January 12, mid-morning

The secretary was out.

Harlan strode past her empty desk and banged on the Governor's door as the fire alarms continues to ring out.

"FAIRWEATHER! You motherfucker I know you're in there!" Harlan banged his fists on the door to no avail. He took several steps back and threw himself at the door frame, but it was sturdy.

"Tony, a little help?" He shrugged and joined his partner in the insanity. After hurling themselves at it several times, it swings open and the two fall to the floor as it slams shut behind them.

Junior just barely squeaked through.

The Governor stood above them with a revolver in his hand, pointed right at them.

"Give me one... good… reason… not to end you two queers where you lay?"

"It's too late for you," Harlan flipped over to a sitting position and held his hands in the air, "If they're not dead already, everyone will be soon." As if on cue, a blood-curdling scream emanated from deeper inside the mall.

The Governor kept his gun trained on Harlan.

"There are others out there who know about you, what you've done." Anthony said, trying to take the heat. "Those people at the self-storage lot? They're fine. Your death squad didn't get them all."

"What death squad?" The Governor moved his sights to Anthony. "Tell me, what did Mister New York Times find?

"I-I know you've been lying to these people about where all their stuff came from!" Anthony felt his heart racing. "I know you've been killing other survivors and disappearing trouble-makers."

"And now you've killed us all." The Governor chuckled. "Your brave fact-finding mission has made you a worse monster than I. You know, we have children here."

"There were kids at the storage lot too you bastard."

"Irrelevant." The Governor swayed his pistol between the two men, keeping them on the floor.

"Their lives didn't matter?" Harlan was livid.

"Their parents were terrorists, they put us in danger." The Governor decreed. "You saw it yourself when they threatened you, Harley."

"They didn't threaten us! They wanted us to leave them some gasoline."

"That's not what you told me," he said, "You told me they were aggressive, they wanted what we had, and worse, they knew where we were."

"I didn't say shit like that!" Harlan looked at Anthony, who was breathing fast.

"Lying, in front of a child?" The Governor gestured to Junior, who was frozen against the wall. "Now that's low, very low, even for the man you think I am."

"You're a liar and a bastard, you know that?" Harlan said.

"It's a step ahead of being dead." The Governor aimed for Harlan and fired.

But all Harlan felt was Anthony collapsing on top of him.

Junior screamed and lunged at the Governor, sinking his teeth into the man's leg. He screamed and dropped his revolver.

"DON'T YOU HURT HIM!" He screamed as he sunk his teeth in again. The Governor grabbed Junior and threw him against the wall, knocking him out cold. He spun around to find Harlan holding his gun.

"You killed Tony." He laughed. "You killed Tony!" Harlan had a wide, bright smile on his face. "You might've killed Junior too!" He laughed some more. "You just killed the only good things in my life."

"I-I meant to kill you you sicko. Why are you laughing?" Harlan held a hand over his mouth as he giggled.

"Oh you fucked up," he held the revolver up to the Governor's face, "Oh ho ho you fucked up real bad."

"Just kill me you maniac!"

"No!" Harlan brought the butt of the gun down on the Governor's head, knocking him out. Harlan kept laughing and couldn't stop. He turned to Junior, who began to stir.

"Hey kid, you alright?"

"Are you okay?" He asked.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Are you fine?"

"I'm hurt." Junior's eyes welled up.

"Don't worry kiddo, we're almost done here."

He walked to Anthony's body with tears welling in his eyes and flipped him over, but there wasn't a blood stain. The movement made Anthony flash back to consciousness.

"JESUS!" He shouted as he sat straight up.

"Wh-What?" Harlan couldn't believe his eyes. You- but he- you got shot by a revolver."

Anthony tore open his shirt, revealing a bulletproof vest.

"I picked it up in the security office." He coughed. "Hurts like a bitch anyway."

Now Harlan laughed, genuinely laughed, as he picked his lover off the floor and kissed him. Anthony kissed him back, again and again. Junior hugged the two.

They turned to the Governor, who was still out.

"I have an idea." Harlan said as he tore through the Governor's items, producing some twine and tape. In short order, he had the man strapped to his leather chair. He began to wake up right as Anthony wrapped the last of the twine around his legs.

"What the fuck? What sick fucking idea is this?" He shouted.

"You'll see." Harlan winked at him as he and Anthony moved his desk to the side of the room.

