SHOTGUN.

her body aches.

early morning sun filters through the cracks between the boards that cover the tower’s many windows.   slow eddies of dust flicker and glint in the cool light, caught in a draft they likely won’t ever escape from, and her fingers lift as if she can reach out and touch them.   there’s a hint of half-dreamed reverence to it — she might yet still be asleep the way her eyes play tricks on her, tracking the whorls of dust as they shift and shimmer, all but reaching right back to her. 

a half second of panic bursts in her chest as the dust all but shapes itself into the idea of fingers to mirror her own and she’s centimetres from making contact when a hand stretches its fingers flat against her stomach.

she jerks awake and the dust spirals away, scattering with the sudden movement.

it takes everything in her not to immediately clamber off the bed and across the room.   she doesn’t remember falling asleep.   she knows it’s only been hours but it feels simultaneously like days and lifetimes have passed in the same breadth of time.   remembering the night before feels like trying to remember six months ago and it doesn’t sound entirely wrong inside her head to say there’s no real difference.

the hand belongs to him.   there’s no real question of who, of course it’s him.   it’s just that she’s forgotten in her six-hour-six-month sleep that he’s been there with her the whole time.   it takes a concentrated effort to turn her head back far enough to see if she’s tipped him into wakefulness too.   the sudden relief that washes over her when her eyes find his in the grey light is almost shameful.   she doesn’t want to examine it.

there’s just the one bed, but that doesn’t explain why even only half-awake she's glad for it.   slowly, careful under his hand lest she scare it away, she turns where she lays on her half of the cot until their knees touch, until there’s nothing between them but the span of empty space and the bridge he’s built with his arm.   it says something, but she’s not sure what.

she builds her own bridge to answer him in silence.   dream fingers, real fingers, dust eddies of her own as the centimetres close and ghost-light she touches the curve of his chin in the murky haze of morning.   for a brief moment there’s no secrets between them, no convenient lies or half-truths or pretenses to dance under.   for a brief moment there’s just the searing light of possibility and despite everything else going on outside the bounds of their little bed she can’t help but feel like this is right.

she doesn’t smile, but the sentiment is there all the same when her thumb grazes the scruff that hides his jawline.   she feels like she hasn’t seen him in years.   maybe she’s never really seen him at all.   maybe this is all that really matters, for as long as this moment lasts.

     “Y’know, a wise woman once told me    ‘if you’re alive, you got choices’,” a palm went to his chest, feeling the fabric of his shirt as if reaching for something that wasn’t there, “And in this world that sorta thing    well it’s pretty much the whole point.”

it’s colder out than she’d thought when she made her escape from the hospital.   the fact that they had infrastructure enough to offer that said a lot about who they were and what their focus was, but it didn’t make her feel any better about waking up somewhere strange.   the itch to find a good spot to hide was too deeply ingrained at that point, she’d needed to get out and away and not have a bunch of strangers showing up to ask her a bunch of questions she had no interest in answering.   and that’s if she’s lucky.

“     𝐍𝐎𝐖, 𝐈 𝐀𝐈𝐍'𝐓 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐊 𝐀 𝐆𝐈𝐅𝐓 𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐄 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐇  —  but  i  can’t  help  but  to  feel  like  you’re  makin’  a  big  mistake.     ”          the  humanity  in  the  gesture  only  serves  to  arouse  a  sense  of  pity  in  him.   if  she  were  smart,  they  wouldn’t  even  be  having  this  conversation.   surviving  this  world,  this  infection,  takes  a  blatant  sense  of  selfishness.   you  don’t  get  far  carrying  the  load  of  another  on  your  shoulders.   had  it  not  been  for  the  pain  shooting  up  his  leg,  joel  might’ve  laughed  in  her  face.  instead,  he  kicks  his  gun  towards  her  and  glances  towards  a  window.

“     just  fuckin’  go.   we’re  still  people  now,  but  we’re  both  gonna  be  dead  if  you  sit  here  tryin’  to  play  the  hero.     ”          maybe  it  was  better  this  way.   one  way  or  another,  this  fate  would  slowly  catch  up  to  him.   whether  it  be  now  or  sometime  down  the  road.  you  don’t  get  to  live  a  long  and  prosperous  life  after  everything  he’s  done  in  the  name  of  survival.   if  it  wasn’t  the  infected,  it  would  be  ending  up  on  the  wrong  side  of  a  gun,  or  pissing  in  the  wrong  person’s  cereal.

“     if  the  tables  were  turned,  i  woulda  done  left  you  already.  hell,  if  we  weren’t  even  in  this  situation,  i  woulda  taken  all  you  had  and  left  you  for  dead.   i  sure  as  hell  ain’t  worth  stickin’  your  neck  out  like  this.     ”

“yeah,” she says with little fanfare, calm agreement in her voice, “i know.”

she’s done a lot more for a lot less before, though there’s nothing wholly altruistic about the choice to stay with him.   time has passed since before, things have changed immensely all the way down to basic human interaction, and she still hasn’t decided whether it’s more selfish to leave someone behind or to try and save them so she doesn’t have to live with the weight of that choice on her shoulders.   a bit of both, maybe.   she’s always been good at going down with sinking ships.

“everybody's been telling me to be thankful i’m still alive .”