A/N: So sorry this is late! Been really busy lately. Thank you to all who are reading this, especially Babatomyfriends and Amy! I really appreciate your comments.
"Your timing was... perfection," Chandler said to Joey.
Phoebe nodded. "Yeah, and I don't want to sound like a sitcom character or anything, but you got some explainin' to do."
After opening a box of cookies from the back, Joey sat down and told the others his story. When he got to the part where he was surrounded by zombies, the others were all staring at him with wide eyes, even as he sat there alive and well before them.
"I was lying there, thinking of all you guys, ready to let those jerks rip me apart, and then it hit me that I couldn't give up," he said, meeting his friends' gazes and sharing a lengthy one with Rachel before continuing. "So I kicked a couple off of me and rolled under a car nearby. They pushed it over, and that's when I thought I was really done for, but Derek and the others showed up." He gestured toward the man with a double-barreled shotgun who had first appeared on the street, the man who was in the corner enthusiastically making out with a shorter, but just as muscular man. "Thought I left them back in Arizona, but they decided to come to New York. They followed the signs I marked, and they found me just in time." He shrugged, lifting a cookie up to his mouth "Talk about dumb luck, huh?"
"And now for the million dollar question," Chandler finally deigned to ask with a grin. "What's... what's with the getup there, soldier? I mean, at least at the wedding, we knew why you were all dressed up."
After swallowing his first cookie, Joey stood and looked down at his ruined fatigues, as if he were seeing them for the first time, and, brightening a little, he said, "Oh, yeah! I ran into some army guys, and they gave me all this stuff. I thought, 'Wow, these look really cool,' so I put them on, and thought they would help me feel more… tough, you know? Like I'd do a better job at getting over here if I could look the part. I think it worked out pretty good!"
He put his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest, looking absolutely ridiculous.
"Never change, Joey, never change," Phoebe said, reaching out to pat him on the arm.
"So," Chandler said as he rubbed his hands together, "who's up for a round of poker?"
Emma and the other kids had slept through the whole thing.
When she awoke, yawning and rubbing her eyes, her mother was right beside her, combing back her hair and smiling down at her.
"Hi, honey. Didja have a good nap?"
"Yeah!"
It was strange for her at first, seeing all the new people who were milling about in the coffee place. It seemed like the grown-ups were having one big party that lasted well into the night. She kept asking why they were celebrating, wondering what all the fuss was about, but all she got in return were kisses on her head, her cheeks, and squeezes from her parents and their friends.
Not that she was complaining.
A man in dirty green clothes knelt down in front of her as her parents stood off to the side.
"Hey, Emma," he said. "Remember me?"
"No," she said shyly, but after a moment, she recognized his scent.
Hugsy.
She smiled back at him, still a little uncertain, but the feeling went away when the man told her, "I'm your Uncle Joey."
The first few days and nights after the humans won what Chandler called The Battle of Central Perk - the name needed some work, but it would do for the time being - everyone had gotten some much-needed rest, and began to set about their task of clearing out the street in front of the shop. It didn't strike anyone as ironic that their street was the one area in which none of the zombies in the city ventured into, during neither day nor night. Some would probably get up the nerve to come back eventually and try to get their revenge, but until then, the group took full advantage of their new safe haven.
"Sucks about the apartment," Joey said as he and Chandler hauled what was left of a zombie into a wheelbarrow from the piles of bodies on the pavement. "It would've been perfect for you, Mon, and the kids to move back in there."
"That's okay," Chandler said. "We decided that the one downstairs isn't so bad, if you ignore the possibility that Mr. Heckles' ghost might still be hanging around and just waiting to start haunting us. How's your old place, by the way?"
"Still as empty as I'd left it. It's weird, you know. It's almost like it was... waiting for me to move back in."
Chandler picked up the wheelbarrow and rolled it over to a tire. "Well, it wasn't alone."
He and Joey were suddenly hugging, then, and they were still locked in a tight embrace when Chandler opened his eyes and saw Monica approaching them, wearing a mile-wide grin.
"What? What are you smiling about?" Chandler asked her, and she nodded toward Joey.
"It's just... It's good to have you back."
