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 ^{(it's beta!)}

He stared down at it. I was pretty shocked too, I mean nothing really ever happened in my life. But now, cautiously peering down at a skeleton's grin, that had emerged from the waves on the lake's edge, we realised that our lives were changed. No more martial arts just for the fun of it, no more upper middle class life at all. With Drake, come to think of it... or Brittany. Yes, of course, this had an effect on all of us, it was the real thing now: survival. I wanted to run away, to the next state, to get some sort of militia, some S.W.A.T. team like in the movies. I needed something big to wipe out this terrible infestation that had killed my best friend with whom I had watched movies about just this.

As though he could read my thoughts, Drake snapped his head up and spoke quietly. Actually, everything was quiet.

"It makes me want to fight. It makes me want to take a baseball bat and just run in screaming and bash their dead skulls in. I want to rip their throats out. Hmmm... wait, no I wonder -"

As he changed from fiery to pensive I siezed the opportunity to grab his hand and start running. The love that we shared was keeping us physically intact; though fear consumed our minds.

"What, what's the matter?" he said.

"Huh? Oh," realizing my eyes were open wider than normal, I blinked, "uh, I just thought we, uh, should like get some shotguns or something. Y'know? Like in all of the movies they have guns even though they don't really do anything, they help you feel bigger and slow 'em down and stuff - come to think of it we should get some grenades and -" I stopped as he started to smile and his eyes lit up.

"You are so funny!" he laughed "There aren't any grenades in the whole fricken' state of Minnesota! We're landlocked, and the only bordering country is Canada!" The last part made me smile enough to join in his good humour and we finished the last couple of miles to my house without speaking much.

"Good thing someone already snapped that bastard's head off, eh?"

"What?"

"Oh, the uh, the one down at the lake. I wonder how long he's been gone for. Oh." He stopped. I stopped.

"What? You realized that the zombies got him?"

"Yeah. Heh."

I opened the door to my building and sprinted up the stairs with Drake not far behind.

"How else would he have no skin or hair?"

"Yeah, I'm glad we didn't move it or else we might've seen the hole in his head that I'm sure is there now," he said as I turned on the light, "the jagged indent -" I raised an eyebrow, so he halted his macabre description. I grinned and gave him a quick kiss and then went into the kitchen to start up some toast, which I was good at cooking.

He sighed, "you have really got to learn how to cook. Like me!" We laughed and he started up some eggs which he found in the nearly vacant fridge. "Hey did you bolt the door?" My face fell.

"Oh - no..." I stopped staring at the toaster and quickly walked out to the door and turned the bolt lock. There was promptly a thump on the door, I yelled, and Drake came running.

"Christ - shut up, will you?"

"Oh, hey Mr. Johnson, you scared me. Who's with you?" I didn't really want to open it up.

"No one." I opened the door.

"Who's with you?" He said, taking in Drake, looking him in the eye and then, when I had introduced him, extending a hand for a brief, terse handshake that was characteristic of him. "All right, just wanted to check in with you guys, seen anything out there?"

"Not much," Drake said, "but yeah, we wanted to look around a little, y'know. We're thinkin' about getting out of here soon."

Johnson looked away, "Yeah, are you coming with the rest of us? West?"

"I dunno" I said, "We were thinkin' about going up into Canada and then back down more East."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, best of luck to you guys. What have you got for... er... defenses?"

"Well right now we're pretty much working on stuff we can hit 'em with."

"All right sounds about like us, try to get some guns too."

"Ok, Sammy." He grinned as I rolled my eyes at the pejoritive use of my name. I turned my mouth down in that sort of slight smile and shut the door, listening to his footsteps traverse the short distance between our living spaces. The spaces where our lives were privately carried out.

Drake and I sat down to the TV and turned it on.

"Wait," I said. I rearranged the room by moving the TV into its diametrically opposite former position, and turning the couch around, as Drake lazily made sure I had as much weight to move as possible. As I sat down he shifted so that we were cuddled up on the right side of the couch where we fell asleep watching the news, in the dark.