David Dunwoody - Empire

Bill laughed incredulously. "No you don't!"

"When do they want everyone out again?" Voorhees asked Marie. "When are they cutting us off?"

"July."

"Independence Day." Voorhees rose from his chair. "I need to get back on my rounds."

"We're going to leave with the first convoy." Bill said. He averted his eyes to look at his son, giving Cody a reassuring squeeze of the hand. "It just makes sense."

"You're right." Voorhees said quietly. "But I can't leave people here. That doesn't make sense. I'm a cop."

Bill stared solemnly at him. The man just didn't understand. Later that evening, he and Marie would discuss all the irrational reasons why Voorhees must have insisted on staying. They'd call him suicidal, lonely, afraid. Bill's reasons for evacuating were plain as day, but Voorhees…Voorhees said he was a cop, and that wasn't an answer, not to them. "Yeah." Bill said.

Voorhees left the house and crossed matted dead grass to the sidewalk. He'd probably be hearing from the P.O. Union before long about pulling out. The Union, a lot of spineless bureaucrats who'd forgotten what it felt like to walk a beat. If they called him north, he'd ignore them, he'd lose his job; but he'd still be a P.O. in Jefferson Harbor, just as those who refused to leave their homes were still Americans.

He wondered if any of his officers would stay with him.

Postman drags himself down the front hall of Llewellyn House. It's important to remember locations: this is Llewellyn House, at the north end of the city. North is veering to the left of dawn. The sun rises in the east. Sets in the west. This is all that Postman's curdled brain can hold onto. Locations.

Location, location, location! Someone used to say.

Postman drags his severed torso down the porch steps.

For one hundred and five years, Postman has kept his route in the city. The route is something, the one thing, ingrained in Postman's soft brain, and in fact it has served him well. Still wearing his whisper-thin uniform, a few things sticking out here and there (arrow, stick, whatever catches him as he walks) he would walk the route, and on occasion, find meat wandering by.

Meat hasn't come by in a long while though. Postman is old and dry and falling apart, and yesterday a crumbling brick wall tore his legs and groin from his waist.

Postman is approaching something that he recognizes as an ending. There is no more meat in this city. No more meat will come to this city because there is nothing for them to take; the buildings are skeletons now, seared by the sun overhead.

His bones are brittle. He realizes it is no longer important to remember locations. Synapses let go and fall, like broken bridges, into warm goo.

Postman stops in the yard in front of Llewellyn House and lies in dead grass, knuckles scraping dirt, one milky eye studying bits of sunlight. No more. His hat slides over the exposed bone of his forehead, nudges the spot of brown flesh on his cheek.

Another is coming down the road, toward Llewellyn House; coming north. Coming at a measured, healthy pace. His clothes and hair are soiled but his flesh seems robust; he has eaten well in recent days, this one, this other. He drags a tool over the asphalt; a shovel.

This other kneels beside Postman and jams the shovel into his guts. Postman looks up with his one eye, watches quietly as he is dissected by handfuls, and pushed into the maw of the other. His uniform is opened and laid back, threadbare, the sun striking through its weathered fibers; His head is gently peeled, and then that eye is taken, with its tiny bit of moisture, and life, and it enters the jaws of the Omega.