"Totally," Chandler said. "I mean, no offense, but we wondered if you had camped out at some star's mansion back in L.A. Or maybe a Denny's. I still don't know why you were already on the way over here before the cell phone thing happened, but whatever the reason was, I'm glad it didn't involve a plane."
Joey froze for a second, and Monica looked at him. As he opened his mouth to speak, she quickly said to Chandler, "Honey, isn't it obvious? He left early because of you. He probably missed you so much that he wanted to come over for a surprise visit."
"Uh, yeah," Joey said, nodding fervently. "It was all for you, man."
"Aw," Chandler said as he looked down at his feet. "Well, you know, you could've just... called."
"So, I heard Rachel's staying over at your place for now," Joey said, obviously trying to change the subject. "How's she doing?" Chandler noticed that, unlike the last million times Joey used a different version of that line, his words were solely concerned.
"Holding up as well as the rest of us," Monica said. "She said she's gonna find her own place and settle down there with Emma. I guess she and Ross will figure out what to do with her then."
Joey nodded, then bent down to pick up the tire and set it down on the small pile in the wheelbarrow. While he was busy with that, Chandler leaned in toward Monica and muttered, "So, if Rachel's moving out, does that mean we finally get to have some celebratory 'Yay, we're alive!' sex?"
"Definitely," Monica said. "In fact, I'm starting to think, sex on the balcony? Not such a bad idea, after all."
"The world so needs to end more often," Chandler said, and she kissed him, taking over the wheelbarrow and guiding it over to the bonfire at the far end of the street.
After watching her go, Chandler turned to Joey and said, "D'you ever get the feeling that our lives are kinda like a soap opera, slash sitcom?" He grinned. "A comera?" He knew the punchline sucked, but in the moment, he didn't care.
"Not really," Joey said. "Trust me, if our lives were more like the characters' on Days, things would be a hell of a lot weirder."
Chandler nodded as he put his hands in his pockets, glancing at the patch of pavement they'd exposed with a thoughtful expression on his face.
"Even weirder than zombies?" he asked.
"Even weirder than zombies."
Then, Chandler said to him, "So, do you think you, me and Ross could go out one day and play a friendly game of Fireball with them?"
"Dude," Joey said, "I've been dying to do that."
Phoebe and Monica were on clean-up duty as they stumbled across a large, pink bike with tassles.
"That's not..." Monica started to say.
"No. Mine was in storage in my apartment. "It's probably long gone by now," Phoebe said, running her fingers along the new one's handlebars. "Up in that big bike stand in the sky. But this'll make a pretty darn good replacement, don't you think?"
When Monica pointed out the lack of training wheels, Phoebe said, "My old bike had them? Oh, that's why I stopped falling down! I thought the bike had forgiven me for neglecting it!"
Monica tried not to laugh at that. Then she said, "So, are you taking this back with us?"
"Yeah," Phoebe said, folding up the kickstand and leading the bike onward. "I think it's time I finally learned how to ride one of these without the kid gloves on, you know?"
Though he didn't need to patrol the neighborhood streets, Joey liked the feeling of walking around outside with a gun, feeling useful and, okay, pretty macho. It seemed that playing soldier had been the best role he ever landed, and he was more than willing to keep up the act.
He was just wishing that John McClane could see him now, when a voice from behind him said, "Hey, Joe," and he promptly ducked, waving his weapon around wildly as he yelped.
When he met Ross's face, he straightened up. "Dude, you scared me."
"Sorry."
"What the hell are you doing anyway, sneaking up on me like that?" Joey said. "I could've shot you."
Ross raised his eyebrows. "Well, first of all, we both know that your catlike reflexes are way better than mine."
Joey grinned, nodding in agreement. "Yeah, they are!"
"And second of all," Ross said, grabbing the muzzle of Joey's gun and shaking it back and forth with ease, "this is made out of plastic."
Joey groaned. "Aw, I told Chandler not to put the Nerf guns so close to the real ones!"
As he let go of the gun, Ross cleared his throat. "Honestly? I didn't think you were going to make it over here, man."
"Yeah." Joey shook his head in shared disbelief. "For a while, I didn't think so, either."
"Well," Ross said. "I'm… I'm glad you did."
