Sometimes life gave you lemons. Other times life took those lemons and squeezed them straight into your eyes. This was the latter.

"Run!" Kyle bellowed at Rose, then turned on his heels and ran. Munchers were slower than the average human thanks to the level of decay, but that didn't mean a thing when you were trapped in a pharmacy with your only means of escape blocked off by a horde of them. At that point all they needed to do was patiently Michael-Myers-walk after you and sooner rather than later you'd be caught.

He didn't spare a glance to see if Rose had listened. He could hear her panting as she ran behind him. Not that she had her pick of choices: run or die. Too many people in the early days were like deer caught in the headlight of a truck. They just stood there as the munchers converged on them.

A father holding his little girl's hand as a pack of the recently turned had stumbled closer. A teenager struggling to film the disaster. An elderly woman screaming on her porch as her husband sank his teeth into her neck. If Kyle let himself, he could picture each of their deaths in his mind.

He had run that day. He was still running.

"Rose, is there another exit out of here?" he yelled. There should be another way out of the pharmacy, it would be required of any commercial building in case of a fire. If there wasn't they were in big trouble.

She didn't answer at first.

"Rose!" he shouted louder, more urgently. "Exit. NOW."

"Uh, yeah, there's a…back door down the hall past the office," she said. "But it's chained shut from the outside. I tried to open it a few times with an axe but the noise just kept drawing more of the munchers, so I gave up."

He bit down on his tongue. No time to curse. Of course today just had to go this way. Months spent alone, alive. The minute he met someone, he was going to die. It was a sick joke at his expense.

Kyle reached the office and turned right, propelling himself down the dim hallway as fast as his legs could go.

Distance was key. More distance meant more time. More time meant maybe getting that door open.

There it was. A gray metal door at the end of the hall. The only thing standing between him and becoming muncher food. He had never seen anything so beautiful.

He slammed into the door, pushing on the panic bar. It gave a little but the chains on the outside stopped him from opening more than a few inches.

He heard Rose come to a stop beside him. "I told you it was chained," she said out of breath. She bent over suddenly. He thought she was catching her breath, but then she handed something over to him.

The fire axe.

Tiny scratches marred the red paint but it looked sharp. He could break the chains with this.

"That's gonna make a lot of noise," she cautioned. "It could draw more munchers from outside and we'll be trapped."

"That's a chance we'll have to take," he shot back. "We can either possibly die out there or we'll definitely die in here." A chorus of moans caught his attention and he whipped his head back the way they'd came.

Shitshitshit.

The first of the munchers had rounded the corner and was now lumbering towards them, its mouth opening and closing, a thick string of saliva hanging from its rotted lips. The rest soon followed in its wake. The moans in the cramped hall made the hair on the nape of his neck stand on end.

Kyle instructed Rose to hold the door ajar for him, then he raised the axe over his head and brought it down hard on the chain.

The axe clanged noisily off the chains, but they did not yield.

Rose nervously craned her head behind them. The munchers were closer now, maybe a dozen yards away. "You need to hit it harder!" Her voice rose shrilly. Her entire body shook but she held the door.

She was scared.

So was Kyle.

"I know how to swing an axe!" he snapped back, his face red. He gripped the handle tighter and gave it another swing.

The chains rattled but still held on stubbornly.

Ten yards now.

Like a mad man, he lifted the axe and swung it down again. Again. And again.

And still it would not break.

Eight yards away. Close enough to smell the pungent rotting odor.

"Fucking hell!" Kyle roared, swinging the axe down once again. So this was it. He was going to die here. Not in some brave final stand but trapped like rats. His family was probably looking down on him from Heaven disappointed.

"A real man could get that door open." His father.

CLANG.

"Oh honey." His mom, disgusted.

CLANG.

"You're such a wuss!" The teasing voice of Jenna.

CLANG.

Kyle slumped forward, defeated, letting his forehead rest against the cool metal door. His arms ached from the strain. What was the point? If he couldn't even get a door open, what hope did he have of surviving this?

All the people he watched die, maybe he deserved this.

A hand on his shoulder brought him back to the world. Rose's worried face looked up at him.

"Keep going!" she urged him. She flashed him a strained smile.

He didn't say a word, just nodded and turned back to the door. If he was going to die, it wasn't going to be while feeling sorry for himself.

Five yards away. Too close.

He summoned every ounce of strength and adrenaline he had left. With a growl, he swung the axe down for the final time. The chain links shattered with a metallic scream.

"Let's go!" he shouted.

Kyle flung his shoulder into the door and barreled out into employee parking lot. A moan came from his left. A muncher lurched out seemingly from nowhere and reached for him hungrily. It got a face full of axe in return. The creature dropped to the ground taking the axe with it. Kyle planted his foot on the muncher's chest and wrenched the axe out with a sickening pop and scanned for more threats.

From multiple directions munchers were shambling their way, pouring out of alleys and buildings, likely drawn from his Bluetooth trap earlier and the moans of their brethren. It was like he had rung the dinner bell at KFC and they were the finger lickin' good appetizers.

