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The afternoon wore on—simple, quiet, peaceful. Happy. Liv busied herself in the kitchen and did some cleaning up, Major obligingly got up whenever needed to lend a hand and otherwise leafed through a book while listening to the radio.

Just as he was thinking he might need to follow up that pie—and the martinis—with some actual food, Olivia came to him with a plate of sandwiches. As she set the plate down, Major caught her around the waist and pulled her into his arms. She laughed in delight, protesting … but not too much.

"The people who own this house could be home at any minute. What would they think if they found us necking in their parlor?"

"That I'm the luckiest guy in the world." He was, too. No doubt about it.

"I know you said we're in Oregon … but it feels more like cloud nine."

"This is how it could always be for us. We are not the problem; it's the rest of the world that mucks everything up. What if we leave all that behind? Ignore the rest of the world." Suddenly, he was sure this was the right path for them. He got to his feet, tugging Liv with him, and held her there in front of him, hoping she would see it his way. "Let's never go back."

"How would we eat?"

The answer came to him so quickly and clearly. He had never been more sure of an idea in his life—except his idea to ask Liv to marry him, all that time ago. "There have to be cemeteries around here somewhere. I'll buy a shovel."

"Well, what about money?"

"I'll work. I'll pick apples, I—I'll sell vacuums door-to-door. I just want to be with you."

She smiled. She felt the same way. This was right, Major could feel it.

"And gosh," he went on, "if Ravi finds a cure someday, we can go back to the way things were before any of this happened. Before boat parties. Before zombie outbreaks."

"I'd be your fiancee again."

Yes. Oh, please, yes. "You could be my wife."

"Mrs. Major Lilywhite." She leaned up and kissed him, her hands tucked in his. "Well, that sounds perfectly lovely. Almost perfect."

Major could feel her objection coming, and he thought quickly, trying to forestall whatever it would be.

In all seriousness, Liv looked up at him and said sorrowfully, "We're out of Tom Collins mix."

He really didn't have an answer for that one. "Oh. There has to be some somewhere." Either she was teasing him or this brain really had her turned around. Either way, he wasn't about to let the first happiness he'd tasted in far too long get derailed by Tom Collins mix. "I'll go take a look."

Olivia's smile returned, sunshine restored. "My hero."

She followed him as he hunted through the tall cabinets in the kitchen where she couldn't reach without a stepladder, and then rifled through the pantry. No luck. Off the kitchen, he spied a door. A basement! That must be where these things were kept.

With Olivia behind him, he carefully made his way down the steps into the basement. "Now, where in the Sam Hill …"

As he was frowning into the darkness, a light went on. He turned to see Olivia smiling at him next to the bouncing chain of the overhead light. "Really, darling. What would you do without me?"

He was about to answer that he hoped never to find out, when over her shoulder he spied the last thing he had expected to find in the basement: zombies. Other zombies, to be exact. Full Romero zombies.

Liv saw the way he was staring past her, and her smile faded. "What?"

When Major didn't speak, she turned and saw what he had seen—a metal gate, closed and locked, and behind it, two Romero zombies. A piece of paper was taped to the gate, but Major didn't need to read it to know who he was looking at. "These are our people." The married couple. What had happened here to bring them to this?

He and Liv approached the gate. Major took the paper down, reading quickly through it, while Liv looked apologetically at the zombies. "You have a lovely home."

Maybe something in them still recognized speech, still remembered their home and took pride in it. Maybe. But maybe not; maybe these people were just gone and their bodies didn't know it.

"It says Fillmore Graves stopped sending brain tubes," he said. "They were afraid they'd go Romero and hurt somebody. They decided Jeff would shoot Tammy and then himself … but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Couldn't bear the idea of living without her—even for a moment."

They stood looking at each other—two couples who loved one another. If he and Liv stayed here, would they end up like this, locked in a basement, slowly decaying? Or if they went back to Seattle, would they lose each other like they almost had already, even though they kept themselves? Major wasn't sure that sounded like the best option any longer. Jeff and Tammy were still together, after all, which was what they had wanted. Maybe it wasn't quite the way they'd imagined once upon a time, but it had to be better than being alone.

The thing was, he thought as he and Liv quietly turned off the light and returned to the main portion of the house, minus the Tom Collins mix that had seemed so important just minutes ago—the thing was that Liv didn't think that way. And there was a limit to how long he could dose her with happy wife brains before she remembered all the reasons she had to go back to the real world.

Even Major's happy husband brains couldn't overcome the gloom of that thought.