A small silver band was getting dirty and cloudy on your scarred finger. If you took it off, which you never did, there might be the resemblance of some initials engraved; J.M, and a small heart ending them. You hadn’t gone a day without thinking of those letters, the man they belonged to.

Before the Outbreak, before the world went to hell and you spent your days scavenging, fighting off deformed humans, psychotic perverted kidnappers and weird culty religious groups, you had a boring, lower middle class, texan family life. You would do anything to return back to those days.

Working eighteen hour shifts and coming home to a charity shop sofa was better than patrolling old cities near Jackson for clickers and runners. His band was wearing down too, rusty and dented. Hope was faint these old years of his life, turning fifty six in that town. His birthday marked twelve years without you.

Without those soldiers under FEDRA on that hot summer day, the cities shut down and crawling with freaks of nature, his wife would be with him. Years and years of searching, and he can’t help but think you both will always just be one step away, but one step still too fucking far.