"I'll see to it that you two burn in hell for eternity!" He turned to Junior. "If you follow these men, you'll end up in hell like the two of them!"

Junior shook his head wordlessly.

Harlan and Anthony grabbed the Governor's chair and brought it against the far wall, opposite of the window overlooking the food court.

"It won't work, it's shatterproof."

"No it's not." Harlan said.

"Yes it is," the Governor retorted, "You're just wasting time."

"This is an investigation, we're investigating how strong the glass is." Harlan and Anthony met each other's eyes with a grin. "On three."

"No."

"One."

"No!" The Governor kicked and tried to wiggle in his chair.

"Two." Harlan and Anthony gently rolled the chair forward an inch.

"NO NO NO, NOT THIS!"

"THREE!" The two men ran with the chair across the office floor. It connected with the glass, which shattered on impact, and the Governor fell two stories onto a table below as Harlan and Anthony high fived each other.

"NO! NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!" The Governor cried as the dead began to feast on his warm body. The duo watched from above, Harlan nearly threw up when one of the dead ripped the Governor's intestines out like a string of Christmas lights.

"We need to leave, and fast." Harlan said.

"I think I know just the trick." Anthony winked as he swung open the door, only to be greeted by a wall of the dead.

He quickly slammed it shut and braced himself against it.

"Maybe I don't!" Undead fists slammed against what remained of the door. Junior started crying. "What do we do? What do we do?!"

"Uhm, uh," Harlan's mouth hung slack as he looked around the room. They couldn't jump down to the food court or else they'd become food as well. The office door was certainly out of the question. Harlan's eyes tracked along the walls for something, anything, to get them out of this, but there wasn't a chance. "I don't know!"

Junior's wailing only succeeded in making the dead fight harder to get inside the room. Harlan pressed his hands over his ears and stared at the floor. The trio heard the door crack. In all the chaos, Harlan felt a chill come over him. He looked around, then up.

A vent.

Without a second thought, Harlan dragged the Governor's desk underneath it.

"I think it's too late to update his feng shui, Harley!" Anthony cried as the door creaked and groaned louder than the undead fighting to get in. He watched his partner climb on top, then fiddle with the ceiling until the vent came off. "Are you kidding me?!"

"Do you want to live or not?" Harlan yelled as he scooped up Junior and put him in the frigid air conditioning duct.

"The fuck do you think?" Anthony shouted as he lunged for the desk. The door broke down and a mass of undead flesh fell to the floor behind him. Harlan helped Anthony up, then climbed inside, missing an undead claw by mere moments. Harlan paused for a breath, but the dead began to grasp at the now-open duct.

"No time to waste!" Harlan squeezed past his compatriots and forged ahead. "Junior, we're safe now, stop crying!"

"B-b-b-but I'm scared!"

"I'm scared too!" Anthony put a hand on Junior's back, "But we have to keep moving. We have to be brave." Junior nodded, snot running down his face.

The trio crawled, lost, through what felt like miles of ducts. As they passed vents, it was like small plays being performed in each store.

Harlan saw a small family get torn to shreds in the jewelry store. He felt a pit open in his stomach, these people died because of him, because he broke into the mall. He paused as Anthony watched a man take his own life behind the counter of a Seahorse Coffee rather than face the dead. The screams of the living soon gave way to the moans of the dead as even the guards' gunfire died down. An eerie silence took over the mall, cut only by the glib muzak still on rotation. Harlan took a deep breath of cool air and exhaled.

In.

And out.

Harlan, Anthony, and Junior came to a four-way intersection with no markings. They paused to catch their breath.

"Now I know what a TV dinner feels like." Anthony joked.

"Babe, I love you, but now's not the time." Junior had stopped crying, but he hardly looked content with red eyes and a deep frown in the dim light of the air duct. "Which way do we go?"

"I'm not sure," Anthony began, "If we head that way it's a sheer drop to the first floor." He pointed down another duct, "That way only takes us to the empty shop where we uh, anyway." Anthony peered down the third and final escape route, "And I don't know where this one goes."

"How do you know where all these ducts go?"

"I saw it on a map!"

"Great. And you don't know where this one goes?"

"No clue." Anthony shrugged.

"So, it's the devil you know, or the devil you don't?"

"Pick your poison."

