"I got it!"

"What are you yelling about, Kurt?"

"I got the flame to take!"

"Fred, Kurt, will both of you kindly shut the fuck up? Unless you want to be eaten, in which case I think I saw some rebar back there you can use to spit yourself on."

"Fine, fine, you're right. But hey, I got the fire going, you got anything to cook with Tyler?" Kurt said, adjusting the pyramid of logs over the quickly heightening flames. Tyler had already pulled out the foldout grill, three cans of Spam and a knife and was handing them to Kurt. Those two idiots were going to get him killed, but he couldn't just leave them behind. They kept following him.

"Thanks man. This whole thing is the pits. I saw my fucking trig teacher at that store!" Fred said, opening up his Spam and slicing it up with the knife while Kurt put the grill over the fire. Tyler sighed, shaking his head as he popped the top on one of the last sodas he had. Gulping down a third of the bottle at once, his thoughts were inexorably drawn to how he had met the two teenagers across the fire from him.

He had been walking down the empty street, avoiding the places where the packs of undead seemed to group together. Another boring day looking for somewhere to hole up for the night. He had just taken a break and had only been walking for about ten minutes when he heard yells coming from a liquor store across the street. They were all making what noise they could with their decaying vocal chords as they pounded their hands against the huge glass windows in front of the store, while two more voices were yelling from inside. Immediately, out of habit borne from two weeks of avoiding death, he moved into the shadows of the closest stoop, pulling the handgun he had taken off of a grey haired zombie days before. He didn't know what it was, but it had a 16 round clip and enough power to get through the skull, so he had kept it.

Moving slowly, making sure there weren't more zombies in the alleys around the street, Tyler moved towards the group, pistol aimed. He counted ten, but the group was moving too fast to be absolutely sure. Suddenly a loud crack split the air as the Plexiglas window weakened under the onslaught of the zombies. Squeezing the trigger, Tyler smiled as a zombie crumpled with a fresh hole in it's skull. He fired four more times, re-killing two zombies and dropping a third to the ground to be trampled by the group as it turned towards the new target. The smile disappeared as Tyler turned and sprinted down the street and into an alley. As the zombies turned the corner, continuing their low bellowing, a flash lit the walls and raced down an alley perpendicular to their location, followed quickly by another. Before a third could shoot off into the alley the zombies had turned and were chasing after the fleeting bits of light, forgetting about the liquor store and Tyler. Six pops covered their moans and the thuds of their bodies hitting the pavement, followed by a belated seventh.

Pistol still in hand, Tyler walked out of the alley and ran back to the liquor store to peer into the cracked window. Flicking the safety and taking hold of the gun by the barrel, he finished the job with a few quick strikes of the grip and stepped in to look for the source of the other screams.

There were no other zombies inside, and after walking up and down the aisles and then checking the security camera's tv screen behind the counter, Tyler holstered the pistol and walked to the back of the store. A door, covered in faded blue paint chips that could only hint at it's original color, was the only break in the wall to wall coolers filled with booze in the place. A quick inspection told him it opened outward, so he took hold of the handle and opened the door, moving so that he would be behind it when it stopped moving. A scream followed by the loud crash of a teenager running into a shelf full of glass bottles followed, and Tyler was left looking down at Fred and Kurt, the former holding a crowbar; the latter a box cutter. He had laughed, kicking the crowbar away and saying, "Relax, I just saved your asses."

He had thought that would be the end of that. He grabbed some bottles of the strongest alcohol he could find, refilled the bag he kept specifically for cigarettes, and turned to leave to find his two rescuees standing in front of him, arms laden with various alcohol. "You've got to let us come with you!" "There will be more here anytime now, and the window's broken!" "You've got guns, we have a box cutter!" and various other pleas spewed from their mouths as he pushed past them and out onto the street, but they just kept following him. Finally, an hour later, he stopped in his tracks and rounded on them, agreeing to let them continue following him if they dropped all the booze. Dismayed but obedient, they did just that, but still hadn't shut up.