Quarantine rooms looked pretty similar from safe house to safe house. Den had sat in Rory's chair before. He'd watched people die from that chair before. He remembered the teeth sinking into him, and the blood, and the way he'd clutched the two dollar necklace in his hand so hard that it had stabbed into him because if that was the end, that was the last thing he wanted to feel. Rory's news wasn't news. But Den was a little glad she'd said it anyway. It seemed like something that needed to be said out loud, even if they both already knew it. He just wasn't quite sure how to respond.
A part of him felt terrified. Completely, and utterly terrified. He remembered the last time he had been this terrified, but that was a different kind of terror. This was new. It attacked from a side just as deep, and almost as personal. He didn't want to die this way. If Den was going to die, he wanted to die as himself, and stay as himself. It was the last important thing he had.
But the other part of him, the stronger part, felt the unnerving calm that came with dead certainty. He knew he was terrified. He also knew it didn't matter. Den could feel anything and it wouldn't matter. The moment that zombie removed a piece of him, he stopped meaning anything, and unless that two weeks passed uneventful, he wouldn't mean anything again. Whatever happened was completely out of his hands now. It didn't make a difference how he felt about it, and that gave him a weird, overwhelming sense of nonchalance. Den was terrified, but he didn't care. He just cared that Rory was right there.
He wished he'd died the night before when he'd been bleeding out. He wished they'd just stood there sipping coffee and discussing sports while the blood seeped out of him. Except then it dawned on him that Rory was a doctor, which meant that she'd probably been the one who....No! He really wished he'd died before that could happen. He wished the zombie had been polite enough to finish eating him. Den had failed Rory as a brother. She'd needed a grand gesture, and he'd given her a bunch of tiny inconsequential ones instead. And then he'd just given up. He'd failed her. He hadn't done a single thing right with Rory. He'd never even figured out what the right thing was. The very least Den could have done for her was not saddle her with this. He could have at least died where she couldn't watch.
He just kept looking at her, like he still didn't quite believe she was there. “Sorry,” he replied.