Every last day
Seemed to carry the weight of a lifetime.
Watch from the ground as the gold fluttered down
From the sky.
-Sara Bareilles, Send me The Moon

Dan

It feels strange to feel so calm right after waking up.

It's been a long time since I've slept all the way through the night- usually I make it to about three in the morning before the dreams begin and I can't stand to be asleep anymore, surfacing from my nightmares with a tight feeling in my chest, almost as if I'd been drowning. My breaths come in shallow bursts and I'm often shaking so hard that I have to physically make the effort to secure my blanket tightly around me to the point of discomfort, hiding the jittery motions so that I don't wake Phil. I hate seeing the concern in his eyes when I accidentally rouse him, screaming and flailing before I come to my senses and shut up before a zombie hears me and is alerted to our presence.

Phil never says it but I know he's much more worried about my sleeplessness than he lets on. I feel terrible, personally responsible for the dark circles under his eyes and the stress that makes his shoulders sag in defeat. I don't deserve to have someone like him in my life- he's like my polar opposite, bright and cheerful and always full of optimism. The amount that he cares for others and for me specifically is something I simply cannot comprehend, something even a zombie apocalypse cannot dampen.

For as long as I've known him, he's always been this way. So completely, utterly, insufferably good. How does he stand it without exhausting himself? I'll never know. The human bloody equivalent of the sun, I feel like I'm just some shadow that eclipses him.

Even his eyes are bright, impossibly blue in a way that I've never seen on another human, ever. Against his black hair, they catch me off-guard when the rest of our world is all browns and grays and greens. I am in no way this colourful, nor do I want to be. I'd probably go crazy, would have to resort to faking it, because I'm just not that kind of person.

I'm not heartless- I know how to appreciate others. Phil and Cat are worth more to me than they'll ever hear me express, I've just never been that great around people. I don't like to depend on others, it makes me feel weak and vulnerable, because when you hand your trust and safety to a person you're give them a weapon against you, the ability to abuse your weaknesses and hurt you beyond repair. It's a dangerous thing in this world to get invested, who even knows how many people have been killed because they put their faith in the wrong person.

I like to stay closely guarded, not always sharing all that I'm feeling like Phil, who is so open-book around me I worry for him simply because I can't trust myself not to say the wrong thing by accident. He's too gentle for this world, although I know he can be strong when he wants to be. It was Phil that got us out of London after all, not me, and I probably wouldn't be here today if he didn't have my back.

While we are in some ways exceptionally different people, this is something that is mutually understood. He's my closest friend and always will be, a loyal constant in my life. Anyone else might have a much harder time.

And it's not like he's made of glass. Phil is strong, stronger than me in a lot of ways, but he's human and humans are prone to shortcomings. He's strange because he feels so much more than I do and yet I hardly ever see tears in his eyes, he holds himself so steadily and yet it's always him whose eyes I see soften when our gazes meet. He cares and he doesn't stop caring, a strange relationship when it feels like I hardly give an adequate amount in return.

The world is being strangely quiet today. After living rough for so long, sleeping under the stars and spending my days always on alert, I've become so much more attuned to what's going on in the environment around me. One year ago, you wouldn't even catch me outside of my uni dorm unless I was hungry or the next Final Fantasy was released, not if I could avoid the prying eyes of roommates and strangers alike. I preferred to avoid human contact and direct sunlight if at all possible, the typical internet hobo teenager that all of us are at some point. As long as I had Skype and my social medias, I could tough through anything.

I feel so distanced from the boy now, so much older, my outlook on life a completely different perspective nowadays. Now, a life like that seems so provided and shallow. These days I can observe my environment like some sort of weird nature guru, every sound and movement the outdoors has to offer catalogued and defined in my mind to mean something. Telltale rustles usually indicate approaching animals, a change in the direction of the wind warning of a shift in the weather. A village that looks too conveniently stocked on resources could be a trap or overrun by zombies. And so on.

Things are different in the world now. Life isn't temporary anymore and death isn't permanent, the lines so blurred it's best if you just avoid thinking about it. It's much more stressful if you think about it. Death is an art now, a concept with multiple meanings when it's no longer finite, and it's literally everywhere. It's all around us.

I sit on the top of the barn board pile, high enough up that the breeze catches my hair and everything below looks distant and small. My legs dangle down with nothing below them but a twelve foot drop onto the grassy hillside, and I take a deep breath, taking in the earthy outdoor smell, scanning the horizon where a small, abandoned town sprawls for about a mile.