Okay, so speaker distraction…not a good idea, he noted mentally. He'll have to remember that should he make it out of this alive.

Rose's bloodcurdling scream made him whirl around. As he turned, he saw she had made it out of the door but a muncher had snagged her by the hair and was now trying to reel her in like a big bass. She was putting up a good fight but she didn't have much time before it sank its teeth into her head.

"Kyle, help!" she screamed, frantically fighting to avoid the muncher's teeth.

He took a step, then hesitated. He should just leave her to her fate. Trying to help would only get him bitten or killed. And she was so annoying, too. Even if he did rescue her, sooner or later her constant yapping would get them both killed, right?

No, she wasn't worth it. It was her fault that he was in this situation in the first place, after all. Because she was in that pharmacy he'd been delayed and would have been in and out long before the munchers had come back.

She was still struggling with the muncher. If it didn't get her, the ones still in the pharmacy would find their way out and overwhelm her. And him if Kyle didn't make a decision and make it soon.

Her startling blue eyes sought his out, locking onto them. In them was desperation, a cry for help. Above all they told him what he needed to do.

"Fuck," he muttered irritably. "I swear I'll regret this." He ran to her and buried the axe into the muncher's face. Instantly it released its grip on her and collapsed into a heap at her feet like a marionette cut free from its strings. There was no time for thank you's, Kyle yanked her arm hard and ran.

She let out a gasp of pain, but Kyle dismissed it, dragging her like a child behind him. There would be worse pain if the two of them didn't get the fuck out of this parking lot and now. He got as far as five feet before he realized the futility of their situation.

There were zombies everywhere and more were coming every second. It was like a river of the undead with smaller tributaries of zombies feeding into the main body of water. All of which was coming straight for Kyle and Rose. It almost stretched Kyle's suspension of disbelief. How were there this many munchers? How had he missed them all? It couldn't have been just his speaker, could it?

He could dwell on that later. Right now he needed to find a way out of this mess. His thoughts raced as he tried to find a break in the undead, some small opening they could use to escape. He was in the middle of this when he heard Rose speak up.

"My car," he heard Rose say croakily. "My car's right over there. If we can get to it…"

She was pointing off to their right where a garish, lime green Toyota Corolla was parked.

Figures, he thought, barely able to not grimace. A boring, safe choice, but he would have wept at the sight of a Pontiac Aztek at this point. Anything that had wheels and could ferry them away from the horde.

In another life maybe he'd have stopped and criticized her choice in vehicles. Instead he said a simple, "Okay," and began a mad dash for the car. There were several munchers in-between them and their lime green chariot, though. Rose had yanked herself free from his grasp and pulled a machete from somewhere, he didn't want to ask, and dispatched the nearest one to her.

He allowed himself a moment's pause, noting her skill, before taking out a zombie that had stepped into his path. Congealed dark blood oozed from the gash in the muncher's face before it toppled backwards, quite helpfully taking a second zombie down with it and pinning it. Kyle didn't have time to stop and kill it, however. A woman zombie who had once been pregnant before she joined the legion of dead grabbed his arm and attempted to sink her rotting teeth into his arm.

"Not today, bitch!" He lifted his leg and kicked her in her swollen stomach, hard enough to have maybe killed her baby had she still been alive but luckily she wasn't. It did the job and dislodged her just long enough for him to lop off her head with a single strike.

To his right Rose was making quick work of any munchers that came from her side, swinging her machete almost gracefully. A balding male zombie tried to grab her but she crouched down causing the zombie to stumble over her, then stabbed it through the face.

Finally the two were at the car. "I'll drive!" Kyle declared, yanking the driver's door open and climbing in. Rose jumped in the passenger side, slamming her door just as a zombie plowed into it a second later.

"Hand me the keys," he said. A fat zombie wearing a Jujutsu Kaisen shirt, pissed that its prey was beyond its grasp, pounded Kyle's window, startling him. He saw Rose digging through her pack. "Anytime now would be nice." A thump came from the back of the car.

"I know they're in here somewhere," she muttered to herself, frantically searching through her pack, tossing candy wrappers left and right. "I…I think."

"You think?!" He turned and glared at her just as another two zombies joined the party forming around the car.

"I can't find them!" she yelled, her voice cracking as she tore through the rest of her pack.

His blood turned to ice.

"What do you mean you can't find them?" he barked. By now the car was surrounded by the dead, their fists and hands beating against the vehicle causing it to rock back and forth. It didn't take long for the ones in front of the pharmacy to smash their way in, it wouldn't be long before they did the same here.

We're like sardines in a can.

He was gripping the steering wheel for dear life, already bracing himself for when the munchers got in, when he noticed something next to the steering wheel. Was that—

"They must still be in—," Rose began, then suddenly whooped in triumph. "Got 'em!"

The car abruptly surged to life, the dashboard lights blinking to life and its engine purring like a cat. Rose blinked at him, holding the key fob weakly.

"Oh," she said, "It's push to start."

"It's push to start," he said with a dry laugh. "Because of course it is."