Part I

The Twins crouched low behind a makeshift barricade of old JCPenney boxes, a couple hundred feet down the corridor. They played the world’s most dangerous game of peekaboo with the undead thing. Every so often, one of them would risk a glance. And every time, the dead thing was staring right back. Those eyes, in their milky whiteness, seemed to luminate within the shadows like bug zappers calling to moths.

Andrew leaned his mouth toward his sister’s ear, voice barely a whisper over the silent tension.

“What’d you call this again?”

Anne didn’t look at him. Didn’t dare.

“What?” she hissed.

“This. The situation.”

“Oh…” She blinked slowly. “Fustercluck.”

Andrew grinned, a little too wide. “Right. Fustercluck. Got it.”

The grin barely had time to settle before the soft, unmistakable scraping-thud of dragging feet echoed up the corridor. Anne’s heart jumped against her ribs. She turned her gaze back toward the husk and saw it had begun to stagger forward.

“Weapons check,” she murmured.

“Four clips for the handgun,” Andrew said by rote, “sixteen rounds for the Mossberg.”

The shuffling was closer now, louder.

Hungrier.

Anne swung her OTs-38 Stechkin silent revolver from her coat and popped open the cylinder with a practiced snap. Empty casings clinked on the cement floor like a warning bell. She quickly loaded 6 fresh rounds into each chamber.

“I only got two more of these.” with the flick of her wrist, the cylinder snapped back into place. “After this, I’m dry.”

She raised the weapon, the silencer, long and thin like a surgical blade. “Not gonna get us too far.”

Andrew’s reply was flat, resigned. “Well, we go forward and dance with a hundred of these things. Or we can head back outside and get swallowed by a city of them.”

It grew closer still.

Anne gave a humorless chuckle. “Fustercluck,” she muttered.

She rose from cover in one clean motion. Ten yards out, the corpse reached for her with arms like rusted levers. Anne exhaled slowly, felt the trigger against her finger, and pressed. The bullet zipped through the corpse’s face just above the nose bridge. Its head snapped back, and the rest of it crumpled like a dropped coat.

She ducked again. “No choice, huh?”

Andrew unfolded a map he rescued from one of the displays when they first came in. “What do we have? Here…” he ran his finger along the colored routes. “There’s the Security Office… Third floor… What are the chances mall cops have anything useful?”

Anne scoffed. “I don’t think tasers will help us this situation.”

A new shuffle echoed down the hall, heavier this time.

“As it stands, we’re already screwed.”

They both whispered it together, not meaning to: “Fustercluck.”

Anne moved first, rising and aiming.

There were two corpses this time.

She steadied her breath and locked on the nearer one. Just before she could pull the trigger…

POP!

A shot rang out behind her, wild and ricocheting, crashing through Mrs. Fields’ cookie display. Another POP, and the lead zombie’s neck exploded in a fountain of gore, its head flopping backward like a busted hinge.

And still, it came.

Andrew was suddenly in front, booting the creature hard enough to knock it into its shambling partner. He climbed over their bodies like a man possessed and popped a round in each rotting skull.

“What the hell, dude?!” Anne snarled.

“It were gonna bite you!”

“I had it handled!” she moved him aside to look at the downed corpses. “The idea was to be quiet! You just rang the dinner bell!”

Andrew looked small then. Small and guilty. “Damnit… I wasn’t thinking.”

Anne grabbed his collar and yanked him eye to eye. “Start thinking!”

They moved again, side by side, weapons raised, hearts hammering against their chests like war drums. The food court opened before them like a sports team entering a stadium filled with a sold-out audience of death.

And it was worse than they feared.

The walking dead. Everywhere. Every floor. Shuffling slowly, steadily, like casual browsers on a Sunday.

And then one spotted them. A kid, couldn’t have been older than five.

Tank top.

Cargo shorts.

It opened its mouth and let out a sound like glass dragged across metal.

It was a signal.

Every head turned.