Our mission for the day is to visit this place, I've already talked with Cat and she thinks it's worth checking out if Phil and I are looking to update our supplies a bit. I'm somewhat suspicious about the apparent lack of zombies there, especially since it looks like it once held a substantial number of people. But I trust Cat, even if she is half zombie. She's proven herself to us in the past many times over, and she's already been down there herself. If she says it's good, then it is.

My fingers trace the rough wood grain below me absentmindedly as I start to assemble a rough schedule of the day in my head. I turn my head back to look down below at my two friends, seeing Cat sitting by the fire and Phil leaning against the far wall, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. He's frowning, which makes me wonder if something is wrong.

Did I not sleep well after all? I thought my dreams were relaxed but for all I know I could easily have forgotten. What if I've kept him up all night? My content mood shifts uncomfortably, the familiar stress creeping back into my consciousness.

I place my hands against the board I'm sitting on and shift around to face back in towards the interior of the barn. Pushing off, I'm airborne for a few seconds before my feet touch down onto the stacked timbers below, and slowly I start to pick my way back down from where I've come. I step cautiously so that I don't trip on weak boards.

I try to detect a change in the atmosphere when I'm back on the ground, wondering if the mood had shifted recently or if it's all in my head. I thought he was fine, he'd smiled and joked with me when I threw his hat at him earlier, but I'm second-guessing it now, wondering if it was genuine.

I make it down to the ground in no time and move to sit down next to Phil, settling myself a slight space away to his left and poking his foot with my toe. My runners are dirty and worn-down from a year of wear, the black material dark next to his blue ones with their peeling soles. He looks over at me and smiles, then settles back against the wall.

I'm not usually one to show affection but his lack of response annoys me, mostly because I really don't want him to be upset, particularly if it's my fault. That would be a miserable day. So I let out a sigh, shuffling sideways to close the distance between us and letting the side of my head thud onto his shoulder noncommittally.

"Pay attention to me, Lester." I huff, nudging him with my head in what I hope is the most irritating way possible.

He reaches over and presses his palm against my face, shoving it away and then squeezing my chin with his thumb and forefinger, squishing my cheeks.

"Hey!" I squeak in protest, jerking away, reacting as if he'd burned me and not like he's literally the only person in the known universe that I'd allow to get away with that. "I did not consent to any inappropriate face-touching." He merely shrugs, his face softening into a smile.

"I always pay attention to you." He argues. "You're the only friend I have besides Cat, idiot."

I glare at him even though really I'm not mad at all, it's an empty glare and I'm sure he knows it. At least I know he's not upset with me now. Just lost in thought, though I have no idea what they could be about. He's gone back to sitting silently, his eyes fixed on his shoes with the obvious expression of someone whose mind is elsewhere.

"What are you thinking about?" I ask him, wondering what could possibly be occupying him because while he's obviously not troubled by me, he's just distracted, not annoyingly bubbly like usual.

He sighs and looks back over at me, shaking his fringe out of his eyes. His hair has grown longer in the last few months and it's starting to encroach on his visibility, but it's still as straight and tidy as it's always been, something I used to be incredibly jealous of when we were internet friends. Not like my brown bush of hair. I raise my eyebrows at him, prompting an answer.

"Just..." he trails off, picking his words carefully. "thinking about... stuff.."

Like that's a proper answer.

"Right. What are you actually thinking about?" I ask, sticking out a finger to poke him gently.

His eyes lower and I wonder if I've said the wrong thing. What is up with him today? This is not the Phil I know. He starts tapping the side of his foot against mine absently, but he does give me an answer.

"I'm thinking about the day we left London, honestly." He says unexpectedly. "It was so long ago, but I'll never forget that first time we saw the zombie. I was so scared back then and I thought I was going to lose you somehow. I don't want to do that."

Okay, not what I was expecting, but I appreciate the underlying message in his words, that he's happy to have me. It makes me feel important, valid, even if the memory itself  is still somewhat raw and uncomfortable. I'm not sure why I'm surprised to hear he's worrying about something like that when it was over a year ago, it really does come as unexpected to me and I wonder how it possibly could have crossed his mind.

Something must have happened in the night that's caused him to remember. I don't want him to worry, I want him to be excited about the journey into town and in a good mood because usually the spirits of our little group ride on whatever wavelength Phil is walking on that day, like the heartbeat of a living being. It's not like we can count on me to do it, I'll be the one to dig in my heels and drag them down as much as possible, scoffing when Phil gets too excited about some mundane trinket or something.

