No, she didn't want to think about that. She cocked thehammer again, enjoying the play of tension against the tendons and muscles inher thumb. She lowered it again, and thought some more. It was gone. Theimage... that image, of Zeke's head lolling to the side as Lou chopped at thethick cords of muscle in Zeke's neck. But then it was there again, his eyesblinking in his severed head, his jaw opening and closing as if he were tryingto say something.
She cocked the hammer again, and this time she hesitated,her thumb off the hammer instead of on it, daring it to come crashing down ontothe primer and erase all of her thoughts. It was dark, so she let the tearscome. They came silently and rolled down her face. She didn't know who thetears were for. She didn't know if the tears came from real Katie or fakeKatie. She didn't know if they were for her husband, her son, Zeke, or thatgirl's dead sister and father. She just knew they were.
They started out hot, and then they rolled down hercheeks, which had become pinched faded things. The look of them had made herfeel queasy when she saw her face in the bathroom mirror earlier that day,looking to see if she had changed. She had. She had changed a lot. Her hair wasan unkempt bird's nest full of tangles, stringy looking. Her eyes had dulled,the luster erased by the world that they now lived in. Her lips were pale, thinthings that seemed to her to belong to an 80-year-old nun with no patience forbullshit.
What was she now? What were any of them? Katie loweredthe revolver, putting her thumb on the hammer and easing it back down into theresting position. She thumbed the safety back into place. With her free hand,she rubbed at the spot where the barrel of the gun had pressed into her temple.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow she would be able to doit.
****
Blake sat in the darkness, his eyes closed. He willedhimself to hear something, anything. But there was nothing. It was as if hewere living underwater. Fear, something he had never really known had becomethe dominant aspect of his life.
During their escape from the Coliseum, Blake had stuckclose to Mort, relying on his own eyes and Mort's ears to navigate their waythrough the city streets. For the first time in his life, he had known fear,true fear. Not just of dying, but of dying and becoming one of the undead. Thelast thing he wanted was to turn into one of those cursed souls, stumbling throughthe street, looking for his next meal in a never-ending cycle of rot andinstinct. As they moved down the street, at a pace that was quicker than it wassafe, his head had turned from side to side, his eyes never able to take inenough visually to assure him that one of the dead wasn't sneaking up on him.At any moment, he had expected a hand to grasp him and pull him down to theground, biting and ending his life, only to rise reborn with whatever virus ordisease was dwelling in the saliva of the living dead.
But it hadn't happened, and now he sat in the darkness,not in the rectangle of daylight drifting in from the open roof hatch, but nearenough to it, just in case. Just in case the fear that consistently rumbled inthe pit of his stomach were to erupt and take hold of him. He was near enoughthat he could run if the hands of the dead came reaching out of the darknessfor him.
His days in the theater had been solitary moments. Heabsent-mindedly brushed his shirt pocket where a small notepad and pen restedcomfortably. It was the only way others could communicate with him, not thatanyone was talking all that much. A malaise had spread over the group,blanketing them like a bird in a cage. They sat, they ate, they did littleelse.
Blake wanted to talk to the others, but doing so wouldrequire him to use more of his paper, something which had become increasinglyvaluable to him since he had lost the ability to hear. Part of him wondered ifhe wouldn't have been better off dying in the explosion that had taken hishearing. Sitting in a dumpster, surrounded by the horde of the dead, he andMort had done the only thing they could. They had tossed a couple of handgrenades outside. The ensuing explosion had left Blake dazed, concussed, andwithout one of his senses. At least it wasn't my sight. He wondered howmany blind people were left in the world.
Mort had saved him and pulled him out of the dumpster.How Mort had managed to get him onto the rooftop, he still didn't know, but hehad done it, and for that Blake would be eternally grateful. He looked aroundto see where Mort had gone off to, but he was nowhere to be seen.
He had come to rely on Mort, and despite the fact that hecould no longer hear what the man said, he still felt a connection with him. Ifhe had more paper, he would have no problem spending hours talking to Mort,using his notepad to see Mort's words, no matter how poorly he managed tomangle the spelling. It only made him like the man more.
Blake's heart jumped in his chest, and his right handgripped the stock of his rifle as a shape began to coalesce at the edge of thedarkness. But it was only Mort returning with a handful of colorful packages.Candy, the same thing he had been eating for the last couple of days. He felthis hand relax on the rifle, somewhat embarrassed by his jumpiness. But he hadto be ready. He had to be. He had always been one to be ready, even before the dead had inexplicably given up the desire to lay down and rot.
Blake had been a member of the National Guard, notbecause he felt any real desire to protect "freedom" as some
