Derek stares down at Sarah's lifeless body. Her eyes have lost all their luster and now gaze vacantly at him. The bite mark on her neck continues to drip blood onto the concrete surface of the rooftop. Slowly expanding the small pool collecting beneath her neck.

He watches each glistening red drop splatter and ripple into the puddled blood. Inhaling deeply, he clenches his jaw in an effort to control a scream building within him. The feeling of something wanting to burst from inside. Is it just her death or is it hope that's actually trying to seep out of him? Hope that seems to want to escape at this very moment and that he's desperately trying to clutch onto?

No, he shakes his head slowly. I'm not going to scream or yell, there's something that I need to do. But what is it?

The blood and Sarah's corpse has him in a trance. Lulling and numbing his mind. Is this really happening? Is this how Claire will end up? Or me?

"Derek!" Claire screams.

He jumps back when he realizes that she's been shaking his shoulder.

"Are you ok?" She asks in a whisper. Her brown eyes nervously scan his features.

"Uh ...," he wipes a hand across his face. "Yeah." He drawls out.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." He smiles weakly. "I just can't believe after everything ... Sarah's dead. I mean, she's actually dead!"

Claire sadly looks at Sarah's body.

"Almost everyone we've run into today, has died. I have to call my parents! See if they're ok, or ... at least alive."

She nods and tightly grips his shoulder. "Maybe hearing their voices will make you feel better."

He holds his cellphone in his hand and stares quietly at the screen. "Claire?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry, but you haven't mentioned your parents once in all this time. Do you want to call them?"

"No."

He scrunches his eyebrows and looks at her. "I'm sure they're worrying about you."

"No, they're not." She lowers her head.

"Don't say that!"

"You don't know what you're talking about Derek!"

"Well, don't you at least want to know if they're ok?" He holds out the phone.

"They're fine!" She grits her teeth.

"Just—,"

She huffs. "They're dead! Died before they had to go through all of this. Ok?!?"

Derek steps back and blinks in bewilderment. "Oh." He says in a low voice. "I'm so sorry, Claire. I didn't know, I wouldn't have—,"

"It's fine you couldn't have known."

"You've been alone this whole time? When did it happen?"

"Last month, just after my birthday."

"Right. Eighteen, you get to live in the apartment. I'm really sorry."

She shrugs her shoulders and wipes a tear from her cheek. "It's fine."

He cautiously approaches her. "Didn't any family members try to come and help you?"

"There's no one else here, just an aunt in New Jersey. She lives too far and has her own family.Can we stop talking about this? I really don't want to think about that right now."

"Yeah, ok." He caresses her arm and looks around at the bodies laid sprawled and battered across the roof.

Several of them contorted on the floor, with arms extended out. Their hands open and fingers curled inward from when they tried latching onto one of them. One of the corpses lays hunched over an A/C unit. Bits of his brain scattered across the floor beneath his head as his only arm hangs rigidly on over the side.

"Do you think Sarah's going to turn into one of them?" He asks without looking back at Claire.

"No clue. Should we ... maybe we should bash her head in to make sure?" She says while uncomfortably tightening her shaky hand around the tire iron.

He turns quickly. No! We can't!"

"But what if—,"

"No, I can't do it, Claire." He shakes his head.

"Well, then I'll do it!" She lifts up the tire iron over her head. Her teeth chattering as she breathes in deeply.

Derek reaches out and grabs the weapon. "We need to block that door somehow." He releases his grip and goes to inspect the door. "Ok. Let's pile up the bodies in front of it. If something else decides to come up here while we're sleeping, it'll take it a while until it can push through. By then, we'll be awake and ready for it. If Sarah isn't a zombie by the time we've piled the rest of them..."

Claire stares silently at him.

He grimaces. "We'll place her body on the top of the pile."

She raises an eyebrow. "So, bashing her brains as a precaution: awful? But using her as a body pile barricade: fine?"

"Well, when you put it like that, it does sound pretty bad."

