He was alone.
Ellis felt his bottom lip quiver. He scolded himself. If he was going to make it, he had to keep composed.
He'd been backtracking to Savannah ever since the others died. It was the only thing he could think to do. Go back home. Now, seeing the ruin his city had become in his absence, he was starting to think he'd made a mistake.
His best weapon was familiarity. As he got deeper into the city, he began to recognize where he was. He could move quicker. He could hide faster.
Most of the special infected had left. There was no surviving life to feed on. All that remained in the skeleton of the city were the walking corpses of its former residents.
It wasn't long until his presence alerted the horde. They had been the sort of folks Ellis remembered seeing every day; passing them on the streets, waiting in line with them at the store, taking them for granted. Now they were all mad dogs, and he was slicing them up with a machete.
He trimmed the swarming infected and wiped splatters of blood from his eyes, then stopped to take in his surroundings. He'd made it to the city's rural outskirts.
Ellis didn't bother looking in the direction of his mother's house. She was dead. He didn't bother stopping at his house, it would be empty.
His destination was a trailer near the river. When he arrived, he was relieved to see it still looked well managed and fortified. He smiled and wondered why he had ever doubted his best friend's survival. Keith could survive anything!
Laughing, he ran past stacks of weapons and ammo, over a wall of sandbags and barbed wire. He narrowly missed a bear trap on his way to the door, where he pounded and shouted in greeting.
No answer.
He tried again with the same result. And again.
No answer.
Ellis rolled his eyes and used the butt of his shotgun to break the door off its hinges. A sickening smell rushed over him and he froze. He felt hope drain from him like air in a flat tire.
He turned his shotgun back around and loaded it with shaking hands. He called his friend's name.
No answer.
He stepped inside and saw his friend lying motionless under a flickering lamp.
Dead? Sleeping?
He called his friend's name a second time and crept closer. The body jerked and shot up. Keith turned to stare at Ellis with glazed, black eyes. He gurgled.
Ellis shot him without even thinking.
