He nods, squinting into the dark, saying nothing. He gets up, adds more fuel to the fire. I'm almost like, dude, don't put that on the fire, that's somebody's arm! But then I see it's just more of those mannequin parts from the old mall above us, above ground. So he puts the mannequin arm on the fire, adds a couple chair legs and a big cardboard box with magic marker writing on it: Christams decortions. I picture the mall shop clerk who used to work here, or maybe the janitor. Whoever was in charge of putting away seasonal crap in the basement and couldn't be bothered to spell Christmas decorations.

The fire blazes up with the new fuel, and he says: "Yep."

So I'm all: "Yep." And he's all "Yep" again, just for something to say.

He sits down. "Okay," he says. "So maybe this whole end-of-world mess was those four horse-guys from the ship, I don't know. Maybe it wasn't because of me having that dream about the end of the world coming and all my teeth falling out."

I say: "Well. Dude. All your teeth did fall out."

He makes a pffft noise and flutters his fingers in the air like whatever. "Yeah yeah. So all my teeth fell out, but that was only after that next jerk on the big black horse came out. Man, did he reek! And I was all, 'Dude, you freakin' reek!' when he rode by with that thing he was lugging--"

"Scales."

"--Whatthefreakever. Scales, then. So I'm all 'Dude, get some deodorant, or some breath mints, or some something.' And he stops his huge freaking beast right in front of me--stops so fast I practically hear the horse's brakes screeching--and points at me with one long, bony finger. Says nothing. Nada. Zip. Just points at me with that bony-ass finger, creepy as anything. That's when I started to get these pubicles."

"Pustules."

"Whatthefreakever, I should've given him the finger. Pustules . . . . " He turns his head and spits into the dust. "Hey, could you hand me the backscratcher?"

I dig around in the rubble by my foot. I find the backscratcher, which I think is actually more like barbecue tongs, but whatever. I hand it to him and he shoves it down the ragged neck of his filthy sweater, making an ahhhh noise and closing his eyes for a second.

He goes on: "So I got the pustules, and all my teeth fell out, and it hurt like hell. With the bloody gums and all, I could barely stand to eat. That, and I was writhing on my back in some goddamn cave somewhere with a fever of a hundred and ten, trying to stay out of the acid rain and the rapid flooding and the raging fires and those swarms of goddamn bugs that sting like hell. By the end of the week I was starving. Totally freaking starving, like for real."

I nod. "I remember when all that stuff was going down. That's about the time I holed up in this mall basement. Before the dead started rising up out of the ground."

And he goes: "Right! And what the freaking goddamn hell is that all about? All 'brainz . . . must eat brainz . . . ' ."

Which makes me laugh. "They do not say that, dumbass. Nobody says 'must eat brainz'." But I'm still laughing. "Stupidest crap I ever heard," I say, wiping my eyes.

He's smiling. He grabs some random pieces of junk off the ground beside him and tosses them on the fire. I watch mannequin heads and wrapped bundles of twenty-dollar bills crackle and burn, sending up gross oily smoke that stings my eyes.

After a while he says: "Well, whatever the walking dead business is, it only started after that last guy rode through. What a jerk that last one was! Just because his horse was the coolest, did he think he was better than everybody else? It's true, I've never seen a green horse, but still--"

I'm like: "Whoa, whoa, whoa: a green horse? There's no such thing as a green horse. Even those spaceguys didn't have a green horse, not that I ever saw. It was a pale horse. That last dude rode a pale horse."

And he makes his whatever motion again with his hand. "Fine, pale green. That dude with the pale green horse and the poleax."

And I'm all like: "Dude! How would you know what a poleax is? D-&-freaking-D, or what? Besides, it was a scythe. The last guy was all swinging his scythe all over the place, like a badass." I shake my head, throw another couple busted chair legs onto the fire. "Poleax. I never heard anything so stupid in my life."

He shrugs, says: "Right. So the jerk on the pale horse comes thundering through, swinging his whatthefreakever around him like he's at a goddamn polo match. And bodies are falling right and left and all over the place, and everywhere they fall, blood and guts and stuff spew out and everyone who gets spattered, then they all start falling, and it's like dead-dude-dominoes. I had to get out of there, man. I wasn't hanging around for no sonofabitch and his goddamn poleax-scythe-polo mallet."

"Word."

He nods once, final. "Goddamn right," he says. "God-daaaamn right . . . ."

We both lean back against rubble and watch the fire in silence. The basement's big, and there are several places for smoke to get out, but it's pretty hazy in here and I'm feeling sleepy. I sink onto the gritty floor, settle on my side with my knees drawn up to my chest, positioning myself so I can still watch the fire.

He settles down too, his back pressed right up against my back. For the first time in a long time, I feel the warmth of another human being. It feels good. As I get sleepier and sleepier, it's like I can feel the beat of his heart pulsing straight through his back; through mine; past my spine and my blood and my lungs and whatever else is in there between me and him. Lately, I've spent so much time running and scrambling and trying to avoid dying, I haven't really thought much about anybody else at all. There is nobody else, so far as I can tell. Not the army, not the government, not the girl-freakin'-scouts.

I breathe in. I breathe out. I breathe in and hold it. I tell myself: by the time I let this breath out I'll be asleep, and for the first time in what feels like an awfully long time, I won't be alone. That'll be nice.

My eyelids drift shut. I feel like I'm floating. Floating on a warm ocean to the rhythm of someone else's heartbeat.

I listen to the rumble of his sleepy breathing. I listen to the heated crackle of mannequin heads and Christams decortions, and somewhere in the distance--beyond the circle of fire and light and the crumbling walls of this mall basement--I hear something else wafting in on the smoky air of eternal night; something soft and kind of sweet, like a lullaby.

As I fade off to sleep it comforts me, that lullaby. Brainnnzzzz, it goes: Brainnnnzzzzzz.