"They're calling it The Pulse," Rachel said.
"The who in the what, now?" Phoebe asked.
"Well, Charlie's calling it that," Rachel added. "Y'know, the whole cell phone thing that started all of this?"
"Oh," Phoebe said, then sniffed derisively. "Yeah, I don't like that name. We should call it something else."
"Okay, give me a second," Chandler said as he shifted against Phoebe, then gestured with his hands as he pitched, "The Cell."
Phoebe pursed her lips, then said, "I don't get it."
"One Missed Call?"
"Ew, no."
"Okay, fine." Chandler slumped down in his seat and half-heartedly said, "The Happening."
"Ooh, I like that one!"
Rachel tiredly rubbed at her brow. They were all sitting in Ross's living room, exhausted and awkward while waiting for the sun to go down. The electricity and water were still working, which Rachel thanked her lucky stars for as she had first bathed Emma, took a shower and then heavily implied that Phoebe and Ross take ones too. She wasn't sure the power would last for much longer, so the group - except Joey, Rachel repeatedly thought throughout the day while worrying her lip - had spent the day learning how to shoot and going over Ross's plan. Carol and Susan offered to watch the twins in an abandoned apartment down the hall, and Gunther had enthusiastically offered to watch Emma with them.
"You saw Charlie?" Ross asked Rachel after a minute of silence ticked by. "Where?"
Rachel felt Monica's eyes practically drilling into her. The two of them were squished in Ross's single chair, while Chandler, Phoebe, and Ross sat on his leather couch. Monica had spent the last twenty minutes occasionally touching Rachel's hair, which was much better than when they first reunited. Monica had spent about a whole hour squeezing the air from Rachel's lungs and then pinching her repeatedly to check if she were real, sobbing weird things like, "I'm so glad you've still got your face!"
Rachel cleared her throat before answering. "Oh, in Long Island." She had left out the part about getting lost, telling the others she'd wanted to lay low for Emma's sake.
"Really? How is she?"
Rachel frowned. She didn't know what was weirder, Ross interrogating her about Charlie, or the lack of her usual jealousy. "Not so good. I kind of, um... attacked her husband."
"Nice," Ross said approvingly. "Wait, why? Was he one of them?"
"Little bit, yeah."
"Nice!" Ross said, then, when he noticed everyone staring at him, he coughed and said, "I mean, poor Charlie."
"Poor her? Poor all of us!" Monica said, obviously trying to change the subject. "I mean, Phoebe, I know I've said this before, but I am so, so sorry about Mike. We all are."
It was as if a shadow crossed over Phoebe's face, but she nodded. "I know. Thank you."
Another minute ticked by.
"If it helps," Chandler said, "it was probably quick. I mean, if I know Mike, which I never really did, because —"
Phoebe patted his leg and Chandler said abruptly, "— And that didn't need to be said!" He turned to Ross. "Do you have a stapler I can borrow?"
"Okay, well, the bottom line is," Monica said, "we're lucky enough to be here, and alive. Let's just try to focus on surviving, and taking down as many of those... those things out there that we can."
"We're still going through with the plan, right?" Ross said. "I know it's kind of a crazy one, but..."
"Crazy's pretty much all we've got going for us right now," Phoebe said. "Not zombie crazy but, y'know. Regular crazy."
"I wish Joey were here," Chandler said suddenly, voicing Rachel's thoughts. "Doesn't feel right without him."
"Well," Phoebe said, "if the rest of us made it here in one piece, Joey's got to, right? I mean, he was on the other side of the country when The Happening well, happened. So that just means he'll take even longer than the rest of you guys did to get here."
"Actually," Rachel began, then pursed her lips as she started touching her hair.
"What? What actually?" Phoebe asked.
"Actually, nothing!" Rachel said, "Come on, let's go kill these things - again? I'm still kinda iffy on the whole dead-undead thing." She started to rise from the couch, but Phoebe went over to her and grabbed her by the shoulders.
"Wha - hey!" Rachel squealed.
"You talked to him, didn't you? Before this all happened? Where was he?" Phoebe demanded to know as she shook Rachel by the shoulders. "The last time I talked to Joey, he said he was driving, and that he'd get rid of his phone right away, so I couldn't call him and ask him where he was going. Rachel Karen Green, you tell me what you know or I'll —"
Rachel wrenched herself out of Phoebe's grip and rubbed her shoulder. "He said he was on his way here, okay? I called him the night before all this happened, and I know he's coming back! That's it, that's really all I know! What I don't know is whether I should be mad at you, or glad you're on our side!"
