Larry slammed the iron pipe into the zombie's skull, splattering brains across the road and finishing it off. Panting, the young man stood up and hefted the brain-covered makeshift weapon with a half-hearted smile towards the woman smiling at him from where she was standing over the body of another zombie whose head she'd just blown off with her nine-mil handgun.
The iron smell of blood was thick in the air, along with decay and rot. It was the usual smell of a zombie world. And Dominic, the other survivor in their little trio, only made it worst as he walked up to Larry puffing on a generic cigarette that smelled like old, dirty gym socks and giving Gabby (the woman) an ugly, tobacco-stained smile. The man was chunky and balding and his face was covered in bad acne to boot. He was totally unattractive.
"You handled yourself pretty good, kid," he told Gabby. The way his eyes traveled up and down her body, he thought of her as anything but a kid. "Maybe you actually know what you're doing. Unlike this punk Perry or Larry or whatever his name is."
Larry shook his head in silence, rummaging in the clothes of the zombie he'd killed, hoping to find a weapon better than the iron pipe. He didn't want to get in an argument with the other male survivor right now; it was problematic enough fighting zombies, but fighting another human being, let alone one with a shotgun hanging from a strap around his shoulder, would be tough enough to warrant caution.
"Now I personally think I should be in charge . . . " Dom explained slowly. "Because I'm obviously the most capable and leader-like of us three."
Larry snorted in surprise and derision. That statement had been almost laughingly absurd yet the way Dominic was saying it, Larry knew he was serious. "We don't have time for this right now. Gabby, let's leave this prick behind and head to the mall like we had always planned."
The woman smiled back at her boyfriend, looking from him to Dominic slowly. "Yeah," she agreed after a moment. "You don't have what it takes to be leader, Dom. You stay here, huh?"
She raised her nine-mil and shot him through the cheek viciously. Dom's eyes widened in horrified surprise and he grabbed at the bloody bullet hole and let out a garbled scream of pain. Gabby shot him again through the right side of the chest and he fell over onto his face without another sound. Dom was dead as a doornail. She kept firing into his body point-blank slowly, taking a step forward with every slow, deliberate pull of the handgun's trigger.
Larry gaped in surprise; he hadn't wanted the guy to die, per se. "What the . . . You just killed a man, Gabs!"
"Who gives a fk?" she asked airily, slapping a new mag into the pistol. "Take his shotgun, let's find a car to hot-wire, and go and get somewhere to stay safely for a while. Or do you want to end up like Dom?" She grimly aimed the pistol at his cheek.
Larry stared down the barrel of the pistol, swallowing hard and hoping not to give the wrong answer. "Alright, sweetheart." He grabbed the shotgun off of Dom's body and followed Gabby down the street to look for a car, formulating a plan in his mind ever so slowly.
Once they were gone, the bullet-ridden body of Dom slowly sat up and looked around before letting out a chilling moan and following them.