The wall loomed behind me. I was surprised that the landscape before me looked so... alive. I felt stupid, having expected this place I’d been sent to presumably die in to have a grey sky, no grass, rotting corpses of those who’d come here before me. Instead, there were trees scattered around; a number of buildings, some in disrepair and some perfectly fine. A broken trike, old tires, a crooked stop sign. The wind picked up a plastic grocery bag and blew it toward me.

  I began to walk, deciding to embrace it all. Wasn’t like I had a choice.

  This place just looked like any other poor town in the midwest. Except that so far, I was the only person here. I’d made a fantasy of this being an ordinary town, appearing empty from it being a Sunday and everyone simply being at church. It was quickly shattered when I saw her under the tree.

  A lady, quite rotten, was slumped over the protruding root of a maple tree. Helicopters, those little seeds that spin when they drop, were everywhere. She looked as though she’d been seasoned with them, the seeds generously dispersed across her body like pepper on a piece of chicken. So my expectation was partially right: what I’d seen so far had been too good to be true up until this point.

  I stared at her for a long time, trying to wrap my mind around it. It felt rude, being fascinated. That, and she reminded me of sensations I wanted to forget. I eventually made myself leave, unsure of whether or not it’d be in my best interest to check out one of the buildings.

  One of them was a general store. I cautiously walked up to the doors, looking through the glass. No one was in there, but the power was on. Why would they send power to this place?

  I knocked on the door, figuring it might buy me time to run if someone didn’t want me there. After a while, no one came. I pushed a glass door open, a little bell ringing above me. I paused, waiting again for a reaction. I checked behind me, and no one was there either.

  “Hello? I’m not here to bother anyone. Is this food taken?” I asked. I waited a long time again, but still no response. Shakily, I made my way toward an aisle. The produce section was entirely empty. It was surprising that anything was left in here at all. I saw jars of peanut butter, which had gone rancid by now. The jelly didn’t seem rotten, but it couldn’t be safe to eat. Did honey go bad? It was mostly sugar, right? I grabbed a plastic bear with a yellow top, hoping I wasn’t being watched.

  “Is it alright if I take this?” I asked no one.

  “If not, just say the word and I’ll put it back.”

  #

  I had taken a blue grocery basket and put items in it that I figured would make me the least sick: honey, a bag of rice and two bags of beans. I’d also taken a roll of duct tape, and a set of rags, seeing as the medicine had expired and most of the other useful first aid stuff was gone. I doubted items like an enema kit or a pregnancy test would do me much good. I hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry when I saw the many boxes of expired condoms on the neighboring aisle.

  The water in the general store’s restrooms didn’t run. It’d been terrifying, going in there. Especially since I’d seen the woman under the tree, I felt like someone would jump out and kill me. I’d kept calling out, asking if what I was doing was okay, only for no one to answer. I did it again when I went outside, offering to put everything down if this hypothetical person wanted. No answer. Still, it didn’t hurt to ask.

  My reasoning was that it would be worse to be mauled to death than to die of starvation. Maybe that wasn’t true, but I didn’t like the idea of being torn up.

  I could’ve chosen a comparably peaceful death...well, maybe. There were plenty of cases of it going wrong, especially these days. Now that I thought about it, if I hadn’t seen so many botched executions on the news, I probably would’ve chosen it instead of this place. My ignorance would’ve put me in the same position as all those other guys, struggling against the straps. There was one time that the news forgot to silence the audio, and I’ll never forget what it sounded like.

  A man in his fifties, convicted for likely drummed-up treason, gasping. I could hear his lungs trying to get enough air but failing. A few times he moaned, the pain tangible in my ears. I’d never heard a living thing in that sort of misery before. Those sounds played over and over in my head for many days after that.

  I kept walking through the town, staring, hoping there truly was no one around. Again, my fantasy died as a tall figure came into view.

  A man in a leather trench coat, with baggy ripped jeans and a thoroughly-stained t-shirt was peeing. I didn’t want to stare, but I was afraid of looking away when he inevitably noticed me. His thick black hair was long and greasy, sideburns and stubble darkening his face.

  He wrapped up his business and turned to leave. His hard eyes met mine. They were blue, with dark bags underneath.

  “Were you watching me pee?” The man asked with thick raised eyebrows.

  “Are you going to kill me?” I blurted shakily.

  “No.”

  I hadn’t expected such a decisive-sounding answer. He came much closer and I tensed up in case I needed to run.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth? Like, how am I supposed to trust you?”

  “Well,” He shrugged. “You can’t. I mean, I don’t really have collateral to give you. I can give you my name though; it’s Dante.” He stuck out his hand.

