“Yeah, why not? It’s not like they’re coming back.”

“I don’t know… it’s like desecrating the dead or something.”

“Not really. It’s just putting stuff to good use that would otherwise go to waste.”

“Hey, Todd?”

“Yeah?”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

“I know; I’ve been holding my piss for the last hour.”

“It’s not just piss.”

“Well, just try to hold it.”

“Too late.”

They were prisoners of the flesh, golems of raw meat, doomed to wander the wasteland until they drowned in their own filth. Ray expected to die a little sooner, having been shot through the side, but this was only speculation since there was no way of examining or treating the wound. At least it didn’t hurt, and the bleeding had stopped, so there was that.

Out of forty boys who had come ashore, just these two survived. Did they survive out of superior skill or intelligence? Was it their unusual grit that enabled them to outlast their fellows? Were the others just weak?

No-much as they might have wished it were so, both Todd and Ray knew they were nothing special. This was what haunted them: the thought that stronger, smarter, and more deserving boys had died in their stead. Brave dudes like Sal DeLuca and Kyle Hancock had sacrificed themselves so that lazy nubs like Todd and Ray could escape. It wasn’t fair. But as Todd shuffled along the barren streets of his hometown, staring out through misshapen eyeholes at the living nightmare that was his only companion, and knew that he, too, was a horror, both of them damned to this ridiculous, incomprehensible fate, he realized there was perhaps some justice to it after all.

Maybe the dead were the lucky ones.

As they turned a corner, they encountered a blue Elvis. Elvis was dressed in a blue-and-white polyester suit covered with sequins, a gold-lined cape, and boots of blue suede.