Every moan joined in a crescendo of the undead.

Anne’s stomach dropped.

“No no no no…” Andrew chanted like a prayer.

But there was no God here.

Anne thought fast. “What store’s got the biggest floor windows?”

Andrew knew the mall like the back of his hand, but he was in panic mode.

“Now, Bro! Now!” She screamed at him, snapping him back to reality.

“Victoria’s Secret or, or… Suncoast Video.”

“Which is closer?!”

“Third floor.” He pointed to the glowing red sign, half naked angels, breasts and neon lights leering down at them. “Right there!”

Anne took in the situation…

Six stores away…

One floor up…

One escalator before them…

She looked at the dead tide rolling toward them from all sides.

“Okay,” she said, breath ragged.

“I think I’ve got a plan.”

Part II

Hot metal ripped through flesh and bone. Bullets opened holes in animated corpes that had forgotten how to die.

They twitched, staggered, crumbled, and still… they came.

Gunfire clattered off marble floors and decorative fountains. It sang through shattered glass and chewed through mannequin displays. Exit wounds bloomed like wet crimson flowers.

Still, the dead kept coming.

“Move, damn it!” Anne’s voice rose above the gunfire, sharp and wild. She and Andrew moved like two caught in a nightmare.

Clumsy.

Frantic.

And caught between flight and fight.

The mall’s polished tiles were slick with gore. The moans of the undead pressed in from every angle, unseen mouths snapped and snarled promising pain and death just beyond their peripheral vision.

Andrew shot at everything and nothing. His aim was scattered, erratic, a bullet spent here, another there, some into walls, one into a plastic Ficus.

Reloading chewed up time they didn’t have. His fingers fumbled. His eyes darted.

Anne, by contrast, was surgical. Her gun rose and fell in time with her breath, and each pull of the trigger was a poem in precision. Her bullets went where they belonged: into skulls, eye sockets, and kneecaps.

“I’m almost out!” Andrew screamed.

“Then stop wasting shots on shrubbery!” she snapped, dropping another two with cold efficiency.

They reached the escalator. Back to back, guns smoking.

“Status?” she barked.

Andrew looked up. A mass of undead clogged the escalator like writhing worms. Limbs flailed. Faces drooled. They tripped and toppled over each other like toddlers.

“Escalator jam!” he said.

Anne didn’t look. She didn’t need to. “Follow me!”

They leapt into the escalator’s wellway, the gap between the two escalator sets of stairs. Their boots echoes with ever stomp as they sprinted up the two-foot run of flat metal past the snarling snarl of bodies on both sides. Anne vaulted over the top. Three zombies met her, and three zombies died from gunshots.

Andrew wasn’t so graceful. A ghoul lunged. He kicked it in the face, sending teeth skittering across linoleum.

He landed awkwardly, breath hitching in his throat.

Anne was already moving, eyes fixed on the beckoning pink and powder blue glow of Victoria’s Secret signage. Posters of lingerie models before them, half-naked saints of salvation.

“Keep it moving, Bro!” she called back.

They slowed their momentum as they crossed the threshold of Victoria’s Secret.

The mannequins seemed to leer.

One moved.

Not a mannequin.

It reached. Anne didn’t hesitate. A bullet through the eye, and it was done.

Andrew burst in behind her. While he watched her run off into the racks, he slammed the glass door shut and locked it, top, bottom, and side.

And just in time.

The dead arrived.

They pressed and pounded, painting the glass in blood, bile, and horror.

Anne returned to her brother after she had finished doing the same to the rear door. They met behind the register, breathless, filthy, and blood-slicked.

Those glass doors wouldn’t hold.

But for now, they had a second.

“Damn!” Andrew panted with a grin. “How are we not dead?”

Anne answered with a grin.

They bumped fists and did yet another weapons checked.

Her revolver was empty, useless.

He handed her the Mossberg shotgun. It looked like something out of a nightmare. She grinned.

