That was it then. That was yesterday. An hour earlier they’d found this cheap hotel, and it had seemed abandoned, so they’d snuck in and bedded down in one of the rooms. They’d been running for so long after abandoning the car, they had to rest. Victor went for ice – he wanted to laugh that this was why he was cut off from Lauren and Clint, ice! – and now there were zombies between him and Lauren, real fucking zombies. It was no dream.

He’d really kicked open the door of a random hotel room, and he’d really blocked the door with a chair. One rickety, orange-canvassed chair holding back the undead. The door rattled as the first of them began clawing at it. Did it smell him? Hear him breathing? Or did it somehow remember seeing him enter just a moment ago? He looked around. It was a really shitty hotel. Time had peeled back the flower-patterned wallpaper in all the corners. Plaster fell away from the ceiling with each shudder of the door, and the furniture was so pathetic, it belonged in a bad movie – not the real world. Victor wasn’t dying in a place like this.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He flattened himself against the floor and stretched out his arm for the clip. He shoved his hand roughly into the space between the TV and the carpet. He lost a layer of skin, but he came up with it. Then, the spent clip ejected, Victor rammed home the fresh one and chambered a round. The gun held eleven bullets, and there were five or six zombies out there. Not bad odds. Victor had killed thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of zombies in video games across the years. You shoot ‘em in the head, everyone knew that. It wasn’t so hard. There was more sweat in his eyes, and he blinked it away. The temperature was beyond tropical, a presence weighted against his chest each time he drew a breath. Whatever else was going on, it was definitely more than zombies. But one thing at a time.

Just as he stood and readjusted his backpack, the chair fell to the side and the lead zombie shuffled in. The power being off, Victor couldn’t see much detail. But he could see the head, and that was enough. A non-running zombie, the lowest common denominator of undead, was not going to keep him from Lauren.

He took aim, and fired.