  Against my better judgement, I put down my basket and shook his hand.

  “My friends call me Rat.”

  “How come, if you don’t mind me asking?” He took out a lighter and a cigarette. I raised my eyebrows, surprised that he was able to find a working lighter here.

  “Well, my dad’s name is Jebidiah, and we have the same name. That, and I’m kind of a slob,” I chuckled.

  ‘Kind of’ was a bit of an understatement. I didn’t shower or brush my teeth often, and before my trial, I looked about as greasy as Dante. Shaving had never come easy to me; I only did it when there was a special occasion so as to embarrass my mom slightly less. It always resulted in a bloody hack job. I was painfully aware that it would probably get easier if I showered more often, as I’d get more practice.

  My room was undeniably gross. Dirty clothes everywhere, random items in various piles, dead bugs who’d once feasted on whatever snacks I’d procured from the gas station. Occasionally I found mice, alive and dead. Much to my mother’s dismay, I wasn’t great about washing my hands either.

  I smelled pretty bad. Sometimes I got embarrassed about these things, especially when girls made faces as I walked past. But I’d joked about it so much that I felt like if I became more clean, I’d be a different person. Like I’d morph into Jebidiah instead of Rat. That guy just wasn’t me. He reminded me of the kind of person I imagined my mom wished I was. But I was Rat.

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  Thankfully, Dante laughed. I noticed just how stained his crooked teeth were and felt a little better about my own.

  “Well, I can’t judge you too much, especially not with the way I smell.” He paused and added, a little sheepishly, “And you just watched me pee on the side of a building.”

  “I mean, is there anyone else here?”

  “Not that I know of. Well, not people anyway. I hear and see weird stuff sometimes, but that might just be the gas.”

  “Gas?” I felt an anxious nausea start to form.

  “Yeah, there’s this purplish-pinkish gas that comes out every few hours. It hasn’t hurt me, as far as I know.”

  Dante blew smoke toward a run-down building near the one he’d peed on earlier. He started walking toward the road.

  I picked up my basket and followed him.

  “So you’re saying it doesn’t have any other negative side-effects? I find that too good to be true.” My basket was already starting to bother me, even though it hadn’t felt heavy earlier.

  “Well, I’ll put it like this: every person I’ve met so far here has died, and none of them died from the gas. It was always something else.” He blew out another wisp of smoke.

  “What’d they die of?” The nausea was getting stronger, but I wanted to know what I was up against.

  “A lot of them stayed for about a week and not too long after, took their own lives. Some, the ones that didn’t want help from anyone, died of starvation or dehydration. A few were killed by the Freak. It’s a monster that comes around at night.”

  “How do you avoid getting eaten by the Freak?” I asked, wishing I could try one of Dante’s cigarettes.

  “Oh, it doesn’t eat people. It just plays with them. I actually don’t know what it looks like, but from the noises, maybe dog playing with a chew toy. He plays too hard every time, I guess,” Dante answered, dropping his cigarette on the ground and putting it out with his boot. He chuckled.

  “I like to imagine the Freak is just, like, a chihuahua or a corgi or something. Helps take the edge off.”

  He giggled. “It’s just so stupid.”

  I realized he couldn’t hear me nodding.

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t able to bring myself to fake a laugh. Dante had seen so many horrible things. He’d had to listen while the Freak tore people up, and find their remains afterward. I wondered if he buried them.

  “Did you see that lady under the tree by the wall?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. What’d she look like?” He asked, pausing to move a stop sign that had fallen in the road. He laid it in the bed of a truck whose front had been heavily damaged.

  “Just like a normal lady, but rotten.” I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold it in. My body answered for me as I turned to throw up on the side of the road.

  “Whoa,” Dante said as he walked toward me; though he didn’t sound alarmed.

  I ran out of food to throw up, realizing that food was probably the best I’d eat for the rest of my life, and it was from the prison.

  “Sorry.” I wiped my mouth on my sleeve.

  “You’re good. It takes awhile to get used to it,” Dante shrugged.

  “Is there anyone else here alive besides you and me?” I asked, picking up the basket of food that I’d dropped.

  “Not that I know of. So maybe, but I haven’t seen them yet. Unless they drop in another guy right after you, which would be a new move on their part.”

  Dante cracked his neck, and put his hands in the pockets of his leather duster.

  “So if she didn’t look super tore-up, she probably found something in a closet and uh, took things into her own hands.”

  “So are you from the south?” I asked. I knew the abrupt subject change was rude, but I frankly didn’t care.