"I'd go with the second one," Ross said. "If it weren't for Phoebe, I'd be dead by now."
Rachel looked up at Phoebe, her shock over Ross's admission outweighing her shock over Ross's lack of reaction to her having called Joey.
"Is that true?" Rachel asked Phoebe, her voice shaking slightly.
Phoebe crossed her arms and shifted onto her other foot. "I dunno. Why don't you ask him yourself? Except for gossiping about Charlie, you two've barely said anything to each other since you got back."
The temperature in the room suddenly dropped several degrees. Everyone seemed to notice it, and they all started looking in separate directions.
Finally, Rachel looked at Ross.
"Okay," she said. "Okay, we'll talk."
Chandler stood up and said, way too quickly, "So, we should probably head to Carol and Susan's new place and take the twins off their hands. What d'you think, Monica?"
"I think that's a great idea." Monica got up too. "Come on, Phoebe."
"No, I'm good right here."
"You should probably come with us," Monica said pointedly. "You could catch up with Jack and Erica."
"Why, what's there to talk about? I mean, aside from music-powered zombies, and how much the twins are gonna miss Chandler when he dies."
"Phoebe!" Monica and Rachel gasped.
Phoebe shrugged. "Oh, come on, I don't need some psychic ability to know that Chandler's screwed for sure."
Chandler wordlessly headed out the apartment, followed soon after by Monica dragging Phoebe out with her. They shut the door behind them, leaving Rachel and Ross to look at each other.
Conversation about Emma would come later, in time. They'd figure things out with her, just like they had when Rachel moved out of his place the first time, but for now, they needed to have this talk. Rachel realized she needed to have it, before doing anything else.
Ross broke the silence first. "You know, when you said you got off the plane, that was the happiest moment of my life."
"That was mine, too," she said, then joined Ross on the long couch as she drew in a deep breath.
"I..." she started to say, then paused.
After a moment, she shouted, "I can hear you all out there, you know!"
"It was Chandler!" Phoebe called back. "He pushed me away so he could hear you guys better!"
"Well, I figured I should get the best listening spot, since I'm gonna drop dead any second now," he snapped at her.
"Oh, did I say you? I meant me. Now move over!"
Rachel sighed as Ross awkwardly shifted in his seat next to her. "Chandler, if it makes you feel any better, we could all die tomorrow."
"That does make me feel better," Chandler said.
"Then could you guys please give us some privacy?"
"She's right," Monica replied through the door. "Okay, we're really going."
Rachel listened as their footsteps grew fainter, then she looked back at Ross, reaching out to grasp his hand.
"I lost the ring," she said, turning her hand over so he could see for himself.
He shrugged. "I screwed up. It seems like every time we try to do this, I always somehow manage to screw it up. The list, the copy girl, Emily, the annulment, Paris... Actually, just thinking about all that stuff makes me wonder why you kept putting up with me."
"If it helps," Rachel offered, "I wasn't innocent in all of it, either." She lifted up his hand, still intertwined in hers. "And I wasn't kidding when I said you know what to do with these."
He didn't argue either of her points, for which she was very grateful. Instead, he said, "We had some good times, didn't we?"
"Yeah," Rachel said softly, lowering their hands. "We did."
"But we had some... some pretty bad ones too. Too many."
Rachel searched his face, catching his attention. He finally looked up, meeting her eyes.
"We're not in high school anymore, are we?" he asked. In that moment, she knew that that wasn't what he wanted, just as much as she didn't.
"No," she agreed. "No, we're not."
"Friends?" he asked after a long stretch of silence.
With a genuinely loving smile, she told him, "Always."
After they hugged for what felt like hours, she got to her feet and wiped tears off her cheeks, knowing that she didn't have to tell him her tears were born out of relief and happiness.
"Ross?"
When he looked up at her, she said, "You were right, you know. We were on a break."
She swore she could hear him laughing as she walked out of his apartment.
