Even after the world ended, I tended to my job at a radio station. I had always hoped she would hear our songs and hear my voice and come back.
And, apparently, having someone knowledgable about radio transmissions is extremely helpful after the living dead have taken over nearly everything, shambling about eating every creature in sight. Whether to distract a huge group of them as the nearby outpost just outside the city loots for supplies to keep together some semblance of society, or to help keep different squads in contact with each other and relay info between them and the guy in charge of their operations.
I suppose what I was doing was immensely helpful for the fate of humanity, assuming we're the only ones left, but it was also immensely boring in the down time.
Wake up. Eat whatever can of anything was left. Check the radio for comms. Don't think about the zombies outside that haven't left, keeping you trapped inside this tiny building potentially forever. Maybe listen to a song or two assuming the batteries in your portable CD player don't die the next time you go to play something. Sleep.
Day in. Day out.
But every night, I'd put on her favorite song to end my transmission. Either to tell her I was still out there, or just from how much I'd missed her.
Maybe it'd work. Maybe it wouldn't, it doesn't matter. Not anymore.
Days into the outbreak became weeks, months, and maybe even a year.
Until, one day, I realized I hadn't heard anything from the compound.
They'd rarely call in, if they had to beyond my distractions for the undead, but a day hadn't gone by where they wouldn't check in at all
But it was static.
It'd annoyed me the first few days of living here, the sharp noise of it cutting into the pitch black of night when I was trying to get as little sleep as I could between the nightmares
Eventually though, it became background noise, occasionally becoming an earful again after some lengthy back and forths between the Compound before dulling back into near nothingness.
Maybe that's why I hadn't realized how eerie it should have been. Maybe I was ignoring the pit in my stomach that'd existed since the start of this whole damn thing.
My radio broadcast was over, I slid my office chair to the other side of the room to the 'Private Communications' as they so lovingly put it.
The static felt deafening, but still I put my mouth to the mic. Surely someone would respond.
"Call-sign Romeo, sounds like my playlist for the night left you speechless, heh heh"
A few seconds passed.
Then minutes.
Dead
Silence.
If alarm bells weren't ringing in my head by then, I don't know what sort of sound my panic would have made.
I headed up to the roof, occassionally I could come up to steal glances at the open night sky and gaze at the stars, wondering just how insignificant this world-ending situation is in the grand scheme of things. The outpost was just barely visible past the city's jungle of buildings.
It was on fire.
Gunshots were ringing out clearly in the open air, the radio station must have been too soundproof to have heard them while inside.
I saw something that made a lump of bile rise from my stomach.
A horde of zombies were marching from the city to the compound.
What was I meant to do in the moment? I had to do something to help, to save even just one person there.
I ran down back to the station's machinery, grabbing any random CD off the rack that I could find, jamming it into the system, pumping the volume knob as high as possible.
And then I hit play. I shouted into the mic, yelling at the zombies to come get me instead, that I was a much easier target, to kill me instead of them.
I'm not sure how many zombies actually came back towards the new blaring noise, but when I had lost my voice I leapt back up the stairs to the roof and peered below, I could immediately tell it was more than usual.
Good. But doesn't tell me what I need to know!
I looked back towards the compound again, hoping to at least see more of the walking dead to have stopped and made a U-turn back to the city.
I couldn't tell still. I couldn't see any, but that could have also meant they had made their dread inducing pilgrimage.
I looked up to the stars, begging they would have answers as to why this had to happen, but it only made the world spin around me, a faint ringing in my ears, along with a familiar song that was still blasting into the dead of the night, as I felt more and more lightheaded.
I looked down to the cement of the radio station roof to bring myself back to Earth. It helped slightly.
I peered again over the side of the building to check on the mob I was amassing.
I saw her.
I had always hoped she would hear our songs
and hear my voice
and she came back. I felt my footing slip.
I felt the cold air whip against me as I plummeted
into her arms.
into her mouth.
into her stomach.
And even death could not keep us apart any longer.