survivor's guilt
It doesn't seem like six o'clock in the morning, but that could just be because she's on a boat.
Ana rolls over onto her side and blinks a few times, clearing the sleep out of her eyes. She's near the front, one arm stretched out and the other curled against her stomach. If she scoots back a few inches, she knows, she'll bump into Terry. Ken's at the wheel, taking first shift. Hers ended around three, and she hasn't been able to get to sleep since.
She tells herself it's because she's got things to worry about - the food supply, fresh water, where exactly you're supposed to pee when no one had the forethought to bring buckets with them. (Answer: empty Snapple bottles. Not the most sanitary thing in the world, and aiming's a bitch, especially for her and Nicole, but it gets the job done.) She's in charge, at least as much as Ken is, maybe a little more, and she's not quite sure how she feels about that.
Except she knows that it was more comfortable when Michael was still th-
No, she tells herself, don't do it, don't think about him. If she thinks about Michael, she'll start thinking about Louis, and her parents, and Kathy and Dave Harris four houses over. They were going to Europe next month, she remembers suddenly, making her eyes water. She's not sure why. Florence, London, Paris. Second honeymoon.
And okay, it's six in the morning, so maybe she can let herself think about Michael just this once.
Michael, who held fifteen jobs in the last ten years. Michael, who had three ex-wives living in two different states. Michael, who had a kid. Boy or girl, he'd never said either way, and now no one's ever going to know.
It hurts. It hurts in a way that a lot of things haven't - not slamming her car into a tree head-first, not taking the gun out of Andre's hands and shooting that...not-a-baby. Not-a-baby, she's called it the entire time, because it hadn't been a baby. It had been a very, very tiny zombie, that was all. No different than shooting the ones chasing after her on her way to the boat.
No different at all. That should scare her, but it doesn't. She doesn't have time to be scared, not anymore. Scared people die.
Michael hadn't been scared, she thinks idly, and her eyes water again. Goddammit.
Except - had he been? There hadn't been time to ask, and even if she had, she's a little doubtful he would have told her. She'd been holed up with him for weeks, almost every waking hour, and there was still so much he wouldn't say. Couldn't say, maybe. She'd never told anyone about Louis; the closest she'd come had been keeping her wedding band on. No one had ever said anything, though she'd spotted Michael looking at it a few times.
He would've been a good dad, she decides, because that's something you can do when someone's dead. She can ascribe him all sorts of good and noble motives and truths, because he's not around to contradict them. In her head, he's a good dad and a pretty good husband - it's all the ex-wives' faults in her head; it's easier that way - and really, really good in bed.
But that's all moot now, because he's dead. He showed her the bite - oh, God, the fucking bite and she couldn't have been two fucking seconds faster, could she? - and smiled at her, sad and a little regretful but not all that surprised. He'd kissed her hand like this was the last act of a fucking movie, and waved a little as they headed off away from the dock, and he'd taken the gun out of his waistband.
She'd looked away before he could do more than lift it and stare at it. Felt like cheating, like she'd been doing something wrong, but she couldn't watch. She could blow Leda's baby's brains out, but she couldn't watch Michael raise the gun to his own temple and apply the slightest pressure.
Sometimes - two times, so far; this makes three - she would tell herself stories to get to sleep. Maybe there'd be a cure, someday, and they could go back for him. Maybe it had - had missed him, somehow, like the Angel of Death drifting over the unmarked houses, and he was holed up somewhere with other people. (There have to be other people. Ana doesn't let herself think otherwise.) Waiting to get to another boat, or waiting for them to come back.
Waiting for her to come back, and she will, and they'll be together. He'll kiss her hand again, and her mouth, and her throat and her breast, and points lower, and it will be all right. It's a fairy tale she's telling herself, and fairy tales always end with happily ever after.
But this isn't a fairy tale. This is a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan, headed for one of the less-populated islands, armed with few guns and fewer bullets, and not enough good to last them six months, let alone a year. But there are a few of them, and they're all still alive and uninfected, and it's the best any of them can do right now.
Ana lets herself lay there, eyes closed, for another couple of minutes before she gets to her feet and heads for the wheel. Maybe Ken will let her take watch for a while. It's not like she's going to be getting any more sleep today.