Chapter 5

-Author's Note- I appreciate people who read (and review) every chapter, thank you. By the way, I'm sorry to those who gave me some "pointers" to improve my story. Indeed I have seen the credits at the end of Dawn of the Dead, and I've seen the part where the zombies race towards them- and I, too, know they didn't make it, but this fic is about them making it, I'm pretending they did; it's a fic. Yes, I agree, I wrote my first chapter crappy, making dialogue and not thoroughly thinking about how people would really talk and act in that situation. However, I've never been in that situation, so I wouldn't know… And everyone is different.

I wasn't myself lately; I was different, like a different person. I had inherited CJ's nasty attitude and feeling some of that determination Kenneth (usually) had. Nobody seemed to be themselves, really. Ken seemed to be weakening up, as if this whole situation was really getting the better of him- well, I think it was getting the better of all of us, but especially him.

"Should we wake them up?" I asked Ken, jerking a thumb back at the sleeping bodies.

"Nah," he replied, looking out there, far off, but ignoring the zombies. He didn't seem to be focused on anything in particular and he had that vacant look in his eyes. I couldn't read his expression, his eyes, anything. I was usually good at reading peoples' eyes; they always revealed something about what the person was thinking.

I got to my feet and went back to my area. I laid down and try my hardest to close my eyes but every snarl I heard down below would alert me. I looked hopelessly at Ken who turned around to face me. I sat back up and looked amazedly at Terry and Nicole who were still fast asleep- I wondered exactly how they could fall asleep and not be awoken by anything. Nicole's eyes flickered at the lustrous light from the sun shining in on her. She shielded her eyes and groggily mumbled something I couldn't make out. She turned on her side to look down upon Terry who was breathing softly, she gently nudged him. I suppose she didn't want to be awake without him.

"You two are actually up? Wanna give some of that sleep to Ana?" Ken stalked over to one of the coolers and snatched a bottle of water that he took a swig of. "This damn heat…"

The couple looked over at me, wondering what Ken meant. I was nervous to tell them our plan, I knew Nicole would break down and panic, and Terry would stand up and argue, giving reasons against the idea, telling us how absurd it is.

"Want something to eat?" Terry whispered to Nicole. She nodded and he crawled over to the coolers, she padded after him. "Ew, not that," I heard her squeal.

"Are we going to tell them?"

He shrugged. "Go ahead."

When the two crawled back over to the sheet they slept with, I cleared my throat to get their attention- but that didn't work. "You guys, Ken and I thought that…"

"Oh, do I want to know what you two have in mind for us?" Terry drawled.

"Alright listen, we thought up an extremely risky plan, but- it's worth the risk. OK, I thought- we thought- maybe we should go back down." I put it nice and blunt.

"Back down eh? God, Anna, you're sick." Terry did not sound like himself either. He was always the good guy, the thoughtful security guard out of CJ and the other one.

"So you're telling me you'd rather rot up here?" I demanded.

"Than get torn and eaten alive by walking corpses? Yes, most definitely."

I sighed heavily. "None of us want to get eaten alive by people we once knew, but I feel like I'm admitting defeat by sitting up here doing nothing about anything."

"There's nothing we can do, Ana. Except become an appetizer for zombies." Nicole began to tremble when he said this.

"You know, I never would have thought you'd be a pussy about this," Ken said, searching for something cold to drink.

Terry glowered in Ken's direction and his hand that was clutching Nicole's tightened its grip until his knuckles turned white. "Look, I just have sense enough to know that going back down there is just automatic death for us all."

"We won't know though, will we?" I said matter-of-factly.

Terry's patience was running short. "Look," he began firmly, "we have plenty of food up here, blankets-"

"Blanket," I stressed.

"-it's a good enough shelter for now."

"For now?" Ken inquired.

"Well yeah," he shrugged. "I'm sure those zombies won't be down there forever. They'll die off eventually."

"Die off? They're already dead," I snapped. "They're not gonna die again, obviously."

"When we shot them they died again, they didn't come back alive. I think it's possible for them to just… die off, without actually having to kill them ourselves."

I shook my head in disbelief. "You honestly believe that? Shooting their heads off is the only way we were able to kill a small portion of them. God, it almost seems like they're reproducing…" I was repulsed at the thought.

"Reproducing? Yeah. Right. Just eating more people." Terry rolled his eyes and shifted closer to Nicole who was wild eyed and confounded. "I'm not going back down."

Ken was a red-hot flurry of rage as he stepped closer to the two seated on the flimsy sheet laid out. "You're really gonna stay up here and not even give it a chance?"

Terry got to his knees, not able to sit still with so much rage boiling inside of him. "You think we'll be able to outrun, to outsmart, millions of brutish, savage living corpses!"

"Then we die either way," Ken said casually, as though the thought of a possible death for us didn't frighten him the least bit. "It's a loss for us if we stay up here, or go down there. You just have to make the decision of how you wanna die. We're of course eventually gonna run out of food, and it's gonna get real cold, you do know that."

"Yeah, but I think I'd prefer that." Nicole edged even closer to him until they were like a pair of Siamese twins, attached by the hip.

As I listened to their brief argument, a thought occurred to me. Perhaps I didn't want to live. Was going through all this really worth it? It would never leave my mind, I could never let it all go, let it be isolated in a far corner in my mind. I would be paranoid all the time, I would never be the same, and I've seen too much to be the same. And not only that, I have lost so many loved ones. I lost my husband, my beloved. I also lost Michael, who I felt I was fallling for even through all we endured. I already felt devastated and traumatized. And all this had taken such a massive portion out of my life, there wouldn't be a point in continuing on, and we didn't know how much longer this was going to last. Was Terry right, were the zombies eventually going to die off? I doubted it, but it was still a possibility. We had guns, we could start shooting them all one by one, but that would do no good, we certainly didn't have enough bullets, and more and more continued to come. Guns… a new thought struck me. Guns… we had a few guns handy, in reach, we could easily just grab a gun and…

"… and like I said, I don't want to fucking be eaten alive." I just caught Terry's last sentence.

"None of us do," I said calmly. "Nobody wants to be torn and eaten while we're still full conscious. "But we have a solution to that." I stalked over to the coolers and reached inside, pulling out a crumpled garbage bag. I unwrapped the bag, revealing our gun, which contained the largest amount of bullets. I held it up to show them what I was indicating.

"What are you implying?" Terry asked suspiciously, narrowing his eyes.

"Well, its obvious isn't it?" I pointed at the gun and hardened my eyes.

"You want us to shoot ourselves," Kenny said. "Shoot ourselves and get all this agony and fucking nonsense over with. Make our lives come to an end."

I swallowed the potato-sized lump that had swelled in my throat. "Yeah, basically." I thought the mere idea was horrifying. I would most definitely find great difficulty holding a gun up to my head and pulling the triggar. When I thought about it more, my hand started to tremble, my entire body quavered. "I guess it's kind of morbid of me to suggest but…"

"No," Ken shook his head and went over to the cooler to pull out another gun wrapped in a garbage bag, "I think it's a damn good idea."