Bodies litteredthe ground all around the squat building. The moans of the dead drifted throughthe air. He couldn't wait for the sun to kill him. But in the meantime... hepulled on the rope.
The sun beatdown upon him. Beads of sweat ran down the sides of his face. One ran down theside of his nose and perched on the edge of his upper lip. He blew the sweatinto the air and grunted as he pulled on the coarse rope. His hands, nowcallused and blistered after days on the roof, lumbered robotic automaticity.
Chapter 1: Zeke
Today was the day that the guns had to be cleaned. No onewas making Zeke do it, but years of habit prevented him from taking it easy.Zeke was a well-adjusted veteran who had recently seen his service in the Armyend. There had been no promotion in his future, so he saw no more point inwasting any more of his life. Still, the old habits died hard.
His house was a squatty, two-bedroom bungalow on the edgeof Portland, Oregon's SE quadrant. He lived there alone... hence, all the guns.They weren't alive. They didn't keep him warm at night, but they gave himsomething to do on those nights when the past seemed to be sitting outside ofhis window, breathing its dusty breath.
There were so many guns because... well, he had no wifeand no life outside of the military. This was a problem. For Zeke, life was notsupposed to be like this. When he was a young boy, dreaming in Toledo, Ohio, hehad more than once imagined that in the future he would live a picture perfect,Rockwellian existence with a standard-issue wife and several kids runningaround the yard to pass on his legacy. He looked at his guns. They were theclosest thing to a family that he had and the only legacy he was likely to everpass on.
His parents had died years ago, when he was onlyten-years-old, after a drunk driver had run into them head-on, twisting theircar and their bodies into an unrecognizable mess. He could almost remembertheir faces... almost. But years of dust, travel, and simplicity of emotion hadleft him vacant and damaged. He plucked a shotgun out of the gun locker in thecorner of his living room, a SPAS-12. It was empty. Zeke knew the feeling.
Zeke sat on his couch and turned on the TV with hisremote control. The flat screen sprung to life. He unscrewed the magazineextension, and slowly removed the magazine spring, making sure it didn't flyoff. His hands moved easily, disassembling the fore-end and the bolt from thereceiver. On the TV, the news was on. Boring feel-good stories, and littleelse. The weather report came up. It looked like the month of June was going tobe a scorcher. It didn't bother him. He had grown used to sweltering heat overthe last decade of operating overseas. Hell, he had actually grown to like theheat.
As the "local" sports news came up, he couldn'thelp but laugh. Having grown up with actual sports teams on the TV, Portland'ssports news always seemed rather hokey and small-town to him. They only had oneteam, the Trail Blazers, a perennially underperforming professional basketballteam. There was also a soccer team, but no one that knew anything about sportsreally considered soccer an actual sport. When the Blazers weren't playing,everything circled back to Oregon's colleges, The University of Oregon andOregon State. Were you a Duck or a Beaver? Who gives a fuck? He reassembled theSPAS and cocked it, making sure the action felt right. Everything wascopacetic. He filled the magazine with shotgun shells, and then cycled themthrough with the pump action just to make sure.
Zeke placed the shotgun back in the gun locker, andwalked to his dumpy old refrigerator, which had probably been put in rightafter the house had been built in the '60s. The hipsters that migrated throughhis neighborhood to reach Southeast Portland would have called it retro; hecalled it a piece of shit. The refrigerator was the only original piece of thehouse that still remained. It hummed along loudly, occasionally rattling as ifit were about to give up the ghost, but it kept things cold, so he really hadno problem with it. He pulled the dirty white door open and looked inside thefridge. Ah, a cold PBR. Nothing says "Tuesday rocks" like a cold PBRand the smell of gun oil.
He walked over to the front window of his small shitboxand peered out through the bars on the window to eye the street people. Helived on the corner of a road to nowhere that intersected with 82nd Ave... agreat road if you liked crystal meth and hookers. He popped the top of hisbeer, and took a long swig, enjoying the burn of the beer as it travelled downhis throat. There were times when he thought he ought to track down his realtorand put a bullet through his head, but then he realized it was his fault fornot staking out the place on his own. One hour spent around here at night, andhe would have known better than to buy a house this close to 82nd.
The night people moved at a shambling pace. Their liveswere over, but they had no idea. Once you got on the meth, that's all there wasto it. You might as well throw yourself from a bridge downtown. The bars on hiswindows were for them. A methhead would do anything to get the cash to buyanother fix. They walked along, picking at their skin, missing teeth, andgenerally making non-junkies feel nauseated by their very
