Even when he had shot his own father, Lou hadn't feltthose emotions. But when Zeke had gone, for the first time, he had experiencedloss, the type of loss that those motherfuckers in Hollywood always played upin the movies. The type of loss that could send a man to his knees blubberinglike a five-year-old.
Before all of this had happened, before the dead hadtaken over the world, he had been a man. He had been one of those thoughtlesscreatures, stumbling through life with no purpose, no reason. He hadn't feltanything but hate and pleasure, mixed with the occasional self-loathing. Thefeelings he had experienced since the world had begun to crumble, those werenew. Those were hard to deal with. They were like being shown a new color forthe first time. The mind struggled to make sense of them, and they threatenedto consume.
As he watched Mort sob on the floor. He knew that he wasgoing through the same thing. He held him tightly, and a new emotion crept overhim, something he had never really expected to find in the apocalypse.Compassion. He felt Mort's pain. He would give anything for it to stop. Lou newthat Mort's pain came from more than a near-death experience. It came fromloss, and the constant up-and-down of the post-world. One minute, you're eatinga can of soup that made you feel like a king and the next, you were on yourass, fighting off the dead.
"I got you," Lou said.
Just a month ago, the thought of putting his arms aroundanother man would have brought revulsion and thoughts about what other peoplewould think of him. Now, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, andhe wondered, How did I miss out on so much of the world when it was stillhere?"
"I got you, man. It's going to be alright."Mort's sobbing had slackened off a bit, and his hand began to relax on Lou'sforearm. He was coming back to himself, exiting that world of emotion andfeeling, sliding back into his body, a little different, a little changed.That's how they lived their lives now, growing and changing, sloughing offtheir previous selves after each major event like snakes shedding their skins.
"You alright?" he asked.
Mort nodded.
"Alright. You stay here. I'm gonna look this placeover."
Mort nodded again. Dazed... like one of those things. Buthe would snap out of it and be stronger. That's what had happened to Lou. Hethought back on the man that he was, and he realized he had been little morethan one of those dead things out there, shuffling along, looking for somethingto eat. Before the dead had already started walking, he was out there doing thesame thing. Now, he was alive. And he intended to stay that way.
Lou started his search in the room that the man hadlocked himself in. It was a mess. Brown streaks of blood and rot covered thewalls. He didn't know how long the man had been entombed in his own bedroom,but it had been long enough to slather virtually every surface with some sort offilth.
From the large bloodstains on the bed, it looked like theman had been attacked and then died on his bed. There was no sign anywhere ofthe person that had attacked him. Lou squatted down on his knees to peer underthe bed. It seemed to be the only place not covered in blood. He pulled a shoebox out from underneath the bed. Immediately, he felt disappointment at itsweight; there would be no weapon inside.
He took the lid off anyway and found himself face to facewith pictures and love letters. He recognized the face of the constructionworker, although in many of the pictures he had a beard. The woman in thepicture was handsome, not exactly beautiful, but to Lou, she looked like adream. She had shoulder-length red hair, a smattering of freckles, and a smiledominated by crooked front teeth. Best of all was the smile. Here were peoplewho had experienced something real in their life, people who had seen the bestthat life had to offer.
Lou looked around the room, realizing that is was onlybig enough to accommodate one person, and barely big enough for theconstruction worker by himself. He grabbed one of the letters, written in analmost child-like cursive script. It was dated a few years ago. He toyed withthe idea of taking the letters, and maybe reading them when he got bored, butin the end, he put the pictures and the letters back in the shoe box and pushedit back under the bed. It was what he would have wanted someone to do for histhings if he had any.
He stood and ignored the blood-soaked note on the nighttable. It wasn't a story he wanted to carry with him.
In the other room, he marveled at a wall full of DVD'sall stored on mismatching racks. The construction worker must have been a moviebuff in his spare time. He recognized a few of the titles, but most of themwere horror movies and not really his thing. It's not like he could watch anyof the damn things anyway. He returned to the closet he had been diggingthrough when Mort had been attacked. He had been looking at the man's jacketsand deciding which one he wanted to take.
It was summer now, but if they ever made it to the coast,he would want something to wear. He had never actually been to the coast, butJoan had told him how it was. Unceasing wind, always a little bit colder thanyou wanted it to be. Lou hated the cold. He pushed the jackets aside, trying todecide which one would do the job. In the end, he pulled out a blackwindbreaker. It was light enough, and it was black. Camouflage was importantnow. Bright colors wouldn't be a good choice, not that the man's closet hadmuch variation. It was mostly brown, green, or black clothing, nothing tooexciting.
Lou took the jacket off the hanger and wrapped it aroundhis shoulders. It was big on him, but he immediately felt
