“Why, though?” I asked. I stared into his gray eyes with tears swimming in my own. “What’s the point of fighting so hard to stay alive if this is what life is?”

“Because.” He looked up at me, and then he stood up.

He leaned forward, and he pressed his lips to mine, kissing me gently. Then he stopped, but he kept his face close to mine as he searched my face.

“Why’d you kiss me?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I wanted to make you feel better.”

I thought about it, and I hadn’t heard a better reason to do anything in a long time, so I told him, “Do it again.”

He kissed me, deeper this time, and pushed me back on the bed. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him to me.

30.

We lay on the bed, him on top of me, kissing for a long while after that. There was something almost subdued in the way we kissed and the way he touched me. I’d gotten used to everything being so frantic, immediate, and insistent.

But this was something much different. It was as if we were savoring the moments, trying to make them last, enjoying one of the few things left in this life that we could enjoy.

I tried not to think of anything except the way his lips felt on mine, the strength of his hand on my side, the weight and warmth of his body against me.

Then as abruptly as we’d started, we stopped.

Boden propped himself up on one arm, staring down at me, and he brushed the hair back from my face.

“Are you feeling any better?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly.

The rage I’d felt earlier had dissipated. But the emptiness and ache lingered. By now I knew that it would never really go away. The longer I lived, the more I’d lose. Eventually, I’d have a giant hole inside me, and nothing else.

“Where’d you go?” Boden asked.

I blinked and looked up at him. “What?”

“Just now.” He smiled crookedly. “You disappeared.”

“I was just thinking.” I tried to smile back at him, but it felt weak.

“Do you want to go over and see Serg and the kids?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. A few more minutes, okay?”

“Okay.”

He lay down next to me on his side, and I slid closer to him, resting my head on the crook of his arm. We stayed like that for a few minutes, probably longer than we should’ve given how frantic Max and Stella probably were.

But I wasn’t ready to go over there. Something about seeing them, telling Max and Stella that Daniels wasn’t coming back … that made it feel all too real. I just wanted stay here, in this weird cocoon with Boden, and pretend that nothing outside this room existed.

Eventually, we did get up. Boden pulled the thin comforter off the bed and went into the bathroom. I stood just outside and watched as he covered up Daniels. That was the closest we could get to burying him.

We’re gathered our stuff before we left the room, and then Boden locked the door behind us. That would hopefully keep the zombies out, and Daniels would maybe get some peace in his death.

That’s what we had to do. Leave our dead lying around and move on.

Max ran over and hugged me as soon we went into the next room. He’d been positive that something horrible had happened to me, despite Serg’s assurances to the contrary.

Almost as soon as I walked in the door, Stella began asking about Daniels. She’d gotten rather close to him over the past few days. I sat down next to her and explained as gently as I could that he wasn’t coming back.

She knew what that meant, though. She’d already lost enough people and understood what death was far better than any six-year-old should have to understand.

We went to bed after that. I still felt too sick to eat, and the kids had already had supper. I shared a double bed with Stella and Max, and Stella snuggled up close to me. She cried softly as she fell asleep, and I stroked her hair.

Max was having trouble falling asleep, too, so he asked me to sing him a lullaby. When we’d first started out on our own, right after zombies had killed our parents and the virus was still new, I used to sing to him every night.

I didn’t know any lullabies, but Max didn’t know that. The only song I could come up with that I knew all the lyrics for “Blackbird” by the Beatles. So, as the kids drifted off to sleep, I softly sang to them about broken wings and being free.

The morning came, and we packed our things and left.

The days that followed felt unremarkable. We walked from sun up until sundown, barely out-running the death groans following us.

Boden and Serg took turns carrying Stella when she got too tired to walk. I tried to, but Boden refused to let me. Daniels said I shouldn’t be lifting anything until my incision had healed completely.

The one good thing about losing so many people in our group was that our food rations suddenly didn’t seem so low. We were going to be set for a while, but not forever. 

When we went to bed one night, camping out in the back of an abandoned Dodge Ram, I realized we hadn’t heard a single death groan all day. Just to be safe, we walked on another day, and another day after that, and we still didn’t hear anything.

Midafternoon on the fourth day without any death groans, we found a house on a lake. It was more than a house, though. It was glorious. The living room had a fireplace, and the back wall was the height of the house and made of glass, so you got the full view of the lake.

All the furniture was covered with sheets, carefully protected. This was somebody’s vacation home, and they’d left one fall and never came back.  Based on all the dust that had built up and the musty smell, I’d guessed it had been a while ago. But that made sense. Once your neighbors started eating your flesh, a vacation didn’t sound like as much fun.

There were four bedrooms upstairs, and the master bedroom had a fireplace. One of the bedrooms was done all in purples and pinks, with flowers everywhere. The small twin bed even had a new fluffy teddy bear sitting on it.

The other two bedrooms were more basic. One was really beige, and the other was forest green with duck trim around the edge.

But the most exciting part wasn’t the view, the bedrooms, or even the multiple fireplaces. It was the game room in the basement. Not only did it have a pool table and a poker table, which were fun enough themselves, but it had a gun cabinet, with seven different shot guns and many boxes of shells below. They even had a crossbrow, and several fishing rods.