“Only got a dozen shells,” he said.

“It’ll have to do.” She replied, ripping open the box of 12-gauge shells and quickly loading her gun to capacity.

For five minutes, they sat in silence. The pressure on the glass doors groan as the crowd outside moaned.

Anne peeked back at the entrance.

Corpses…

Dozens of them…

Soon to be hundreds…

She stood. “You know the plan, right? We can’t move until they get in. Understand?”

Andrew was not ready. “Yeah, yeah, yeah…” He nodded.

“Once we get outside, It’s headshots only.” She schooled him. “We move quietly across the walkway to the security office. If we do it right, we’ll be inside before they realize we left the shop.”

And cupped Andrews cheeks and pulled him close until he snapped out of his panic and focused on her eyes.

”Save your rounds and keep your distance. If they touch you, you’re done.”

She watched his look of panic transform to determination.

“Got it.”

They split up to monitor both entrances.

Anne eyed the front door. It looked like a Black Friday sale, but with death.

The crowd on the back door wasn’t as big as the needed, so Andrew rang the dinner bell by banging on the glass.

His crowd grew. More moans. More bodies.

Then… CRACK.

A fissure in the glass. Then another.

“It’s starting!” she yelled.

Andrew turned. “It’s still holding on my…” His window spider-webbed.

He stepped back. “Oh, never mind… there it goes!”

They regrouped at the register.

“I’m going to check to see if the maintenance corridor is clear. If I’m not back when it all breaks… Run!” Anne ordered.

He nodded.

At the far edge of the store, a door with peeling paint and faded red letters spelling ‘Employees Only’ was visible beyond the clothes racks marked ‘50% off!’

Anne slammed, shoulder-first into the door. It flung open, revealing a long corridor that led back into the mall’s main 2nd floor.

No ghouls, just a dark hallway lined with bins and boxes.

She stepped into it, Mossberg ready, just as she heard the glass entrances shattered behind her.

Andrew ran for the employee door as zombies poured into the store like a Tsunami, cutting themselves on their way to the fresh meat. He leapt over a woman’s bloated corpse, but he was too slow.

It grabbed his ankle, sending him toppling into one of the clothes racks. He felt the base of the metal stand dig into the back as he hit the floor, head and shoulders first.

He felt pain, dazed, and saw teeth coming for him.

He shot twice.

Anne came back into the shop just in time to hear her brother scream.

Found him down and entangled in fallen clothes and something had him.

She aimed, but hesitated.

A shotgun spread would be too wide. It might hit him.

She fumbled, flipped the shotgun around with the intent of swinging it at the head of her brother’s attacker.

She fumbled, flipped the shotgun around with the intent of swinging it at the head of her brother’s attacker, when behind her, something moved. She cursed herself for a lapse in observation, because at that moment, hot, putrid breath washed over her, arms wrapped around her waist, and a tongue slathered her shoulder.

She screamed and sent an elbow shot into the thing behind her.

The Thing slipped, but grabbed her shirt.

They both went down hard, crashing back through the employee door exit.

Andrew was still flailing with his corpse when he heard his sister’s scream.

“Andrew!”

Her brother turned. Her silhouette flailed beneath a ghoul.

He raised his gun.

And fired.

Part III

Adrenaline tore through Andrew like wildfire.

The pain in his ankle vanished, a mercy carved out by panic. He slammed his boot into the bloated ghoul’s head. It groaned, then loosened its grip.

He didn’t wait.

He rolled, came to his knees, fired once more, point-blank. No time to check if it landed. He was already limping toward the door, heart beating in machine-gun rhythm.

Anne’s arms trembled, muscles screaming as they fought to hold back the corpse’s weight.

The thing atop her wasn’t just dead, it was… wrong. A bloated, blackened cadaver with sagging, toothless gums that still managed to snap and gnash like a starving beast. Its breath was reeked of old meat and algae, like death itself exhaled through its lips. Blood and gore slathered Anne’s neck, already painting a target for the thing’s hunger.

