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blood and bits smeared everywhere. They’d left Lea’s body alone, Daniel guessed it was because she had turned before the end. The virus wasn’t interested in spreading to a host that had already been infected.
    Standing over Lea’s body, Daniel studied her. He threw up a little, remembering how she had once looked, and seeing what he had done to her. She hadn’t been bitten, her death was entirely on him. He was about to walk away when he saw her hand twitch. At first he just thought it was her nervous system firing after death, but then her eyes opened, bloodshot and wild still. Her stomach muscles were destroyed, her guts blown out her back by the M4, it took her a minute to roll to one side and push herself up on her feet. Daniel couldn’t handle the idea of shooting her again. He’d already done so much. Instead he picked up the machete Greg had dropped and pushed Lea’s corpse down with a hard shove. Using his foot he held her head to the side and jammed the blade through her ear. She stopped struggling and went limp. Daniel closed her eyes and dragged the body beneath a tree. It might be peaceful here, a good place to rest forever.
    “I don’t know any prayers.” Daniel admitted in a whisper, aware that the infected were still near. “I just want you to know, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I love you, even if we didn’t have long. I’ve never met anyone like you before, never meant for any of this to happen…”
    Daniel left without another word. He snuck back to the house they’d hidden in to find Rick in the recliner with a porno on the TV, his pecker hanging out next to a bottle of lotion. He had a new hole to breathe out of in his forehead. For whatever reason this didn’t surprise Daniel, not after the day he’d just had. Everything worth taking had been taken, not so much as a blanket or a half eaten can of food remained. Daniel was on his own save a rifle and a handgun and half as much ammo, everyone he’d known since crashing here was dead in less than an hour. He didn’t stay there that night, he just set off down the road and kept walking until he found a home under construction. The workers had left water there and he drank all of it. His knees hurt almost as bad as his throat, Daniel’s mind ablaze with the images of his lover dead at his own hands... in his hands. The Virginia night was hot, even in the top floor of the skeletal house where the breeze was the best. He didn’t sleep, he just watched the cities around Washington, DC burn as brightly in the night sky as their capitol had. A gas station over a slight hill exploded, the people who’d been there were fighting the zombies hard until it all suddenly ended. He watched that drama play out until the last shot was fired in the early dawn. If those people hadn’t made it after such a heroic fight, had anyone?
     
    Chapter 3
     
    From exhaustion alone Daniel passed out just before light filled the smoky skies. The sound of wooden boards creaking woke him up not long after he’d fallen lightly asleep and he almost shot the first person he saw. His training made him pause, waiting to identify his target. Daniel’s vision cleared fast enough to realize he was looking at a child. She was standing there in her Scooby Doo pajamas, dirt and blood smeared all over her disheveled hair. She didn’t have the vacant stair the zombies did, and she was holding a can of soda. From what he’d seen, the infected weren’t in the habit of holding onto things, except you.
    “Can you open this for me?” She said, her tiny voice out of place in the carnage that surrounded them. “I can’t.”
    Daniel took the can when she handed it to him. He popped it open and handed it back. “Are you thirsty?” He said. She nodded. “Here, drink some water. It will make you feel better than a soda will.”
    She traded him and guzzled the water as if she’d forgotten how it tasted. “Are you okay, Mister?” She asked.
    “Yeah… Yeah I’m fine.