Andy closed his eyes, tears rolling down his cheeks. Iwish I'd never come to Portland.
****
"This sucks," Rudy said.
The others just looked at him, as if to say, "Tellme something I don't know." They were all sitting in the dark, huddledaround the square of light that filtered down from the hatch that led to the rooftop.There were no lights anywhere in the theater. Whatever power the emergencylights had been running on had long since gone away. Now, they were stuck in acave of blackness. The darkness tended to have two effects on the survivors. Iteither made them sleepy or grumpy. In Rudy's case, both.
Here he was in the middle of a movie theater. Everythingthat he could have wanted around him, movies, junk food, popcorn, those littlecrappy containers of movie theater nachos that never had enough cheese, and hecouldn't have any of it. He felt like a prisoner with his face pressed upagainst the bars, staring at the keys to his cell hanging just out of reach ona brass hook. The projectors didn't work, the lights didn't work, the sodafountain didn't work. It's as if they were all waiting to die, and Rudy wastired of it.
He stood up, dusting off his pants.
"Where are you going?" Amanda asked.
"I'm going up there," he said.
There was no response from Amanda or Chloe, so he beganhis ascent. He paused every couple of steps to pull his pants up. Over thecourse of the last week, they had loosened somewhat as his life became more andmore about survival and less about video games and stuffing his face with junkfood. At first, he hadn't noticed, but whenever he walked through the darknessof the theater, a flashlight in his hand, he kept having to reach behindhimself and pull his pants up, something that he had never had to do before.
He wished he had a belt. He had bought his pants to fit,and they were snug when he tried them on. Rudy had never really lost weightbefore. He had always been in a constant state of growth. Now, he ate forsurvival. Though there were racks of candy in the theater's lobby, he knew thatthe food wouldn't last long, not with eleven people having to eat each day. Ithad only been two days, but already the racks were starting to look bare. Soonthey would be down to the pure sugar items, the things that were literally justcomprised of gelatin, sugar, and artificial flavoring. If you would have toldRudy ten days ago that he would soon look at a package of Gummy Bears withdisdain, he would have laughed in your face, posted something shitty about youonline, and pretended to throw punches at your face when you weren't looking.
Things were changing. Rudy had embraced that factwholeheartedly rather than wallow in it. In his mind, he replayed the escapefrom the Coliseum over and over again. There he had been, standing side by sidewith fierce examples of humanity like Zeke, the always composed Blake, and thebrutally efficient Lou, and he had done his part. He had been every bit as goodas they were. Sure, he had to stop and take a puff from his inhaler at the endof it all, but he had come through. He had pulled his own weight, and there wasa lot of it to pull.
The muscles in his arms were still sore from the jarringforce of swinging a crappy souvenir sword at living flesh and bone, but he pushedthrough the pain and managed to climb the ladder anyway, hiking his pants uponce again when he reached the top. He wondered how much weight he had lost,but then he thought, maybe he was just dehydrated. Maybe if he found a steady sourceof water, he would balloon up again right to where he was when this allstarted.
He shook the thought out of his mind and walked over toLou who was leaning with his back against some shiny metal ductwork. Lou fidgetedwith his hands, and his eyes looked far off. Rudy could tell that he was in nomood for talking, so he moved to the side of the roof and looked down. Heremembered his improbable escape from his apartment building, the vertigo hehad felt at climbing out of his window and setting both feet upon the fireescape, a rickety concoction of metal, bolted into crumbling brickwork. Hishead had spun then, just as it was now, rocking side to side. It was so badthat he didn't even pay attention to the legion of the dead that had gatheredbelow them.
He knew they were there. They weren't the type of thingthat you could put out of your mind. As soon as he had stepped onto the roof,they had assaulted his senses. The smell was the first thing you noticed; itwas the smell of a slaughterhouse combined with a tannery. The bodies belowwere rotting, the organs inside turning to mush. Their skin was doing the same,but in a different way. The skin was becoming tanner, harder, almost likeleather. The sun was drying them out from the outside, but the inside was likea soft putrescent center. They were like Rolos. As soon as the thought crossedhis mind, he vowed to stay away from the Rolos when it was time for dinner.There probably weren't any left anyway.
Another building burned in the distance, and Rudy turnedaway from it, as it reminded him of his near-death experience. He had almosttumbled to his death when the fire escape he was using had collapsed beneathhim. It was just one of many near-death experiences that he had lived throughin the past two weeks.
Rudy focused on the nearest building to the movietheater. It was a mall. Lloyd Center they called it, perhaps the worst mall inPortland. It was the type of mall kept open by outlet clothing stores, cellphone kiosks, and a food court. There were always empty
