A/N: Thank you guys so much for the reviews, Jodi and I appreciate them and love to hear what you guys have to say about zombies! Anyways, this chapter is from Chris's POV in case that is unclear. Just another reminder, neither Chris nor Stephanie have children in the story. So hope that you enjoy some more zombie apocalypse goodness and be sure to leave a review and tell us what you think. Enjoy. :)

Sometimes I wonder if the smell will ever go away. You never get used to it, it's been months and sometimes I still find myself gagging. It's like I can see the stench lingering in the air, the way barbeque smoke used to on a warm summer's evening. This smell though, I don't think it'll ever leave. It's decay and suffering and guts and it permeates everything, living or not and it's awful and every morning or night or afternoon I wake up to this nightmare, for that very brief moment of wakefulness I think today is the day it'll be gone, but then it hits me again and I'm reminded that my life will never be the same.

I didn't even see it coming, I laughed at the news and shook my head in disbelief as I threw back another shot of grey goose. The lies people created these days were unbelievable. I wish it was just lies, that driving that four hour drive home wasn't my awakening to reality, but it was. I don't think I'll ever forget that radio warning, or the static that was left behind when it was suddenly cut off. That's all my life was now, white noise left behind by the static in the air.

And, of course, screams.

It was on every newspaper and TV report for weeks, normal scheduling had been over taken and all that was coming from the little man on the box were useless facts like: stay in your house, lock all your doors, everything will be taken care of. I'd of course ignored it, remember the GG, but you know what all those rules are...bullshit.

I wished I could blame it all on an alcohol-induced haze, but when you see your first dead person walking towards you, wanting nothing more than to tear you limb from limb, you snap out of whatever haze you tricked yourself into. All that's left is the cold reality of the situation. When that radio warning cut through the piercing silence of my car, I knew that the shit was hitting the fan. I tried to wrack my brain for survival tips. I'd loved horror movies growing up, watched so many of them, but this was real life and now I was relying on some movie to get me through a real zombie apocalypse. It seemed childish, but still, I tried to remember everything I'd learned.

I don't know how I made it home that night. I'd just suddenly been in front of my house and I nearly ran through the garage trying to parking my car. There were no lights on except the porch light. I was unarmed and scared. Yes, Chris Jericho was scared. I hadn't seen a zombie on my street, but could they lurk, run, jump? I had no idea. I had no weapon, nothing, so I just ran to my front door. It was wide open. I ran inside, screaming my wife's name, but she wasn't there. Some of her things were gone. That was the last time I saw her. I figured she would run to her mother's, but when I tried to call, no answer. So I did what any idiot would do, I stayed inside. I had enough food for a while and we'd bought a gun for protection so I boarded myself up. I don't know why, maybe I was waiting for Jessica to come back so we could make a break for it together, maybe I was just shell-shocked, but I have to say, not my best decision. All staying inside gave me was time to watch the horror.

I'd looked out a window in my home and saw my neighbors being pulled out, screaming. Their blood still makes my stomach turn. Eventually the rules came back to me, seeing death will make those things come back right quick. My rules kept me alive. Run like fuck, because your life does depend on it. Never look back, because what you'll see will make you turn in the grave...not that I'll ever get a grave. Guns are your only friends, Uncle Sam was right, fuck the haters. You wonder when your life turned into this b-list movie where you have to fight for your life every night and you wonder what happened to everyone in your life, are they still alive? Are they dead? Or worse, will you have to blow their head off because they're chasing you own the highway wanting to eat your brains?

The food didn't last long, and if I'm honest my home didn't really instill that homely feel it once had. Maybe that's the down fall of coming home to find your door wide open and your wife missing or maybe it's because it wasn't much of a home those awkward months before the world decided to freak the fuck out, hell for all I know it could've been the fact I was sick of eating dry Lucky Charms. All that matters is, the food ran dry and I had two options: stay and die, whether it be of starvation or the unlucky scenario that I become the food or I could man up, open that door and face what the world had become.

Okay, so I stayed an extra two days, but you try manning up in a zombie apocalypse. On the third day, the sun rose and I was already awake and packed. I had my gun and a baseball bat and all the prayers that I could remember. I thought about taking knifes, but I didn't really plan on getting that close to a zombie, if I'm honest. I like my arteries on the inside of my neck, it's just how I am. I couldn't find my golf clubs, I hope Jessica had the hindsight to take them with her, but she was never very good in a panic and the chances of her grabbing her make-up bag were higher than her taking a weapon to protect herself, because zombies, they wanted a makeover, cover up that rotting flesh and all.

