"Aside from you, the last time I saw someone alive was seven months ago. I put an arrow through his head to save him from a slow, torturous death."
"Pete," Watts said.
"What?"
"That was Pete Wilson."
"You knew him?"
"We hunted together for a while."
"Have you seen anyone else?"
"No."
"So who am I saving food for then?"
"Me?"
"You put a lot of faith to rest in the idea that I wouldn't enjoy watching you starve."
"You talk a lot of shit for someone who just saved me back there."
"Purely instinct. If I had a second to think it through, I would have asked them to start with your heart. I mean, there couldn't be much of it in there, but it would be a little appetizer."
"Oh, Junebug, still bitter? Even with the end of the world and all that?"
"What can I say? I need someone's face to use on my targets. I chose you."
"How have you survived this long?"
"I'm going to drop you off here," I said, pulling toward the side of the road.
"I'm serious. I want to know. You were more worried about your pedicure than cardio when we dated."
"Yes, well, a lot has changed since then. Or haven't you noticed? A girl forgets things like her pedicure when she is watching her mother get her throat ripped out."
"Jesus," Watts said, wincing at the words.
"It was fast."
"That is all any of us can hope for anymore," Watts said, shaking his head.
"Yeah. So where am I dropping you?" I said, impatient to get back, knowing I had several trips on the boat before dark. Even then, I would likely lose strength in my arms before I could get it all across.
"Come on, June."
"Come on, what?"
"You're not dropping me anywhere."
"Ah, like hell I'm not."
"We should stick together."
"Ah, yeah, no," I said, shaking my head. "I'd rather let one of the zombies pluck my eyeballs out, actually."
"There's safety in numbers."
"And there's homicide. Namely, yours," I told him.
"June..."
"No, Watts. You've done fine so far. Go on and keep doing fine by yourself."
"I can't do that."
"Why the hell not?"
"Because you're the only fucking person alive that I care about, and I am not dead enough inside to let that go."
Care about?
I won't lie, there was a pathetic little heart-skipping sensation inside at that. You know, before my mind kicked in and reminded me that people who cared about you didn't treat them like Watts had treated me.
"Don't try to rewrite history just because we might be the only people left alive. You don't care about me. You never did."
"I cared, June. I still care."
"You treated me like shit."
"Now who is trying to rewrite history?" he countered, shaking his head. "I treated you like gold."
He did.
Damnit, he did.
That was why the break-up had been so brutal.
He'd gone from perfect to the worst of the worst in a blink, not even having the balls to give me a face-to-face break-up.
"Look, I don't want to do this now," I said, shaking my head. "Just go."
"No. We're going to be in this together now."
"Watts, get out of the car."
"Try to make me," he said, shrugging. "You are wasting gas sitting here. Fueling up is never a good time anymore."
He wasn't wrong. With the grid down, getting the stored gas out of the ground was a chore at best. That was why I'd driven around and snatched everyone's red gas cans out of their sheds and garages to get me by.
"Just take me to your place for now. If after a couple nights, you still want me gone, I'll go."
A strange, buried, needy part of me wanted me to say yes, to have someone to talk to, to get answers from him.
I found I didn't have enough strength to fight that part of me.
So I put the car back in drive, and I made my way toward my place.
"June, this is genius," Watts said. And in an old, familiar way, his praise made a warmth spread through my chest.
"I know," I agreed, climbing out of the SUV, going around to the back, popping the trunk.
"You take a boat across?" he asked.
"Yes."
"How many trips to get all this shit back over there?"
"A dozen maybe. The boat is small."
"Well, I can cut half those trips out for you," he offered, grabbing a couple bags of dried lentils.
"We should keep it light for this trip," I said, putting some dried beans under my seat. "I've never done the trip with two people."
With that, we loaded a few more light things, climbed in, and paddled over toward the remaining few feet of the dock where Watts insisted he climb off first to tether the boat, then reached down to help me out.
Chivalry, during the apocalypse.
Would wonders never cease?
"This is amazing," Watts said as I showed him around my place.
I'd gotten inventive a few times to get bigger items across the water, including a mattress I'd brought over on top of pool floats, pulling it behind the boat.
I'd set the bed up in the back in the old walk-in fridge that I had rigged to lock from the inside and not the out, giving me a fortress for the unsafe sleeping hours.
I'd dragged out the couch and the chairs from the owner's office in the back, moving all the tables and chairs into that room, making the main space into a massive living room with lots of floor space to do my indoor workouts.
I'd created a composting toilet system in the bathroom.
It wasn't perfect. But it was pretty damn good.
"It was a stroke of genius," I agreed, seeing no reason to play down what had been a smart decision.
"They never hang out on shore?"
"Maybe they would have in the earlier days," I said, shrugging. "But they're getting slower and dumber now. They don't seem willing to wait out a meal, choosing instead to travel to try to find an easier target."
"Makes sense," Watts agreed, leaning down to pet Buffy's head as she weaved in and out between his legs.
"Where have you been crashing?"
"The lighthouse," he supplied. "Similar idea,
