had existed millenia before I was even conceived. and he felt it, too. there was no denying that the hypothetical taste of flesh on our tongues was enough sustenance to keep us from feeling the bite of autumn or the memories of betrayal sulking in our war-punctured hearts. a different war, for certain; but there was still the hunter and the hunted, and we fought with every cell within ourselves to be the former.