"I don't think there's as many of them up on the second floor, plus if we fall down we might make a lot of noise."

"But what about the mystery duct?"

"I'm not the least bit curious right now," Harlan narrowed his eyes, "Unless it's a straight shot out of the mall."

"It probably leads to the air conditioning unit, do you feel that?" Harlan held a hand in the air, the gentle breeze was coming from the final mystery direction.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say we don't need any spinning fans of death added to this escapade."

"Might be a fun challenge?"

"Oh fuck you," Harlan gently hit Anthony, "How can you joke at a time like this?"

"It's the adrenaline, don't mind me."

"I'm trying not to." Harlan sighed and rested his head against the metal wall of the air duct. They could hear the growling of the dead all around, coming from every direction. "The devil you know?"

"Sure." Without another word, the trio snuck through the ducts and found themselves in the abandoned shop. Through gated windows, it looked like the second floor was untouched. Anthony ran to the window. "It's a pretty big place, but they're pretty spread out down there. I think we can outrun 'em."

"Okay Mister Confidence." Harlan jested, "We outrun them and then what? How do we meet up with the old folks?"

"Just trust me." Anthony threw the gates open and bolted into a sprint across the mall's top floor. Down below a thronging mass of the dead was migrating through the mall towards the flaming southern entrance where the guards must've had their last stand. But for the moment, it was safe. Harlan lead Junior with his hand in his.

"Okay, I'm trusting you. Now what?"

"There!" Harlan followed Anthony's pointed finger to see a shiny red Cossette sitting in the middle of the horde.

"Your plan is a new car?"

"My plan, Harley, is for us to survive. Look." Farther up the mall Harlan could see a lull in the horde, an opening.

"Huh, no shit."

"That's a bad word." Junior spoke.

"Right on, kiddo," Anthony said, "But sometimes you have to fuckin' curse, got it?"

Junior nodded sagely, not absorbing any of this.

The trio waited a minute for the horde to migrate, then another minute, then a few minutes.

"So when do we go?" Harlan asked Anthony, who was half-hung over the second level's barrier.

"We go… soon."

"They'll see us eventually."

"Maybe so, but we're smarter than them."

"But there's three of us, well, two adults and a kid, and how many of them?"

"I can get a head count if you'd shut up." Anthony swiveled his head around before laughing. "There!" He pointed to a small opening among the dead that closed a moment later. "Fucking hell."

"We need a distraction."

"Like what?"

"Like something loud, I dunno?"

The two men started bickering, when a lightbulb went off in Anthony's head.

"Oh, duh." He started running towards the mall's northern promenade screaming bloody murder.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" Harlan shouted after him.

"Leading them away from the car, dummy!" Anthony kept screaming the lyrics to a song Harlan couldn't place. "HEY HEY HEYA HEY NOW NOW NOW NOWWW!"

And just like the maniac said, the dead followed the noise up the northern escalators.

"NOW DOWN THE STAIRS!"

Blindly, Harlan spun around and bolted down with Junior in hand to meet Anthony in the atrium. They were surrounded by the dead, but they were steps away from that brand-spankin'-new sports car.

Wordlessly the trio hopped inside and Anthony threw himself under the driver's-side console to fiddle with some wires. There were a few clicks, then the car alarm went off.

"Do you know how to hotwire?!"

"No! I thought I just touched some wires and-"

"Move your ass." Harlan reached between Anthony's legs and tugged at a few wires, before twisting two red and green ones together, touching them to a blue one, and the vehicle roared to life.

"Hot damn! Where'd you learn that?"

"I'll tell you if we make it out alive!"

Anthony stepped on the gas.

Carr and the rest of the "Senior Squad" were nestled among some houses, waiting. Martin pored over a half-constructed house while Cheryl stood guard. Carr smoked a cigarette.

"Where the hell are they? They're late." Cheryl complained.

"Hah, those queens are never late, we're just early." Carr spat back.

Then the trio heard a rumble from up the road. Carr peered through her binoculars and spied a red Cossette, dented to all hell and splattered with chunks of… is that a spleen?

Before she could process the sight, the car came to a stop near the group.

Harlan was the first one out, followed by Junior. "Teacher!" He cried, locking his arms around Carr.

Anthony stepped out last, "Where's my hug?"

"Here." Harlan stepped over and wrapped his arms around Anthony, before pulling him into a kiss.