Cat helps I suppose, she's stubborn as hell if she wants to see us having a good time. Somehow though that's a background noise for me, the notion of Phil smiling on this watery lighting morning because I decided to be less of a dick than usual outweighing it. It makes no sense, I know that. They're my thoughts, I don't have to make sense of them.

So I give in and pull him in with one arm for a hug, which at first he tenses in reaction to. I feel something then, a small sink in my chest at the realization that this is a surprise to him, mentally noting that I'm a worse friend than I thought. Just as this crosses my mind he slowly settles into it, leaning against me and reminding me again that this is all in my head. I feel the achievement in this small victory, seeing how comforting has never been my forte, reminding myself that Phil has seen me at my worst, and he's still here. I don't really feel the appeal of hugs like I used to but it seems to have worked for Phil, who seems to feel a little bit better just with this small contact.

"Don't worry about that stuff," I chide him, wanting to put his mind at ease. "We've made it this far, haven't we? You just have to take it one day at a time."

He merely nods in response, but I feel his head rest on my shoulder and I know he's not worried anymore. I don't even scoff at him for the motion, feeling the weight and letting him take the comfort. I can do that at least.

We both settle into a comfortable silence then, sinking into our own trains of thought. Now that the sun's up it's nice and warm, even in our dimly lit shelter almost completely roofed over by collapsed barn boards. It's comforting, being here with him when it's quiet like this, and I probably could sit here for much of the day if not for Cat coming over to our corner, having finished repacking all the supplies she thought I'd stuffed away in too messy of a fashion. That's the role Cat plays in our life, the put-together friend who cleans up our messes.

"I think we're about ready to get off to town now, if you guys are up to it." She says, then seems to properly notice the way we're sitting. She smirks, raising her eyebrows, to which I just roll my eyes. "Unless you're comfortable just sitting there- it's up to you."

Phil quickly lifts his head off my shoulder and turns away to grab his own backpack, and I almost feel a bit unhappy about the end of the moment already. I haven't sat back and relaxed in a while, constantly on the lookout for danger or other things, and it was comforting, just being still for a while. But it's getting on high noon now and that means we'll need to move if we want to look around in the safety of full daylight, so now's a good time to go.

"Sure," I reply, accepting my neatly organized bag that she hands me with a smirk, stopping to pick up my crowbar that I've always carried since I found it, just in case. "Let's head out."