You have to love the sun, it makes them slow, it rots them faster, which, when you look at it are bonus points for the human race, because we may not have much going for us lately, but we could damn well get a sun tan, and out run zombies, which, when they're legs are falling off, was a real plus. Then and there I knew if I kept going in the morning and rested at night, maybe I'd survive.

I'd thought about staying in Florida, with the heat, you'd think they'd rot faster, but it just wasn't safe and safety nowadays is one of the first things you want and one of the hardest things to get. The virus or whatever (my mind is so jumbled with thoughts that it's hard to remember how this all started) spread so fast that I think the zombies outnumber us at this point. Staying in one place just isn't practical. They will find you and when they do and you don't have a way out, you're screwed, beyond screwed, you're dead. I'd heard about some safety points. There was one in Nashville so I decided to go there, see if I could find any other survivors and try to figure out the world from there.

Bullets don't last long though. A baseball bat is only useful if you've got a clear shot and those don't come too often when you've got a hoard of zombies on your tail. Your car needs gas and the gas stations close and they run out of gas. Getting to Nashville wasn't as easy as driving there, stopping every now and then to get food, stopping for a night in some hotel. Getting to Nashville is no longer getting there, it's surviving until Nashville. Some nights, while I was driving, I'd close my eyes, just for the briefest of moments and I'd pretend that I was just traveling to another show, another match waiting for me at the other end.

When you're surviving, your old life seems so far away. I think about the people I worked with every now and then, hoping that they're okay, that they're alive. I called these people my coworkers, my friends, my family away from home. Some days they were more a family to me than my own. I know it's not feasible that they're all alive, but I just want to picture that at the end of this long road, they're all waiting for me, waiting with a schedule and a match and an audience that will cheer me and not want to eat me.

All I want is a life again.

But I'm not stupid, I know there's not happy ever afters anymore, no shining light at the end of the tunnel, no happiness, so I can dream and dream all I want, but the fact still remains, that those people I called my family, chances are they're dead, or the undead. Sometimes at night, when I manage to sleep more than an hour and my dreams aren't filled with maps and escapes, sometimes I see the color blue and it calms me, I don't exactly know what it means, it's not your average blue, it's icy and should chill me, but I find myself searching for it when I wake up and maybe someday, one day so far away, I'll find it and I'll be calm and the world might be too.

I guess I'm still a dreamer.

The first person I killed was a guy in a business suit. A business suit. I'd never envisioned a life where I'd have to kill to survive, if what you can call what we have to do killing. I think I prefer to think of it as putting them out of their misery. I can't imagine a life where you're neither truly dead nor truly alive. I'd have to think that's even worse than what I do. This guy, he was coming at me, lumbering really, and his eyes...their eyes, so glazed over, death settling in them, but not staying dormant. I pulled out my gun and I shot him through his right eye, just to get that glaze out of my brain. I felt sick afterwards, I almost threw up and would have if the sound didn't carry around the empty space and attract more of them.

I travel light. Just what I can carry. I've got a truck, found it with the keys still inside. There were some bloody handprints along the side, poor driver probably got dragged out of there, kicking and screaming. It moves fast and gets me where I need to go. Remember how I said I was heading to Nashville? Zombie town now. Government, in all their stupidity, underestimated the numbers and I guess they just abandoned post. That happy ending I was looking for, it just ain't there. The radio broadcasts have stopped, nobody's on the other end. Every once in a while, I'll meet someone else and they'll tell me about the latest safe spot they've heard about, pipe dreams probably, but like the rest of the poor living bastards, I still head for them, hoping this one will be the one.

It's mid June and the sun is high in the cloudless sky, the earth still revolving around it, like there's life down here that needs air to breathe. Wouldn't humanity weep at what it's become? Pennsylvania is a pitiful excuse of a state, word has it that the zombies over run it and increased the infected in four days. Four fucking days. New York took two whole weeks. But who am I to judge, for all I know they could have given up hope, wandered into the streets as a collective and gave themselves willingly. A shudder runs through me, willingly or not getting torn to shreds or getting infected isn't a thing to want.

