My eyes sprung open as my body jolted from the sudden loud sound. I sat up quickly and turn to see Jay laying flat on the ground looking off somewhere with a pair of binoculars. His head turned to me noticing I was sitting up and motioned for me get back down with his arm. I quickly did as I was told, not sure what was going on but trusting that Jay knew what he was doing. He did seem to have a few screws loose but he didn't exactly seem like he wanted to die. Or at the very least, he didn't want me to die. As he had poignantly explain to me yesterday, I wasn't worth much to him dead. My body was tense, I felt anxious, not only from the sound of the gunshot but also worrying about how far we were from the horde. I passed out while Jay was carrying me yesterday so I have no idea how far we ended up travelling, I just knew that it was dark by the time that I had woken up. 

Another gunshot. If there were any undead in the vicinity they would definitely hear that and go towards it, and if we were close enough that we could hear it that meant that we were in trouble too. Another big concern of course though, wasn't just the undead. If there was a gun going off that meant that somebody was holding it, somebody alive. I bit my bottom lip, looking back at Jay. He seemed concentrated and looking in the direction that I'm assuming the commotion was coming from. I wondered if he had been able to see what was going on with those binoculars, or if from where he was lying there is an opening between the trees that let him see whatever it was that was going down. I looked around our campsite without moving from where I was, the fire had been put out, clearly pretty recently since it was still smoking. My eyes widened.  If they noticed the smoke, they would find us easily. I looked back at Jay but he wasn't paying attention to me. 

“The smoke.” I whispered as quietly as I could. Jay kept looking in the direction that he had been staring, not budging at all.

“I know.” He whispered back. I guessed that might have been part of why he was staring so intently at whatever he was staring at.

“What do you see?” I whispered again, I wanted to know what I should be prepared for just in case. It took him a second to respond, he was concentrating pretty hard.

“There’s two groups of people fighting.” We were far enough that we couldn't here any of the fighting, or at least I couldn't hear it, but we could definitely hear the gunshots. 

“So… what do we do?” I whispered again, my anxiety clear through my tone.

“We don’t do anything, you stay where you are, and I’ll take care of it if anything happens.” I found myself getting irritated again. I know I'm a lot smaller than this guy but he's freakishly large, I'm just average. Even if I'm not the strongest it's not like I'm totally useless. 

“You know I survived just fine for a long while at my campsite before you came around, I'm not useless.” I watched him hold back a chuckle. That irritated me even more.

“When I ‘came around’ as you say, you were being stalked by a zombie and were about to be eaten.” I felt my eye twitch, and my hands clench. I wanted to smack him with something, a book, a wood log, or, you know, that stupid axe of his.

“You have no way of knowing if that zombie would have walked away and I would have been fine.” I whispered back angrily. He looked back at me this time, putting his binoculars down for a moment as he took his eyes off of what he had been looking at. He was holding an irritating smurkish grin. Somehow it was even more irritating that he didn't say anything at all and just gave me that look before bringing his binoculars back up to his eyes and resuming what he had been looking at before. Where's that stupid axe of his, because I'm really feeling like getting him acquainted with the butt end of it. 

We sat there for a while longer and I didn't hear any more gunshots. I was expecting that that meant we were in the clear, especially when I saw Jay stand up. I sat up, expecting him to go back to minding our campsite or something but instead he started walking in the direction that he had been staring, leaving his binoculars on the ground and picking up his axe as he did so. I opened my mouth to ask what the hell he was doing, but before I could he spoke first.

“Stay there, I'll be back in a minute.” Before I could ask what the hell he meant by that, he was already taking those long strides with his stupidly long legs in the direction that he had been looking this whole time. I decided to get back down on the ground, frustrated and just wondering if he was about to get killed. I guess that outcome wouldn't necessarily be especially bad for me since all of my stuff was still here at the campsite. 

I paused for a second realizing. All of my stuff was here at the campsite. All that he took with him was his axe. And he's clearly going to be walking at least decently far. I could probably just…  while in the middle of the thought, I realized however that I had no idea where I was still. I was in the forest though, and I knew how to forage and use the land to survive just fine. As long as I found running water, anywhere in the forest would be fine. Granted my main source of protein and most of my high calorie meals were coming from catching fish and that would require a river or lake somewhere.

I bit my bottom lip, I hated having to make decisions like this. My previous campsite I'd already been familiar with since it wasn't my first time going there so I knew where everything was and it was easy to get comfortable in a place that I was already relatively comfortable with. The thought of starting from scratch, and trying to find another good spot made my stomach tighten. I looked over to my side and saw those binoculars still on the ground, maybe I should take a look at what was going on and make my decision then.

I picked them up and looked over to where Jay was walking, he could walk freakishly fast. He was already pretty far by the time that I was looking at him through the binoculars. I used him as my anchor point before trying to look past him. I could see the road. I'm guessing that was the highway that we had been on before I passed out. I guess he just followed it and picked this spot off the road to camp for the night. Even though I had no idea what highway it was, at the very least that  gave me a landmark to figure out where I was. Of course if I was going to make a run for it I couldn't go towards the highway since that's where Jay was. Not only that but highways are landmarks for more than just me, they're landmarks for everybody. That of course made them very dangerous,  because it was very easy to meet the wrong people that way.

I panned the binoculars trying to keep them steady on the road but it was hard when you're looking this far, even the smallest shake means you're looking one hundred metres in the wrong direction. Eventually though, I found my breath getting hitched as I unfortunately saw exactly what I was looking for. Blood splattered the side of a car, and right beneath it was what I could only assume was a very fresh body. It was hard to see as even the smallest tremor blurred what was able to be seen through the binoculars. I did my best to steady them by keeping my elbows on the ground and holding tightly with both hands. Jay had just reached the body. Oh, I was wondering what he was going to do until I saw him starting to check the pant pockets. I just sighed. Right, of course he's going to loot it. He did try to steal all my shit and I'm alive, why wouldn't he steal from somebody who's dead?

I almost put the binoculars down because at that point, I didn't really care to just watch him steal from somebody who has just died. But, before I did I swore that I saw the body move while he was looking through the contents of what looked like a wallet. I squinted, thinking I had seen wrong, or maybe Jay had just moved the body and I didn’t notice. But then, I saw the head lift and the mouth open. My blood ran cold. Jay hadn’t noticed. I’m too far. I dropped the binoculars and scrambled to my feet.

“JAY!” I yelled, the words tearing at my throat.