I grabbed my gun. It was a pussy pistol, so it was obvious that I didn't plan on being gone for too long. I bent down to tie my shoe. It has a retarded and unnecessary tendency to untie itself without my damned permission. I was just about to head out on my mission, when I heard a moan. It was Joel, waking up from his beauty sleep. I bet he was about to go over the checklist. He managed to catch me every time I was about to leave. It has become a routine to review everything that I needed before I left. I admit that it is a smart idea, but it got old after twenty years. Sometimes, I wondered if he ever actually slept.

"You have your weapons?" His raspy tone belted from beneath his overwhelmingly white and shaggy facial hair. I mouthed the same words. He rubbed his face with his palms.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, your majesty." The sarcasm was strong with this one.

"Ellie-" he said reassuringly. It would have been all that more reassuring if his lungs didn't betray him. He began to cough. I felt guilty for being a smart ass, but he deserved it for nagging. His cough grew even hoarser over the years. If only there was a doctor close by, but that was highly unlikely. It's the fucking apocalypse for crying out loud.

He stopped coughing. "I'm gonna trust you to come back."

I laughed. "Where the hell have you been for the past twenty years, Joel?"

He laughed, but it was cut short by another coughing episode.

"That's my girl," he said in between coughs. All he needed to do now, was stroke my fur, and throw a stick in the air.

I smiled as I loaded my gun. Without hesitating, I walked outside and shut the door behind me. Everything was so quiet outside. The only thing that I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. The trees were dead. They surrounded the circumference of the perimeter. A few of them scattered throughout the snowy field ahead of me. To my right was a frozen creek. I did not want to head that direction. I didn't want to risk falling through the ice and ruining the only pair of shoes that fit me.

I looked to my left. There was a church. There was definitely not going to be any service today – or, ever again. Even if service continued, I wouldn't attend the sermon. God has been a dick, lately. I don't feel like he attributed to anything, but pure chaos and destruction. If there even was a "God," I definitely would not want him around. If he existed, and magically appeared out of nowhere, I would kick him in the balls that he lost a long ass time ago.

I proceeded forward, deciding it was clear enough to do so. There was an abandoned barn, not less than half a mile away from me. The sun's rays glistened directly above it. It was a combination between a newborn horizon, whiteness of the fog, and radiation emitting from the heat of the sun. There would be a rabbit or squirrel running around in there. Over the years, I have learned that little critters like to come back to the places that feel the most familiar to them. All I could think about was the barbecue I was going to cook for lunch today.

The snow beneath my sneakers crunched with every step I took. It would suck if there were clickers in the barn. It would become more of a challenge to escape inconspicuously. At the speed I was going, I was already halfway to the entrance. I looked behind me, and took a mental note of the trail I had left behind.

"Note to self," I whispered in between breaths, "Exercise more."

I made it to the barn. The wall was torn to my right. A decent portion of the wall was missing to my left. In between the walls was a barred, giant gate. Inside the termite-infested walls was a horse. It was no longer edible. A wound, which, in this situation, was an understatement of the term, exposed its intestines. Flies swarmed around it. Anyone could have mistaken the flies for bees by the intense buzzing noises.

"Joel would be thrilled if I brought this big guy back," I said to myself, with an overwhelming hint of sarcasm. Talking to myself has become a reoccurring hobby of mine.

I crouched down in front of the barn's gate. Something had startled me. In return, a god damned clicker heard me. It still seemed unsure of what it heard, though. It was in one of the stalls on the opposite end, which gave me more leeway than I could ask for. There were four stalls between me and the lonely bastard.

I quickly scavenged around to see if there was a heavy enough object I could throw. There could still be food in there. Fortunately, I was skinny enough to fit through the gaping hole in the wall. I crawled through. In front of me, was an opened stall with nothing but shavings and horse shit. The smell was, still, overrun by the rotting horse.

I remained low. The stall to the left of the horse-shit stall, was in front of the one with the clicker in it. The door to it was locked from the inside. Someone would have had to manually lock it. I made my way for the stall. The clicker's distorted shoulders twitched toward my direction. God damned snow. I wanted to let out a triumphant sigh. There was a piece of decaying wood gradually making its way to the ground.

I looked through the hole that the broken piece created, just in case there was something essential to my mission in it. If I could digest an infected, rotting human corpse, then I would have hit the mother lode. The body was sewn to the corner of the stall with the evolved fungi infection. I scanned it with my eyes in bleak curiosity. Its legs were spread as wide as they could possibly spread. Its jeans were torn. The shirt was ripped open by the various growths the fungi created over time. I couldn't tell if the shirt used to be white or not. Its head appeared to be more of a mutated mushroom. The brain looked like a bowl of white, forty-year old spaghetti. I smirked. It's sane to smile at a re-decaying corpse, right? My smile went away when a fly landed around its empty eye socket.

"Don't do it," I whimpered.

It entered the corpse's eye socket. I gagged. It almost ridded me of my appetite. The clicker turned toward me. I tore the piece of decaying wood off, and giggled.

"I'm holding 'wood'."

This is what I got from running freely with a man, who is more than three times my age; a perverted perspective for everything I came in contact with.

I crawled away from the stall, and around the wall that separated the stall with the bastard in it. I wanted to have some fun.

I whistled. "Come here, you little bastard," I taunted. I almost made an awkward song out of it.

The clicker made its disgusting mating call. I responded to its weak mating call with my war cry. Believe me; it was not even remotely close to a 'cry' of any kind. I rose the block of wood in the air. As soon as the bastard's face was within pulverizing distance, I plunged the wood into its deteriorating face. It went straight through it. It stuck in a seemingly desperate position. Its arms were outstretched, but the life, or thrill, of it, immediately became nonexistent. I let go of my Excalibur. The clicker fell to the ground. Dust flew a couple feet into the air, and floated its way back down. I brushed my hands together triumphantly.

"Now," I said, "That's what I call, penetration."