Chandler stood in the center nosebleed section of the stadium, looking down at the sleeping, open-mouthed zombies on the field. His stomach was churning and if he breathed through his nose, he felt like he was seconds close to vomiting. He couldn't get away from this place fast enough.
He looked around him, at the others standing in the spots they'd picked out earlier. When Ross looked at Chandler from the left field section, Chandler raised his hand and made the 'Rock on' gesture.
After a moment, Ross returned it.
Chandler lifted the walkie-talkie he'd been gripping onto for the past twenty minutes like it was his lifeline, and spoke into it.
"Okay, honey," he said to Monica, though he couldn't see her from where he stood. "Do it."
Then he hunched over a little, bracing himself for the shockwave.
It didn't turn out to be as intense as Chandler pictured it. Almost, but not quite.
There was a moment of silence, and then, all the speakers in the stadium filled the air with sound, drowning out the catchy, mindless beat the zombies were emitting from their own mouths down below.
He'd picked out the first song: Bowie's "Space Oddity."
"This one's for you, man," Chandler said to the only friend of his that wasn't there.
Then he broke into a run down the stairs.
As he ran in a zigzag pattern, he pressed the play buttons on all the portable stereos he had hauled up and set down on the aisle seats. Each of them had a different CD inside: jazz, classic rock, metal, classical, and anything else that wouldn't be categorized under 90s pop. He nearly tripped when he heard the upbeat polka music coming out from a stereo he'd activated on his left, wanting to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
He'd thought Ross's idea had been incredibly bizarre: fighting the undead with the sound of music. But, as he got to the bottom of his section, out of breath and shaking with anticipation, he figured that it made sense. In a way, it made more sense than everything else that had happened on the first afternoon of October.
He looked all around him at the others: Rachel, Phoebe, Ross and Susan. They'd reached the last step of their sections and were waiting, just like he was. Chandler pulled his noise cancelling headphones up from around his neck, and pressed them over his ears.
He listened to the quick, steady thrumming of his heartbeat, knowing that the mingled reverberations all around him would probably drive him past the point of no return if he could hear him. With a hurried glance, he watched the others mirror his actions, and stood, watching the piles of monsters below with his breath held in his throat.
Nothing happened at first. After a few long, torturous seconds ticked by, Chandler began to think that they'd failed, that he'd done all that work and busted his ass for nothing.
Then, he saw it.
He saw the zombies shift in unison, looking much like one of the human waves he'd been a part of once or twice in this very stadium. He watched them move, he watched them react, he watched them shudder as the music washed over them, overpowering their own. He could've sworn he saw a couple hundred of them rise up off the ground, their chests arching up toward the sky, as their mouths closed, opened, then closed again.
Not all of them collapsed back to the ground, looking like bodies that had finally seemed to accept they were dead. But most of them did.
Most of them.
Chandler could think of nothing better to do than laugh in triumph and relief. He turned to the scoreboard and changed it in his head.
Zombies: 1.
Humans: More than 1.
When it was over, Rachel and the others went back up the steps of the stadium, pausing to turn off most of the stereos. They left the others on just in case, plus their batteries would all give out by morning.
When they all regrouped outside the stadium, Ross confirmed what they all noticed: that about a third of the zombies had not been affected by the music. At first, Rachel didn't want to leave them alive; she suggested that they use Monica's rifle - and the handful of pistols and box of bullets Susan and Carol had brought along - on the surviving monsters, but Monica didn't want to use up the rest of their ammunition. At the back of her head, Rachel wondered if it were a good idea to leave the stadium, but she was too exhausted to stay.
They all were, she noticed as she looked at them.
Carol was waiting at Central Perk with the kids and, strangely enough, so was Gunther. He had locked himself in the storage closet as soon as the car crashed into the front window, and had been hiding in the shop ever since. Rachel let Gunther hug her as Carol rushed into Susan's arms. They all hung around inside Central Perk; Rachel hid a smile as Phoebe complimented the duck-patterned bedsheet-and-tarp combination that Carol and Susan used to cover the large, open window.
Rachel did Emma's hair as she sat at one of the stools in front of the door. Though she tried not to, Rachel couldn't help occasionally looked up at the door, as if, at any second, Joey would appear.
When someone did knock on the door, Rachel's head snapped up, her heart skipping a beat.
It was some tall guy carrying a shovel and wearing sunglasses.
