I thought Jack was crazy when he told me: "I like knives because they don't run out of bullets."

This was Before: I was a lackey for Simone and Carly and it was my turn to humiliate the outcast. I got a Coke from the machine and flicked the tab with my nail as I slinked toward his table, the /snap, snap, snap/ reverberating through the lunchroom. I caught Simone's eye as I passed her and she grinned, that I-love-to-make-people-suffer curl of the lips.

Jack didn't look up from his sandwich until I popped the can open and took a long, loud sip. When he did, it struck me how normal-looking he was. Brown eyes, brown hair, tan-ish skin, a big Jewish nose. If he hadn't worn trenchcoats and carried around thick comics with death on the front, he might've passed as a member of society. But he didn't.

He just stared at me for a moment and I remembered that time in freshmen year when he was suspended because he had a journal full of drawings of dead people and weapons. No hit list, or else he'd be expelled, but that was enough to thoroughly creep people out.

Finally, he said, "I don't want you to sit with me."

I smiled because I knew this was coming. "That's nice."

Then he leaned over and snarled right in my face: "I like knives because they don't run out of bullets."

It creeped me out enough that I got up and Simone and Carly decided I wasn't cool enough to join their group.

This is After: I like knives more than bullets.

I remember the first time I killed someone. Zack Taylor, my boyfriend, had run away with me once the Sickness took over. It was raining that night and I had a pocket full of painkillers from a house we'd just looted. They came on us too quick for me to react and all I could do was run. Zach had the gun and two shots killed them, but not before one of them bit him in the arm.

It takes a while for the poison to get to your brain. You have a good day if you aren't bitten any place close to your heart and I knew Zach had at least a few hours. I fed him the painkillers, one and then wait a minute, one and then wait a minute, until there were three left in my pocket. And then I took the three and fell asleep.

Bullets are like gold, now. They are like diamonds and pearls and tickets to the safe places. They are almost urban legends. And when you have no bullets, you get good with other things. I still have Zack's gun, though, stored away in my backpack, in case the urban legends are true.

In movies, it seems like people are so cavalier about killing others. There was a movie that came out right before the Sickness and this little girl pretended to be a superhero and killed a bunch of people. Like it was nothing. Killing the zombies, I can do. They are not people.

But when I killed Zack, that was a person. His favorite color was black and he had been the biggest baby I'd known before the Sickness - scared of spiders and heights and the dark. He'd liked how baby food tasted because he had a baby sister and she'd only eat it if he took a bite first. He'd been my first at almost everything except kissing. He'd told me he loved me the first day we began dating and I don't know if it was true or not, but I said it back because I was seventeen and I didn't know what love was. Everyone else was gone - my mom, my brothers, my best friend - and he was all I had.

And I'd ended his life.

Something snapped in me, and I suppose it was just in time. Because after the Sickness, it was like the Dark Ages, and being a woman who didn't know how to fight meant either death or rape. I was something to be traded for other things - food, livestock, aspirin. People get uncivilized when the world collapses.

I shaved my head, binded my breasts, and learned how to throw knives.