"Why don't you start by telling me what sort of things you're talking about?" Bixby asked.
"Okay, well, when we left the club, and were trying to get here, the morning after everything went to hell, I flipped my car, being stupid, not paying attention and I made Caroline and the others leave me behind. I ran, and they were chasing me, and just when I thought it was over, I was saved." She blurted it all out, talking as fast as she could, as if afraid if she stopped, she'd never start again.
"Believe it or not, saved by the only Gaunt in probably the whole city who didn't want to eat me. He took me back to a clinic, as in, with an actual doctor type clinic, which believe me, I needed. Then I find out he worked for a classic car rebuild business before the dead got up, and wants to fix my Camaro so I can get here. I mean, come on, seriously, what are the odds of that, right?" She looked at the Reverend, half-expecting him to call her nuts.
“Wow," he said, settling back in his chair. "I'd say the odds are right in the neighborhood of not at all possible."
"Yeah, I kind of figured that myself," she sighed.
"Of course, the good news is, God obviously has a plan for you," Bixby told her.
Bunny drained the rest of her vodka. "I'm not even sure I believe in God, if I'm being honest."
"He obviously believes in you," Bixby replied.
"I wasn't under the impression He was fond of girls like me," Bunny laughed.
Bixby shrugged. "Just because you worked at a gentlemen’s club doesn’t make you unworthy of God’s love, Bunny.”
"Not quite what I was talking about there, Reverend," she told him.
He frowned. "Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean then."
“Not important," she said, waving it off. "So, what, you think God has some sort of grand plan for me then?"
"He has a grand plan for all of us. Sometimes, we have to let things happen the way He wants," Bixby told her with a soft smile.
"So, then, His grand plan for the rest of the world was that they get eaten alive and come back like that?" she asked, jerking a finger in the general direction of the wall.
Bixby scratched his head. "I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know the mind of God, Bunny. I don't have a hotline to Him or anything."
"Then how can you know?" she asked.
"Faith," he replied. "You just have to have faith."
Bunny stared at her empty glass for a long time. "I'm not sure I have any."
Bixby reached out, resting a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay to have doubts, Bunny. None of us are perfect. Having faith is hard, and these days, nearly impossible. Trust me, I know. What's important is that you try to believe that this has happened for a reason and that in the end, that reason will bring something good."
"You believe that?”
He nodded. "I have to. It's in my job description." He smiled. "Plus, it keeps me from eating a gun, so there's that."
She couldn't help but laugh a little. "It's all I can do not to try that myself."
"Forgive me, but I find that hard to believe. You have a lot of friends who care about you a great deal, and even more admirers who look up to you," he said.
"That's kind of the problem," she admitted.
"Ah," he said, realization dawning in his eyes. "This isn't so much about God as it is about you. You aren't sure you're worthy of that kind of love and admiration."
"I'm not," she told him plainly.
He shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Like it or not, that isn't your decision to make."
"I shot two men, living men, before I got to this camp," she said. "That isn't the kind of person you look up to."
"Why did you shoot them?" Bixby asked.
Bunny looked up at him. "What?”
He looked her dead in the eye and she found no judgment there. "Why did you shoot them?"
"They were infected," she replied.
He nodded. "Then you showed them mercy?"
She nodded slowly. "I tell myself I did. I want to believe I did. But I wonder if maybe I was wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it.
“Was there another option?”
She thought about it for a long time.
“Not that I could find. I still can’t, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. I shot them, told myself it was right, and now...”
"Okay, so here's the thing," he said, leaning back. "I can't say what brought the dead down on us like this, Bunny. Maybe it was a biological weapon, maybe it was a comet, maybe it was space aliens, hell, maybe it even was the Devil himself. What I can say is that I'd rather be shot in the head than turn into one of them. So, from my point of view, what you did was a mercy, plain and simple. If it was me who’d been infected, I’d thank you for it.”
"It doesn't feel that way," she admitted, tears in her eyes. "I killed them. Not like when you have to shoot one of them, when you know you have to do it or they'll kill you. I killed them without even batting an eye. Hell, one of them I’d already left for the dead to have after he tried to..."
She trailed off, suddenly
