It was a race for who could move first: Brains or the girl. It was the worst kind of race for her, the one where you are run for your life while the competition runs to the buddy you just shot. It invariably looked bad on paper and in retrospect.
Brains barely registered the girl turned tail and ran into the pharmacy after the departing yells. The door had not even shut and Brains was at Jack's side. He slid the last meter on his knees.
"Jack! Jack, talk to me!" He took him up by the shoulders, winced at the fleshy ruin that used to be a face.
"Getting shot in face sucks," said Jack, remarkably eloquent for his state. "Though it sucks less as a zombie. Key word being 'less.' This sucks."
Brains' immediate reaction started with snorting and ended somewhere between laughing and sobbing. "Why didn't you tell me you were bulletproof?! Jack, you complete, utter wad!"
"Not bulletproof, bullet resistant." He chuckled bloodily. "Little joke I made there. You won't get it now, but you will . . . very soon."
Brains shook his head. "No, I won't. This isn't going to end like that—I refuse. There has to be something I can fix you up with." He turned to once more empty pharmacy. "Like in there."
"You're free to try," said Jack, letting himself be pulled upright. "Just in case though, I'll do one of those cool final speeches they always do in the movies."
"Yeah, but only you won't die at the end. . . . Right?"
Jack was silent.
They walked, staggered, shoulder under shoulder, blood soaking the pair of them. Jack felt a black nostalgia; the residues of heated arguments under thick sheets of rain, of a turbulent lifetime of playing the hero, of always running into a bigger villain. Died like I lived, redeaded like I unlived.
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"I think you know most of this, Brains," said Jack; "You can have my stuff, I don't care where my body goes, delete my browsing history if only you could—the usual. But that's all junk in the end . . ."
Jack tilted his head back as if to look at the sky. "Do you know what makes a hero?"
Brains, head down, kept trudging. "I don't know, dashing and bravery? Selflessness and nobility or something?"
"Babes. Babes make the hero. Have you ever seen one without a girl or two or five hugging his arms or legs when he is like hefting a sword or gunning down demons or door-to-door salesmen or freaky monster aliens? You haven't. Save the day, get the girl, man. Basically the same thing."
"You're rambling."
The pharmacy interior was unsurprisingly bare and decayed. Shelves were thrown over with gashes and dents, glass cases smashed and looted, and skeletons lay under gently blinking emergency lights. The two friends advanced with steps that crunched on myriad scattered pieces. Had they not been through worse they would have preferred lying out in the street. That was at least cleaned by rain.
Jack patted Brains and lowered himself on one of the frayed seats.
"I want you to carry my legacy, Brains," said Jack suddenly.
"We'll deal with that if it comes to that."
Brains stood up and took a few cursory turns, then frowned. "Damn, there's nothing here."
"Try upstairs . . . 's a door behind the counter. . . . Could be . . . a pretty nurse, haha."
Brains walked over to the counter and vaulted over. The door was steel with an electronic lock instead of a handle. Keypad. Unworn, unlike the door. Brains guessed the door was supposed to automatically lock and unlock, and the keypad was a backup. He took out his data-slate, popped open the back, and drew out a flat cable and tagged it into the keypad's access slot.
Brains fumbled through the menus whose language he could not decypher. Despite the barrier, the door opened easily; likely it was never locked, only closed. He shrugged.
"A victory's a victory," he muttered.
Jack laughed weakly, his single eye closed. He made a slight wave.
"Surely . . . there is at least one . . . elven princess in this city . . . with a cute bodyguard too," he said, and died.
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: THE MAIN HERO "JACK" HAS DIED]
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: THE STATUS OF MAIN HERO HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED]
[SYSTEM ANNOUNCEMENT: THE MAIN HERO IS NOW "BRAINS"]