FicWad

Kevin had managed to convince himself it was all a bad dream. The - people? Things? What the hell were they? - pressed up against the windows couldn't have been real. Will wasn't sitting downstairs with his throat ripped out,

- and if this wasn't/ a dream and the bum from before was back to finish the job, then Will probably wasn't sitting there anymore -/

Cindy hadn't nearly been dragged out of a window while she was opening the doors for them, he hadn't put a bullet through the head of something that looked like J, and Mark didn't have to half-carry Bob just to keep him moving.

So long as he believed that, everything was fine. It was all just some bad dream that he'd wake up from eventually.

- and if he didn't, if the world really had gone to hell and all that was left was lurching bodies that just kept coming, snatching at him with rotting hands and trying to rip his throat out with his teeth, then what? -

Cindy was the one that made it real. Pretty blonde Cindy who'd always gone around the bar with a smile for everyone, who dropped the glasses if anyone startled her, who'd run ahead of them to get the doors open and stayed behind to make sure they were barricaded, who kept forcing weird bitter herbs into their mouths to keep them upright. One of the things had grabbed him by the shoulders, breathing clouds of raw-meat breath into his face as it tried to get its teeth into him - he'd tried to shove it back far enough to get his gun up, but it grabbed his arm and wrenched -

And then it dropped.

It dropped to the floor, nearly dragging Kevin down with it, and he put the gun to its forehead and fired until the gun clicked empty. When he looked up, Cindy stared back at him, eyes wide and knuckles white around the steel pipe she'd hit his attacker with.

That's all it took. Pretty, happy Cindy grabbing a steel pipe from god knows where and hitting monsters with it until it was bent in half.

That's what made it real.