She sits. "I'm about ready to pass out and go into a sleep coma after all this is done. Just give me a second to rest a bit."

"Yeah, no problem. I'll actually start up on that, just stay there."

The sun is beginning to set. Orange and red hues fill the sky, making the occasional stray cloud appear to have a blazing underbelly.

Sarah didn't wake up and lays at the top of a corpse mound in front of the door.

Derek and Claire stand next to each other and stare at the horizon.

"You know ... I've never been superstitious, but it's pretty weird this is all happening on Friday the thirteenth. Suckiest day ever!" She says.

"Yeah. Getting a little paraskevidekatriaphobia there?"

"Paraskevide-what?!?" She raises her eyebrows.

He laughs. "It's a really long and complicated way of saying fear of Friday the 13th. There's another way of saying it, but it doesn't make it any easier."

She fixes a strand of her hair while struggling with her steps towards one of the A/C units. Sitting down slowly in front of it, she groans and sighs with relief when she rests her back against it. "I thought it was triska-something?"

"Triskaidekaphobia? No, that's the fear of the number thirteen. Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of the day and number combo. It used to be about black cats, walking under ladders, breaking mirrors, picking up a penny, stepping over a crack and stuff like that. Guess we should add zombies to that list." He chuckles and shakes his head.

She laughs. "Encyclopedia. Sometimes it's easy to forget you were the Valedictorian at our school."

"You were a junior and doing your own thing. I didn't expect you to remember that."

She gazes up at him. "I know you were mostly preoccupied with schoolwork, sports and had your nose in books, but did you think that gave you a cloak of invisibility or something? I mean we did talk on occasion and lived in this building."

He sits next to her. "Not invisible. Sure you'd talk to me on occasion, but we didn't really hang out or anything."

"You wanted to hang out?"

"I tried asking you a few times actually."

"When?!?" She places her hand over his.

"It doesn't matter."

"It does."

He gazes silently at her hand.

She shakes her head and sighs. "I'm sorry, I didn't even realize you wanted to. Why didn't say anything?"

Resting his head against the metal bar of the unit, he turns to look at her. "It's ok. It was a long time ago. You were a freshman. When you started your junior year, it was my last year to try and ask you. I told myself over the summer—before school started—that I was going to do no matter what. Told myself a bunch of times. I was going to ask you directly if you wanted to go out on a date, which my parents would have hated by the way."

"What?"

"Not because of you! But because you'd be a distraction from school."

"Oh ... wait, why didn't you though?" Her eyes sparkling with wonder.

"I found out during orientation that you were already had a boyfriend. That he was in college, which was a big thing with all the girls apparently, and so I just didn't. Figured I lost my chance."

She bites her lip. "Yeah, I started dating Anthony over the summer, but we weren't officially together. It wasn't until Christmas that year that he became my boyfriend. That had to be my best friend at the time—Lacy—who told people that. She was the only one who knew."

"Lacy? Wait a second, you don't mean—was that the one I saw earlier today with you in the parking lot?"

Claire sighs loudly and looks up at the sky. "That would be the one."

"I thought she looked a little familiar, though she's changed a lot."

"Yup, a lot more than just physically and style." Her eyes fix on a solitary and wispy cloud gently floating above them.

"I'm sorry. That's gotta suck. Your best friend and your boyfriend."

She scowls. Looking down at the tire iron on her lap, she runs her finger over it. "Lacy hasn't been my best friend for a long time, maybe never was to begin with. How do you know she was actually doing something with him? Thought you only saw me decking him?" She stares at him.

He shifts uncomfortably. "Well, I saw her buttoning her blouse, running away and you being pretty angry. Kind of obvious what happened there."

"Ugh! Yeah." Claire coughs.

"Are you ok?"

"Yeah. We should try and get some rest, before we start all over again with the zombie smash fest."

"Sweet dreams."

"Sweet dreams, Derek." She smiles and lays her head on his shoulder.

