Sam had always thought he’d be doing something more thematically appropriate when the dead started coming back to life. Like walking through a graveyard, or getting trapped in a mall, or even waking up in a hospital after the apocalypse had already happened — that was a popular one. He thought it would at least happen at night, or during a storm, or maybe in a deep, atmospheric fog. Instead, it’s three o’clock on a brilliant July afternoon, and he’s trying to get his hand down his boyfriend’s pants.

“Boys, come out here, something’s happening on the news,” says Emmett’s mother, through a door that had been closed for good reason.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” mutters Emmett, shifting a little under Sam’s weight. “She has, like, the worst timing ever.”