"Hey," he said, completely ignoring the duck bedsheets, "d'you mind if we move this hockey stick from the door? It's kinda in the way."
Carol and Susan reached for their guns, but Monica stopped them once a tiny blonde woman joined the tall guy.
"Erica!" Chandler said as Rachel picked Emma off her stool and set her down, her braids finished, before unlocking the door.
"Hi, guys!" Erica hugged Monica and Chandler, then waved at everyone else. "Thanks for letting us in. It's been a weird week, huh?"
"Well, after a while you get used to seeing the undead and running for your lives," Chandler said nonchalantly.
"Who's your friend?" Phoebe asked Erica.
Before Erica could say anything, the tall man whipped off his sunglasses and struck a pose. "Bert Macklin, FBI. We're gonna wipe out these assholes if it's the last thing we do."
"I sincerely hope that won't be true," Carol said.
"We came here to make sure the kids are okay," Erica explained. "If that's okay."
"Sure, the more the merrier," Monica said. "You wouldn't happen to have picked up a shotgun or ten on your way over here, huh?"
"Oh. Well... No," Erica said sheepishly, then brightened. "But we've got a shovel!"
Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel caught Chandler glancing first at Bert, then at Monica knowingly, something they did when they shared an inside joke.
"Good thing we went to the stadium," Susan muttered under her breath, and at Erica's puzzled look, Monica started filling her in on everything.
Rachel thought she heard someone else at the door, and looked back at it quickly.
Nothing. No one.
"He's coming back," Ross said from behind her, as if he could tell who she was thinking about.
Whom, she corrected herself sadly, then said, "Yeah, I know. Just wish he'd hurry up."
"I do too," Chandler said as he brushed past Rachel and Ross to lie down on the long couch. "But in the meantime, I'm gonna get some shut-eye. See, I've never really been familiar with winning, and I'm starting to realize that it takes a lot out of you."
Rachel and her friends all turned to silently check if Gunther was okay with them camping out at Central Perk. He'd been gazing at Rachel the entire time, and shook when he noticed everyone looking at him.
"It's fine," he said after Rachel asked him if they could stay. "Not like I own the place."
Rachel didn't think she would be able to sleep, but after everyone dragged Chandler off the couch, settled the kids down on it and then stretched out on various spots on the glass-free floor, she found it all too easy to slip away into a darkness that was just as consuming as the night sky.
When Ross woke up, he looked over at the front door, where Phoebe was standing.
Her back was turned toward Ross, and she had the handle of the coffee shop's emergency axe clenched tightly in her hand.
Her hand was bleeding and covered in bits of glass.
"Phoebe," Ross said in a muddled voice as he stood up, trying not to elbow Chandler or Monica's heads as they tightened their arms around each other. "What're you doing?"
"I think you should come look at this," Phoebe replied quietly, not turning back around to face him.
The seriousness in her tone was enough to set Ross in motion, to bring him over to the window beside her.
His heart didn't stop beating, but he almost wished it had.
Across the street, all along the sidewalk opposite the coffee shop, there were about thirty or forty zombies, quietly standing there and staring with their tattered clothes flapping in the chilled air.
Ross's breath hitched in his throat as his gaze traveled along the line of undead New Yorkers. There was the CEO he and Phoebe had talked about earlier. Ross saw his ex boss from the museum, and Emma's favorite hot dog seller. There was this person he knew, and that person he was vaguely familiar with, and many more that had been ruined long past the point of recognition.
In the center of the line, there was a woman with the most familiar face. On it, there was a jagged gash twisting diagonally downward. The top part of her head had been partially burned, and the melted flesh of her forehead drooped over one eye, obscuring it from view. Her mouth had remained more or less unmarred, and when Ross looked at it, he swore he could see her smiling as she parted her bloodstained lips.
"Is that - is that Ursula?" Monica asked as she drew up next to Ross at the window, her hands on her rifle, but not putting it up to her shoulder.
"Yeah," Phoebe said. "In the flesh. More or less."
"Holy..." Chandler said as he came up from behind Ross. "Please tell me I'm still dreaming."
The other adults approached the door as well, and for a long, long moment, the two groups looked across the street at each other. It would have been very much like one of the Westerns Ross used to watch as a kid, but at least in those, the good and bad guys had an equal fighting chance.
Which he and his friends did not.
