Love Revived

What is strength?

We walk all day and my legs ache for disuse, but I am doing it and my muscle memory is kicking in and taking me further than I thought I could manage. When the sun begins to set I look up at Bie. "Let's get a house with a backyard." I smile up at him, happy to still be in the suburbs. I just have a few more days to train. A few more days.

He grunts in response, ever the talker. I roll my eyes. A few moments later I spot a house with a tall fence around it and head toward it. Checking the door I again find it unlocked to my shock. Bie is right behind me and it occurs to me too late that we didn't check the primitor. We walk in on a family of zombies already starting to stumble toward us. I quickly close the door and look up at Bie.

He already has his hand on my sword with his eyes focused on me. "I guess we need to find another place," I say with a shrug. But Bie shakes his head and reaches out for me. I place my hand within his larger one as he guides me out from the porch's overhang and it's then when I realize what he wants me to do, climb. I want to say that I can't but those words are lodged in my throat like a half-swallowed pill.

I allow him to pick me up and reach for the hot roof, pulling up on with my arm until I am a third of the way up. My torso is just gracing the roof's edge. Then I freeze. I can't do it. I couldn't climb a freaking ladder, how can I climb on top of this roof, even with help, or even up the stupid ladder without help! As emotions flow through me I bite the inside of my cheek in an attempt to not cry.

"You can climb." Bie's voice startles me out of my whirling mind. Looking down I see calmness coming off of him in waves. He is holding me up and not annoyed that I am breaking down up here. He instead believes in me, even when I don't. Gritting my teeth I throw my stump up on the roof and bare my weight on it and my hand, pulling myself up.

The hot gravel of the roof digs into my soft, newly healed "arm" as I put more and more weight on it. Finally, my waist comes up to the roof's edge and I throw my leg up knee first on the roof's edge, using that to pull the rest of my body up. Inch by inch I pull myself up on the roof and then when I am finally on the roof I collapse in exhaustion, my muscles and skin burning from the exertion and roof's heat and roughness, but I lay on the roof and cry in triumph.

I did it. I climbed it. It may have only been a roof, but I did it! I climbed a roof with one hand... and Bie's help. Catching my breath I get up on my knees and walk over to the edge of the roof, then peer down to say thank you to Bie and see if maybe he needs help, but when I look over the roof Bie isn't there. But I see his shadow disappear around the corner. Then I hear the door open but not close.

I listen to the moans of the zombies and gurgling but not much else. After a few minutes goes by I move over to the part of the roof that overhangs the porch. That's when I see Bie exit the opened front door with two headless zombies, one under each arm. I gasp in shock when I realize that he must have killed all the zombies in the house... for me because I wanted a closed-off backyard to train in. Bie drops the two bodies and heads back inside. A short time later he is out again with two headless zombies, one under each arm, this time kicking a head out the door.

I watch as he drops the bodies and kicks the head to the other two and turns back around. He does this three more times and then only exits with heads until I assume the house is empty. I watch as Bie closes the door and I follow him on the roof as he walks around to the back of the house. He stops and steps into the house and steps out kicking, the sound of a door closing in his wake.

Then that is when I see it. The backyard. It's filled with zombies, well not filled, but there are five of them stumbling around, but seeing Bie stand up against them makes my heart race. I am lucky they are trying to stumble away from him but he is outnumbered. I know he was outnumbered the day he saved me, in the tunnel and probability everywhere else he is. But seeing it, seeing it makes it sink in... That he is all alone.