"Just toss her over board, damn it! We don't have time for this shit," said Victor.

Gil lunged across the table grabbing Victor by the scruff. "That's my wife you're talking about, Vic, and unless you fancy going for a dip yourself--"

"Go ahead, Gil. Try it. I'd like you to try, really I would," Victor was smiling, his voice even, cold, calm.

"Look I know you guys both think I sit around all day wondering about whose cock is bigger, but you want to know who has the biggest cock on this boat?" Jane pumped a round into the chamber of her shotgun. "It's the bad bitch, with big ass shot gun. Now I don't need this shit, really I don't."

The boys settled, they had seen her knee-cap Jameson a week back. There wasn't a soul left on that ship stupid enough to call Jane's bluff.

"Now...Victor, quit being an asshole--" said Jane

"But she's a fuc--" Victors protest died in his throat as soon as Jane gave him a nice look down the barrel of her scatter gun. Next she swung the barrel to Gil.

"And you, god damn it, Gil, you should know better. Your wife is dead, Gil. She died the second that thing took a chunk out of her arm. I should of popped her then and there. Would of been cleaner, but you wanted to wait, god knows why, but she wanted to wait too. And now we have this shit to deal with."

Gil said nothing. He knew she was right, and he'd seen it happen a million times, but this was different, this was his wife.

"Now, I know you don't like it, hell I don't like, Maria was there from the start, me and her busted our way out of that gas station with nothing but a pair of baseball bats stuck with a few nails. You remember that? Sure you do, nobody forgets that shit. But she's gone, Gil. That thing down in the engine room, it's not her. Your wife is gone, Gil. She's gone."

Gil slumped against the wall. Quiet for a moment, before he whispered. "I know, God help me I know... but could you at least give her a bullet, don't you at least owe her that?"

"How many shells, have we got left, Gil?"

Gil said nothing.

"I said how many, Gil!"

"Six," he said finally, he voice tired, defeated, broken.

"She goes in the water," said Jane, her voice touched with sadness for the first time. "We need to know if Harrison's theory is right, we need to know if the virus can survive the cold. It's the whole reason we're out freezing our holes off in the first place. She goes in the water."

Gil watched as they brought his wife up on deck. Her eyes had turned white, feral, her skin, sallow and blotchy had already begun to degrade. She struggled against the ropes that bound her to the chair. An animal like growl gurgling from her throat as she snapped her teeth vainly at the air. Harrison and Victor hoisted her onto the lip of the boat. The things eyes seemed to widen as she realised what was happening. She began to struggle even more, a sort of panic seeping into her gargled growls. And then she looked at Gil. She looked right at him, and Gil felt his heart break all over again. It was a look that said, save me. A look that said, how could you? And just as she went over the whole crew heard her say-- heard the zombie say "Giiiiilllll!"

Gil fell to his knees, hopeless sobs jerking at his broad shoulders.

The rest of the crew looked at each other nervously. "That thing just talk? Did I just hear a zombie talk?" said Victor.

Jane looked to Harrison with a raised eyebrow.

"Could be..." started Harrison. "That the cold had slowed the virus down a little. Could be that I was right. Could be zombies don't like the cold. Could be we're headed in the right direction."

"Well alright," said Jane as the crew erupted into whoops and cheers. Hope, after all those years, there was finally hope.

But not for Gil. Gil just lay there. He wife's last word's screaming through his soul. She was still in there, he had seen it with his own eyes, heard it. She was still in there, and he'd killed her.