"Did you think it'd ever end like this?" Ash inquired as she put a cigarette to her lips and lit it with a lighter. A tendril of gray, wispy smoke curled off the end and into the air. She puffed on it deeply before blowing it into the air.

Forte wrinkled is nose in distaste. "Do you have to do that?"

She looked at the cigarette in her hand. It had been the last one in the pack. She looked back to him. "Yeah, I do. It steadies my nerves. Now are you going to answer my question?"

His frown deepened as he steadied his hands on the shotgun. He was shaking just a little bit, but not by much. It wasn't from fear, either. There was adrenaline pumping through his blood. His heart pounded in his chest at the thought of what was going to happen next.

Animalistic growls broke the silence, and the sound of nails dragging down the wooden door resonated in the small, white bathroom.

Ash kicked the door from where she was sitting on the toilet and shouted, "Shut the fuck up out there! We're coming!"

The growls lowered into hisses before fading into indistinct shuffling.

She let out a soft humph sound as she took another drag on her cigarette. She clutched a hammer in her right hand. A pair of goggles was strapped on top of her head and a medical mask hung around her neck. A few droplets of blood were splattered across her black tank top and green cargos. She'd beaten a few people down as her and Forte had rushed up the stairs and made for the bathroom, the closest room they could lock themselves in.

"No," Forte finally answered as he stared at the floor from where he was sitting on the edge of the bathtub. "If I did, I'd have thrown Page's worthless hide off the roof while I still had the chance."

"Yeah," Ash laughed as she took another long drag on her cigarette.

It tasted bad, but that wasn't what was important. What was important was the fact that it would steady her nerves for when they made a rush out of the bathroom to reclaim the house. At most, she had counted five undead when they had slammed the door shut. The sight of their gaping jaws, filled with razor sharp, blood stained teeth sent a shiver down her spine. Had Forte been any slower in retrieving the shotgun off the table, those jaws might have found themselves around his hand.

She'd hate to have to hammer Forte's face in.

Just like Forte would hate to blow Ash's face off.

On the other hand, it was all about survival. Friends weren't friends anymore when they were lumbering around trying to eat your brains out of your skull. That was a zombie. And a zombie wasn't a person.

That was the first rule that had been established in their base with the coming of the zombie apocalypse. A zombie was not a human being, person, friend, relative, or anything else. It was a flesh eating, walking corpse.

Everything had been fine, too. At the first sign of the dead walking the earth, Ash, Forte, and Page had blacked out the windows and moved most everything upstairs. The only reason they ever went downstairs was to use the stove or microwave for cooking. That was something they did very rarely. The less they had to risk being detected by the undead, the better.

The trio managed to persevere for a few weeks. They communicated every so often with a few of their friends outside of their base, but those communications were few and far in between. The electricity had gone out the first week of the apocalypse, and the cell phones were only used when contact was absolutely necessary.

Everything had been perfect. They had been planning their first foray out into the world to get canned goods from the surroundings houses. The way they had it figured, one would stay at the base to monitor everything that was happening in the surrounding houses. The other two would go into a house and take down any zombies they managed to encounter while raiding the house. What could go wrong?

Had they even managed to get that far, they might have found out.

Needless to say, Page went a little crazy before they were able to get fresh supplies. Call it cabin fever, or whatever else. Plain and simple, he suddenly jumped off the deep end and wanted to flee to Kid's. Page wanted, no, needed, contact outside of Forte and Ash.

They didn't know he'd jumped ship until he was tearing the barricade away from the door. By the time they were there to try and pull him away, he was already brain deep in zombie saliva.

Ash sighed inwardly at the remembrance of it all. She hated other people, and for that very reason too. They always managed to go and fuck things up.

If she didn't trust Forte so much to not be a complete idiot, she probably would have tossed him out the bathroom window after taking the shotgun for herself.

It was a nice shotgun: single barrel, 16 gauge magnum. It had been made back in the late forties, and man, did it have a wicked kick. If she shot it off more than 10 times in succession, she'd have a nice little bloody outline beneath her skin where the butt had slammed back into her shoulder. On the other hand, if she needed to fire it 10 times in succession, then she was as good as dead.

Finishing her cigarette, she extinguished it on the back of the toilet before flicking it on the floor.

Forte's eyes followed the withered butt as it skidded across the white tile.