She screamed, but it came out as a cracked whisper.

Her elbows buckled.

Her grip faltered.

The corpse inched closer, its milky eyes fixed not on her face, but on the pulsing artery beneath her shoulder.

Closer.

Closer still.

And then—it vanished in a blur of tan leather.

Anne blinked.

Where the corpse had been, there was now the motion of her brother’s size-11 Timberland boot, slick with rot and decay. Andrew had come barreling out of nowhere, her literal blunt-force salvation.

“The door!” Anne choked out, coughing to catch her breath.

He hesitated, a fist already drawn to finish what the boot had started, but her voice cut through the fog.

He pivoted.

Sprinting back through the cramped corridor, Andrew seized a dented metal trash bin, shoved it on its side, and slammed it against the emergency door. The space was tight, barely wide enough for two people to pass, but the overturned bin wedged in perfectly, grinding against the walls with a metal door.

Seconds later, the door shuddered.

Then bulged.

Then split open just enough to let the dead in six inches, but no more. But it was enough for arms to reach, claw, scrape at the air, with cracked nails and jagged fingers.

Behind him, Anne was up again, barely.

Gore ran down her cheek like tears. Her shotgun, sticky with old kills, rose high, then came crashing down on the corpse’s skull in a wet, muffled crack. Again. And again. Until the thing was just a twitching ruin beneath her.

Andrew grabbed her, tugged hard.

“Security office!” he barked.

Anne gave a breathless nod, her eyes wide and haunted, and together they fled, limping and half-dragging across the polished tiles of the second floor.

Behind them, a low moan rose.

Then another.

Dozens now, maybe more drawn by movement, by scent, by some invisible radar the dead seemed to recognize.

The mall echoed with their pursuit, heavy shuffling, guttural growls, and the scrape of wet feet leaving bloody streaks.

Anne and Andrew didn’t look back.

They didn’t need to.

The screams told them everything, as they reached their destination.

Anne twisted the doorknob. It didn’t move.

“Locked!” she shrieked, slamming her fist against the door.

Behind her, the dead howled, their cries rising through the corridors of the mall. She turned to Andrew, expecting panic. But there was something else on his face:

Calculation. Calm. Centered in the eye of the storm.

He was doing what she taught him.

Thinking.

Planning.

Surviving.

Andrew’s eyes flicked left, catching the slumped body of a mall security guard just feet away. His stomach lurched at the sight; half the man’s head was gone, leaving a red halo smeared across the tile. But the ring of brass keys still dangled from the corpse’s hip.

“Keys!” he shouted, jabbing a finger toward the body. “I’ll buy you time!”

Without hesitation, he snatched the shotgun from Anne’s trembling hands and racked a shell with a mechanical ‘clack’.

She dove onto the guard’s body, fingers clawing at the belt. The leather was slick with blood. The keys jangled like tiny bells as she looked for a way to free them.

As she wrestled the ring free, she didn’t see it, not at first.

She didn’t see the corpse’s eyelids flutter.

She didn’t see its broken jaw tighten with effort.

She didn’t see its one remaining eye fix on her with slow, ravenous clarity.

Anne scrambled back to the door, her fingers slipping over a dozen near-identical keys. Behind her, the moans grew louder. Closer. More insistent.

Andrew had taken up a post between her and the horde. Each blast of the shotgun lit the corridor in orange flashes, tearing through rotting flesh, snapping limbs like kindling. The recoil punched his shoulder, but he held fast.

Shot after shot, he carved out extended moments… precious seconds for her to find the right key.

But behind her, death wasn’t waiting in the crowd.

It was already on its feet.

The security guard, once a man, now something else, rose in silence, arms outstretched, its head twitching.

Anne tried another key.

Click.

Another.

Nothing.

The shotgun roared again behind her.

Another key…

Turn.

Click.

The lock gave way, and the door swung open.

