- Not just your combat skills. Sure, knowing how to knock a zombie’s jaw off with a wrench is important, but so is knowing how to light a fire in the rain.

  - Learn. Practice. Repeat.

  - Don’t get caught lacking and have a zombie roast you with “Skill Issue” as it tears your spleen out.

  ---

  I started training every morning—sparring against a dangling sandbag wrapped in old clothes. Better grip, better speed. I needed to be sharper. The stakes kept rising, and my luck wasn’t going to hold forever.

  I told Alex to do the same. “Pick something, anything,” I said. “Fighting, climbing, sprinting, anything that'll make you faster or harder to kill.”

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  She nodded with this distant look and said, “Okay. I’ll try.”

  But the next morning, I saw her sitting on the floor. The bat I gave her lay untouched by her side. She had her shoes on, but hadn’t moved in what looked like an hour. Just... staring at nothing.

  When I asked what was wrong, she blinked like I’d woken her up.

  “I didn’t know what to do without you,” she said.

  And I—I didn’t know what to say. That hit different. Deep. Uncomfortable.

  I realized then that everything she did was tethered to me. If I cooked, she’d clean. If I scavenged, she’d fix things. But left alone with an open-ended task? She froze.

  Executive dysfunction, I think it’s called. Where even the smallest decision feels like climbing a mountain barefoot and blindfolded.

  She wasn’t lazy. She wasn’t helpless. But she’d been running on my direction, my rhythm, for too long. Like she wasn’t surviving for herself—just because I was here to tell her how.

  And that... that’s dangerous.

  Not just for her. For both of us.

  So this tip is for the both of us:

  Hone your skills.

  Do it for you.

  Not because someone told you to. Not because someone’s watching. Not because someone might need you later.

  But because you matter enough to survive.