The Last Good Boy

The apocalypse hadn't been kind to anyone, but it had been particularly cruel to those who remembered how things used to be. Elena sat on the rusted fire escape of her fourth-floor walkup, watching the street below. A skeletal dog—some mix of retriever and something else—nosed through a pile of debris, ribs pressing against mottled fur like fingers against a drum.

She'd named him Barnaby three months ago, back when he still had meat on his bones and enough energy to wag his tail at her approach. Now he just wandered, a creature of habit in a world that had broken them both.

"You're hungry, aren't you?" she whispered, though she knew he couldn't hear her. None of them could anymore.

The first wave had come through the city like a plague of sleepwalkers, the infected shambling with that terrible, jerky gait—half stumble, half seizure. The news had called them zombies at first, until the networks went dark and the word became just another ghost in the collective vocabulary. Elena preferred "the hollow ones." It felt more accurate, somehow.

She shouldered her rifle and checked the window for the third time that hour. The hollow ones were drawn to movement, to noise, to the electrical impulses of living brains firing with thoughts and fears and regrets. Elena had learned to move like something that wasn't quite alive—slow, deliberate, barely breathing.

A fox darted across the alley below, all orange flash and clever eyes, carrying something small and dead in its jaws. Barnaby lifted his head, watching it pass with dull interest. The fox was alive. The dog was not. The hollow ones gathering three blocks down were neither, or both, depending on how you looked at it.

Elena's radio crackled—the pre-arranged signal from Marcus at the supply depot two miles north. His team was moving out. Today was the day they attempted the hospital run for antibiotics and insulin, the last stash in the city. She'd promised she'd cover their flank from above, spot for stragglers, take down anything that followed them home.

She checked her ammo. Three rounds left.

"Good enough," she said, and shouldered the rifle.

Below, Barnaby paused and looked up at her fire escape. For a moment, something like recognition flickered behind those milky eyes. Then he turned and shambled toward the oncoming swarm, drawn by whatever electrical signal still animated his dead heart.

Elena lined up her shot and whispered, "Good boy," as she took aim at the things that used to be people.