“We’re in…” she started to say, just as two clammy, cold hands clamped down on her shoulders.

She screamed.

The dead guard shoved her hard into the office.

From the corner of his eye, Andrew saw her vanish inside.

“No!” His voice cracked like a thunderclap.

He whirled, fury overtaking fear, and let the last three shells fly. The horde shuddered under the impact, meat and bone splintering against concrete. He didn’t wait to see them fall.

He ran.

Straight for the office.

Straight for his sister.

Straight toward his biggest fear.

The security office was chaos wrapped in four walls.

The stench hit him first. Then the sight: Anne pinned beneath a corpse, its face trying to bury its bite into her neck.

“No!!” he screamed.

He reached the ghoul, grabbed a fistful of hair, and yanked. The scalp came free like wet newspaper. A blood-slick skull leered back.

Andrew roared. His hands found the thing’s collar and ripped it. The corpse shrieked and flailed as he hauled it off Anne and flung it against the desk. It hit with a meaty thump, then slid to the floor like a boneless sack of filth.

The Thing’s final attempt to stand was met with a left Timberland boot crushing its cranium against the wall like a vise. The black bile and brain matter splattered the wall like a Jackson Pollack painting, splotches of black goo, highlighted with splashes of deep redness.

Anne gasped, clutching her neck. Blood was everywhere. Her fingers smeared crimson across pale skin, searching and praying.

“No, no, no…” she muttered. Her voice was thin and strangled.

Andrew knelt beside her. “Hold still, hold still, hold still..,”

He pulled out his water bottle and dumped it over her shoulder, watching the red wash away.

No bite. But there were scratches. Deep, ragged, and angry marks that screamed infection.

“No teeth marks. All the crap came from him” he said. “You’re okay. It didn’t bite.”

“Stop.” Her voice was firmer now.

He kept rubbing.

“Andy, stop!”

She gripped his wrist, her eyes locking onto his. “It clawed me. That’s enough. I’m done.”

“No,” he whispered.

She opened her mouth to say more, but then her eyes flicked to the door. The window’s closed drapes revealed the ghostly silhouettes of figures approaching the security office.

“The door!”

Andrew turned.

The horde had arrived.

They were pushing in, jamming through the threshold like a trash compactor. The first one spilled forward, and Andrew kicked it so hard it flew back into the crowd like a bowling pin.

He slammed the door shut and spun around.

The desk.

Only choice.

He threw himself behind it. Muscles screamed, and his lungs burned. Inch by inch, he forced the thing into place. It scraped across tile and shrieked against the walls. But in the end it jammed, solid.

The door rattled. The moaning grew.

But the desk held.

He turned, and Anne had the shotgun under her chin.

“No.” His voice cracked like broken glass.

She was crying, but smiling too. “So close. We were so close. I’m sorry, Andy.”

“Don’t you dare,” he said, inching toward her. “You don’t get to leave me.”

“I’m dead,” she said, her voice rising with the pounding fists behind the door.

“We don’t know that!” he knelt to one knee trying to focus on saving his sister, but the moans of the undead outside were preventing his focus.

“Two them scratched me.” She sobbed.

“Not a sure thing.” He responded, true resolve in the tone of his voice.

“I’m feverish.” Her second point.

“You were feverish yesterday. Doesn’t mean anything.

He slowly moved forward to the point where he wrapped he placed his hand on hers, using his finger to move hers away from the trigger.

“You don’t get to leave me.” He also sobbed.

Anne hesitated. The barrel trembled. Her finger hovered.

Then she released it, the shotgun now was firmly in his grip.

And Andrew caught her in his arms.

They sobbed together, wrapped in blood, sweat, and panic. The moans outside grew louder. It became a sadistic, cruel lullaby.

“You’re going to be okay,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t hurt me. Never.”

Anne’s gaze dulled, lost something human in the space of a heartbeat.