Phil shoulders his bag in silence and keeps his head turned away from me, and I smirk as I imagine his cheeks turning pink.

~~~

Up close, the town is not quite as well-kempt as I'd thought it had been.

It's obviously been left for quite sometime, the houses falling into abandoned disrepair and many of the colourful storefronts missing glass in their windows. It's been evacuated, looted and picked over, like a hundred different places in all the hundreds of towns we've been through. Though it's not all a waste as Cat, having already been here before, directs us to a specific farmhouse on the the corner of what must have once been an unassuming neighbourhood side street.

The door is locked tight and we end up needing to break a window to get in, but it's worth it when we step inside and realize why she picked this place. No one's really been in here for at least a year, at least not since the apocalypse. I'm not sure why that is but I don't question it, as it means the whole interior is almost completely untouched.

It's big on the inside, and I abandon caution somewhat to separate myself from Phil and Cat, exploring the rooms with a slightly surreal feeling in my stomach, seeing all these reminders of previous domestic life, everything in place like a normal home, just very dusty from a year without inhabitants. The kitchen, for example, is well-organized and nicely updated, with a cool stained wood countertop and some dishes in the sink, something I haven't seen or thought about in ages.

I start to make my way down the long hallway, trying every door to see if there's anything worth taking in each room, and with good results. The first door leads me to a bedroom, where I find a candle and a box of matches in one of the bedside table drawers. Definitely good, very useful. I also find a clean throw blanket, which will be good for when it starts to get colder at night.

The next room turns out to be a bathroom, and I start a little when I see my own reflection in the mirror, something I'm not used to in such detail because I only ever see myself reflected in windows or on the surface of water. Actually that's an understatement, I very nearly jump out of my skin because for a moment I think there's a brown-eyed stranger in this house.

It's strange, seeing how different I look. I don't stare for too long because it's only a reminder of what life is now. My face looks aged, with dark circles under the eyes. I've also tanned some, having lived, eaten and slept outdoors for ages now. I do take the time to adjust my curly hair, taking advantage of being able to see it and not entirely thrilled at seeing what a mess it is. I look awful, and without a comb or a straightener there's no way to set it straight.

I don't know how Phil stands to look at me, and glare at the reflection of my own face. The expression at least feels familiar, calming me enough to turn away.

I shake my head, opening a drawer and grabbing the roll of bandages in the cupboard; you never know when or where you might need that. We've been lucky since the beginning to only seriously need them once, our lives are mostly made up of Phil's self-inflicted injuries than anything, given his clumsiness.

I'm tucking my new finds into my bag, about to make my way into the last room on the end when I hear Phil shout from the other side of the house, sending me flying into a panic at first because I fear that something's wrong.

But there's an excitement to his voice, and it has me rushing to see what he's found.

"Dan! Dan! Come into the room over here, you've got to see what I've found! Hurry!"

I move as quickly as I can, passing back through the kitchen and skidding round a corner to the lounge, where his voice beckons through a door off this large room. I step through the archway, seeing Phil haloed by the light of a tall rectangular window, the room itself rather small but full of natural light.

"You better have a damn good reason for making me run like this." I huff irritably, pasting a frown on my face so I can at least pretend I want him to feel guilty. "You'd better be dying."

My feet sink into grey carpet and at first I wonder what's so spectacular about the room, seeing as it's mostly empty, when I realize what object is sitting behind Phil.

"Do you see that, Dan?" He breathes, though it been stunned into silence. "When was the last time we've been around one of those?"

He sounds so excited, voice high-pitched and eyes alight with a childlike wonder, but I'm at a complete loss for words as I stare at this ethereal object, not having seen one it what feels like a lifetime.

It's a piano.

Nothing too fancy or spectacular, just a standard oak wood one with dusty black and white keys, but I can hardly believe my eyes as I take it in, wondering if it's just my imagination.

"You're kidding...." I breathe, my voice trailing off as I make my way over to it, sitting down on the accompanying wooden stool as if I'm walking in a dream. For most of my young life I played the piano, it was one thing that after I'd initially learned had always come naturally, something I always felt secure and comfortable in when everything else, from family life to my life at school started to feel tense and overwhelming. I loved the being able to release melodies with a touch of my fingertips, it felt like such a free form of expression even when I played notes written by other people's hands, and I can't believe Phil thought to remember that this was something I loved so much.

"I can't believe you remembered-"

"You should play something!" He urges, and I'm about to refuse, already on the cusp of shaking my head when he seems to get a sudden thought, and his eager, excited face makes me change my mind almost instantly. "Moonlight Sonata! The one you used to play for me on Skype all the time!"

"Phil, honestly." I protest, fingers trailing over the keys and brushing the dust away from it.

I see Cat poke her head in, probably investigating after all the shouting.

"Is that.. a piano?" She questions,

"No, it's just a block of wood pretending to be a piano." I shoot sarcastically, and Phil laughs.

"I'm trying to get Dan to play it." He chuckles, "but he's being stubborn because he's too talented."

Now I've got two eyes on me, the pressure on.