Joey felt even more confused than usual. For a long, long portion of his life, he hadn't bothered dealing with mixed emotions. Either he was happy, or sad, or hungry, or horny – and most of the time, the latter two emotions were the case. However, in one of those rare occasions of depth, he was once again torn between being the happiest man on the planet, and the guiltiest one.
"Listen… About Rachel," Ross started, as though he'd read Joey's mind. Yet Joey knew he would have been an even bigger idiot than usual to have not seen this talk coming.
Joey took a deep breath, then said, "Yeah. Look, Ross, I —"
"— No, please. Just… hear me out, okay?" Ross raised his hand, but it was not clenched into a fist, so Joey relaxed.
"The thing is," Ross said, "I didn't think this was ever gonna happen again, but it did, and… it's my fault. Hers, too, but it's mostly mine. And at the same time, I guess it's neither of our faults. I really thought things would be different this time, but I – I guess I should've known that they wouldn't be." He let out a humorless chuckle. "Maybe it's better that things turned out this way, instead of us getting divorced."
He paused, then added, "Again."
Joey averted his eyes.
Ross reached out and touched Joey's shoulder after a moment. "Joey, if there's anything going on between you two – or if there ever will be – there's nothing I can do to stop it. And I, I don't want to. I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I've realized that if she can be happier with you, well…" He paused to draw in a deep breath. "Then that would make me happy, too."
Joey let the silence draw out between them for a moment, then, flicking his gaze up to look Ross directly in the eye, he said, "Really?"
Ross took a hesitant step toward him, then rocked back on his heels as though he were second-guessing himself, but Joey closed the distance between them and wrapped him up in a tight bear hug.
When they parted, Ross smiled. "I guess I don't need to tell you that if you ever hurt her or Emma..."
"You'll kick my ass?" Joey said as he started to smile too.
"Well, I'll certainly try."
"Fair enough."
"Come on," Ross said. "Monica's throwing some of the canned stuff together for all of us."
As they both started on the way back, Ross told Joey that, even with a fake gun, he still looked pretty cool, and John McClane would've been proud of him.
As Rachel and Monica put up signs for their family members and any other survivors in the city up on the wall next to Central Perk, Rachel asked Monica if she planned on going back to Westchester.
"Are you kidding?" Monica said. "I've got an entire city to clean. I ain't going anywhere."
After she hung up a poster for her parents, Rachel let her arms fall to her sides, and said, "Do you think they'll ever make it? Both mine and yours?"
"I don't know," Monica admitted. "I'd like to think so." Privately, she had already made her peace with them never showing up. Even more privately, she especially made her peace about her mother never showing up.
"At least Frank and the triplets made it back. It's still so heartbreaking, what happened to Alice."
"Yeah. She was... She'll be missed." Not knowing anything else to say about her, Monica knelt down and picked up a large banner, holding out one end of it and letting Rachel take the other end as she took a few steps back. They raised up on their toes, taping the banner against the wall.
"What about your sisters?" Monica asked as she finished taping her side of the banner's bottom corner. "Don't you want to put up signs for them?"
Rachel wrinkled her nose. "Nah. I mean, I hope they're alive and safe, but... I don't think they're heading over here. The last I heard, Jill was in Colorado with some of her friends, and Amy went to Atlantic City with some guy named Barney. So if they turn up, they turn up. And if they don't, that's fine, too."
"That's what Chandler said about his parents," Monica said as she and Rachel put up a few more fliers. "He doesn't really think they'll come because they're both probably on the same cruise ship filled with male strippers, whether they're alive or dead."
Rachel chuckled at that, then hesitantly said, "I know what you're thinking."
Monica raised her eyebrows. "If it's what we're gonna do about hot water when it runs out, or the stadium, then I'd say you're right on the money.
"Phoebe said something about letting all the zoo animals loose in there."
Monica pursed her lips. "Hmm, it's a good theory on paper. But it needs work."
She and Rachel stood together in silence for a moment, looking up at the covered wall, then moved toward each other, each of them putting their arms on the other's shoulder.
"I'm sorry I didn't know things had gotten that bad between you and Ross," Monica said. "If I did, I would've..."
Rachel shushed her gently, leaning her head down on Monica's shoulder.
