Why, I idly thought, couldn't we have turned left after leaving Riverside?
Ah, well. Pointless to think on the 'why's and 'why not's now. Pointless to do anything. We were all going to die in here. This goddamn lighthouse was going to be our collective tomb, with the only epithet upon it written in our blood by the hands of our killers.
Sighing, I shifted my position slightly, wrapping my arms tighter around the red-jacketed woman who clung to my chest. She made no sound, simply burying her face deeper in my leather-garbed shoulder.
It broke my heart to see her like this. Zoey was such a trooper, it seemed impossible that she could break down. She had always held onto a positive attitude, cheering the rest of the group on and murmuring words of encouragement as she helped us up from the ground, mended our injuries or gave us fresh ammo.
Now she hung onto me as if I was a liferaft in the empty ocean, the only solid ground to cling to.
Leaning my head back against the wood paneling, I listened to the howls of the swarm congregating outside, the dull, arrhythmic thumping of their fists pounding at our fortifications, so hastily erected in our flight from the slaughterhouse that the woods had proved to be.
My breath hitched as I remembered that panicked, headlong flight, firing on the run at half-seen shapes flitting beneath the trees behind us, stumbling over roots hidden by the darkness, the screams and roars of the approaching infected closing in from all sides. Bill and Louis were still out there, torn apart and lying dead in the woods, probably half-devoured by now.
The horde had separated us, and Bill was dragged off by a smoker, kicking and thrashing, into the undergrowth. Louis had tried to follow him, but was pounced by a hunter. The horde swarmed around Zoey and me, blocking our view of them, but I could still hear Louis's screams in my head as I sat there, cradling Zoey in my arms.
She didn't cry - she was long past tears - but she made a pathetic spectacle nonetheless. Running one of my hands in a caress down her back, I whispered "Do you remember the first time we made love, Zoey?"
Looking up at me, her eyes huge and shimmering in the darkness. "Of course," she whispered back, voice thin and tremulous.
I smiled down at her, brushing a lock of hair out of her face. It had been in a hospital bathroom back in Philly, after a particularly hairy encounter with a tank. We had come so close to dying that it had spurred us into action, and finally let us express our love for each other. We didn't sleep at all that night - we made love until the light of dawn seeped through the windows outside, then sat on the bathroom floor and held each other until the others woke up, never wanting to let go.
I of all people should have known that one day, we all have to let go.
Pulling Zoey in for a kiss, I savored the feel and taste of her lips against mine, relishing in the passion and need coursing through both of us like electrical charges. Reaching down with my free hand, I unbuckled the holster at my hip, wrapping my fingers around the grip of my pistol, feeling the cold metal hard and lethal beneath my fingers.
Pulling away far too soon, Zoey murmured "They're breaking in… I can hear them." Surely enough, downstairs wood started to splinter. The first of the boards we'd nailed across the door had broken, apparently.
Leaning in and resting her head on my shoulder, squeezing me with enough force to almost crush the breath from my lungs, she whispered "You know what to do, Francis. What you promised me you'd do."
It was true. I'd promised her much. I'd promised her a house on the beach, where we could watch the sunsets together from the balcony. I'd promised her children, as many as she wanted. We'd even named them; Michael, Ellie - in honor of Zoey's best friend, torn apart by zombies the first time of the infection - and John. Three sounded like a good number to her, and if she was happy, I was happy.
But I had also promised her never to let her be eaten alive. That was her one real fear, she'd told me. One night, as we lay entangled in our sleeping back in a moonlit forest, she had made me promise never to let that happen to her.
And I would never, ever, break a promise to Zoey if I could help it.
Extracting the pistol from its holster, slowly and gently, I took a long moment to stare into Zoey's eyes. She was incredible. She really was, and I couldn't blame her for falling apart. In fact, it amazed me that she'd managed to hold it together as long as she had.
I was a logical choice to survive this shit. I was Mr. Badass Biker Boy, the guy who started bar fights for fun and was probably born with a shotgun in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.
But Zoey… she wasn't. She was only nineteen - nineteen, dammit - and her only experience with tough, scary situations was watching old horror movies with her policeman dad. But she'd toughened up, and hadn't given the zombies a moment's peace since. In a way, she was a bigger badass than I was.
Leaning down, I planted one last kiss on her lips, drawing away reluctantly as I raised my pistol. Lowering it, I tenderly placed its cold metal lips on Zoey's forehead, a lump forming in my throat and my heart trying to burst out of my chest. She closed her eyes, and I felt tears start to form in mine.
"I love you," she whispered, and gave me a squeeze. Part of me wanted to squeeze my eyes shut, to block out the scene so I didn't have to think about it. But no. I had to look. I had to see. Had to drink up every last scrap of time with Zoey that I could, every last drop of her so I could have something to hold on to as the zombies set upon me.
I tried to reply to her, but my throat was locked shut. So I simply brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face, and performed that final, excruciating act of love - I caressed the trigger.
The report was louder than doomsday in that confined space, and Zoey's whole body jerked as the bullet passed through her skull, blowing blood and brain matter out the other side to paint the wall and floor behind her. Throwing my head back, I screamed her name to the uncaring heavens, a primal howl of loss and agony that bounced cruelly back from the roof beams as the front door smashed inwards.
Pulling Zoey's body tighter against me, I fumbled at my waist for my last Molotov. Lighting the rag with my cigarette lighter as the zombies swarmed up the stairs, I looked up at the unrushing horde with rage and grief boiling in my heart. I'd be damned if I let these monsters get a hold of Zoey's body, and I'd be just as damned if I didn't drag as many of the bastards with me to hell as I could.
With a roar, I threw the Molotov at the nearby wall, the flames hungrily spreading to the wooden walls, the floor, the ceiling. As the incredible heat seared the air from my lungs, I pulled Zoey's dead body against me for one last embrace.