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She pushed away froun Pointed it at a spot fifty yards to his right Swung it ninety degrees, swung it back Her voice came to him shrill and set ht, for the rifle and the bullet were a part of him, and when the round wed bone, he would be there, too, inside her, the instant she died

Not yet Not yet, he told himself Wait till she runs

But Cassie Sullivan didn’t run Her face, speckled with dirt and grease and blood froh the scope, so close he could count the freckles on her nose He could see the familiar look of fear in her eyes, a look he had seen a hundred tiive back to death when death looks at us

But there was so that warred with her fear, strove against it, shouted it down, kept her still and the gun

Her face blurred in the crosshairs: Sas dripping into his eyes

Run, Cassie Please run

A moment comes in hen the last line must be crossed The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands If he couldn’t cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost

His heart, the war

Her face, the battlefield

With a cry only he could hear, the hunter turned

And ran

32

AS WAYS TO DIE GO, freezing to death isn’t such a bad one

That’s what I’ as I freeze to death

You feel warm all over There’s no pain, none at all You’re all floaty, like you just chugged a whole bottle of cough syrup The white world wraps its white arms around you and carries you doard into a frosty white sea

And the silence so--shit--silent, that the beating of your heart is the only sound in the universe So quiet, your thoughtsair

Waist-deep in a drift, under a cloudless sky, the snowpack holding you upright because your legs can’t any, I’m alive, I’m dead, I’m alive, I’, brown, blank, creepy eyes staring at you fro, You lousy shit, you proainst your cheeks

"It’s not ot a beef, take it up with God"

That’s what I’ve been doing a lot lately: taking it up with God

Like: God, WTF?

Spared from the Eye so I could kill the Crucifix Soldier Saved fro every step a journey over hell’s highway Keptuntil the blizzard cah drift so I could die of hypotherloriously blue sky

Thanks, God

Spared, saved, kept, the bear says Thanks, God

It doesn’t really irly about the Others, and for spinning the facts to s seem less bleak, but I wasn’t actually much better than he was It was just as hard forand woken up a cockroach Being a disgusting, disease-carrying bug with a brain the size of a pinhead isn’t so you deal with easily It takes tioes, Did you know a cockroach can live up to a ithout its head?

Yeah Learned that in bio So your point is I’m a little worse off than a cockroach Thanks I’ll work on exactly what kind of disease-carrying pest I am

It hits hway let , walk away Do you really need to stick around while it flips on its back and claws the air with its six spindly legs?