Carlos felt like his head had been split open.

At least my room's nice and dark, he thought, raising his hand and rubbing his head. The bed had never been so soft. His skin was red-hot to the touch and he winced when his fingers sunk into the wound. Ow. What happened – did a meteor crack his head open or something?

He blinked in the semi-darkness smelling the remnants of smoke in the air. Suddenly that thought didn't seem so ridiculous. His surroundings came into sight, and instead of the posters of the latest action-adventure computer-generated robots films that lined his walls, mouldy, cracked stone walls faced him, condensation trickling in rivulets down its surface. He wrinkled his nose at the thick scent of pond scum.

Goosebumps rose on his skin. He rubbed his arms, noticing for the first time the dirty jacket that covered his chest. From the stench of old tobacco and cheap beer, he wouldn't be surprised a tramp had died in it. The scent reminded him of back when he lived out in the wild, away from humans, scavenging whatever they threw away.

Alone. He was so alone.

He sat up, pushing the jacket aside. The room stood empty, the silence broken only by the steady drip drip drip of a broken, rusty pipe in the corner. A chilling wind came from the other side of the room, bathed in darkness. It whistled through what was probably a doorway opening out into the night.

Aside from a dim oil lamp barely clinging onto the light and the jacket on his lap, the room was bare. He shuffled, crossing his legs in front of him. His hoodie was in tatters, his t-shirt streaked with sweat and dirt. The rips exposed bits of purple bruises and half-healed grazes. A well-worn sleeping bag protected his butt from the damp floor, its stuffing peeping out of its burst seams.

"Now this is where I take the oil lamp and enter the ravaged post-apocalyptic world," he said out loud. His voice was thin, but it gave him a little confidence. It was like he was narrating the start of a game. He straightened his shoulders. "Carlos, the last surviving member of the city, must fight his way out of this zombie invasion. Armed with nothing but an oil lamp and anything he could scavenge, his only hope of ensuring survival is his stealth, quick-thinking, and never-faltering bravery."

He imagined the camera pulling out of a close-shot of his face, rising higher and panning across the desolate, destroyed city with its fallen tall buildings and stumbling corpses.

"Just what lay in store for our gutsy hero? What hardships must he overcome before he finds other survivors? How long does he have before time runs out?"

He stood up, seeing the imaginary flesh-eating zombies stumble at him, dead eyes focused on his face and arms outstretched.

"With the remaining humans surviving in precarious conditions, our brave hero—eek!"

A rustling at the dark doorway made him jump. His feet tangled in the jacket and, with a thump, he ended up flat on his back. Panicked hands scrabbled on the slimy floor, increasing the distance between himself and whatever monster awaited to tear him limb from limb.

"If that's what a side-glancing bullet does to you, I should probably have just left you at Braverley."

"Ross!" he said, relief flooding through him. His shoulders sagged. "Aw man, you scared the crap out of me!"

"I don't know what's more scary." Her red hair came into sight. She looked tired out, with dark circles under her eyes and her freckles stood out more than ever. "The fact that Markl stabbed us all in the back and played us for fools for four years or the fact that you can still make a game out of this entire fiasco."

Last night's events came flooding back to him. The excitement left him as abruptly as it had come.

Ross shrugged out of the baggy, tatty bomber jacket she had on and threw it onto his sleeping bag. She slung the backpack she had in her other hand onto the floor and proceeded to root through it.

"Um, what are you doing?" He scuttled over and peered in.

"Surviving."

"So like knives and food and rope and..." It was like his zombie apocalypse game had come to life. Ross glared at him, slamming cans onto the sleeping bag.

"I can't believe this is still all just a game to you."

"What, you expect me to cry like a baby 'cos Markl treated us like dirt?"

She stopped. For the first time, Carlos noticed the pink puffiness around her eyes, which she hurriedly hid with the side of her red hair.

"Look, stuff happens. We have to get over it."

She let out a breathless laugh.

"Of course you're so laissez-faire about it!"

"So lassie-what?" Carlos's brow furrowed. "Hey, where's Damien? And Tora?"

Ross looked like she wanted to cry.

"Damien's dead."

Now he really felt like he'd been hit by a meteor. His knees quivered. The next moment he found himself on the floor again, staring at the lieutenant. The words echoed in his head, but her lips didn't move.

The silence dragged on forever, heavier than ten elephants.

"Was it Markl?" he said at last, his throat dry as sand.

Ross nodded, her head downcast. Fat tears splashed onto the material of her ripped jeans. Her hands curled into fists, squeezing the dirty sleeping bag.

Carlos rumpled his hair roughly, wincing with pain when he tugged the roots. She had to be joking. There was no way... He shook his head at himself. It didn't make sense. None of it did. He bit himself on the inside of the cheek. His eyes watered. It was real, all right.

"I couldn't..." His brain spinning like a tornado, Carlos swallowed and tried again. "I can't imagine Markl would be the baddie of all of us..."

