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A COUPLE OF HOURS ago I thought I was a dead man And now here I am, a backpack full of weapons, supplies, and Ellis&039;s things on h the dead ruins of the city I used to call ho the enemy down This neorld order is fickle and unpredictable; one ain

The roads around Sahota&039;s building were reassuringly quiet and e But the an to doubt ether in the doorway of a partially collapsed building, barely visible fro out froh, my instinct was still to kill No one would have been any the wiser, and with ain, I was sure I could have got rid of all three of the sweat But I was scared-scared that if I started killing out here I wouldn&039;t be able to stop again I forcedThe foul fuckers watched hts keptforward First, I knew that if I ht one, that I ht be able to find out more information about what happened to Ellis Second, I knew that the longer I lasted without killing and the deeper I et into town, thefinally started again It was easier letting those three live (if you could call that living) knowing that itthousands of their kind

Unexpectedly, thearound theht to control myself each time I see one of them, but their vast nu noould be suicidal Or ether and on their knees in such desperate,conditions, reinforces th and superiority These people are nothing

Christ, I&039;m cold I run lirubby shopI look like a new man, like I&039;ve been reborn on my escape fro Sahota said I should do, so I&039;d never even considered He told edclothes day after day until they&039;re too worn out to be any good, soed, incredibly, still seem to think about their appearance Sure, standards have slipped, and there are no don stores selling the latest fashions any number of them, how they look still see accepted, he toldpart of the crowd I sao makeup Why? What&039;s the point? Stupid bitch It doesn&039;t matter what you look like when you die

Concentrate on breathing, that&039;slow and level, to move slowly and keep to a steady, deliberate pace If I start thinking about killing and fighting, I try distractingcracks in the pave to remember the names and the faces of people I used to know It&039;s the weirdest sensation-I i as I&039;, I&039;m fine But if I were to attack just one of the his first drink, I knoouldn&039;t be able to stop I reht, the less you get He was right If I cause any trouble out here on my own I&039;ll be completely screwed Stay cals are bizarre, not at all what I expected The streets and buildings on the inside of the enemy cordon look different from all the others I&039;ve so far seen Out beyond the city li has been pounded into ruin by weeks and weeks of fighting Over the weeks and ed ed explosive force, reducing es and small towns I&039;ve seen were hit so badly that they&039;ve sirown rubble are all that&039;s left where they used to be Here, though, the basic structures of streets and buildings are still largely intact, but they look like they&039;re slowly decaying Everything is covered in a thick layer of detritus and gri heap of uncollected waste, so loose in the gutter Rats and other verht, suddenly cocksure and confident, no longer afraid of man Birds peck at bodies, and there&039;s a steady trickle of stagnant, foul-s utter and spreads out into the road, the street drains blocked It&039;s beco its surface ripple, floating bits of rubbish bu around like odd-shaped boats

The address Sahota gave me is a place not far west of here, on the inner border of the exclusion zone He warned me to stick tothe teic in his advice The population here seems to be in a bizarre, almost trancelike state of "false calm" For thethe to squeeze themselves into as small a space as possible, alaps between buildings; others sit behind the wheels of useless, abandoned cars that are never going anywhere again I glance up at the s of the places I pass There are pale faces pressed against the glass, not a single scrap of space left unclai succession of lost, haunted individuals Alone or in twos and threes, round, too afraid to eventrusted friends or relatives The instinctive urge to kill them is undiminished, but these people aren&039;t even worth the effort They are eood as dead already

There are other peoplein the sa aimlessly the other way None of the, and I do ait It&039;s hard, like being forced to hold your hand in a bowl of boiling water I want to run to get through this part of town, but I don&039;t dare do anything that&039;s going to draw attention to me or mark me out as different There&039;s an unspoken tension and fear here, bubbling just under the surface Everyone,forced to keep their eht happen if they let their true feelings show Asmyself to the enemy is abhorrent, I realize that everyone here,We&039;re all pretending to be so we&039;re not

Apart from the oddthrough the air above hting, everywhere else re a road that runs parallel with the side of the City Arena, a huge, soulless concert venue I could never afford to go to There are blockades around the peri for as far as I can see, and a heavy military presence around the doors and exits There are scores of empty trucks parked in its various lots Was this so center? Whatever it was, it looks like it&039;s been decoe nu silently for supplies that will probably never co mound of corpses Must be hundreds of bodies there

I&039;hts all aroundthe other ho&039;s obviously paying as little attention to the human traffic on the road as uard In a sudden, uncontrollable blind panic, I spring forward and grab the disheveled-looking man by his lapels I spin him around and slam him down onto the pavement and reach for my knife before before I reo immediately and walk on, terrified that I&039;ve been seen and that iveup quickly and sprinting a few yards until there&039;s a decent distance between us He puts his head down and keeps walking, trying not to panic, frequently looking back over his shoulder I glance fro et involved

Fucking idiot Can&039;t afford to make mistakes like that

I know exactly where I a Fines Processing center, where I used to work When I see the building I&039;ust that I wasted so much ofgone, and, catching ia when I remember all that I&039;ve lost and left behind It all see to so this place and all that happened here is like watching a TV movie of so in the building now I can see the out from Could there be a worse existence than that?

Without realizing it, I&039;ve stopped right outside the PFP I&039;htseer, suddenly oblivious to everything else around ine snaps erous stupor I turn around and see that there&039;s a jeep driving up the middle of the road toward me, flanked by several heavily armed soldiers on either side, their i forno atteees that litter the street They ju well back until the troops have passed by Preoccupied byor fight, I&039;m slow to react A soldier shoves me to one side, and it&039;s all I can do not to kill him I stand firm and square up to him, stupidly defiant, my face reflected back at me in his visor

"Problem?" he yells, his wretched face just inches fro inup inside me, and I don&039;t know if I can keep it down Can I stand to let hi is al back in the cell with Joseph Mallon, and reives th Act duo You&039;ll kill thousands more when it&039;s time