"For a while there, I thought I'd lost you," Monica whispered.
Rachel closed her eyes. "I came back for you," she said. "For everyone. You didn't think I was going to let you hog all the fun without me, right?"
"Not a chance. But now that all the fun and games are over, are you sure you still want to move into your own place?"
"Yeah. You've got a pretty sweet set-up, but Emma and I are taking up too much space, and the one across from yours is kind of nice. It'll be like old times."
"But will you be okay by yourself?" Monica asked, pulling away from Rachel slightly, though she kept a tight grip on her shoulder. "I mean, it's just going to be you and Emma. You've never lived on your own before."
"I know, and I think it'll be challenging at first, but Emma and I will manage. This is just something I need to do, at least for a while," Rachel said, the corner of her mouth tugging up a little. "You know, the whole hat thing."
At first, Monica didn't catch the reference, but when she looked into her friend's eyes, she got it.
"There is one more thing," Rachel said as they walked away from the wall their arms around each other. "What do you think I should do about Joey?"
"Well," Monica said, "I think that, for once, I'm the wrong person to be asking that sort of question."
Rachel took that in for a moment, and nodded. "You know what? You're right."
Monica squeezed her arm gently. "Aren't I always?"
Rachel knocked on the door, and Joey opened it.
"Hi," she said.
As he invited Rachel inside his barely furnished apartment, Joey sighed, taking a seat in a dining room chair he'd snagged from an apartment down the hall. Rachel sat down next to him, on the only other chair in the living room, reaching out to touch the faded green jacket Joey left lying on a small table near the chairs.
"I was really hoping you'd work things out with Ross," Joey said after a moment of silence.
"Why?" Rachel asked, genuinely curious. "You know how things have always been between us. You know how crazy and horrible we'd get with each other. I mean, you've all been there since the beginning. Through all of our beginnings and endings. Ross and I… We always did put the rest of you through so much."
There was an apology floating around in her last words, somewhere.
His eyes lit up again as he said, "But you know what? We all made it through those times. You did too, and you will now. To this day, you are one of the strongest, most incredible women I know. And," he added, "I've known a lot of women."
She scooted her chair closer to him, putting her hand on his as she squeezed it.
They sat together, talking for a while about this and that, until she drew in a breath and told Joey she'd seen him at the window. Because she knew, now, it really had been him.
"You were there? How did… What…" His eyes widened, then he closed them as he bowed his head forward. "I wish I would've looked up and seen you then."
"It's okay, sweetie," she said, sliding her hand from his to stroke his arm. "Don't beat yourself up about it. I mean, things worked out in the end, didn't they?"
"Yeah, I guess they did."
"How did you even get to Long Island?" she couldn't help but to ask. "I mean, that's one of the reasons why I didn't think it was you."
"Oh," he said, comprehension dawning on his face, "That was all Shane's doing. Y'know, Derek's boyfriend. He and the others had picked up a helicopter, and after they saved me, he flew it all the way out to where your mom moved to. When we couldn't find you, we went to Queen's, and after I made sure my parents and most of my sisters were okay, well... You know the rest."
Though that explanation satisfied Rachel's curiosity, she was still perplexed about one thing. "How did you know I was at my mom's? I didn't say where I was when I called you. I thought we'd meet back here."
He shrugged. "Well, I know where I'd go if I was having a hard time. Figured maybe you did the same."
Rachel smiled, but then it faltered.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"When I saw you from the window, you looked... mean."
"Oh, yeah," he said, fidgeting a little. "Well, I was only eating about three times a day, since we had to keep moving. You know how I get when I don't eat that much, right?"
Rachel looked at him - really, really looked at him. She could see the ways in which he'd changed, and the ways he had not since they first met.
Deep down, he was still her dear, sweet Joey. She knew he always would be.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing at a square object sticking out from one of the pockets of his ruined green coat that he'd flung across the table.
Joey looked down and brightened, saying, "Hey, all right! Thought I lost this," when he pulled out the object, revealing it to her.
It was a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide.
"I found this in a bookstore I crashed in one night," he said, holding up the battered, blood-stained book. "Some of it turned out to be pretty helpful, I'll tell ya."
