A pair of unblinking blue eyes stared up at him from just beyond the threshold.

Blue? Kyle looked closer. They weren't the typical milky white eyes of one of the undead. Instead they belonged to a disheveled looking girl with stringy blonde hair. She looked horrible, like she hadn't had a bath in months. The dirt-covered girl was maybe a couple years younger than him and sat cross-legged on the floor of the pharmacy's back office, with a candy bar frozen half way to her mouth.

The two of them eyed each other for what seemed an eternity before she spoke.

"…hello," she said meekly. The girl sounded hoarse, like her vocal chords hadn't seen much use recently.

"You're not a zombie," he replied flatly. It had been weeks since he saw another living soul. Quite frankly Kyle had begun to suspect he was the last survivor in town.

The girl's eyes flashed to the knife Kyle had yet to lower. "And neither are you, so that's nice."

Kyle lowered the knife and tucked it away. "Sorry, thought you were a muncher."

She visibly relaxed and smiled at him. It was a great, big smile that reached from ear to ear. It felt so alien to Kyle, so sincere, like it didn't belong in this new world. "It's fine, I'd probably have thought I was one too, hiding away in here like I was." She quickly finished off the candy bar and stood, her arm outstretched. "The name's Rose, what's yours?"

Kyle ignored her chocolate stained hand, taking in the state of the office. The girl had obviously been squatting here for some time going by the mess. A green sleeping bag sat in one corner of the room, wrappers of different candy bars lay strewn on the floor, some empty cans were stacked haphazardly, and he did his best to ignore the bucket in the furthest corner. He had his suspicions what that was for judging by the smell emanating from it.

Ugh.

After a minute Rose finally realized he wasn't going to shake her hand and lowered her arm. With her left hand, she pushed a lock of her greasy blonde hair from her face and looked embarrassingly at the floor. "It's a bit messy, I know. I've been camped out, or more accurately stuck, here for a couple weeks. The, what did you call 'em, munchers chased me in here. Every time I thought about escaping, they got all pressed and tried to get in."

He glanced over in time to see her anxiously eyeing the door he'd just come through.

She was speaking faster now. Like she thought if she didn't get it all out, she might never. "And they sure are persistent, I'll tell you that much. Kinda like this one guy I used to date, Roger. He was a whole red flag." Another candy bar had mysteriously appeared in her hand.

She laughed nervously, picking at some invisible lint on her jeans. "By the way, that's an odd thing to call them, munchers…," she continued on, taking small bites of the candy as she rocked on her heels watching Kyle begin to rummage.

"They munch, it fits." He opened a desk drawer but didn't find anything but some pens and paperclips. He didn't know what he was expecting to find an office of all places. Last he checked offices didn't have BFGs and health packs for apocalypse survivors like him to raid.

If only, he thought.

"Most people call them zombies or the undead. Munchers, though, that's a new one. Guess you're one of those zombie hipsters, huh? Like that one zombie show, do you know the one? They had all kinds of different names for zombies and it was like, bruh, let's call a spade a spade, right?"

Kyle had been searching through what few supplies were left in the office, hoping to find anything worth taking while Rose droned on and on. He'd just met the girl but was already sick of her. "You really like to talk, don't you?" he snapped.

At that Rose blushed, stopping mid-sentence on her tangent about the differences between zombies and voodoo zombies. "Sorry, it's just I haven't had anyone to talk to for so long besides myself. Got to a point where I talked just to pretend there was someone else there."

Kyle felt himself soften a little. He hated to admit it but he could understand. After the first few weeks, he'd found himself talking to his family when he couldn't sleep at night, listening to the moans of the dead on the wind. He'd tell them about how he was doing, how he was going to survive. And sometimes he'd pretend he could hear their replies. His mom telling him how proud she was of him, his dad praising the man he'd become, his little sister Jenna saying she wanted to be just like him one day.

Kyle blinked back tears and the pharmacy came back into focus. Rose was biting her lip and watching him curiously. He squared his shoulders and turned towards the door. Clearly there wasn't much left to scavenge that Rose hadn't eaten. Well, he had what supplies he needed anyway. It was time to leave. He began walking back towards the entrance.

"Wait, are you okay?" Rose called after his retreating back. "Where are you going? "

"Away from here." With any luck the zombies were still busy with his drone and he could slip out without being spotted.

He heard her frantic footsteps scurrying behind him on the linoleum floor, the squeaking of her sneakers bouncing around the walls of the near empty pharmacy. He spared a glance over his shoulder. Yep, she was following him. Rose had her backpack in her hands and skidded to a stop when she noticed Kyle wasn't walking any more.

"What are you doing?" he asked coolly.

"C-coming with you?" she stuttered, flashing him a half smile.

He stared at her. Her blue eyes looked back up at him pleadingly, like a puppy at the pound in need of a forever home. Too bad he wasn't interested in picking up a stray. Rule #1: No companions. For Kyle that rule was non-negotiable. It was as immutable as the laws of gravity. If he let this filth covered girl tag along, he might as well put a bullet in both their heads.

"No," he said, "I prefer being alone." He started walking, but Rose dogged his every step.

He glared at her out of the corner of his eye. She was still smiling at him. The way she was looking at him unnerved him.

"You don't know me," he said, trying to get her to see reason. "I could be a rapist."

She frowned for a split second, before her smile returned. "You don't have rapist vibes."

"Vibes?" he sputtered, his mouth agape in amazement. "You're going to risk your neck based on 'vibes?'" This girl was even more batshit crazy than Kyle had realized.

"Sure, I make all my decisions that way and it's never once let me down," she said grinning broadly as she skipped beside him. "Except for Roger, of course."

Maybe I can lose her on the way, he thought dejectedly.

She spun around, arms twirling, and walking backwards said, "I still never got your name, stranger. Or is there something in your lone wolf code that forbids you from revealing it to a fair maiden like myself?" She winked at him.

"Kyle." He slipped his phone out of his pocket. It wouldn't hurt to double check on the status of the drone and those zombies.

"Kyle," she repeated, smiling broadly at him. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Kyle."

He froze, staring at what was on his screen. Or rather what was not currently on his screen. His birds-eye view of the throng of zombies was gone and in its place was an error message, 'DISCONNECTED.'

Something was wrong. He tapped uselessly at his phone but he kept getting the same message. What happened to the drone? If it died…

"Shit!" he cursed.

Rose looked at him, her mouth turning down into a frown. "What is it? What's wro—?"

Before she could finish that question, a loud BANG came from the front of the store. The two of them slowly turned to face the large glass windows of the pharmacy. Standing there furiously smacking its fists against the panes of glass was a muncher, its dead eyes eagerly watching them. Kyle noticed that before it joined the undead, it had been some sort of businessman, though its black suit was now dirty and stained with the blood of the fallen.

The business muncher kept up its attempts to get into the building, but was soon joined quickly by another. A woman in a yellow sundress missing half of her jaw.

Then another.

Two more. Five. Ten. Twenty.

In the span of seconds dozens of the walking dead had taken up the task of banging on the windows, furious that it stood between them and dinner. Kyle had never seen so many before. Hundreds of white eyes stared at him and Rose with only an inch or two of plexiglass between them and a horrible fate.

Rose, her face drained of its color, asked the same question Kyle was thinking, "Do you think it'll hold?"

CRACK.

A single crack had appeared in one of the windows.

In horror Kyle watched on as more and more cracks began surfacing in the glass, unable to withstand the onslaught of force being applied to it by so many fists.

"No, I don't think it will," he said, more to himself than to Rose.

It was at this moment the windows shattered.