JUST NOT WORTH IT

     I heard them out there, looking for me.  In the waning darkness, I sucked on my last cough drop and checked my ammo.  Three rounds left.  I sat with my back to a tree and loaded the Glock.
     So this was how I was gonna die?  Somehow, my city-boy ass lasted fourteen months on the run.  I survived the initial outbreak.  The riots.  The nukes.  Them.  In the end, what brought me down were my goddamned sinuses!
     The Virus (among so many other things) kills the immune system.  These days, a common cold was equivalent to terminal cancer.  Ever since I was a kid, I had bad sinuses.  If I didn’t get to the doctor within a week, I usually ended up with bronchitis or even pneumonia.  As of last week, my phlegm started coming up green: a bad sign.  It took me three days to find some antibiotics.  By then, it was too little, too late.
     I was gonna die.  Then I was gonna become one of them.  As bad as the zombie apocalypse was, surviving the undead hordes was even worse.  They were slower than us but just as strong.  They were everywhere.  The worse thing about them though?
     They could reason.
     Earth was a post-Apocalyptic world overrun by thinking, talking zombies!  They rotted just like big budget movie corpses but loved using guns and underhanded tactics.  In some countries, civilization even endured . . . sort of.  The fuckers hunted us and killed each other.  They lacked compassion, mercy, honor, or regret.  All that mattered to them was the next meal.  To that end, they warred among themselves for every scrap of fresh human flesh.  The more they fed, the better they schemed.  We were “brain food” to them.  Some of the fuckers even bred us like livestock.
     A starving zombie, on the other hand, was batshit insane . . . to the point of feeding on their own.
     I should’ve ended myself long ago, back when there was still hope.  Enduring, for the sake of survival, just sucks.  I could run.  But they’d find me eventually.  Zombies don’t use hounds for anything but appetizers these days.  The fiends had my scent and could track me for miles –
     The wind suddenly shifted.
     Now, I caught their stench.  A search party.  One large enough for my clogged nose to smell.  As we were in Georgia, they’d surely be zombie rednecks with long guns and great aim.  With two trembling hands, I pressed the Glock against the underside of my chin.  I hoped that I didn’t fuck this up.
     I had one shot.
     One chance to die a man.
     May they fucking choke on me.