Free The Passenger (Surviving the Dead) by James Cook, Joshua Guess Page B

television begging me to feed the children, or adopt an abused animal. Like many, I built a careful little wall around myself that insulated me from the terrible facts of the wor ld. Sad when you think about it, and worse when the practical application becomes clear: I was not in any way prepared for the drastic fall of humanity. There were no emotional calluses to protect me from the heat of experiencing it firsthand.
    Then again, what could prepare anyone for what I was seeing? Maybe genocidal wars in far-off places, but short of that , my mind went blank at finding a comparison. I would have cried if it had been possible, or turned way. But my body, ever focused on its next dining experience, had no soft points. No emotional reaction. Just a vague disdain for the wasted food around it and the implacable urge to feed.
    I tried not to think about the loss each of those wasting bodies represented. Which of them might have been the next Einstein or Lincoln? Was the child whose spine my body ste pped on meant to create great art? Write the quintessential American novel as so many people have tried to do? And even if none of the poor rotting souls close by had high destinies before them, so what? Each of them was a mother, father, brother, sister, son, or daughter. From the brightest practitioner of the most arcane sciences right down to the guy who worked the grill at my local burger joint, they were all human beings. Dreams and hopes and plans all wrapped up in a fragile body with infinite potential before them.
    How huge a tragedy was it that so many people died like animals in the street? Pretty fucking enormous, to me at least.
    Walking through the dead streets of a dead town that was only a slim fraction of a dead county in a dead state that comprised one fiftieth of a dead country in a dead world, I was hit with the realization that it was well and truly over for civilization.
    There was a chance we could come back from this if enough people survived to start again. I knew that. No matter how slim or weak, the possibility existed. But the fabric of what we'd been was gone. There was no going back, not ever. My generation and maybe that of my children would remember a world that could never exist again. No matter what came after, all of history no longer mattered. It was a clean slate or nothing.
    Locked inside my head, I wept. My body did not care.
     
    *****
     
    Long hours later , my body decided to have a rest. I don't know if it was from a lack of food or due to some other factor I was ignorant of, but I didn't question it. My muscles were no longer my own, my every movement the result of a nervous system not beholden to my whims, and the stillness gave me the illusion of control. If I wasn’t walking somewhere, I could pretend it was my urge to die driving me to stand motionless.
    I know self-delusion is unhealthy, but let’s be real. Long-term considerations no longer applied to me.
    For a while, I just enjoyed the day. Piercing sun, a sky more blue than any other I could recall—though I admit it might have been the idea that this day could be my last giving me that impression—and a breeze strong enough that even my dull senses could appreciate it.
    Truth be told, I would have been thankful if a volcano had erupted a hundred yards away. Seeing the dead in t hat little town and knowing my future wasn't much different created some perspective. Living like this forever was something my mind just wasn't equipped to handle.
    Knowing your days are short is awful, even if those days are spent trapped in the body of a nearly mindless killing machine. But worse, much worse, is the possibility you'll stay stuck that way. Because we humans are hopeless fools, I'm an optimist. Death was my only hope, but my determination to meet it only added to the sweetness of every moment between all the horrors. The town was enough to sour me on the idea of soldiering on, however small the urge had been. Having set my mind on reaching