Laurens stood in the pharmacy, his sister, Martha, pacing beside him. He knew making the attempt to calm her was useless, she'd only snap at him anyway. Martha could get very stressed out in these situations. It made sense. An apocalypse had broken out a year and some change ago, which wiped out more than a half of the population in less than two months.

In the beginning, Laurens had his father and four siblings, Martha, Harry, James and Mary. The younger kids didn't survive. Laurens had managed to keep them all together for three or four months, tops. After James fell off a seven story building while trying to escape the undead, it all went downhill real fast. Harry had took Mary to go to the library to lift her spirits and to stop her from asking Laurens, 'Where's James?' Laurens didn't tell Harry this, but the question was killing him. But Harry knew. He tried to help, but he couldn't stop what happened. It all had happened so fast. When it did, he had thought of all the things he would tell Martha and Laurens. Beg them to forgive him. Tell them it was an accident. In the end, he never even got to tell them the excuse. He never came home from the library either.

Martha continued to pace. "I'm all out of bullets, Jack, I don't know what to do, and— and,"

Laurens didn't say anything, his eyes set on an undead creature outside, scratching at the glass. He let Martha continue to spew out words in her panic. Maybe he should've said something. Maybe that would've made it better but he didn't think so.

"If we don't do anything, we'll be fine." Laurens finally spoke up, holding his sisters arm lightly. He shifted his eyes to meet Martha's. She didn't say anything at first but then looked away, and scoffed, "Of course."

"I'm serious. They'll go away if we don't do anything. Let it go."

"They're everywhere!" Martha exclaimed, yanking her arm away, glaring at him. Yeah, he knew he shouldn't have tried to help. "If we sit and do nothing, we will die! Do you understand that? Do you hear what I'm saying, Jack, or is it just going in one ear and out the other?"

"You need to calm down."

She threw her arms and shook her head. "I guess you want to die! Cool, cool, you stupid bastard." Martha went and paced the aisles again, muttering curses that were directed at John but she would have never looked him in the eye and said that to his face.

When a shot rang through the air, Martha's breath caught and she quickly bent down, and looked to Laurens. Laurens hadn't moved.

"What was that?"

Laurens stared outside, scanning the crowd of undead surrounding them. "Gunshot."

"Thanks, genius."

"Welcome."

Martha hid the start of a smile and stood up slowly, going back over to her brother and eyeing the outside with him. Another shot. It shocked them again, but Martha suddenly exclaimed, "There!"

Laurens followed where she pointed and saw a man on a building across from them, shooting his gun repeatedly, slowly attracting zombies away from them, and to him. Martha watched in wonder. Laurens thought that the guy might be a real humble guy, but a damned idiot for risking his life for two strangers like that. Laurens would've done the same.

"Holy shit." Martha smiled, giving a shocked, breathy laugh. "Holy—shit. Can you believe that?"

Laurens' eye twitched as another few shots went off rapidly. He shook his head. "That's suicide."

"Yeah, Maybe." Martha mumbled, tightening her ponytail. "Are you up for looting this place now that we're scot-free?"

"Yeah, yeah, I—..yeah." Laurens said, and took what was left off the selves but only stuff he needed in case there was ever someone else in here, struggling to live like they were. Martha wasn't so considerate.

By the time the man had stopped shooting his gun, nearly all the undead that where formerly pressing their faces up against the pharmacy's glass doors were gone. Well, the majority anyway, but nothing that Laurens and Martha couldn't handle themselves. They could kill around ten on their own, before it got crazy. Maybe fifteen, on a good day and high turn out of undead.

Martha stood up, with a contented sigh. "Alright. I've got what I've needed," John raised an eyebrow. "Let's head out."

"We should go check on that guy. See what his deal was, I mean, he did just save us. We should thank him." Laurens said, hiking his bag up. "Or something. That seems..appropriate. The right thing to do, or whatever."

"Yeah, let's bake him a cake, throw a party."

"You know that's not what I intended. Come off of it, we really should go thank him. Serves him right, he just saved us."

"Let's take a step back here. We shouldn't assume his gender," Martha began.

"Jesus Christ." Laurens looked at the ceiling, shaking his head.

"He could be a pre-transition woman. Don't be such a boomer, Jack. We should be, Uh, open to all identities in this here pharmacy."

"Why are you doing this?"

Martha shrugged. "Just saying. Just 'cuz the worlds ending doesn't mean we can't accept diversity and LGBT..Q..A..I? LGBT..A..Q..."

"Just stop."

"Is there in 'I' in there somewhere?" Martha pushed.

"..I don't know, I just- how did we even get here? We're thanking the guy, stop calling him a girl, c'mon." Laurens said, heading out of the pharmacy, while Martha pondered the letters more. She shrugged it off.

