He couldn't pinpoint the source of the pain. He had oftenheard of broken hearts, but his pain was not located in his heart. His handsclenched and unclenched seemingly without his own knowledge, as if they weretrying to physically pull Blake back from the dead. His eyes blinked often,heavy with moisture. His mouth hung open, as if it were searching for the wordsto some sort of mystic spell that would revive his friend. His mind was a cloud,a roiling mess of emotions and thoughts that came unbidden to his mind.
I could sit here for hours, he thought, butthat's not what Blake would want. And that's what made Mort move on, theidea that Blake would not want Mort sitting there feeling sorry for him. Hewould appreciate the sentiment, but in the end, he would most likely crack somesort of joke that would hit just to the right of funny, and then they wouldmove on. And so that's what Mort did. He stood, grasped Blake's rifle, andheaded up the stairs in the hopes that somewhere Blake was there, looking downat him, and smiling.
At the top of the stairs, he paused and looked at Blake'sbody. "I hope I see you again someday."
****
Clara and Joan were busy dragging a small couch from theother end of the upstairs offices, when Mort appeared. He looked better thanshe had expected to be honest. Clara felt the loss of Blake, his smile, theeasy confidence that he showed in everything that he did, those would all bemissed. But there was no way that she could feel the loss like Mort did. Shewanted to reach out to him, to let him know that everything was alright, butshe didn't know if it was her place or if he even wanted to hear it. She couldonly imagine if she lost Joan, the one person she knew in this world, the oneperson who knew everything that Clara herself had gone through.
He turned sideways, sliding past them, and disappearedinto an office, the ravages of mourning etched on his face. God, Ihope I never experience that sort of sadness. She had lost Courtney, sure,but etched along the sadness of his loss was a sense of bewilderment.Everything had been new, strange, disorienting. That odd feeling had cut thesadness, making it almost acceptable. It still sucked, and she still hadnightmares every other time she actually managed to sleep, but it wasn't whatMort was experiencing. Mort was experiencing the total loss of hope combinedwith the effect of having to gun down the one thing that seemed to give a shitabout you.
At least she'd never had to shoot Courtney.
"You in there?" Joan asked.
She broke out of her brief trance and said,"Yeah."
"Good, you can help me move this couch then. It'skilling my back."
"Relax, it's not that heavy," Clara said asthey stopped at the top of the stairs. They tipped the small sofa up on itsside and sent it sliding down the stairs. They followed it down, ignoring thebody in the corner. They pushed the couch up against the door that led to thezoo's gift shop. It wasn't much, but it should slow down the progress of thedead.
At the top of the stairs, Lou appeared with an officechair in his hands, his arms straining with the weight of it. Clara noticed forthe first time that the veins on his arms were standing out as he exertedhimself. When they had first met, Lou's forearms had been thicker, meatier, andthere had been no sight of the veins in his arms. Clara looked down at her ownarms, and noticed a difference there. They were harder, bonier.
The world was shaping them to survive. Soon they wouldall be caveman hard. Clara stifled a giggle at the phrase. She kept the thoughtto herself though, as no one else seemed in the mood for laughter.
Lou pitched the chair down the stairwell and it came to astop at the bottom. Clara jumped as a sound rang through the office. Ascratched and bloody hand punched through the door to the offices. It graspedand pulled at the wood around it. It ripped chunks of the door away with acrunching sound.
"Shit," Clara said. The dead seemed to haveimpeccable timing.
"We're gonna need some more furniture!" Joanyelled up the stairs.
Mort appeared, and began throwing chairs down the stairs.Lou and Clara had to jump out of the way as chairs desks and electronics felldown the stairs, creating a racket that barely drowned out the noise of thedead.
How long had they been listening to it? That unceasingslam of fists upon walls. How long had it been? It was dark inside, the spaceonly lit by their flashlights as they moved around. Joan and Clara were contentwith moving furniture and piling it up against the door. A gray blue arm rippedat the cheap wooden door. Clara picked up a light office chair and beganswinging it at the arm.
Her attacks didn't do much, scratch up its skin, maybebreak a few bones, but it still came. It still tore at the doorway. Outside,she could see the chest of a large man in a faded blue workshirt."Herb" the nametag said. Clara continued to swing the chair at hisarm as she wondered if that was really his name or if it were some sort ofironic hipster thing that he had thought up.
"Remember hipsters?" Clara asked Joan as shepiled another chair upon the pile of junk that they were slowly building infront of the door.
"Ugh. How can I forget?" Joan plopped the chairon top of the pile and then backed away, wiping an arm across her sweaty brow.More chairs tumbled down the steps behind them. "How many do you think arestill out there?"
"The dead?"
"No... hipsters," Joan said.
Clara just laughed and said, "They probably all diedwhen they ran out of PBR."
"That or they all just killed themselves to beironic." A metal cabinet