For the first time in a long time – too long – she saw him grin his classic Joey grin.
"Think we should put this one in the freezer?" he asked.
And that was when Rachel leaned over to kiss him.
Ross was feeling pretty good about his idea for a book. It would be the first one to be published following the end of the world, an immediate classic, a story for the ages. The others didn't look too thrilled at his proposal, but he figured the plot he'd had in mind was too advanced for his friends to understand.
"I'm telling you," he said, "A security guard at the Natural History Museum discovers that all the displays come to life at night!"
"Oh, Ross," Monica said, "even if the world hadn't just ended, no one would ever want to hear a story as dumb as that."
"Maybe we could rework it into a comic book," Chandler mused. "Or it could be a movie."
"Only if I can play the security guard," Ross said, in total seriousness.
"Ooh, you know what would make it even better?" Phoebe said. "If that big T-Rex skeleton acted like a dog!"
"What? Why would it —" Ross stopped when he saw the look on Phoebe's face, and said, "Sure, of course it can."
Phoebe beamed.
"Wait," Monica looked around at everyone who was gathered in her living room, noticing that two people were missing in action. "Where's Rachel and Joey?"
"They're, uh…" Ross paused to clear his throat. "Catching up."
When Rachel moved onto Joey's lap and straddled him, never taking her lips off his while his hands went up her shirt, she realized, then, that they had been too close before as friends to do this, but after being apart for as long as they had, she needed this more than ever, just as much as she needed air.
She nipped at his bottom lip as she sighed and felt his hands press into the small of her back, then lightly drifted up her spine and grazed along the curves of her breasts, and she moved against him steadily, deepening the kiss and enjoying the low sounds he made at the back of his throat. Unlike it had a few years ago, the desire she felt for him now had built up and up in a slow and steady way, gaining strength and speed rather than being a sporadic, fleeting burst of lust.
As she put one hand around the back of his neck and slid her tongue into his mouth, she reached down to slip her other hand in between their bodies to run it along his —
"Woah, woah," he said, pulling his head away from hers.
He did it with so much force that they tipped over a bit in Joey's chair, dangerously close to crashing backward.
Before they could, Rachel leaned backward, rocking them to their starting position, and when they both looked at each other again, their breathing still ragged, she started laughing, and he ended up joining her.
After they got their wind back and their laughter trailed off, she leaned in to kiss him again, but he turned his head to the side.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "This is the farthest we've ever gone with each other. Don't ruin it now!"
"We..." he said, licking the spots she'd kissed, spots she desperately wanted to kiss some more. "We shouldn't be doing this."
"Why not?" she asked, then rolled her hips as she pressed herself closer to him, eliciting a small sound from him that fell somewhere between a moan and a chuckle. Lowering her voice to a whisper as she leaned in to start kissing his neck, she said, "Give me one reason why."
He let out a long, weary sigh. "Yeah, you got me. But here, now? After you broke off your engagement and after the world ended?" He shook his head resolutely. "It wouldn't be right, right now. You know that. We both know that."
"I know we both know that, but do we really need to know we know that?"
Despite the pained expression on his face, Joey closed his eyes and, in one quick, smooth movement, he lifted Rachel up off of him, and gently put her back on her chair.
"So," she said, smoothing down her rumpled clothes to mask her disappointment and giddiness, "just to be clear, we're never getting past first base, are we?"
"Well, I think we made it past second for a — that isn't the point!"
"I thought it was," she said reaching out to play with the one of the buttons on his shirt. "It's kind of a point I'd like to keep making."
He pretended to be engrossed with the book he'd left on the table, flipping it open and glancing down at it instead of Rachel.
She put her hand over his and the book, stilling his movements and trying to get him to meet her eyes. As she waited for him, she could see, once again, just how conflicted he was, just how much he was struggling to keep his loyalties and love in check.
"Joey," she said, "I know what you're trying to do, but you can't protect me from this – from us – anymore. Do you still want this?"
He was still silent for a few more moments, his eyes still averted from hers. He said, "I've wanted this since the day I met you, Rach. But not justthis, not just now. I..." He swallowed, and, though he didn't say anything, when he looked right at her, his gaze said more than any words could.