It occurred to Ross, then, that he had been so incredibly naïve to think that he and the others were going to make it through this.
He looked over his shoulder then, his eyes resting on Emma and Ben, and his heart shattered all over again. He longed to wake them, to tell them how much he loved them and wished it didn't have to be this way, to end this way.
He watched Emma shift a little and snuggle further into her half-brother's side.
Ross cleared his throat before saying, "Let's go out there."
"Yeah," Phoebe said, her tone matching Ross's. "Let's see what my sister – well, what's left of her – has to say."
After Rachel unlocked the door, they moved their small barricade and gathered on the sidewalk outside Central Perk, their backs to the children.
Chandler said, "Okay, now that we've established that this was the dumbest idea ever, I say we all go back inside and have some stale coffee."
"No," Ross said.
"We'd need to come out sooner or later," Monica agreed, her voice small, but still just as resolute as her brother's. "At least this way, we won't be trapped inside like rats."
"Why don't we just wait until dusk, when they'll leave?" Chandler pointed out. "Then we can get out of here, and not have to die."
"What if the night doesn't do anything to them anymore?" Rachel wondered.
"Yeah," Ross said, "not all of the ones in the stadium died because of the music, so maybe they've developed an immunity for the dark, too. Or being indoors."
"Makes sense," Susan said, sounding slightly impressed with Ross's guess. "And I don't know about you, but I don't want to wait inside all day knowing they're out there. It'd probably make me end up like one of them."
Ross didn't know why he and Susan had always been so mean to each other, why he'd been so much at odds with her even after he'd completely gotten over Carol. Susan was actually not such a bad person, really.
"What are they doing?" Carol asked, her voice much shakier than the others'. "I mean, they just keep standing there. They couldn't possibly want anything else other than to eat us, right?"
"Actually, they do," Phoebe said, causing the others to turn their attention toward her.
"How d'you know?" Chandler asked.
Phoebe's gaze never wavered from her former twin. "Because she told me."
A hush fell over the group in front of Central Perk, then Chandler said, "Again, I ask how."
"Ooh, I know!" Rachel said, suddenly and proudly. "Charlie's husband - uh, ex-husband - was thinking things to me when he attacked us."
The guy who insisted that everyone call him Bert Macklin, FBI, said, "Really? Like what?"
"I dunno. Some dinosaur name."
"Let me guess," Ross said in a flat voice, "Boscodictiasaur."
Rachel nodded as the zombies kept staring the whole group down. "Yeah, but it has a silent 'M.'"
Ross held himself back from stomping on his healing ankle. "I hate that guy!"
"Hey!" Monica hissed, her rifle already out and loaded. "Dozens of vicious, sorta-dead cannibals right in front of us. Can we please focus?"
"Yeah, okay. This must mean they've somehow become telepathic," Ross said, remembering the bond he'd mentioned to Phoebe days ago, when she'd just laughed it off. For once, he wasn't pleased with being right.
"That is so, so weird," Chandler said. "And kinda cool."
"So, what do they want from us?" Susan asked.
"She says she knows what we did to the others at the stadium," Phoebe replied in a distant voice. "But she's not mad about it; she just wants to even the score a little. She says... She says she wants us to join them."
"What?" the others asked, all at the same time.
"She says it's easy: we can just pick up any old cell phone and make a call. She says it feels great, and..." Phoebe paused, then said, "All the free food we can eat."
"Tell her 'thanks,' but we'll pass," Chandler said. "Even if that means we become the food."
One by one, the others murmured their assent.
"Our loss," Phoebe said, her voice as cold as Ursula' s had always been. "She's giving us to the count of ten to change our minds. If we don't, they'll kill us, and take the kids. She's going to make the children just like them."
"Over their dead bodies," Monica said as Chandler nodded grimly, and suddenly this was all going to happen, just as Ross imagined it. At least, he reflected distantly as everyone readied their assorted weapons, when they died, they would go down fighting.
"Gunther," he said, still facing forward, feeling his entire body hum with coiling energy. "See if you can go inside and play something on the sound system."
"Ten," Phoebe said.
"That wasn't really part of my job," Gunther admitted, still sounding just as nonchalant as he had about everything for as long as Ross had known him. "And for the record, I've always thought Rachel was too good for you."