Her long lashes tremble slightly as her eyes shift underneath the lids. A strand of hair glides with a gentle breeze and falls over her face. He softly tucks it behind her ear and grins when he sees a ghost of a smile upon her lips.

It's been a terrible day, but this moment is one he's ingraining in his mind. Out of all the events during the day, this one is worth remembering forever. Cherishing every slight movement she makes in her sleep and the peaceful look on her face.

Maybe after we find a safe place, I can ask her on that date? Whatever type of date two people could have in this newly messed up world. He thinks and chuckles lightly.

***

Three hours after falling asleep, Derek stirs when a sound awakes him. He blinks away the sleep from his eyes and peers into the dimly lit rooftop. He looks down. Claire had shifted in her sleep and her head lays on his lap.

A faint gurgle and the chattering of teeth emanate from somewhere nearby. The wind and electrical humming from the blades drown it out, but he was certain it came from behind the air conditioning unit.

He slowly shifts and gently places Claire's head on the floor. Crouching, he cautiously peaks over the side and sees what was making the sound.

Sarah is standing in front of the pile of dead zombies. Twitching and gnashing her teeth, her white eyes rolled back into their sockets. Her head jerks repeatedly in the direction of every conditioning unit. One of them bangs as it shuts off and she limps towards it. Growling loudly and quickly halting in front of it.

He takes quiet and slow steps towards Sarah, tightly gripping the baseball bat's handle. Carefully trying to approach her, he lifts the bat and hits her over the head with a loud cracking sound.

Sarah tumbles forward and crashes against the air conditioner. She turns around and lurches towards him with a gasping, gurgling growl in her throat. Her mouth opens wide and ready to bite at him. He cracks her head with the bat.

Claire groggily wakes up to the loud sound of the wood continuously thwacking Sarah's skull. She tries to get up, but falls back down. Groaning and laying the back of her head on the floor while breathing heavily.

Derek runs over to her and helps her sit up.

"I'm still half asleep, but I'm pretty sure I just saw Zarah." She says weakly.

He places a hand on her forehead. "You feel a little warm. I think you're running a fever?"

She laughs deliriously. "Is it just me, or do the jerks get a physical improvement when they're zombified?"

"You know what ... I noticed that too. Sarah was pretty much a train wreck!"

Claire chuckles.

He looks at the door. "We have to get you some water or something."

She shakes her head. "I'm not doing too good. I think I'm infected."

"No!"

"Yes, which means you're going to have to bash my brains in before I turn into Zaire."

"What do you have against Africa huh?"

She smirks. "Stop deflecting. You know what I meant."

"Yeah, well, it's the DRC anyhow. Maybe you're not infected, maybe you're just sick! What if the only thing you have is the flu?" His eyes pooling with tears as he pleads with her.

"Anthony was sick. He was carrying whatever turns people into zombies, right?"

"Yeah, but—,"

"Sarah was bitten in the neck and after a long while after she died, she woke up a zombie."

"Ok, I get it, but what does this have to do with you? You weren't bitten."

"Anthony wasn't bitten either. He was infected another way and was probably carrying it for a while before he turned." She stares at him. Her eyelids struggling to remain open.

"Uh, are you trying to tell me Anthony sexually transmitted a zombie virus to you?"

"What?" She croaks. "No, it's been a long while since any of that and we both know why, because he was obviously getting it elsewhere. No, remember yesterday, when I punched him?" She leans her palms against the floor, hanging her head as she coughs.

"Of course. Wait, you broke his nose. Did you injure your hand?" He grabs her hand to inspect it and notices a little cut on her knuckle. "You don't think that from this you got infected?"

"It's possible, but I'm positive ... I'm infected."

"Claire, there could be another explanation!"

"No! There isn't, Derek! Did you like not notice when I was going up the stairs yesterday or something?" Her arm trembles as she supports her upper body.

Derek stands up and begins to pace. He shakes his head. "I just thought maybe you were a little out of shape or just needed to rest! I dunno!"