With her heart swelling and chasing away the ache she'd felt for him since he'd left, Rachel looked back at him, hoping he could see that she felt the same way.
Joey let out a loud, long breath in exhalation as he lowered his head, looking happy and relieved and still just a little bit nervous. When he looked back up at Rachel, he said, "You sure?"
Scooting her chair closer to his, she reached out to pick up his hand, and placed it on her thigh.
"I am sure, Joey. I think back then, when we tried it the first time, we were both too scared to mess things up between us. But I'm not scared anymore. Are you?"
When he drew closer to her, she just knew: whatever lay ahead of them, all the bad parts and good, she could make it through with him.
After everything she'd been through, before the end of the world and after it, Rachel Green was not scared anymore, especially not of this.
When Joey brushed her hair away from her face before he kissed her again, she knew that neither was he.
"You sure you don't want us to stay back?" Monica asked.
"No," Phoebe said. "No, I don't want to do this alone."
Even now, even after all these years, Phoebe Buffay-Hannigan could not, would not, do this alone. She had already been alone for so much of her life that, ever since she'd befriended the five most obnoxious, self-absorbed, talkative, dramatic, hilarious, loving, and amazing people in the world, she couldn't possibly imagine doing this without all of them around her.
At least, not during this first visit.
"It's nice," Phoebe said, putting the many-ringed fingers of her right hand up to her eyes. "Thank you so much for doing this, you guys. It's... No, you know what? Screw that 'nice' crap. It's perfect. Mike would have loved this. 'Course, y'know, he probably would've liked to be alive to see this, but —"
The rest of her words got stuck in her throat, and she closed her eyes as she started to sway to one side.
Standing next to her, Monica and Rachel each put one arm around their friend, squeezing her tightly and keeping her on her feet.
"I am so, so sorry, Phoebe,"
"I'm sorry, Pheebs."
"Yeah," she said. "I am, too."
She reached out with trembling fingers, and stroked the glossy, black surface of the makeshift headstone.
"I'm really gonna miss you, Mr. Bag," she murmured. "More and more… Every day."
After looking down for a few silent minutes at the large chunk of Mike's old grand piano that was wedged into the earth, she and the others slowly turned around, and started heading out of the small, peaceful graveyard they'd made in Central Park.
"Y'know, when you told everyone we were gonna go off to have some shooting practice, it probably would've helped if we brought our guns," Rachel said, smirking to hide her curiosity and excitement. As the sun went down, Joey led her by the hand down a street several blocks away from Central Perk.
"Oh, yeah, don't worry about that. They know where we're going. Aaand..." he trailed off as he stopped in front of a storefront with its windows intact. "Here we are."
Rachel raised her eyebrows as she looked at the store's sign:
Time Out Paris.
"After you," Joey said as he let go of Rachel's hand, then opened the door and gestured for her to go first.
Still intrigued, Rachel walked in slowly.
As she looked around the shop, turning in a circle, she gasped.
The place had been cleaned to the point where it looked brand new, the lights from several battery-powered lamps giving the place a bright, happy glow. All around her, there were clothes on racks and even more racks that had been brought in from stores around the city, every piece of garment begging to be examined.
It was as if the place hadn't been touched by the end of the world. It was...
"It's yours," Joey said. "Say 'Hello' to your new office!"
"It's mine?" she asked, "Really?"
"Well, you said you wanted something to do other than cleaning up, or trying to figure out how the heck to fix the power system, or freeing the zoo animals —"
"— Don't tell me that Phoebe actually..."
"Yup, she did," Joey said with a proud grin and a nod. "I think she needed it, too."
"And you had absolutely nothing to do with her little rescue mission, right?" Rachel said with a grin.
"I had to, Rach! The koala bears looked so sad. But I let her handle the snakes. I mean, I had to draw the line somewhere."
Rachel laughed and went back to marveling at the store. "I mean, it's pretty much what I've wanted to do, since we're trying to save water. And it's not like we'd have to pay for all this stuff, anyway. But when I mentioned figuring out our clothing situation the other day, I never thought you would..." She looked back at Joey, her eyes welling up with tears.
"Well, you know, Monica helped a lot," he said as he rubbed the back of his neck. "So did Ross."