She stared pass him and off into her thoughts. She was taken back to what happened to their mother when he has muttered those very words to her. Their father had to put her down before his devoured the children.. but not before she had bitten him. It was up to both Anne and Andrew to lay him to rest before he tried the same thing.

“I’m afraid that’s about to change, little brother.” She whispered.

Part IV

The moaning never stopped. It throbbed like a rotten heartbeat just beyond the reinforced door. Every thud was a reminder that time was running out. Anne felt it in her bones, the way old people could feel a storm coming. But if this was her end, she had a few more hours, and that had to be enough.

So, she talked.

Her voice was low and even, like she was telling a ghost story by the fire instead of dying on a grimy office floor surrounded by the living dead. She taught him how to move silently in the woods. How to siphon gas without choking on the fumes. How to smell the air and know if it was safe. She even told him how long to boil water before it was drinkable. Simple stuff, dumb stuff. The kind of stuff she never thought she’d need to explain to her little brother.

Andy sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, eyes glassy and wide. He wasn’t blinking. Just absorbing. Memorizing. Not because he wanted to. Because he had to. She could see it on his face; he was watching her die in real-time, and it was carving pieces out of him one breath at a time.

When she finished, there was no final lesson, no summary.

Just silence.

And in that silence, they pressed their shoulders together and held hands like the scared kids they used to be. Only this wasn’t a movie.

This could be the end.

And they both knew it.

Andy fell asleep first.

His head slumped onto her shoulder with the weight of exhaustion and too many tears. Anne turned to look at him, really look at him. For the first time, he didn’t look like a boy anymore. He looked hard. Weathered. Like someone who’d already seen too much.

She smiled through cracked lips and aching muscles. At least she’d be with him in this last moment. At least he wouldn’t have to watch it happen.

She reached slowly into her bag, hand trembling as it found the cold metal of her small keychain pocket knife. It was spotless, gleaming even in the dim office light. It wasn’t big enough to use as a weapon. But it was perfect.

Perfect for what she needed to do protect him.

This would be the last thing she could do for him. The last thing she could do to protect him.

Andy dreamed of a world that didn’t exist anymore.

San Francisco’s Pier 39.

The bark of sea lions, the scent of fried food in the air, his sister laughing at some dumb joke he had told.

For a few sweet moments, the world had its color back.

And then his eyes opened.

He woke to silence.

The banging from outside had stopped.

That wasn’t good.

Daylight streamed in through the office window like a cruel reminder that time hadn’t stopped just because his world had. He turned his head and saw her.

She slumped forward. Blood matted her hair. Still.

“Anne?”

His voice was so small, it barely made it out of his throat. He said her name again, louder. She didn’t move.

Then he saw the knife.

A thin line of blood nestled along the blade’s edge.

And the world buckled.

The quiet sobbing he made wasn’t human. It came from the part of him that didn’t care about living anymore. For thirty straight minutes, he sobbed so hard it felt like his ribs were trying to escape. But he never touched her. She’d taught him better than that. Taught him what came next.

And so, like a soldier picking up a fallen comrade’s gear, he got to work.

Andy had a plan. At least, he thought he did.

That was the funny thing about plans during the apocalypse: they had a shelf life of moments. Everyone’s a zombie expert until they hear that first moan, see their first set of blackened teeth trying to rip their throat out,

He crept toward the office window, one step at a time like a man on ice, and peeled back the blinds just enough to see. The mall was a mausoleum of flickering lights and stale rot. The dead had shuffled back to their loitering positions, drifting like forgotten ghosts on the second floor. One, a tall, lanky thing in a decaying hoodie, stood with its back turned, about three, maybe four yards out. Close enough to kiss if it turned around.

The office was dead quiet, which made every little noise he made sound like gunfire. He scavenged the office.

The last pistol from their arsenal with limited ammo.

An expandable nightstick in a sheath from the desk drawer.

The Mossberg with its remaining half-dozen shells.

And a knuckle-guard knife that screamed “last resort” from the security corpse.

