Mini Fic Monday #9 - Love is...doing the right thing.

Last night I killed them.

This morning I'm digging their grave. 

Michael and Davis wanted to bury Tom right away, but they tell me I threatened them with the gun, and I am sorry for that.  I guess I got a little lost there for a minute.  All I can remember is the softness of his hair beneath my fingers, the scratch of the stubble on his chin against my palm, the plea in his eyes as he begged me to do it, and the adoration on his face when I lifted the gun. 

After that everything goes a fuzzy grey color, apart from the softness of his hair beneath my fingers-I blocked out the stickiness of some of the strands, I knew it was there and why it was there, but I didn't need my mind to draw a picture.  When you put a bullet in someone's head, you kind of know there's gonna be a little mess.

We'd promised each other that if it ever came down to it, we would do the right thing.  "Because love is..." he'd always say and I'd finish, "doing the right thing."  Not that it was ever going to happen to us, not us.  We were too savvy.  We knew the best places to hide, the best places to forage, the best places to camp.  It would never happen to us.  Arrogant much?

They didn't usually come up this far, they preferred to stick to the highly populated areas, waiting for any survivors to make a run for it.  But there were five of them last night who had decided to do a little hunting up on the ridge, about a mile from our camp and they must have followed the smell of the fire.

Pandemonium broke out in our little camp as the first zombie stumbled towards us.  There were nine of us and five of them, but all it takes is one little scratch and the infection spreads through you in a matter of hours.  The guns were going off all around me, I grabbed for mine and popped one of the bastards right between the eyes.  But then I froze, and so did Tom beside me.  There he was. 


I ignored the hanging flesh, the blood matted hair, the ingrained dirt covering him from head to foot, the lips curled back like a growling animal.  All I saw was wavy corn-colored strands blowing in his beautiful green eyes, the slouch of his shoulders when I asked him to clean his room, the sleep-warm first smile of the morning.  I must have moved towards him, what mother wouldn't?  But Tom hit me square in the back of the legs and took me down, and I heard Davis shouting something out to Michael.  That's when Tyler made his move, driven only by the lust for blood and bone.  And that's when I raised my gun, just as he sank his teeth into his father's shoulder.


I watch as Michael, Davis and Andrew, the three remaining men in our group, lower both bodies into the ground.  One so small compared to the other, but the same eyes staring up at me from each face.


Last night I killed my son and my husband.  This morning I buried them.  Why?

Because I loved them, and love is....doing the right thing.

THE END