  “Yeah. Before I came here, I lived in Tennessee my entire life. Never went to school. I stayed with my parents in their mobile home and worked at a gas station to help them out.”

  “What’s with the duster?” I asked. It seemed out of place with his story.

  “Oh, I found that here. I just thought it looked cool.”

  I grinned. “Fair enough.”

  “So what about you?” He cracked his knuckles.

  “I worked at a thrift store for awhile–”

  He stopped abruptly. A cracking sound came from above. I looked up and saw a branch the length of a truck, hanging by a thread, give way. It fell about twenty feet in front of us. We continued our walk to whatever place Dante wanted to take me.

  “Hey,” I asked, feeling incredibly stupid that I hadn’t asked this earlier. “Where are we going?”

  “Oh! To City Hall. It’s a brick building, and the windows are small. My bad; I thought I told you earlier.”

  #

  I wasn’t sure how I made it through last night. I didn’t sleep at all. That would probably come back to bite me today or tonight. Dante had shown me his setup in city hall. He’d taken beds out of abandoned houses, along with all kinds of other furniture and knickknacks, attempting to make a home in the building. The windows were boarded up,but he’d put curtains over them, hung random art taken from actual living rooms, and carefully arranged candles everywhere, since there wasn’t any power. The sight of afghans on the couch and two armchairs was especially weird to see in the dead lands.

  Last night, I spotted a basket filled with balls of yarn, knitting needles jutting out. It turned out Dante had taught himself to knit, though with great trial and error. He’d dabbled in all sorts of hobbies, since being hopeless was incredibly boring. Half-finished paintings, attempts at whittling, a log of birds he’d seen and how many, poorly-crocheted doilies, and all sorts of other projects littered the room. I’d found more this morning: unfinished games of checkers and solitaire, puzzles, books with lots of sticky notes and tabs, and a rope with many kinds of knots.

  He’d gone out while I was sleeping to pick apples from a tree in someone’s backyard. Currently, we were sitting on the steps of City Hall, a grocery bag of apples between us. I didn’t feel hungry, even though I hadn’t eaten in a long time.

  “So how long have you been here?”

  “A really long time,” Dante answered, cutting his apple with a pocket knife.

  “I used to count days, but once I hit five years, I lost my streak. So I’m not sure how much longer it’s been. Five years of keeping track is still pretty good though, wouldn’t you say?” He asked, eating a piece of apple.

  “How have you lived for that long? I know the other day you said a lot of people don’t get far.” I really hoped I didn’t sound too accusatory.

  “Not sure. I keep trying to befriend people that come in here, but it doesn’t seem to be enough for most of them. Sometimes they go on their own because they’re women and I’m a man, which I get. But the ones that hang out with me tend to wind up gone anyway. To this day, ‘still haven’t figured out what I’m doing wrong.” He got out another apple.

  “I mean, I’m surprised you haven’t snapped already. I don’t think people off-ing themselves is necessarily a you-problem.”

  Well, it might be. But I didn’t want to seem suspicious. Didn’t want to seem too dumb either though, in case he got onto me.

  “Well, when it’s happened over a hundred times, you begin to wonder.”

  He didn’t sound as bitter as I would’ve expected. I could definitely believe that it really was over one hundred times. Our government had been doing publicly-broadcasted trials and executions of their enemies longer than I had been alive. The number of people on their hit list grew like a cancerous tumor.

  “So how’d you get here, Rat?” He asked, sprawling out in the morning sun.

  “I killed my friend.” He needed to know I could kill. That might help me later.

  “How come?” He asked, still draped over the stairs.

  “He asked for it.”

  Truth be told, Kevin did ask for it. He’d been very sick, thanks to his uncle being an evil piece of human garbage. Kevin hadn’t been able to stand it anymore, and asked to have his life ended with medicine. Because Roger, his uncle, had zero shame, he pulled strings so that Kevin was forced to keep living. Kevin begged me to give him mercy, so I had. I hated thinking about it, but every spare second that I wasn’t worrying about whether or not Dante would kill me or how I’d survive here, the memory showed up.

  His body had been warm where the side of my arm was touching him. He hadn’t struggled, since it didn’t hurt. I had checked so many times to see if he was still breathing, if his heart was still beating. He’d gotten cold, and his mom had come in. I’d told her he’d passed away while I was with him, but my lie had been found out later. I still remember her thanking me.

  “I love my baby. He didn’t deserve it. Thank you, Jeb,” She’d choked out the words, tears falling.

  Ms. Leeds had watched her son suffer at the hand of her brother in this slow, crushing way. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be her, but every once in a while, I tried.