The April mud sputters against the tires in the dusk. The lights in the cabin are on, and I can see them inside, making dinner. The ash from my cigarette falls on my skirt and I curse under my breath. I pull the car to a stop, but keep it running. My hope was that they wouldn't be home, or sleeping early, but even now the smell of roast carrots and wild garlic curled through the open window of my truck.

I clomp through the mud into the shed, looking for my tire iron and the Fix-a-Flat. She would see my truck before long, so I needed to work quickly. No luck. By the time I have my tools together, she's there, leaning forlorn against the driver's side door. A gap in the creme yellow, dark coat and galoshes breaking the lines of the metal. I ignore her. She watches me quietly as I take off the wheel, rolling it around to look for the puncture. I hold the tire in the waning light. Nail jammed in the belt, that'd do it. I spray down a line of the epoxy like it could keep her mouth shut but she speaks anyway.

"Good to see you, Tina..."

That fucking Okie-from-Muskogee gaptooth drawl worms its way through me and in it I hear Daisy, feel Daisy and I remember all at once everything I spent a week drinking and crying and trying to forget. Through the ground I feel her grasping from twenty feet away. I don't need to look over to see her, I can feel her through the six feet of earth, as much as I can still feel her on my hands and lips.

"Hey Max. I'm not staying. Just needed to fix my flat."

"Oh...of course. Just hoped you were finally coming home..."

Shut your dumb fucking mouth. Every word you speak is poison. Every dumb fucking overchewed syllable. You sealed me out of this place when you twisted that ring around her finger and let her die.

"Yeah...pretty sure you took what was home and buried it over there..."

I knew I had hurt her. I could see the words turn her meek hope to ash behind her coke-bottle glasses. My cruelty felt like a balm, like I was soothing that itch inside. Like I could kill my pain by making Max take it to the hilt. She could take it. She owed it to me to take it. So I made her. She, in turn, exhaled. I could hear her throat hitch around that hot breath, and I practically began to lick my lips.

"I...I like to think we carry her with us, y'know..."

Garbage, utter shit.

"I'm sure you feel that way, carrying that ring on your finger. Slick little move, that. Cute, how you get to walk around with your little trophy for draining my life of all its love."

I'm tensing like a panther about to go for the throat when Max pulls the ring off of her finger and pushes it into my chest. I feel her heart beating through her fingertips. I realize my own heart has stopped beating. I shut up.

"There is still someone who loves you here."

Time lurches. Her voice is barely strong enough to hear over the genny thrumming behind the house

"Someone who needs you here."

Max is staring up at me, but I can't see her. I'm blinded suddenly as the floodlights flip on. I feel her hand slide down my arm and press the ring into my palm. It's still warm from her finger. My blood pounds alive, and sweat begins to pool around the edge of the ring. I think of Daisy's cold hand as my heart begins its betrayal. I can manage two words:

"Daisy's ring?"

"We have her with us, Tina. Like I said. I want you to keep it...to remind you..."

It wasn't how I imagined it would be while sweating it out in boot camp. The fantasy usually involved Robert Redford, or at least Jack Nicholson. Max wasn't even Shelly Duvall, but this was real. The ring was real. Was the promise? To have and to hold? I wanted to tear the little bitch to shreds a minute ago, but that feeling feels as far away as those days in the barracks. I become acutely aware that I haven't brushed my teeth in days as I pull her to me. She smells incredible, sweat and sugar and woodsmoke. She looks at me like the eye of God, curious dispassion even as she slips her hands into my jacket.

I brush my lips against her forehead, and she pulls me down. Her mouth tastes salty and stale. It's delicious. I let her taste drip into me. I knot my fingers through the dry gnarls of her hair. We press ourselves into each other and for the first time since she died, I stop thinking about Daisy. I take Max into me bit by bit to patch the hole, her spit and sweat a line of epoxy keeping me together.

I have learned not to question the things that keep me alive anymore, I dump one love for another like I would a worn pair of boots or an empty clip. Ten miles away, the dead walk the Earth, but here there is a warm plate of food and a warm bed with a warm, beautiful body in it, and that is enough.

It's fun... with friends. I gotta say though, there's some flaws with it that simply didn't make it enjoyable for me as a whole. Whilst I know this game actively is under development, I feel like the fact that it still needs modding for me to enjoy it completely says something.

Guns are strong, but at the same time underpowered. Getting infected sucks. Bleeding also sucks. You get attacked by more than one zombie at once? That sucks too. Hordes are even worse! I get at a certain point you're supposed to have shelter and all that good stuff, but it's not really fun to sit around.

It's a vicious cycle. You set up your base, you fortify it, you go out and get something you need, you fortify it, you go out and get something you need... There's also no ending. You cannot win, if it weren't clear with the opening beginning with "This is how you died".