I smile at the memory, and I can't help it, I turn back to the instrument and start to play, the piano horrendously out of tune to my ears but Phil settles down on the windowsill, beckoning Cat to do the same with an impossibly happy look on his face. Sunlight beams all around me and I feel as if I'm under a grand spotlight, all traces of the apocalypse vanishing, if only for this moment. I lose myself, amazed at how naturally the song comes despite never once thinking about it in all this time.

The song starts off slow, partly because my playing is a little rusty after so long but also because it's the natural rhythm of the music. Just three keys, over and over and interspersed with a lilting deeper note every few repetitions, a lulling melody that ascends and then descends over and over in a hypnotizing flow. Gradually it's as if something clicks and suddenly my fingers are playing smoothly, the notes rising and falling and building on one another in complete succession and I relax completely, just letting them come to me as my memory reawakens.

The high ceilings provide a beautiful reverberation and the song fills the air, almost as alive and tangible as we are. Phil has closed his eyes and Cat's silvery half-life eyes are wide with wonder. They hang on to each and every sound, savouring the bit of music after having gone so long without.

If I were to describe the feeling that's settling into my heart at this moment, I would describe it with this. I feel something, a deep sense of contentment and an indescribable warmth, almost a homely feeling, despite this house belonging to somebody I'll never know.

I lose myself in my playing until I run out of song, playing the last few notes and listening to the last deep echo fade, resonating lightly as the music disappears mystically, played on without hands to help.

An odd sense of melancholy washes over me and I sit back, sighing deeply, returned to the world as it was before.

Now that the song has ended, the silence in the room is suddenly deafening, an almost physical buzz that thrums in the air like a tense electricity.

I notice with some discomfort that a lump is forming in my throat and I try to ignore it, not wanting to cry in front of my friends over a bloody piano. But in the few moments before the song was over, the three of us had felt something that we hadn't since the days when all was normal and right. A deep feeling of normalcy, of calm. I hear Phil sigh, and I can't help but do that same.

I'm at a loss for words, but I feel good, so impossibly good, and it's strange for me. Playing an old dusty piano shouldn't amount to this volume of feeling, but it's happening all the same.

"That," Cat concludes, looking at me with a smile that reaches all the way up to her eyes, "was incredible. Truly. Please tell me you all felt it."

I nod and Phil does too, and I almost don't want to leave this room, knowing it means I'll be returning to the old, hard reality.

We sit for a while longer, until all of us remember at the same time that we're limited in regards to daylight. I'm not gonna be the one to say it though so I wait for one of the other two, Phil as usual taking up the spokesperson role when no one else is up to it.

"Guess we should get on, then, see what else we can find before the daylight runs out."

"Suppose we should," I reply, looking back one last time at the piano. "Think we should take the front door, now that we can open it from the inside?"

I ask this to no one in particular, but it seems a good idea as any so we shoulder our backpacks and I take the lead, walking out of the piano room and re-entering the lounge where the front door is located, feeling the weight of the world drop back onto my shoulders as my feet hit the wooden floor again, the spell broken.

My hands fumble with the latch for a bit until I successfully get it to click open, and I drop it to the side and turn the knob, opening the heavy wooden front door and swinging it aside to reveal the porch landing, where I find myself face-to-face with a zombie.

My heart skips a beat.

I let out an involuntary scream as I leap back, dodging it's lunging bite and slamming into Phil, knocking us both backwards. I can see more zombies lumbering up behind the first one and I realize suddenly what a stupid mistake I'd made; The sound of that piano in this empty town probably carried on for a mile, attracting every zombie within the woods and anywhere in the town to this exact area.

I can hear the moans of others approaching from way back, in reality there's probably only about a dozen but against three people expecting to dip in and dip out, we're seriously outnumbered.

"Get back!" Cat shouts and we both obey, jumping as far back as we can as she slams the door shut, the monsters already pounding against it to get in. She re-bolts the latch and immediately backs away, the door shaking as the group works away at it. Gurgly screeches and low growls cut loudly through the air, and my heart begins to pound in real fear.

"There's so many." I mutter, my mind racing.

"Okay, plan B," Cat announces. "We're going out the way we came in, back through the window in the backyard."  Neither of us disagree. We sprint across the house, making it to the aforementioned window and scrambling through it with no amount of grace to be seen.

Dropping to the ground, we're sure we've made it out relatively scot-free until we see the small crowd of zombies stumbling forwards from both sides of the building, with more emerging from the woods backing on the property line. We're completely surrounded, it's fight or die now.

"Shit." I spit out again, raising my crowbar as I stand back-to back with Phil on one side and Cat on the other. Dangerous situations bring out the most eloquent in all of us, and right now feels like we've been caught uncharacteristically off guard. I'm cursing myself for being so lazy in preparing to go in today. These things should never, ever be left to chance.

Phil is trembling but his axe is held steady in his hand, and I harden my determination as I think about how I will go down fighting just to keep him alive, as if we were already dying. It's quickly becoming apparent that there are a few more than a dozen, who knows where they all were when Cat visited here last night. We're never usually caught with this many around us.

Now I know why the homes have never been plundered, this place is crawling with zombies, her presence must not have triggered their appearance seeing how she wasn't completely alive.

