Joe Penhall

I told the boy when you dream about bad things happening, it means you're still fighting and you're still alive. It's when you start to dream about good things that you should start to worry.

All I know is that the boy was my charge. And if he was not the word of God. Then God never spoke.

If I were God, I would have made the world just so and no different. And so I have you... I have you.

Listen, we have to talk. That man back there… There's not many good guys left, that's all. We have to watch out for the bad guys. We have to just… keep carrying the fire.

The fire inside you.

Yes, we're still the good guys. Of course we are.

Always will.

The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions. I think it's October but I can't be sure. I haven't kept a calender for years. Each day is more gray than the one before. It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived, and all the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts, and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food.

Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism. Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food, always food. Food and the cold and our shoes. Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice, difficult as they are to remember. All I know is the child is my warrant, and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke.

I will kill anyone who touches you. Because that's my job.

Maybe. But you won't. Because that bullet will be through your head and in your brain before you can hear it. To hear it, you'll need a frontal lobe, and things with names like "colliculus" and "temporal gyrus". And you won't have 'em anymore, because they'll just be soup.