Meanwhile, The man had climbed down a ladder at the side of the building, having had already lured the undead to the other side of the building. He hopped off the latter at the last few steps and slowed down. He turned the corner of the building, watching the undead herd where they thought the noise had gone off. He held a self satisfied grin and quietly made his way past them. Once he had gotten far enough from the herd and only a few strays around him remained, he jogged happily to the pharmacy. God, it's good to be in the apocalypse.

This twenty one year old packed with energy was none other than the Alexander Hamilton, at his peak. Of course a guy like him peaked in the apocalypse. He was that kind of guy that in grade school, would brag about his knowledge on how to stay alive during a time like this. Because of so, was bullied severely, but he stood proudly by his thirteen year old self, shaking his head at those stupid seventh graders. If only they could see him now.

"Hey you guys!" Hamilton smiled, stopping in front of Laurens and Martha. He quickly glanced back at the herd, smiled sheepishly and lowered his voice. "Hey. I'm Alexander."

"Mm. Yeah, I'm Martha."

"John." Laurens said, offering an awkward, no teeth smile. "Thanks for getting rid of them like that."

Hamilton shrugged, and continued to smile. "No big deal. Figured if there's livin' people, might as well give you guys a hand. So is it just you two?"

"What drives you?" Martha mumbled under her breath.

"Yeah, it's just us." Laurens confirmed. "What about you? Are you on your own?"

"Yeah, have been since day one. Do you guys have any base set up at all?— Not to impose or anything, I'm not going to force you to take me back with you," Hamilton chuckled, shifting his weight. "It'd, uh, it'd be nice though."

It really would be. It had been a while since he talked to anyone real. He had kept an undead man for a while, just to talk to. That was a rough time.

"Well we did have a plan to go back to this apartment complex we saw passing here. It was locked, so I'm not too sure many undead have been in there. And we hit the doors a couple of times to attract them. Nothin."

"Huh. Yeah, that sounds nice."

"Yeah. And of course you can come. Think of it as us repaying you for what you've done for us today." Laurens said, nodding and smiling.

Martha mocked him, kicking a rock.

"Oh, thank you! But really, it's no big deal, I..well, I mean. I could go on about being one with humility all day, so I'll just stick with you guys. I think it would be easier to be around people and all that." Hamilton said. "For safety purposes, of course. Friendship during times like this also seems like a good thing to come by. If you're all alone out here for too long, I think that'd drive any person crazy. I heard this thing about astronauts that sometimes the reason they send more than one person— well, that's because they're qualified, of course, anyway— is because being isolated for too long is proven to send you into some deep depression. Which sounds like total balls, and not fun at all. Like, zero percent fun. And I think that's why they have cut back on solitary confinement. And sometimes they sell dogs with their friends so they don't get sad and scared..and depressed I guess. Are dogs even advanced enough to get depressed?"

"I don't think so." Martha said, now actually listening.

"Yeah, well. I don't know. I'm not a vet." Hamilton shrugged. "So where's that apartment complex?"

"Left and back quite a bit. You'll know it when you see it." Laurens said. "It's not huge or whatever but pretty wide. Has balconies. Has other common apartment traits."

Hamilton nodded, fixing his hat. "Sounds great. I'm so in. Looking forward to getting to know you guys even better. Sounds like a real adventure."

"Uh-huh." Martha said.

"Yup. Okay. Lead the way, mister and misses,"

Laurens gave a breathy laugh and began the way to the apartment building. The chat there wasn't very exciting at all. It wasn't too long of a walk, but it did take time. During it, Martha got pissed that Laurens wouldn't let her touch his bag and Hamilton talked about historical significance and some of the buildings, to which Martha shut down because, 'New York is stinky, doesn't matter.'

When they arrived, Martha hit on the door to show Hamilton that there was no undead and they hadn't been bluffing. So Hamilton decided to break the door down so they could get in. Laurens was impressed but was also concerned, because now there was glass everywhere and did all apartments have such shitty glass doors?

The three walked in, checking the place for undead. When they found none, Laurens took an apartment door and replaced it with the front door, using duck tape and taping it in place. It wouldn't move but at least it'd keep it in place, giving the sense of security.

Hamilton stood in an apartment room, feeling strange to know that once, someone lived there. They had a life, and went to work and had a family and now all of that was gone. His chest tightened at the thought of that.

He put his bag down on his bed, and his hat on the dresser. Hamilton smiled fondly as he heard Laurens and Martha bicker. Laurens wanted Martha to stay in the same room as him so he'd know she was okay. Martha wanted her own room because she was almost eighteen anyway. Hamilton sighed softly, sitting down on the bed and rubbing his eyes. He was out of isolation now, shouldn't he feel better? Maybe he was already in his deep depression and hadn't realized it. Maybe he was in his deep depression before this whole thing started. Even though he had known what to do in this situation since he was a kid, he never planned on the tiredness that followed him day by day. There was no way to plan for that. It was only getting harder.