As the first few monsters make it over to us we finally spring into action, hacking and smashing and driving our weapons into the lethal areas, the head areas, avoiding the snapping jaws and snatching hands. Striking a zombie in its limbs or torso does little to nothing. They don't feel pain so breaking bones or opening gashes will not inhibit them in any way.

The time Phil stuck his entire axe in Cat's stomach when we first met her and how it did nothing is a good reminder of that. They are little more than numb bodies controlled by a rotten, infected brain, hell-bent on consuming living flesh, so knowing their vulnerabilities means the difference between life and death. Destroy the control center, and you destroy the zombie. Cut off the head or strike the brain, that is the focus. As the zombies at the front make their way over to the side yard as well, that is exactly what we try to do.

But even with mine and Phil's efforts and Cat's invulnerability as a zombie herself, we are hugely outnumbered and I panic as I start to tire and there are still over ten lunging forward relentlessly. I've never been one to dwell on the worst-case scenario, but we're dangerously close to being overwhelmed.

I swing my crowbar so violently towards the zombie nearest me that when the metal hits the soft, decaying flesh the head breaks almost clean off, the zombie collapsing to the ground almost immediately. My side is relatively clear so I turn to help my friends, when I see a zombie behind Phil, who is preoccupied with a particularity ferocious one at the moment.

He's distracted, not even seeing the one behind him opening it's mouth and darting forward to deliver the death bite. I panic and lunge forward with little thought but to save him, viciously striking the monster until it too falls to the ground, soon followed by the one that had distracted him too. I'm in shock, how close he just unwittingly came to death, how it could have happened just that easily, and never would I have him there ever again.

It makes my stomach feel sick and makes me fight all the more harder, I will not lose him to anything.

There's too many.

They're closing in, some even going for Cat now.

We'll never make it.

It's only a matter of time before we're overwhelmed, and then we'll really be in trouble.

Is this how it ends?

I swing and slash and hack with all I have in me but it my arms are burning. We can't take them all on on our own. After all that we've survived through in the past year, it's almost laughable that this would be the way we'd die, surrounded by a zombie horde because I'd wanted to play piano for my best friend. Because that's why they're here. If we die here and now, it's going to be my fault. We give a valiant effort, Phil axing, me swinging and Cat stabbing with a short bladed knife, but it's not going to be enough.

It's not going to be enough.

Finally the worst possible thing that could happen in this situation happens with the lunge of a zombie and the slip of a foot.

Phil falls, knocked back by the force of an attack, and suddenly he's on the ground, struggling against the monster that has him pinned in the grass, desperately trying to keep the mouth from landing a single bite.

"PHIL!" I scream, panicking because I can't help him, there's two zombies on me right now and Cat is completely surrounded. I slam my crowbar into the head of the one zombie and it crumples but the second one is smarter, dodging my attacks and grabbing for the bar with rotten hands.

I can't help him, there's no way. I try sidestepping because the zombie is slow but that only allows for it to seize my crowbar, actually yanking it out of my hands and sending me stumbling sideways. Now unarmed and unsteady, I can only run and watch as Phil sinks under the weight of the zombie bearing down on him. I abandon all pretence, pounding forward hoping to knock it off him, to jump in front of him, to do something, anything.

The zombie pushes Phil's arms forward, gripping the axe horizontally, and I can see his hands jerk, exposing his vulnerable neck. The zombie sees it too, and leans down with its mouth open wide, bearing down-

A loud bang cuts through the air and the zombie over Phil falls on top of him, a hole shot straight through it's head. I don't even stop to question the mysterious saviour, even as consecutive shots ring out, mowing down all the other zombies too. I rush over to Phil and push the corpse roughly off of him, yanking him to his feet.

Predictably, he stumbles. I have to grip the inside of his elbows to steady him, both of us shaking hard, and when I look up with bated breath to meet his eyes I see how wide and unfocused they are. Before I've even stopped to think about my breath catches and I surge forward, yanking him towards me and throwing my arms around him as a gasp leaves my lips.

I can feel his heart hammering against his chest as he squeezes me back, tightly, and we watch as the few remaining zombies are shot down or finished by Cat, who is still stabbing determinedly. She stabs the last one right in the center of its forehead, watching it fall with a blazing look in her eyes. It slips to the ground and she grins triumphantly, then sprints on over to us, joining in to form a group embrace, which only lasts a few seconds because we are suddenly alerted to the identity of our saviours. Truth be told, I'd almost forgotten about them.

Two men and a woman emerge from the bushes, the men both medium in height but vastly different in appearance; one tanned with wavy black hair dyed red at the fringe and round, dark eyes, the other paler with sideswept blond hair and blue eyes. The woman is gorgeous, tall with long, caramel hair and big brown eyes, she keeps close to the second man but has her eyes trained on us.

We've barely raised our hands in greeting and thankfulness when all three draw their guns, simultaneously pointing them in our direction.

We drop our hands and back up completely against the wall, staring in disbelief at the glares they shoot our way. Phil shifts nervously next to me, reaching out and gripping my hand, and I in turn look at each of the individuals in front of us, trying to think fast despite my crowbar being inaccessible, laying way off in the grass.

After a long silence the black haired man speaks up, fixing his eyes on us and and shooting us a suspicious look.

"Tell me why you're here right now, or Marzia, Felix, and I will shoot you right where you stand."