She went up to the racks and shelves, and it was in the latter that Joey's craftsmanship - or lack thereof - stood out the most. A couple of them had been reconstructed at awkward angles. Some of them were too big, or too small, and they looked like they were going to collapse any second under the weight of the shoes and belts and accessories resting on them.
When Rachel turned back to look at Joey, she said, "It's beautiful."
"I'm glad you like it," he said, beaming at her.
"Oh, I love it!" she said, throwing her arms around him. When she pulled back, she told him to wait a moment, and went to the walk-in closet.
She came back out a minute later, presenting Joey with his very own men's bag.
"Seriously?" he asked, slinging the bag over his shoulder and nodding at it appreciatively when he checked himself out in the full-length mirror. "Hey, what d'ya know? Still fits!"
She joined him in front of the mirror, linking her arm around his.
"Yeah," she said, resting her head against his shoulder as she looked at their reflection. "Yeah, it really does."
Emma was busy digging with her hands, her tongue pressed into the corner of her mouth in concentration as she worked with all the strength she had.
She was too busy pulling on the shiny, red plastic object in the sandbox that she didn't notice the snarling sound of an approaching zombie until it was right behind her.
The happy, upbeat music - "Baby Elephant Walk," she'd been told it was called, and she liked it a lot - that played on a nearby speaker one of the adults left there, had lulled her into a dozing state, and she froze.
The monster behind her reared up to its full height and roared down at her.
Then, quick as a flash, her mother appeared, smacking it hard with a bat.
"Get outta here!" she yelled, hitting the zombie until it ran away, whimpering a little.
"Mommy!" Emma cried as she flew into her mother's arms, as if a six-foot slouching, ravenous monster hadn't just been terrorizing her.
Her expression was stern, but still loving. "I told you to be careful out here, honey. There's some bad people still running around, remember?"
"I know," Emma said, looking sorry until she remembered her prize. "But I needed to dig a lot for this," she brandished the red shovel she'd found, and her mother whistled, looking impressed.
"Excellent. But I'd be careful when we get back if I were you, Ems. Joey might fight you for it."
"Yeah, you're right," Emma said, thinking hard. "I know! We can share it. Like when I stay with Daddy and have Hugsy, and you have sleepovers with Joey!"
Her mom turned red for some reason and smiled as she quickly checked her watch. "Oh, uh, yeah, that's a great idea! Wow, would you look at the time, there? It's almost dinner!"
"Can we please stay out?" Emma said, but the sun was starting to go down, and the monsters were still outside, probably looking for careless little girls to eat. Emma knew she and her mother were outside the border of the Safe Zone, and had to go home soon.
"Come on," Rachel said, holding out her hand. "Everyone's waiting for us."
Emma looked forward to that. Maybe her dad would teach her something new about dinosaurs when she got back, and the other grown-ups would pretend to fall asleep - Emma didn't know why, because she always liked his lessons and T-Rex voice. And maybe Joey would read her "Love You Forever," again, even though she pretended she was too old to hear it. Maybe Aunt Phoebe would do another cool tea-leaf reading for her and her cousins, or she'd play "Smelly Man," for them on her guitar. Maybe Auntie Monica would let Emma help out with dinner, even though the sight of live, twitching lobsters and gaping fish still scared her. And maybe Uncle Chandler would ask Emma to pull his finger, and her mom and her friends would beg him to stop, but Emma would giggle and do it anyway. And there was a very good chance that Uncle Chandler would then blow raspberries and make a funny face, making Emma and the other kids laugh.
Maybe, maybe, maybe...
Before any of that could happen, though, there was something she had to do.
"Can you push me on the swing?" she asked, reaching out to tug on her mother's free hand.
For a second, she wouldn't move, and Emma was ready to be let down again.
Then her mother said, "Oh, why not," and propped her bat against a bench to sweep her hair up into a messy ponytail. "But only for a minute!"
"Push me high, Mommy!" Emma cried, her heart racing in excitement as she tore over to the other side of the playground. "So, so high that I'm flying!"
As mother and daughter reached the swings, the zombies that were still scattered around the streets of Manhattan turned in unison and yawned sleepily as they started staggering back toward their own home.