"What?!? Do I look out of shape to you or that I've been chain smoking? I also thought it was fatigue, but we slept and I still feel like I can barely walk a block. I'm practically useless to you at the moment."

"You're not useless! I can't just kill you like this without knowing."

"I can't explain it, but it feels like I'm dying." She lays down on the floor.

"I say we wait." He stares over the roof's edge, not wanting to accept that she's sick and has been showing the signs of being infected. Something within him desperately hopes she's wrong.

"The thought of turning into one of those things terrifies me. I can't bear to think that I can also infect you or kill you. I don't know which one of those is worse!" Her voice comes out hoarse and she begins to cough uncontrollably.

"Look, if you hurl your guts out, I'll keep my eye on you. If you turn, and only after you turn, I promise that I'll kill you."

She nods and coughs out blood. "Derek?"

"Yeah?" He asks not wanting to look at her.

"Does blood count?"

He quickly swivels his head and crouches beside her. She holds her hand out, on the palm lays a small mound of what seems to be a combination of mucus and blood. He cups her face. It's a difficult reality, he doesn't want to do it.

She wheezes, aggressively convulsing on the floor. Her legs violently kicking as she clenches her jaw while repeatedly smacking the back of her head on the hard surface.

With a trembling hand, he hesitantly reaches for her tire iron.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

Claire moans and whimpers once her kicking stops. Her chest rising rapidly as she breathes. A long gasp is released as her chest falls and she stills.

"Claire?" Derek cries.

No response from her, no sign of life. Her cheeks are pale and her eyes stare up at the sky. Not wanting to see her face, when he does what he has to do, he flips her over.

Staring at the back of her head, he breathes in heavily and nods. "I won't let you turn into one of those monsters."

The tire iron smashes into her skull. He continues until he's certain that she won't wake up a zombie. Until there's nothing left in her head to turn into one.

Filled with anger over the unfairness of the situation, he hits her harder with each swing. When exhaustion begins to set in, he looks down to see the splattered mess of what used to be the only girl he's ever had a crush on.

"I can't believe this! What the hell!?!" He screams and throws the tire iron at one of the A/C units on the roof.

"Oh crap!"

He runs over to the unit to see if he broke something with the throw. Besides a slight dent, the unit remains unscathed. He sighs in relief.

"That would've sucked, if someone is in that apartment trying to survive and I busted their air conditioning. Well ... for however much longer that will continue working for."

He looks back at Claire's corpse and begins to dry heave in between his sobbing. "Have to figure out what I'm going to do. I need to get off this roof, I can't stay stuck up here forever."

Reaching for the phone in his pocket, he speed dials his parent's number. The phone rings, but no one picks up. He tries again a second time, but the same occurs. Looking at the thirty-six percent next to the battery symbol, he groans.

"Ok, I'm going to search apartments, charge this crap, collect some items and whatever I can use." He walks to the edge of the roof and stares at the city below. "Mom and dad, hold on for a little longer. I'll be there soon."

The sun will be breaking through the horizon in a few hours. Streetlights illuminate the main road by the building. Very few cars are speeding through the streets and some seem to not be moving at all. Off in the distance he can see a helicopter flying in the sky.

Sirens and an explosion can be heard off in the distance.

Yesterday morning, his biggest concerns were to find someone to date and a book report. Now, he just needs to figure out how to survive through a zombie apocalypse, but first he needs to make it out of the building alive.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

What ever happened to Muffins?

THE END

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[3,182 words. Total = 19,183]

Was tempted in adding the bangers and mash looking zombie, I decided against it.

The top drawing, I attempted six times. That was the sixth. I tried very much to create a tender, but tense moment, and found it difficult to find the "normal expressions" people would have in a moment like that. There's a handful of common facial expressions I have yet to fully learn or master through rote, but micro expressions are still [at this moment] almost impossible for me to decipher.

[I couldn't draw many details with such limited time when drawing Derek overlooking the city. Just placed it underneath. One of the few unfinished drawings.]

Hope you enjoyed the story and Happy Halloween. Thank you very much for reading it.***