Emily and I both had machetes in hand, but the M14 was strapped across my back. Emily was in front, while I followed closely behind. "Be careful, Em. We don't know if there's any Z's in there..."

Emily half-snorted. "You're telling me to be careful?"

"Well..." I started, but she cut me off.

"Boy, you need to keep your mouth shut. Right now you need to worry more about getting slapped than getting attacked by Z's." She said hostilely.

And that was the end of that. I dunno how I was going to talk to her about the possibility of meeting our families if they were Z's, with the attitude she showed right now.

Emily opened the door carefully. No Z's were in sight. But then again, it was almost pitch black in there so it was hard to tell.

"Michael, flashlight!" Emily commanded. I tossed the flashlight to her, and she flicked it on. A quick sweep revealed only one Z, who was on the ground, seemingly crushed by a fallen set of shelves.

Unsure of whether it was alive-dead or dead-dead, Emily ordered me to check it. I slowly made my way over to it, holding the machete in a position where I could immediately kill it if it moved. I kneeled over it, gently prodded the Z with the blade. It turned over quickly and growled. I hesitated a moment. It reached out a hand toward me but it fell short as I quickly drove the tip of the machete into the Z's head.

"Jesus." I muttered. "Next time, we don't even think about whether it's dead or not, we just put the blade in."

"Yes, mom." Emily replied sarcastically. If I hated when Emily got all soft with me, she hated whenever I stated anything that sounded remotely close to an order.

As we walked around, looking for useful things, I decided it was a good time to bring up my thought from earlier. "You know, Emily, I've been thinking..."

"Oh, no, he's thinking again." Emily joked.

"I'm being serious. You know, we're going around places and you seem to enjoy killing Z's." I continued.

Emily had a strange look on her face, unsure of where this was going.

"But what if we meet your family, or mine, and they're Z's?"

"If they're Z's, I won't care. They're not my family anymore, they're Z's." Emily replied with a stern look.

I was a bit skeptical of Emily's confidence, but dismissed the discussion. We ended up at the door to the offices with very little found in the way of food, water, and other supplies. "There could be useful stuff in here..." Emily said. She tried the door...locked. "Ready the M14. If there's any Z's in there, they'll come after us when I try to break open this door."

I nodded and grabbed the stock of the M14 to pull it off my back.. Emily threw her shoulder into the frail wooden door a few times. Suddenly it burst open, but instead of flying away from her, it flew towards her as a Z attacked. "Shit!" She screamed. "Take it out, Michael!"

It reached out towards her, and I fired. The 7.62mm bullet went straight through the Z's head, and Emily slowly backed up as it fell.

"You couldn't have shot it any sooner?!" She hissed at me. The panic of the situation had made her anger boil. All the tension that had built up during the clearing of the town, the short little argument outside the store, and now this; it suddenly exploded like the supervolcano under Yellowstone in the movie "2012".

The only thing you could do in this situation was to let her run her course. I shrank down somewhat against the flowing fire of her fury. "God dammit, sometimes you're a good-for-nothing prick." She continued, shaking her head in a kind of disgust. I tried to tune out the rest; but as a summary, it was quite a bit more cursing me out and screaming in my face.

"If I didn't love you, I would have shot you by now. Wasted a full can of ammo on your ass." That was probably the end of it. That was usually how Emily's tirades ended, with a variation of, 'If I didn't love you, I would have killed you.' Then she got all soft again, kissed me softly and murmured, "I'm sorry." At the end of that kind of rage, I was okay with her being soft. "I'm sorry." She repeated with a sigh, holding me close to her. I blinked very slowly, in a sort of relieved way.