The first time I saw Jonah, he was swinging an axe into a zombie’s skull.
The thing had been three steps from tearing my throat out in the pharmacy aisle, and I had been frozen, clutching a box of expired bandages like it was a weapon. Then he came crashing through the broken glass doors, all sweat, grit, and fury.
When it was over, when the corpse lay twitching on the floor, he looked at me. Really looked.
“You planning to duel it with gauze?” he asked, voice low and steady.
I swallowed hard. “It worked in my head.”
He smirked. Not a big grin, just a tug at the corner of his mouth, as if the world hadn’t ended, as if laughing was still allowed.
“Come on,” he said, nodding toward the back exit. “Unless you’re eager to meet its friends.”
We made camp that night in the husk of an old auto shop. The city was quieter than I expected. No sirens anymore, no cars, no chatter. Just the moans in the distance, carried by the wind.
Jonah started a fire in a paint can, using pages of a car manual for tinder. I watched his hands move, steady and sure, and realized I hadn’t seen hands that calm in weeks.
“You always this helpful to strangers?” I asked, pulling my knees to my chest.
He shrugged. “Only the ones who look like they’ll get eaten without me.”
“That’s your pickup line in the apocalypse?”
That almost-smile again. “Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes, but my chest felt lighter for the first time since everything fell apart.
The days blurred after that. We scavenged together. Jonah always checking corners, always keeping me behind him. At night, we traded stories under the firelight.
I told him about the sea, how my family used to take road trips to the coast every summer. He told me he used to be an EMT. That explained the way he carried himself. Prepared, precise, haunted.
“Do you ever think about before?” I asked one night, tracing circles in the dust with my boot.
“Every damn day,” he said, staring into the flames. “But I can’t afford to live there. People get killed when you stop watching the now.”
“And yet,” I teased, “you still found time to rescue me.”
He leaned back, arms folded. “Maybe I needed a reason.”
My breath caught. I didn’t know what to say, so I looked away, pretending to poke the fire.
A week in, we found a battered ukulele in a ransacked house. Jonah slung it over his shoulder like it was treasure. That night, he strummed a broken, out-of-tune melody.
“You play?” I asked.
“Not well,” he admitted, fumbling over a chord. “But my sister did. She tried teaching me.”
He handed it to me. “Want to try?”
I shook my head. “I’ll break it.”
He chuckled. “Pretty sure the zombies already did.”
I laughed. Actually laughed. The sound startled me.
It felt dangerous — laughter. Dangerous, but necessary.
By the third week, something unspoken hummed between us. It was in the way his hand would linger on my arm a second longer than needed when helping me over rubble. It was in the way I caught him looking when he thought I wasn’t.
One night, after a narrow escape in the subway tunnels, I pressed my back against the wall, chest heaving. Jonah was beside me, his hand braced above my head.
“That was too close,” he murmured.
“You think?” I whispered, still catching my breath.
His eyes flicked down to my lips before snapping away.
I found myself whispering, “Do you ever get tired of saving me?”
He looked at me then, sharp and certain. “Not once.”
The silence that followed was heavier than the moans echoing down the tunnel.
But he didn’t kiss me. Not then.
Hope arrived in whispers. Rumors of a safe community inland. High walls, food, medicine. We walked for days toward it, shoulders brushing, words fewer than before. Survival made conversation expensive.
At the gates, we weren’t welcomed. The guards shouted, rifles raised, telling us the camp was full.
“Please,” I begged. “We’ve made it all this way.”
“Turn back!” one of them barked.
Jonah kept his hand on my back, steering me away even as his jaw clenched. “We’ll find somewhere else.”
But then the horde came. Screams, gunfire, chaos.
I felt teeth graze my arm before Jonah yanked me free. We didn’t stop running until we were deep in the woods, until my legs gave out.
I collapsed, clutching my arm.
“Mina,” Jonah said sharply, pulling my sleeve back. His face drained of color. “You’re bit.”
The world tilted. My heart dropped into my stomach.
“No,” I whispered. “No, it can’t…”
His hands trembled against my skin, pressing, inspecting. Then his breath released in a rush.
“It’s shallow. Just a scratch.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’d stake my life on it.”
I met his eyes. His voice broke on the next words. “I thought I lost you.”
And then he kissed me.
Fierce, desperate, like a man starved for something he thought he’d never taste again.
I kissed him back like I’d been waiting since the world ended.
We didn’t stop moving. The safe community fell behind us, swallowed by smoke and screams. But it didn’t matter anymore.
Days later, we found the sea. The air smelled like salt and freedom. Waves crashed against the rocks, untamed and endless.
We sat on a cliff, the horizon burning with sunset. Jonah’s arm was around me, steady, warm.
“Funny,” I said softly. “The world ended. But it doesn’t feel like it right now.”
He glanced at me, eyes gentler than I’d ever seen. “That’s because you’re here.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Zombies took the world…”
He finished for me, his lips brushing my hair. “…and I took your heart.”
