Zombie Ocean (Book 3): The Least by Michael John Grist

covers over his head and tried to stave it off, but it pulled him down into the water again.
    * * *
    For a week he explored other worlds. There were Hollywood mansions and parking lots and even a Kroger's. He tried shopping in it, pretending he was holding a diviner, but it didn't do anything for him.
    His mother noticed.
    "You don't go in that warehouse any more," she said, as she was getting ready to head up to bed, after leaning in to kiss his cheek.
    "I got tired of it."
    "I thought you made a friend."
    He looked at her. She was trying, he knew that. She paid for him, cared for him, fed him and washed him, but that didn't stop her voice and her touch bringing on the demon. In her every move he saw her disappointment, and biting back his own frustration was a constant battle. "I think he was pretending. He wasn't really my friend."
    She put her hand on his shoulder. "Bobby, you spent days playing with him. What was pretend?"
    Her touch stung. "He said he was in a coma."
    His mother raised an eyebrow. "Maybe he was. It makes sense. He plays that game like you, which honestly no normal person would play. Am I right?"
    He had to admit that she was. It wasn't an especially fun game.
    "Maybe he knows what you went through. It's a lot of effort to go through just to trick you."
    "I don't-"
    "You should go back. You said the nightmares were getting better? It's people you need, Bobby, not loneliness."
    He shifted in bed, using his hands to adjust his weight. He did that regularly to prevent bedsores, though now he just wanted her burning touch off his shoulder. "What if it sets me back?"
    She shrugged. "You'll learn from it. You can't break your back twice. Nothing can be as bad as that again."
    She didn't know how bad it was now. 
    Until late that night he lay there staring at his lists. He'd made no progress in the stages of grief. Anger still swung through him wildly, along with depression, denial, bargaining. What had happened to him wasn't fair. He hadn't deserved any of it. He'd been good.
    On the other list it was even worse. He'd run around in the darkness for weeks, achieving nothing. Tears squeezed out and he winced them back in. The demon was rising. He couldn't win, to go or not go, both ways were terrifying and held so little hope.
    But he wasn't a coward. He couldn't be afraid, when he had nothing else, so late in the night he went back to the Yangtze center.
    The shelves inside were all the same. It was dark and the non-player characters wandered, but Amo wasn't there. He ran a few routes, testing himself. It felt empty and sad. He'd been kidding himself there was anything here to be afraid of, or anything here at all. It wasn't any better or worse than the cell of his basement. He put his finger on the key to boot out.
    Then the system pinged and Amo's name popped up. His avatar materialized in front of him, with words popping over his head at once.
    "Where've you been?"
    The fear and anger swelled at once, gulping up his throat. There was no expression on the Amo's avatar's face and he wanted to punch it.
    "That's not your business," he typed.
    The Amo avatar stared at him for a long moment, then spoke. "Did I say something to upset you? Make you angry?"  
    Robert's head thumped, the first signal of a descending panic attack. He couldn't explain it; it was such a tenuous thread holding them together, but plainly it mattered. It mattered to him and it mattered to Amo and that made him angrier still, bringing the water swirling up into his mouth and stopping up his breath.
    "You think this place matters?" he typed. "You think you matter to me? It's meaningless. I'm stuck here and I can't do a damn thing, and who are you? You're nobody either."
    Another long pause passed.
    "I'm not nobody," the Amo avatar said. "I hope you're not either. This place does matter to me. It helps me. I thought it helped you too. We both come here, you know? I know it's not really real, but it's a good place. What changed?"
    Robert