He left the keychain knife where it was, next to Anne’s body. She looked like she was sleeping, if you could ignore the grey sheen and bloodless lips. He didn’t want to go near her. He didn’t want to wake his grief by seeing her face, which was now obstructed by greedy blood-matted hair.

The desk blocked the door like a makeshift coffin lid. It took him ten excruciating minutes to slide it aside in slow-motion increments. He checked the window again; no movement. He turned to say goodbye, and it felt like his throat was filled with sawdust.

“Thanks, Sis,” he mumbled with a tearful whisper.

And then he was out.

Four steps into freedom, and the plan turned to shit.

Two more corpses were just beyond his line of sight.

They moved like broken puppets. Andy ran. Stealth was for people who had time, and time had just sprinted off without him.

The knife went into the first zombie’s temple. Deep. Too deep. When the thing dropped, it yanked him down like an anchor, his fingers caught in the knuckle guard. The smell of brain matter was thick and oily. By the time he freed himself, two more were on him. One grabbed his arm, its fingers like cold vices.

He pulled his gun. First shot to the throat. Second to the head. The second one fell like a marionette with its strings cut. But that sound, that bang, rang out like a dinner bell.

And the horde?

They heard it.

The third one opened its mouth, jaw unhinging like a snake’s. Teeth snapped inches from his arm. Andy’s elbow drove into its face, more panic than technique. It reeled but held on. Its breath was wet and wrong.

Escalators moaned under the weight of new arrivals. The dead were coming. All of them.

Anne’s voice echoed in his head, clear as a bell.

“Don’t get overwhelmed. Every big problem is just a bunch of small ones stacked together.”

So he stopped pushing and pulled. The zombie stumbled forward, and he fired. One shot. Done.

The second one came into view, downed with another shot. Andy turned toward the escalators. They were crammed full, zombies toppling over each other like rotted dominoes.

He started firing. Not to kill, but to slow them. To buy seconds. He fired until the gun clicked on empty.

And then, panic.

He scrambled for another clip.

Too slow.

The nearest corpse lunged.

Then… POP!

A spray of pink mist and it was down.

Andy blinked, dumbfounded.

And there she was.

Anne.

Leaning against the office door, pistol in-hand, looking like death warmed over, but grinning like sin.

“Reload, you idiot!” she barked.

Andy felt tears sting his eyes. He shoved a fresh mag into her hand as if handing off his own heart. She nodded, slammed it home.

Andy grabbed the shotgun, felt its weight like destiny. Six shells loaded. He stepped forward.

No fear now. Not with her here.

“You were dead.” he said, trying to make sense of the situation.

“Nope. At least not yet,” she replied, smiling at him, reloading her gun, her hands moving using muscle memory. “Feel like death warmed over, though.”

She staggered herself next to him, surveying what they had before them. “I was ready to kill myself while you were asleep. But like an idiot, I guess I nodded off.”

Andy pumped and aimed for the next group of shufflers.

She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Choose your shots and watch for the kick!”

“Got it!” he said, grinning.

The shotgun kicked like a mule, and he loved it.

Zombies dropped in clumps. The escalators began to clog with corpses.

“We need an ‘evac’ plan.” she yelled.

Andy was already scanning the mall map, fingers trembling.

“There… corridor to the left leads to upper parking. Roof access is one door.”

“Good man.” She patted him like a dog. “Now how the hell do we get there?”

They looked across the sea of death.

“The hard way?” he replied.

At the far end, like a cruel joke, was the EXIT sign.

Andy passed the shotgun back to his sister, and opened his expandable nightstick.

“So,” he shouted, raising his weapon, “What do we call this again?”

Anne pumped the shotgun, feeling like death warmed over, but at the same time invincible. “Fustercluck.”

Andy grinned, teeth bared like a wolf. “Yeah. Fustercluck!”

His first swing cracked a skull nearly in half.

“Got it.”

End