Death After Death (#2)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Joey slammed the door shut, and threw Max into a nearby armchair, keeping the gun fixed on his guest the entire time.   

"Why the fuck are you doing this, Joey?" Max asked, with an almost defeatist tone.

"Why am I doing this?" Joey spat. "You really have to ask why I'm doing t-"

Max sighed, gritting his teeth and biting his tongue has best he could, but he couldn't hold it any longer, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I abandoned you and you're still throwing your little hissy fit about it. Look, you disappeared into a pile of clickers, my path to you was blocked, and I thought you were dead, so I left you. I admit it, okay, I left you. But in that moment, if I'd have thought there was even a slight chance that I could save you, I would have waded through those undead bastards. But I didn't, so I left, that's it. If that's enough for all this, if that's enough to kill me, Lizzie, all my friends, then fucking do it."

For the first time, it looked as if Max's words may have resonated with Joey, for a split second, his face was almost painted with remorse.

"I don't want to hear it Max. You're a coward, and you will receive a coward's death," Joey eventually seethed, but the grin had all but vanished, as if the enjoyment had evaporated from the situation.

"Did I ever tell you that you saved my life?" Max asked.

"What, what do you mean? That night in the van, of course I'm fucking aware," Joey grumbled.

"No, not that night. Well, yes, I suppose, but hell we saved each other's skins plenty of times. You saved my life in general, for a while anyway. After I left John, I had nowhere to go, no other family to contact. Every stranger I came across was more intent on biting at my flesh than lending a hand. I was lonely, god I was so fucking lonely."

"And then I came riding through the night, yes, it's all very poetic," Joey sighed.

"I even put a gun in my mouth after what happened to you. I couldn't go through that loneliness again, I just couldn't imagine anything worse," Max continued.

"You tried to kill yourself?" Joey clarified.

"Tried," Max scoffed. "I was a second away from pulling the trigger. Only reason I stopped was because I heard Lizzie screaming. Even then I was going to end it anyway."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because every life matters. Remember that? You taught me that. You're the reason I did what I did, you're the reason I've helped so many people since then, because you were right, every life does matter," Max explained. "Even yours."

"Is this where you talk me around, we lay down our weapons and hug it out?" Joey mocked, his grip of the gun that little bit looser.

"I think we both know there's only one way this ends," Max admitted. "I just thought there might still be a slither of the old Joey left in there."

"That's what you don't understand, Max," exclaimed Joey. "This whole thing is so much bigger than me and you! Do you really think that the human race is down and out, we're going to come back from this, and when we do, someone is going to have to take charge."

"And you want that to be you, I assume?"

"Think of the possibilities. The power. The chance to write my name into the history books, the chance to fucking write the books myself!" Joey cried.

Max simply stared back at his former friend, disgusted by the look of joy across his face, but also filled with a strange sense of pity.

"I think you feel it too," he said.