"He was very convincing." Ross tried to wipe her eyes inconspicuously. She turned to face the far wall, away from Carlos. "He played the role of the reliable leader very well, making sure everything was about us, our safety, our thoughts, our hopes and dreams. It was never about him. It seemed like he was selfless, back then, but in retrospect it also meant he divulged next to nothing about himself, yet he knew everything there is to know about us. How to manipulate us. How to break us."

"But why? What's the point of playing with us – it's not like we had anything he wanted. And killing Damien?"

The words sounded bitter on his tongue. It wasn't like any of them were rich or had great connections or minds. At the most their powers were pretty awesome, but from the sound of it, Markl's Sentinel friends were just as loaded.

"I'm guessing it was a cover-up for him searching for the Artefact? He told me his mission was the undercover demon-killing work, keeping the humans safe and in the dark. I suppose as long as nobody knew we or demons exist, whoever had the Artefact wouldn't know to move it."

"Well, guess everything went according to plan for him."

Ross sighed, burying her head in her hands.

"So we really were just tools." His shoulders sagged. She lifted her head and grimaced, almost in sympathy. "And... Tora?"

He dreaded her reply.

"I don't know. She..." Ross bit her lip. "She protected us. I couldn't hear what was going on; the bloody guns were firing everywhere. But we were about to be hit – you, particularly, 'cos you thought it'd be a bright idea to head-butt a bullet – and she shielded us."

"I told you she was a good guy."

"Yes. Yes, you were right." Her voice sounded distant. "But none of it mattered now."

The light of the oil lamp dimmed. Long shadows swayed on the walls. The sky outside got lighter, but a chill still hung in the air, as if winter swallowed up the rest of summer and all of autumn. He could practically see snow.

Oh wait, it was snowing.

"Um, I don't know about you, but the last time I checked the calendar we were nearing end of summer, and I'm pretty sure we aren't in Iceland."

"It's pretty awful outside." Ross moved to the doorway and peeped outside. Apparently satisfied nothing was lurking outside about to ambush them, she pushed the creaky old door shut and leaned a few empty gas cans behind it to keep it shut. Even so, the draught sneaking in through the cracks reminded him of the arctic conditions outside.

She sat down beside him on the deflated sleeping bag again.

"That's it?" He sat up straighter, ogling at her. "Our summer just turned to winter and we're spontaneously covered in about ten inches of snow, and that's all you have to say – it's pretty awful outside?!"

"What do you want me to say?" she snapped, her voice rising. She jabbed her finger at his chest. "Damien is dead, Markl betrayed us, Tora has gone to god knows where, and the world is going to hell. We're stuck here with nowhere to go. What do you want me to do, huh? Pat you on the head and say it's all going to be flipping hunky-dory with rainbows and unicorns? 'Cos it's not okay. Nothing's okay, and there's nothing we can do about it."

Carlos was startled to see tears glistening at the corner of Ross's eyes. He'd never seen her lose composure like that in all the years.

She turned away. Strands of red hair escaped from her usually-immaculate ponytail and curled to her between her shoulder blades. Her back hunched, her arms wrapped around her knees.

"What is this place?" he said, attempting to change the subject. He didn't expect her to reply considering her outburst.

"It was a homeless shelter. I was here when I first left home and people here took me in." Her voice was thick. "I guess the government must have cleared them out quite recently. It's not the safest... we're still too close to the train station, but it's the only shelter I could think of at the time."

Another draught crept through the cracks in the door. Carlos shivered.

"Put that jacket on. It's going to smell, but I can't see this weather getting any warmer."

Carlos reluctantly shrugged it on. It was too loose around the shoulders and the rough sleeves fell past his knuckles. He smelled like he'd rolled in someone's moth-eaten carpet that'd lay abandoned for a decade – or ten.

What are we going to do now? he wanted to ask, but he knew that was a recipe for trouble again. Ross might go ape-shape on him like she did earlier. He scrutinised the cans at the foot of the sleeping bag: cheap, generic cans of vegetables and pasta. He couldn't see them surviving on that in the long run.

He rubbed his head. Thinking was difficult. It didn't help that Ross had shut him off entirely. What would smart people do? What would Damien suggest? His chest tightened at the thought of his friend.

Surviving. That was what Ross said she was doing. But his experience of survival horror video games taught him that it never ended well. There were never enough save points and the twist at the end always ended up being betrayal and all his efforts useless because he was a pawn all along.

Well, the games reflected a lot of the events until now, at least. He sighed.

Ross laid out the sleeping bag so that it had room for two. Tying her hair back into a makeshift ponytail, she zipped up a tattered bomber jacket of her own, faced away from Carlos, wrapped her arms around herself and drew her knees up to her chest, and fell asleep. The oil lamp died, leaving only the weak sunlight peeking through the gaps in the door.

Making sure to breathe through his mouth so as to avoid inhaling more rank body odour than necessary, Carlos lay flat on his back and stared up at the mouldy ceiling, thinking about the video games he would never play again.

Remember to vote!