"Shocking," Ross said, trying to ignore Phoebe as she ticked off another number down to the group's collective doom.
"Please, Gunther, can you try?" Rachel asked, "Look, it might be a long shot, but —"
The door to Central Perk slammed shut behind Gunther.
"Eight."
"Do you really have to do the countdown for us?" Chandler asked before he checked his handgun and drew it up alongside Monica's rifle.
Ross didn't think she could stop herself, for she sounded like she was in a trance. He desperately willed Gunther to hurry up in the back.
"Yeah," Gunther called out, "I have no idea how to work this thing. I always got someone else to play it for holidays and shows."
"Oh, fine, I'll do it!" Rachel snapped before running into the shop.
"Six."
Come on, Ross thought as a bead of sweat gathered at his temple and trickled down his brow. Come on.
"Hang on," Rachel said from inside the store. "I think I've got it."
"Five."
A burst of sound finally rolled outside from the speakers in the back, turned up to the highest volume setting. It skipped a beat, stopped, and started up again, a guitar riff blaring through the tarp and bedsheet.
So no one told you life was gonna be this way...
The group stood there, motionless, as the musicians clapped.
Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's DOA!
"What the hell is this?" Chandler asked.
Wincing, Monica said, "I don't know, but it sure isn't working."
"Three," Phoebe said, and Ursula raised up the corners of her mouth in an amused, feral grin.
"Can't you change it?" Carol yelled back over her shoulder as she and Susan raised their guns. Ross was vaguely aware of Erica kissing Bert Macklin, FBI and hurrying into the shop as he lifted his shovel.
"It's stuck!" Rachel replied. "It won't go to the next song!"
Ross groaned. "You have got to be kidding me."
"Two..." Phoebe said, then, Ross felt her straighten up next to him as she seemed to shake herself out of her trance. "Okay, you know what? Screw this."
In the blink of an eye, Phoebe jerked her arm back, launching her axe across the street. It twisted in mid-air, almost in slow-motion, and landed unceremoniously with a squelching sound deep in Ursula's shoulder.
She stumbled backward a few steps as a horrible, wounded sound erupted from her throat. She looked down at the blade embedded inside of her, then back up at Phoebe with the closest expression a zombie could have that seemed like genuine shock.
"That's for coming over here and trying to kill us," Phoebe said to her twin. "That's for making us stay cooped up inside during the day, for ruining the city, for probably killing Joey, for ending the world.
"And, above all else, that's for breaking my thermos."
The zombies surged forward before Ross could draw in his next breath, their feet pounding in time to the syncopated rhythm of the song that continued to spill out from the speakers inside the coffee shop. He almost expected them to start dancing.
Unfortunately, they didn't.
Ross looked on as Phoebe broke away from his side, running over to Ursula and wrenching the axe out of her shoulder, then hacking her head off with it.
Then he snapped into automatic survival mode, yanking his pistol out of the back of his pants and aiming it to quickly shoot at one, two, then three of the rushing, snarling zombies that were coming right at him.
It was utter, complete chaos. He could barely make out what was right or left, and he caught only brief glimpses of the others shooting, hacking and trying to fend off the surrounding zombies as they filled up the street. There was a flash of Monica and Chandler, back to back and shooting at grey, trudging figures. That was Phoebe running past them to flip her axe right into one zombie's back before it could deliver a killing bite to Bert Macklin. Then Ross couldn't see them, because there were five zombies surrounding him. He reacted to them on a purely instinctive level as he fired off shot after shot, aiming for their heads, then hurriedly reloaded with the bullets in his pocket. He managed to fire off a few more effective rounds, but he was tired and far from an expert shot, so he was missing most of them. During his third re-load, a zombie jumped on his back, pushing him to the ground and sending the gun skittering away from him on the sidewalk.
He felt the brief, white-hot flare of pain on the back of his neck as the zombie on top of him sank its teeth into his skin, and it was really hitting him that this was it, this was how he was going to die, and his thoughts had erratically turned to his son and daughter when the weight of the zombie on him went slack and it became truly dead.
Ross slid forward on his stomach out from under the zombie, getting dust and blood all over his hands, then snatched up the gun. When he stood up and turned around, he saw that Susan had jammed a pocket knife into his attacker's neck.
"Thanks," he said, his gratitude coming out in a voiceless whisper.
