Looking across the sofa at Harry now, playing with Lola, our War Orphan Adoption Act baby, it’s difficult to believe the circumstances in which I first met my husband.

Name, Sargeant Nick Caldwell. Service Unit, DRAPE Desert Road. SO, Gay. Marital status, Widowed.

Oh, you want an explanation? Okay- DRAPE stands for Deep Reconaissance And Prevention of Emergencies -that is, sudden and unexpected zombie incursions. Like most Kiwi soldiers these days, I’m a vet of One Tree Hill, the defining battle that convinced the rest of the country that it needed to take urgent measures if New Zealand were to survive WWZ as a nation.

My husband, Tim, didn’t make it. We were serving in the same SAS unit, hell, we’d even married in regimental colours back when New Zealand recognised same sex marriages as legal tender, back in 2013. I can’t remember all the details about what happened, except the stenches overwhelmed his evac chopper and there was a malfunction and I was screaming, struggling to get back down there and save the man I loved and…I knocked out two or three of my brothers and sisters in arms before I got the back end of a rifle slammed into my head.

I volunteered for DRAPE duty like the other high end SAS vets did after One Tree Hill. Like Jake, Maori, helping his Nga Puhi iwi up in Northland in guerilla forest warfare to stop the stenches in their tracks. Like Mary, above the Melbourne Redline, over in Australia. Like Jenny, attached to the Triage Guard as Maguire’s XO. I suppose I was choking it down and throwing myself back into the heat of battle to prevent dealing with what I’d lost. I was probably risking serious psych problems at the end of it all, but I didn’t want to take anyone else with me.

Mary and I are the only ones who lived through that time. Like me, the rest of them had lost husbands, wives, children, lovers during One Tree Hill and the fall of Auckland that followed it. DRAPE duty was regarded as heroic duty, but it was usually a one way ticket. We didn’t really care if we lived or died, given the acheing and desolate emptiness at the centres of our lives.

So, how did things changed? Three years after WWZ began, I was doing perimeter sentry duty at the DRAPE Desert Road sole occupant bunker that I was holed up in. By that stage, the frontline stretched from one end of the Desert Road plateau and the three sisters of Ngarahoe, Ruapehu and Tongariro to the other. Difficult terrain, but fortunately more so for the zeds than us.

And then I saw him- running full tilt, ragged, pursued by about six or seven stenches. Shouldering my rifle, I took aim and hit the outliers. One. Two. Three. Oblivious to the headshots that had done for their putrefying companions, I switched direction and got another two. By that stage, the poor bloke looked almost exhausted, but he was almost at the perimeter razor wire gate. I yelled: “Get in! Get inside!” He dived for the ground as I shut it and pulselocked it. One of the remainder zeds fell into a spikepit I’d prepared for unwelcome visitors and the other slammed into the razorwire. Yelling obscenities, I bayonetted it as it writhed there, then took my machete and sliced off its cadaverous head, like so much rancid butter.

The newcomer had gotten to his feet. I motioned him toward the hut after I’d made sure that there were no more zeds awaiting my attention, but the perimeter sensor said no. He staggered toward the outlier hut and I kept my rifle on him. His hood had fallen open- late teenager. Couldn’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen.

“Sorry, mate. Strip. I need to see if you were bitten.”

He did as he was told, until he got down to his daks. He looked up at me and said:

“Everythin’? Just asking, like.”

I nodded: “Yeah. Don’t worry, there’s tech to check out whether the stenches bit you. And there’s blood.”

He shrugged: “No worries. I understand. Only make it quick if they did get to me.” He undid his boxers and stepped out of them. I paused as the VReader scanned his body, looking away from him, uncomfortable. He wasn’t. After far too long for my comfort and military detachment, the screen pulsed green and he was in the clear.

“You got lucky, mate. Okay, there’s food in the canteen but I’m afraid I’ve only got coffee or tea. My predecessor here finished off the last of the coke. Nick, by the way.”

“Harry. Harry Lawson. Whaingaroa.”

“Shit. But that’s just by the Taupo Razorwire Fence…?!”

“Broke. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.” He seemed blase and unconscious about the effect that he was having on me. Or so I thought, as he sauntered away barearse toward the showers at the end of the foyer. Little did I know he’d already come to some firm conclusions about me.

We talked. He was originally from Auckland and lost his family, was inside one of the last evac buses out, with a horde of teenage girls. I should have realised at the time, but despite that, there were no references to relationships and girlfriends.

After setting up the surveillance cams for that evening, I went to bed early, all in. About thirty minutes later, the light snapped on. I bolted awake, and the sheets fell away from my bare chest. Harry was there, looking across at me. He cleared his throat:

“Nick? Spotted that photo in your office. That was your husband, yeah? Look man, I’m into fellers too. Only realised it at Whaia, but the place was full of girls and no blokes.”

“I’m not one for one nighters, Harry. Sorry.”

“Yeah, but I’m not just doin’ this for one night. I saw that photo of the funeral too. One Tree Hill?”

“Yeah,” I said, my throat choking at the memory,”so…?”

“You saved my life. But I reckon that yours is in a bad way and you don’t seem to care about it. Well, I want to. Nick? Let me inside.”

So saying, he started to strip. When he was naked again, he stepped out of the pile of his clothes and padded toward my bed. I opened the covers and he slipped inside. I took him in my arms as he reached forward and took my face in his hands:

“So many scars. Not all of them on the inside. Nick? Really, let me inside. So after we make love, then we talk, yeah?”

I blinked back tears. This was real. This young man had come to me from nowhere, and here he was, touching and carressing my awakening body, whispering his love into my ear, telling me it would be okay, and then I felt something crack and shatter as the ice within my soul began to fragment and splinter. I started to sob for Tim, for Harry’s family, for his friends at Whaiangaroa, for all the people we’d lost. My warrior facade fell away from me as we made love. Finally, I was truly naked and unashamed.

Reader, we married about a fortnight later and he is still my anchor, my pinion, my heart’s desire. Amidst the debris of the Zombie War, Harry Lawson brought me peace and I will always love him for that.