Ash stood up. Forte followed, though more slowly. He never put the safety on that blasted thing, and if he managed to squeeze the trigger off, it'd be bad news. Then again, he was more willing to take that chance than to risk having a zombie rush him and not being able to fire.

"Ready to do this, pretty boy?" Ash asked drly as she put the goggles over her eyes and the medic mask over her mouth. She didn't like risks either, and with the splatter effect caused by the hammer, she didn't like taking the chance some blood would find its way into any sensitive membrane.

"On your signal, princess," Forte snickered.

Ash growled beneath her breath, "When this is over I'm going to hammer you in the face."

"Bring it, princess," Forte goaded as he braced the shotgun against his shoulder.

Ash was pissed now. She stormed over to the bathroom door, and after she unlocked it, she dropped down into a low crouch.

Snarls and screams pierced the air as the zombies clawed at the door and tore it open.

The first shot gun blast took the forefront zombie down immediately and left it without a face. Ash leapt onto her feet and swung forward at the next zombie's head with all of her strength. She heard the sound of the shotgun being opened and the shell removed as the metal of the hammer's head broke into the zombie's temple. Ash pulled her arm back as quickly as she could to keep it from being bitten into by a zombie clawing at her from behind the one she just hammered.

Forte cocked the shotgun, which was Ash's signal to drop back down into a crouch so that he could fire again.

That blast caught the two other zombies well enough in the shoulders that it knocked them onto their backs.

Ash let out a maniacal laugh as she sprung forward and, with both hands tightly wrapped around the hammer's handle, slammed the forked end down into one of the zombie's skulls. She did this over and over again, ignoring the coagulated blood that flung itself onto her tank top and cargos.

"Try and eat this, you brain-stem sucking piece of rubbish!" Ash cackled, hitting the zombie again.

Forte had reloaded at this point and stepped up to the second zombie that was lying on the floor. It opened its mouth wide and hissed at him as it tried to use its mangled arm to lift itself up. He smiled grimly at it as he put the end of the barrel in its gaping mouth.

"Say goodnight, sweetheart," he said to her before pulling the trigger.

Needless to say, the zombie's head was gone.

So was a small portion of the floor behind her head. Not that he cared. Whether Ash liked it or not, they were going to Kid's. The guy could lay a smack down more fearsome than The Rock.

Ash looked up after she had finished beating her zombie's head into a bloody heap. There wasn't a fifth zombie.

Forte must have noticed this as well, because he immediately pulled the shotgun up and reloaded. He cocked it, and proceeded in front of Ash. She followed closely, her back pressed against his. They knew how to operate as a team. If they hadn't, they'd never have survived this long. They would have both been as good as zombie food.

That's when they heard the soft ringing sound and a light, anguished groan.

Forte proceeded forward, the shotgun against his shoulder. He cleared the corner before proceeding into the bedroom where they had been mainly located. Ash followed as well, her back still to his and her hammer raised up in the air. She was ready to strike out at any bastard that made an advance.

When Forte nudged open the bedroom door, there stood Page, his eyes wide and his mouth gaping slightly.

Forte was stock still, unsure of what to make of the sight. Or of the sound that seemed to be coming from his gut.

"What's happening?" Ash demanded, hammer still uplifted.

"Page… ate your cellphone," Forte said, and then almost busted out into laughter.

Ash glanced quickly over Forte's shoulder, and seeing Page's half mauled face staring blankly at them, growled, "Oh that treacherous son of a slut!"

Forte laughed as he pulled the trigger.

Page's head was gone.

Ash hurried into the room. After checking every corner and the closet to make sure there weren't any zombies, she went to Page's body and stood over it. Forte glanced behind him before closing the door behind him and locking it.

"Well," he said as he reloaded the shotgun with a shell that had been tucked into his pocket, "It looks like you're going cellphone diving. Better get to work, princess!"

Forte laughed and fiddled with a few shells in his pocket. There were six left. Goodie. What was even better was the fact that there were extra shells in the room.

Now, all they had to do was cut open Page's body and retrieve the cellphone. Then they could get to Kid's and everything would be just dandy again. Tomorrow would be just another day of biding their time until they could get to a real base. A real military armory with high powered assault rifles. Yeah.

Tomorrow was just going to be another normal day.