"Don't mention it. Really, don't," Susan said with a half-smile. Then she swung back around to help Carol.
Ross started after her, but got hedged in on all sides and resumed shooting into the masses of teeth, decaying flesh, and nails. When the last of them fell, Ross noticed Gunther at the front door of Central Perk, knocking aside zombies left and right with a hockey stick before they could get inside the shop.
"Gunther, no!" Ross heard Rachel cry out as she pounded on the door from inside.
"I'll save you, Rachel!" Gunther called back to her in a choked voice, even as blood was gushing from his neck and arms onto the pavement. "Just stay inside!"
Even as Ross emptied his gun's chamber into the monsters clawing and biting at Gunther, even as he saw them go still, Ross knew he was too late. Gunther swayed, then fell onto the sidewalk, clutching the fatal bitemarks in his neck and abdomen.
Rachel flung open the door, shoved the really-dead bodies off of Gunther, and knelt down to cradle Gunther's head in her lap.
"Thank you," she said as she kissed his cheek.
Gunther shuddered. "Oh... I think I can die happy now."
And then he did.
"Rach, I'm sorry, but you should get back inside and watch the kids. You'll be safe in there," Ross told her as he turned his back on the shop, feeling around inside his pocket for more ammunition.
Just a handful left.
He cursed under his breath as he reloaded one last time, trying to ignore the pounding in his head.
"You wanna know something?" he faintly heard Monica say as she joined him in front of the shop, shoving the butt of her rifle into the face of what had once been somebody's grandmother before it could get to Chandler. "This really makes me want to go back in time and kick Alexander Bell's ass."
"Well, children, it's been nice knowing you," Chandler said grimly, pistol-less, as he, Ross, and the others backed up against the ledge of Central Perk. "At least we managed to make it here so we could all get mutilated together."
Phoebe choked up on the handle of her axe, and didn't even flinch as she planted it directly into a teenager's face. When the twitching corpse toppled over at her feet, she said, "Yeah. We're all here, except for —"
BANG.
Right in front of their eyes, one of the approaching zombie's heads simply burst apart.
After the headless corpse collapsed onto the filthy pavement with a dull splat, all movement in the entire street ground to a halt, including the other zombies that stopped and turned their heads in unison, toward the end of the street.
Then, without warning, five more of the undead began dropping to the ground like stringless puppets, after their heads all seemed to spontaneously combust.
Ross peered through the dusty haze, barely making out the silhouette of a musclebound figure standing at the end of the street, the barrels of his shotgun still smoking. Soon, it also became apparent that, spread out behind the newcomer, were other figures hurrying toward Central Perk, holding an assortment of guns as they surveyed the scene before them.
The song on the speakers changed to the next one.
It wasn't as loud as the previous track, and Ross couldn't recognize it at first.
When he did, he knew that they were going to win.
About ten of the monsters froze in place when they heard the music. They began to retreat with flailing, jerking movements, as if they couldn't get away fast enough. In seconds, they dropped like flies.
At the same time, the gun-toting crowd surged forward into the street, rushing ahead of the first man, who took longer, slower strides into the battlefield. Some of the new arrivals joined the group in front of Central Perk and began passing out extra shotguns, much to Monica's delight, while others blasted off the remaining zombies' heads.
It wasn't until someone from the back of the crowd of humans started moving further into the street that gave Ross pause.
Compared to the first muscular guy, the man in the back, dressed in traditional Army fatigues, looked less like a war hero and more like a raggedy-ass player in a battle re-enactment.
Or a low-budget film.
Ross could tell, then that the soldier really was his friend, looking back at him and the others.
The sixth and final link in their indestructible chain.
"Joey."
Ross whipped his head to his left, to the source of the voice that had somehow seemed much louder than all the thunderous gunshots and groaning, terrible noises all around him, and he saw Rachel standing beside him, gazing at the lone figure down the street.
"Rachel?" he asked her.
"Ross!" Chandler chimed in giddily.
"Chandler, if you ruin this moment I'm gonna —" Phoebe gritted out between clenched teeth, but Monica put a calming hand on her arm as Ross looked back at Rachel.
"How's Emma?" he asked.
"She's safe, with Erica and the other kids. I fixed the music after she came in," Rachel answered, her voice barely above a whisper as she kept staring at Joey down the street. "They're all fine. Emma's fine."
