Volume II - Episode 29 Where: Melbourne, Australia When: 1 month and 1 day after E-Day, 8:37 pm Jason. He'd loved her. He'd taken care of her. His family had taken her in when her very own parents had abandoned her. And now he was in the ground. Hayley sobbed and dropped another shovel-full of soil onto his corpse. He looked so tiny in the grave that she had dug; so meek and mild; just a shadow of the big and furiously alive young man he'd been just a few weeks earlier. He hadn't deserved to die so young. And certainly not in the way he did - shot in the head, then impaled on a stake by the monsters at Rushbury Gardens. Hayley threw yet another shovel-full of rain-soaked soil into the grave. She was covered from head to toe in mud...and worse. The acrid smell of rotting flesh filled her nostrils. The taste of Jason's putrid skin still lingered on her lips where she had kissed his forehead goodbye. Yet still she worked. Shovel-full after shovel-full. Even as her muscles ached and screamed with exhaustion. Even as the last rays of light faded out of the autumn night sky. Even as the rain came tumbling down, she continued to bury her beloved. And finally, when the work was done, she let go of the shovel and collapsed to the ground, completely and utterly exhausted. She let the rain soak her face. She allowed herself to sink into the muck, feeling the mud soak through her shirt and seep into the rims of her boots. She felt the cold wind touch her face. At this very moment, at this very instant in time, this is exactly where she needed to be - in the mud, just a few metres from where her beloved Jason lay. Where she had said her final goodbye. Where, at least for a little while, she could let herself believe she could feel his heartbeat pounding through the earth. For as long as she lay here, she was at one with the world. With the rocks, and the trees, and the passing of time. As long as she lay here, she was at one with death.