All Our Tomorrows by Peter Cawdron

his left forearm, he pushes against the rock, wanting to get up. His right arm hangs limp by his side.
    “Stay still,” I say, not sure what to do but suspecting movement is going to make things worse.
    “Help me sit up,” he says, ignoring me.
    I grab him under the armpits and help him lean up against the concrete bridge footing. Rain falls from a dull grey sky, coming down in a drizzle.
    “What a shitty day to die,” Ferguson says, spitting blood to one side.
    I can’t speak. Just a few seconds ago, he was fine. Just moments ago, he was fitter than I, more capable than I, and yet now he lies here bleeding to death.
    “You need to go,” he says. “There’s another bridge about two miles downstream. It will allow you to work around their flank.”
    “I’m not leaving,” I say, surprised by the emotion welling up inside me.
    “You’re a good kid,” he says, reaching out and resting his hand on my cheek. He runs his fingers along the side of my jaw. I can feel the warmth of the blood soaking his fingers.
    I rummage through the backpack. There’s a box of bullets, a couple of magazines for the handgun, a canteen, some wet, soggy beef jerky and a first aid kit along with a bunch of rags and a roll of compression bandage.
    I have to do something about his leg. It can’t be good having it bent back at such an angle. Blood soaks through his jeans, suggesting the shattered bone has pierced the skin. A wooden fence paling has been washed up by a flood, caught in the weeds to one side. It’ll have to do as a splint.
    “This is going to hurt,” I say, grabbing the wood and lying it beside his leg.
    “Everything hurts,” he replies.
    I don’t want to touch him, not because I’m squeamish but because I don’t want to cause him any more pain, but this has to be done. I take his leg with both hands and twist it around, straightening it and laying it on the fence paling.
    Ferguson screams, grabbing at his thigh with his one good arm.
    “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I repeat, gently lifting the paling as I wrap the compression bandage around his leg, anchoring it to the wood. Through it all, Ferguson never swears. He grimaces. His lips are pulled so tight they turn white. His jaw flexes and clenches as his nostrils flare, but he never swears. I would.
    I pull the canteen out, open the lid and hold it gently to his lips. Ferguson sips at the water. He must be in excruciating pain, but it doesn’t show. I busy myself, opening the first aid kit and looking at the supplies—bandages, scissors, gauze, some old medical tape that looks like it’s been used a half a dozen times already, and a packet of over-the-counter painkillers. I pop some of the painkillers in my hand and hold them to his lips.
    “Save them,” he says.
    “Take them,” I insist, forcing them in his mouth and following up with the canteen.
    “Hazel,” Ferguson says as I screw the lid on the canteen and put it to one side. I stop what I’m doing. I don’t know that he’s ever said my name before. I tend to get talked at rather than talked to by most of the adults.
    Ferguson swallows a lump in his throat as he says, “For me, this is the end of the road.”
    “I can make a crutch,” I say, but the look in his eyes tells me I’m not being realistic. Even if I could help him walk, we wouldn’t make it more than a quarter mile before Zee was on us.
    “I’ll go for help.” That isn’t realistic either, or so the grave look on his face says. And I know he’s right. He’ll be dead before I make it back to the commune, if not from his injuries, then from the cold. He won’t last a night out here in the open.
    “You know what I used to do for a job?” he asks, shifting his weight and dragging himself back a little so he can sit more upright.
    I shake my head. I can’t imagine Ferguson doing anything other than killing zombies. It’s hard to imagine there was a time before all this madness.
    “I was a tailor.”
    I’m