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room to wrestle with Dave. He seemed oblivious to the fact that I had fired another shot in his leg and he grappled with me, rolling both of us onto the floor. My free hand was stuck between our bodies and I had no way to stop him as his jaw opened and dove towards my face.
    I moved my head to the side and his teeth found my shoulder instead. They broke through my shirt and tore skin and muscle. I screamed in pain as he tried to pull back with a chunk of my flesh in his mouth. That’s when another bang from the Glock echoed in the room, sending a wave of pain through my head. Dave slumped down, his full, motionless body pinning me to the floor.
    I struggled and looked to my left. On his dresser was a splatter of blood with small pieces of flesh sliding down. I rolled him off of me and staggered up to my feet while waves of pain racked my brain from the reverberations of the gun blast.
    Somehow, amidst the scuffle, I was able to position the gun just below his ear with enough of an angle to go through his head. He laid there on his chest with his jaw slack. There was a quarter size hole near his temple with a flap of skin and bone hanging by a thin strip of flesh.
    There was no need to feel for a pulse this time. That thought made me shiver. I wasn’t sure if he was really dead before or if I had imagined it.
    Pain seared through me as my adrenaline started to wind down. I gripped my shoulder and backed out of the room. My mind was flooded with thoughts and emotions as I paced around the living room. There was too much going on in my head to think clearly.
    I walked to the cupboard and grabbed my bottle of rum, shaking my head and cursing the whole way. The bottle was still half full.  I took a long drink and almost coughed up half of it, but it seemed to bring me out of my rattled state.
    I looked down at my phone and saw there was still no tower reception and my battery was down to nine percent. No help there. I couldn’t call 911.  Even if I could, they were probably busy with a million other incidents throughout the city.
    I took my shirt off and looked at my shoulder. Dave’s teeth really did a number on me. If I had let him munch on me for another second, I’d be missing half my shoulder muscle. The flesh was torn and ripped, and I could tell I needed stitches.
    Even worse, the dark red blood that was dripping from Dave’s mouth surrounded my wound. Whatever that stuff was, I was sure it wasn’t good.  I’m not sure how worried I was about infection at the time, but I remember the thought crossing my mind. Going to the hospital was out of the question, though. First, I knew they stopped accepting patients yesterday.  Second, I didn’t really want to run outside and see whatever mayhem was going on in the world. I was scared.  I thought about going to a FEMA camp, but I wasn’t sure which schools housed them.
    Gritting my teeth and trying to ignore the pain, I dumped what was left of the rum on the open wound. To my surprise, it wasn’t any more painful than what I was already feeling.
    I went to our bathroom and grabbed the closest thing to medical supplies that we had, which was a cheap ten dollar first aid kit you could pick up at any Walmart. I saw a bottle of peroxide right next to the kit and grabbed it as well. There was more than enough medical tape and gauze to do a quick patch-up of my wound, but I was sure it wasn’t going to be enough. I needed some real medical care, but I had to do something right then.
    I poured the peroxide on my shoulder thinking it wouldn’t burn any worse than the rum. Oh, how I was mistaken. I cried out in agony as soon as it registered to my nervous system. I toughed it out though, worried more about infection than the pain.  Infection was something they always warned us about in first aid training while I was in the Army.
    After a few more pours of the acid-like liquid, I covered the wound with a pack of gauze that I had soaked with antibiotic cream. I wrapped the