FoundZombie

     "What do you miss?" she asked me one night out of the blue.

     "Besides everything?"

     "Yes. If you could pick one thing that you could have right now, what would it be?" I thought about that for about two seconds before blurting out that I wanted pizza. Kira sighed.

     "Okay fine. What about you? What is this deep and philosophical thing you miss?" She really annoyed me sometimes with how high and mighty she acted. Like she was so above me somehow.

    …

Today's topic: scavenging. Interesting? No. Fun? No. Necessary in order to survive? Hell yes. Sometimes I feel like all I ever do is scavenge. More ammo. Clean water. My next meal. A new shirt. Incidentally, I did find that. A new shirt that is. It's a red flannel thing about two sizes too big and I like it. I'm still looking for the other stuff though.

Kira helps. Sort of. Sometimes she will just disappear for a few hours. Sometimes longer than that. Sometimes she even stays…

That wasn't living. That wasn't surviving. That was dying.That was the descent into madness. That was the loss of everything important. Ever. That was all we had to look forward to. We agreed to do it. We sat in our little safe dark room. We ate our last bits of food. We said "tomorrow for sure". It would be Valentines Day by our count. It just seemed to fit. We didn't have anything to use. No bullets. That would be the best choice. No pills. Drifting painlessly into sleep would be too easy.…

I remember when it happened. I remember it was just an ordinary day. My mom told me. He didn't want to tell me himself. He was sick. Very sick. He had cancer. It was bad. We didn't talk about it. It was like if we said it out loud, it might make it worse. It almost seemed like that was what sparked it. Nathan got sick and then so did the rest of the world. That was bad too.

We lived in a pretty rural area. A small town. Not many people but enough to have a problem once the super flu…