(Just joining us? Go back to the beginning of the story.)

“Hey lady!” shouted Alex, “Over here!”

They had jumped dramatically through the window of the hotel to rescue Jenny. She caught sight of them and ran over.

“Come on y’all, back in the hotel!” shouted Billy.

The three of them ran back to the hotel and dove through the window not a moment too soon. Jenny’s pursuers howled in heat and anger that their quarry had escaped. The three of them sat on the floor panting, when Billy looked up.

“Oh hey there sweet pea, I wondered where your pretty little self got off to there,” he said, smiling at the woman he met in the bar.

The woman smiled back, but her smile was filled with razor sharp teeth that dripped with blood. She lunged at Alex, biting him on the arm.

“Shit!” he screamed, shaking her off, “Back out the window!”

“Wait!” Billy said, taking a bottle of booze out of his pocket. “Gonna drive off those sons of guns first.” He fashioned himself a molotov cocktail, lit it on fire, then through it out the window. The three followed.

Unfortunately, they found themselves in a writhing mass of horny zombies. To make matters worse, several of the zombies were now on fire. Jenny was the first to go down. By playing hard-to-get, she’d annoyed and upset the zombies even more. Alex was futilely trying to beat of a paramour of his own. Billy, on the other hand, had caught on fire when one of the flamboyantly flaming zombies started to dryhump him.

As Billy went down in flames, he caught Alex’s eyes one last time. Alex looked at him sadly from beneath a pile of writhing bodies.

“Young man,” Billy said, haltingly, “I ain’t known you that long but I got somethin I gotta tell ya.”

“What’s that?” asked Alex, choking back a sob that was partially caused by this heartfelt moment, and partially from the intense sense of violation he felt.

“I gotta tell ya…”

Moaning and groaning.

“…that even though…”

Disgusting slurping noises.

“…you’re just some no-good punk kid…”

“What? What?” Alex shouted, straining to reach Billy, knowing deep in his heart that Billy was going to say what both of them knew, to reveal the powerful forbidden feelings that they’d felt for each other since the moment they’d met. That he would tell him how different things would have been under different circumstances, how this whole horrible apocalypse had ruined everything but still, they’d found a brief moment of happiness in the few minutes they’d spent together.

“…the Baby Jesus loves you.”