She shifted her focus directly onto Ross then, fixing him with a sharp, piercing look, and he knew what she was thinking.
He squeezed her shoulder. "I''ll cover you. Bring him back, Rach. I'll make sure they don't get anywhere near Emma."
Rachel nodded, and said, "Good."
Less than a second later, she dashed into the fray – stumbling once or twice over bodies, bullets and busted cell phones – to get to Joey.
Ross automatically raised his gun and took aim at a lone zombie heading right at her. He forced himself to keep his hands steady, clipping the monster's shoulder with one bullet, then another. A split-second later, Joey shot the same zombie, effectively knocking it down. Their shots were so fine-tuned, so perfectly synchronized, that it was almost as if they'd choreographed their actions beforehand, in their sleep.
Before Ross could congratulate both of them on performing such a feat, he caught sight of another zombie stumbling toward Rachel from her right.
Never breaking her stride, she pulled back her arm and punched it. It swayed, comically, to one side before toppling over onto the pavement.
Ross stood where he was, unable to hold back the sudden laugh of mixed amusement and relief that erupted from him, but his laughter died away as he watched Joey take one slow, dragging step toward Rachel.
And then he spread his arms, dropping his shotgun just as Rachel ran right into him, the force of her momentum sending him stumbling back a few steps.
Ross kept watching them from his spot, through the battle, as they collided.
They wrapped their arms around each other: Joey's around Rachel's waist, hers around his neck.
As Joey held Rachel, he lowered his head a little to say things into the shell of her ear. Things that Ross knew he would never know.
When the two of them broke apart slightly, but maintained their steady grip, they just looked at each other, as if they were the only people on the street, as if the world weren't falling apart at the seams all around them.
And, in that moment, Ross began to smile.
Beside him, Phoebe lifted her axe up out of a corpse's head and screamed down the street, "JOSEPH FRANCIS TRIBBIANI, THIS IS NO TIME TO BE PICKING UP WOMEN! YOU COME OVER HERE RIGHT NOW AND HELP US KICK SOME SERIOUS ZOMBIE ASS!"
Everyone stopped and stared at her.
Even all the zombies.
She shrugged. "Well, I wasn't the only one feeling like chopped liver, was I?"
After the battle resumed instantaneously, after Joey picked up his shotgun and he and Rachel ran back to the front of Central Perk, hand in hand and dodging zombies, Phoebe tossed her axe aside and flung her arms around Joey, pounding on him a little as she sobbed into his shoulder.
Joey took the beating and rubbed her back as he murmured, "I know, Pheebs, I know. Sorry I didn't get here sooner."
Then, Chandler put down his new shotgun, stepped forward, and hugged Joey too.
Ross and Monica set their guns down and, along with Rachel, joined the others in the most awkward, tearful, and inappropriately-timed group hug they ever had.
It was also the one they needed the most, since that one fateful day they all were together for the first time.
They all stood on the spot, drawing out the long embrace, savoring the silent, powerful sensation of unity, of feeling the last pieces of their puzzle finally clicking into place. They held each other on the battlefield's sideline, as more zombies lost their heads and others started to retreat, as the autumn sun continued shining down on them.
When they finally broke apart, dabbing at their faces with grimy sleeves and wrists, Chandler said, "For once, I hate to ruin the mood, but shouldn't we get back to, oh, I don't know... Beating back the hordes of the walking, technically not-so-dead?"
"Yeah, as moving as all that was, a little help here would be nice," the first musclebound guy Ross had seen said, right before blasting a couple rounds into an approaching zombie with his shotgun. "Geez, it's not like the world revolves around the six of you."
"Oh, right," one of them said. In that moment, it really didn't matter which of them was speaking. "We'll help."
After they finished collecting themselves, each of them took up a weapon and rose in unison, to defend their coffee shop and kids with all the strength they had.
Funnily enough, the fight only lasted another minute.
The monsters retreated as a single unit back toward the stadium, and the survivors all headed into Central Perk. The six recently reunited friends were exhausted beyond belief, and covered in blood, sweat, tears - and other things too gross to mention - but they were alive and together.
Together.
A/N: It's not over yet! There's one more chapter and a tag. Thank you so much to everyone who is reading and leaving wonderful comments on this!