We both stood silently, firearms raised menacingly at one another.

My pistol was a 3rd Generation Glock 19. It could end his life at a moment's notice, and it would probably take off the back half of the boy's head when it did.

Is this what I had become? Some merciless killer, fighting to survive in a world that's barely worth surviving in?

I wouldn't pull the trigger anyway. My weapon had no silencer, meaning the gunshot - if I did fire - would ring out louder than an alarm bell, bringing in every single shambling corpse from miles around.

It would be a death sentence for the both of us, but I needed to convince him that I didn't care about that.

His pistol had a silencer. If he wanted to, he could fire a bullet into my skull and walk away like nothing ever happened. I needed to keep my nerve; give the impression that I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger.

One sign of weakness, and I die.

Each set of eyes judged the other - coldly and calculatingly, testing the other's resolve with a terrifying precision.

I inhaled deeply, my mind taken aback by my thoughts earlier.

Just two minutes ago, I was prepared to shoot myself. I was a pound of pressure on a trigger away from ending my worthless excuse of a life... And yet now I'm fighting to save it.

Suddenly, I actually chuckled to myself. It was a dry, cynical laugh, because I knew that what I was about to do would take both of us by surprise.

I exhaled, my breath trembling, before I released my vice-like grip of the Glock's ice cold handle. The weapon hit the ground with a quiet rustle, and the other boy looked at me, regarding me with a subtle sense of both confusion and relief.

He still kept his weapon raised, but lowered it slightly so it now aimed at my chest instead of my head.

"Uhh..." the boy spoke nervously and uncomfortably after a moment of tense silence, "...thanks."

I tried to think back to the last time I'd engaged in actual conversation. I couldn't recall when, but I did know that it must have been a year, at the least.

All I could manage in response was an awkward smile.

We stood for another few seconds in silence, with the boy waiting for me to speak up. When I didn't, he clearly gave up whatever chance we had of a civil conversation, clicking the safety back on his pistol and holstering it.

"I need to go back to my dad - I mean, uhh... I need to go," the boy stammered, before doing as he said and turning around to walk away.

The one chance I have of company - the first time in an uncountable number of days - and I squander it in an instant.

I can't just let him go...

"Hey," I spoke up, almost inadvertently and louder than I had intended. The boy froze in his tracks, pausing in consideration for a few seconds, before finally turning around to face me once more with what I could only interpret as a grimace.

He must think I'm some sort of mental case. Just some lost cause who doesn't have the guts to pull the trigger and can hardly even talk anymore. If he really does have a group - people to protect him and care about him - then there's no way he can understand the true pain of the apocalypse. Not like I do.

"Yeah?" he replied, adjusting his backpack slightly.

I stood silently once more.

"Just..." I stopped, not even knowing what I was going to say. There was no way to compact 'I haven't spoke to anyone in years and my parents are dead and I've been alone for so long and I just want company' into a single, reasonable sentence.

"Just thanks, for not... y'know... shooting me," I concluded, accompanying it with a smile that felt much more genuine than the last.

He nodded, returning the gesture before a distant gunshot fired. The smile was instantly wiped off his face as his head quickly turned to the direction of the abrupt sound.

That's not good. A gunshot as loud as that in a place like this... It's gonna draw walkers from everywhere.

"That's probably my dad," the boy realized - it sounded as though he hadn't meant to say that out loud.

He began walking in the general direction of the gunshot, his pace gradually quickening before he turned back to face me.

"Just... Don't follow me. Please. My dad's not keen on outsiders," he explained hastily, before breaking into a run into the thick foliage, disappearing into the brush and the fog, and then he was simply gone.

My one chance of finding a friend, and maybe even the 'group' he mentioned, my one chance of companionship, my one chance of not feeling alone anymore...

All of that was gone now, and that realization brought me to a simple conclusion.

Of course I was going to follow him.