To Thee Is This World Given by Khel Milam Read Free Book Online Page A

dead for you so far.”
    “There aren’t any battles. They’ll let the dogs rip them apart and not even try to fight back. They just keep trying to shuffle towards you through the dogs until there’s not much left of them. They don’t seem to have any sense of self-preservation.”
    “If you’d ever had to fight one off, you wouldn’t say that.”
    “Everyone’s had to fight one off.” She yawned again. “But I don’t even think they’re really fighting back. The only thing they seem to care about is tormenting the living. I think they just can’t help themselves. That they can’t stop once they start. But the dogs can only handle a few at a time, so I try to avoid them anyway.”
    “Good luck with that. They’re like locusts. You can’t avoid’em if you try.”
    “It’s not that hard. Just avoid crowds. They’re mostly just in places where a lot of people are congregated. You don’t usually find them anywhere else, except for when they’re moving between haunts.”
    “So, yeah, in other words, they’re everywhere you want to be. Anywhere with anything you need, that’s for sure.”
    She studied him for a moment. “You can get almost whatever you need pretty much anywhere now. And even sometimes things you want, too.”
    He snorted. “You make it sound like everything’s just lying in the middle of the road, waiting for somebody to come along and pick it up.”
    A grin flashed across her face. “Some of it is. There were three hundred and fifty million people in this country when it happened. Seven billion on the face of the planet. That’s a lot of stuff. And it’s all yours now. Anything you ever wanted.”
    “Yeah, anything but food or water or bullets. Or a good night’s sleep. You’re shit out of luck when it comes to those things.” He kicked one of his bags. “Unless you get lucky.”
    “It takes more work to get food and water than it used to. But it’s not like you’ll starve to death or die of thirst or anything.”
    He glared at her. “Why don’t you say that to all the people who’ve already starved to death? To all the people who had to sit around and watch’em die?”
    “How does someone sit around and watch someone starve to death?”
    “It ain’t easy.”
    “No, I mean, wouldn’t they both be starving? There’s enough food for one but not for both?”
    He looked away.
    “I see hungry people every so often. I mean, we all get hungry. All our cupboards get a little bare from time to time these days. But the only people I’ve ever seen who were starving were what was left of one of those groups that had hoarded as much stuff as they could in the beginning, and then walled themselves up and ran out of food when the dead hemmed them in and they couldn’t get out. All of those compounds are death camps. And not just because of the dead. No matter how bad it gets in them, they all just stay there. It’s crazy. Even the ones who get kicked out just want back in again.”
    He was still looking away from her, picking at the sand. “You make it sound like it’s an easy decision. But shitty is better than dead any day.” Staring straight ahead at nothing for awhile, he seemed locked in his own thoughts. Then he nodded towards the mutt. “So where’d you find that one?”
    “Ace Hardware.”
    “Ace Hardware?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Somebody was giving away puppies?”
    “No.” She coaxed the mutt closer and scratched its muzzle. “The owner asked me to watch him, but he never came back for him.”
    “Dog’s lucky you didn’t dump it in the pound.”
    “I’m not sure the pound was still taking pets at that point. It was right after it started. Right at the very beginning. The first week, or the second week maybe. I didn’t even know it was happening at that point.”
    “Then you were the only person in the world who didn’t.”
    She smiled wryly. “I was only there to get birdseed.”
    “Birdseed?”
    “I know, go figure, right?” She and the mutt