I saw a guy once, he was a skrawny thing, wanted to travel with me, but I told him I don't work like that, I look out for me and me alone nd if he was smart he'd start doing the same. I gave him a gun though and told him my rules and started walking. He was still staring at the gun when I turned back and the zombie was right behind him. I yelled, started running towards him raising my gun, but I couldn't get a clear shoot and then it was too late, there was a jaw around his shoulder and he was screaming in pain. I saw the pain cloud his eyes and I wondered when he looked up at me in desperation if mines mirrored it back.

I shot the zombie dead between the eyes, but still, it was too late. I wasn't fast enough, he wasn't aware enough, and the world was dying around us. We both knew what was coming and he bit his lip to keep from crying, I didn't blame him he was changing into someone who would remember a thing.

What's your name kid?"

"Brad." He'd whimpered out as a response.

"What age are you?"

"17."

I remember thinking that he'd had his whole life ahead of him, a year away from college and meeting his dream girl, years later marrying her and having three little girls. Seventeen was such an early age to die at.

"I'm sorry." And I was, if I'd stayed for a few minutes more, maybe I could have changed the outcome, maybe I could have saved his life, maybe I could have someone to talk to that weren't the voices in my head whispering at me to give up, that it was useless to fight and that I was going to die tomorrow.

I held his hand and we talked about nothing of great interest, anything that came to mind really, hockey, video games and such, I just didn't want him to die alone. He whispered a quiet thanks before his eyes went shut and his hand went slack and I had to bite my lip from letting out any kind of weakness. It wouldn't take long now and I watched him as I reached out and picked up the gun that could have saved his life and then the first twitch came in his leg. Then his arm followed, after his neck turned with a sick cracking noise that no human could survive and his eyes flew open. It looked like he'd just woken up from whatever dream he was having, his skin wasn't rotten yet and the only injuries he had were the fatal bite to his shoulder, but it was his eyes, there wasn't pain and desperation in them anymore, there was...nothing.

I lifted the gun and shot the boy I could have saved.

But there are no saviors anymore. God? What has he done for us? Punishing us, both the living and the dead. The living having to stay in constant fear of dying and the dead not getting any peace. I'm heading north now, but the truck needs gas. Unfortunately, the only gas station within miles of this hick town I'm passing through on my way up to Cleveland or Detroit or wherever I heard the next place is, is out of gas. I have to siphon some out of another car. It's not too difficult, you puncture a hole in the gas tank underneath the car, drain it out into a canister, then you put it in your own car. The danger is that there are fucking zombies around and staying under a car isn't too safe.

This place looks deserted, but you can never tell. Sometimes you'll hear the moan first, that moan of agony and hunger beyond reason. They don't seem to really think anymore except hunger. That helps when you're blowing their brains out. Most times though, you hear this low shuffling or harsh footsteps, depending on the particular zombie. Still, getting gas is dangerous work and I'm playing a dangerous game, but sundown, according to my watch and my instincts is coming fast and if I don't get my truck gassed and my ass somewhere relatively safe for the night, I'm a goner so this has to be done.

I pull up my truck to the nearest car I can see and park. This will give me at least a little cover. I take my gun, make sure it has a clip in it and step out. I've managed to find a few guns along the way, but most stores were looted. The only positive with so many people dead is that they leave stuff around. I've become a scavenger. I look around before grabbing the canister and a screwdriver and hammer out of the toolbox in my truck. Then I sidle underneath the car and stay there for a moment, taking in my breathing, listening for any kind of sound.

I know what you're expecting, that I hear something and slide out to find out where the noise is coming from and there it is, this abomination ready to kill me and we fight too the death. Sorry to disappoint you, but shockingly this mission was flawless and I get about half a canister. Considering most of the cars I try these days are empty, I call this a success. This might get me thirty extra miles. Doesn't seem a lot, does it? But those thirty miles could save my life, but it could just as well end it. I guess I'll see when the time comes.

I hit a few more cars and much to my annoyance they're mostly empty, except the last one which had about half a tank, but I know my time is up and I need to get my ass out of here. The suns setting and the night is creeping towards me fast, and soon the silence will be broken with moans that have created a fear within me that I can't explain. It's like standing on the front line when the bombs start to drop, you never think it's going be you, until, it is and you're just hoping for one more minute, for...something.

But, time is scarce and you can't predict the future, you're just trying to live, even if it's not exactly living.