The gun game

The loud bang on her front door jolted Clara from her daydream. This was it. After all the careful planning and struggling to survive, the end would come now; 9 blocks up in room 934 of the now abandoned Marriott. She started to cry, not for herself, but for her little 3 year old son, Jeremy. He was the world to her, and she couldn't bare to think of his short life ended, not like this. 'Open the door,' she recognized the voice of her live in boyfriend of 4 years, Jerome. Quickly slipping off the guard chain, she opened the door and let him in. 'I don't have much time. The boys are going to pick out what's left of the Pathmark and I want to be first in line,' he suddenly stopped. 'Damn baby, you smell good. What is that?' 'It's called LOVELY, by Sarah Jessica Parker,' she said simply. 'I found it next to the mini bar. Only the best, right?' 'Yeah,' he said as he left two backpacks next to the door and turned to leave. 'I'll be back soon. Keep the door locked, okay?' Jerome was a survivor. While everyone else was scrounging for supplies downtown, he had had the bright idea to take his little family to the local Marriot to wait it all out. 'No one is coming for us, they've given up on the major cities,' he had said simply. The plan was to just let everyone kill each other while they lived the high life, stories up in the now abandoned hotel. It had worked. Most of what was left of humanity and the creatures they became had pretty much wiped each other out. Not that it hadn't been a tough few months. The power was now out and they were down to canned goods. But they were still alive. Clara dragged the two bags to the kitchen area and pulled out the dented cans. From the bedroom, she heard Jeremy waking up. A few minutes later, he came into the main living area. 'Mommy, mommy, look. I've got a gun shooter,' his excited eyes locked onto hers and she sighed. He was holding some kind of plastic handle he had obviously broken off one of the cabinets. He pointed it at her. 'Bang. Bang. Bang.' It reminded her of the awful gang violence just a week prior. Both Jerome's crew and some Asian gang had had a disagreement over who owned what's left of a number of grocery stores. That had ended with a few of their good friends dead. She didn't show it. 'Let me see, honey,' she said, holding her hand out. He turned and ran into the bedroom. That was the annoying thing about the age, they never did what you asked. She quickly ran after him and pulled it out of his hand. She was now extremely careful not to let him have anything he could hurt himself with. It was safe enough. Other than the next two hours of constant noise, there was no harm in letting him run around with it. 'Mommy can we play that gun game again. Mommy, look at me. Mommy. Mommy can we play that gun shooter game again. Mommy, I want to play the gun game. Mommy ...' 'Yes, yes. We can play that game again,' she hated that game. Every time she played it, it reminded her of the last couple of months. In the last hours of the city's death, both sides had come out of hiding and shot it out. It was unsettling enough to be on the outskirts of a war zone. What made it absolutely unbearable was knowing that one side of the conflict was composed of the walking dead. They had made it as far as the hotel. Jerome and his gang, as well as some of the other groups had held them off just over by 5th street, well within view of the 9th floor Marriott. They had been content to put bullets into their enemies and move on. Conversely, when one of those 'things' shot a human, they usually ended up carrying them off and eating them. Humans were fighting for survival. They were hunting for food. She had seen it first hand. A couple of asian thugs had been cautiously scouting between 5th and Broadway, and the enemy descended upon them with a plan that was both aggressive and cunning. These were not the meandering, shuffling corpses you saw in the movies. The enemy was very much intelligent. And they were still out there. She had only run into one of them once. Jerome had given her a handgun off of a