"We've got to remain logical!" his own words rang in his ears. They weren't new. Those words had been his mantra his entire life. He'd always put rationality and logic before all things.

Before all things…

As he sat in the makeshift TV studio he could remember all the things he'd put aside for Science... no for his career.

"Scientists always think in those terms…" the idiot host droned on, but he didn't hear him. He was continuing the mantra and was able to admit in his own mind that the only person he could or wanted to convince was himself.

How had things gotten to this point? How had he gone from top of his field research to placating dummies who couldn't understand the severity of their own predicament? How had the world come to this? In any end of the world pandemic scenario he'd researched for Washington he'd never envisioned this.

He was stuck here with people who could not see reason. He was the last reasonable person alive.

Less than a year ago he'd been in charge of a crack team delving into how to combat weaponized viruses and suggested government policies in the event of an attack. He'd recommended quarantines and proper disposals of bodies. They'd worked on vaccines and treatments. But this…dead people getting up and walking…attacking the living…eating the living? It was not something for which his experiments had prepared him.

And yet somehow his entire life had prepared him for this. He was the only one who could control his emotions and deal with the problem in the only way it could be dealt with – logically.

When he wouldn't respond the TV host walked away, leaving him alone with his thoughts. The cameramen had long ago walked off. Was anyone even watching? Was there anyone left to save?

The truth of the matter was that that didn't matter. He would press on like he always had…

When the outbreak had begun he had found himself in the same predicament that many had. His wife had attacked him.

She shuffled into the room looking like a grotesque shell of the former woman, her skin had gone pale and her eyes bloodshot and unfocused.

He remembered the first time he had seen her, in the university library. She looked up at him with those big brown eyes and his mouth had gone dry. She had been so beautiful.

Now, he was strangely calm as the creature approached. He'd heard the reports of hysterical and homicidal maniacs, but as he looked at her she clearly wasn't hysterical. She was dead. She had to be with that much of her neck missing.

He remembered following the shape of that neck with his hand as he kissed her on their wedding day and the joy that had filled him when she smiled up at him and said his name.

Now those lips were dried out flaps that twitched aimlessly as a low moan sounded in that back of the creature's throat. It raised his wife's arms and began to reach for him with her long elegant fingers, now caked in blood.

Those same fingers had once lovingly caressed cradles and baby clothes at the store when she was pregnant, and covered her face in agony when she lost the baby only to be told she'd never be able to conceive again.

He heard the artless stomp of the creature's approach and remembered the stomp of his wife's furious feet when yet again he returned home late from the lab.

As it drew nearer the moan became more insistent, more like the anger in her voice when he forgot her birthday in a fervor of one of his scientific discoveries.

He reached for the umbrella he knew to be in the stand just behind him as he waited for the best possible moment. As he raised the weapon, he whispered, "Emily, I love you."

He realized as the sharp point of the umbrella pierced her eye that it was the first time he'd ever said that to her.