All things considered, we hadn't lost as many as we probably should have. We thought we were prepared, but we weren't.

Trish had been hit, once in the neck. It was awhile before we discovered, and by then it was too late. Nigel had broken his leg in the fall from the arena statue, and we set it as best as we could. He'll probably have a limp for the rest of his life. Henry was barely recognizable. Amanda had been shot twice, once in the leg, another that just grazed her shoulder. There were other cuts and bruises, but we were okay. It was Billy's condition that we were having a hard time accepting.

He was still alive, though he'd been shot in the head. The bullet had cut clean through his skull, about four centimeters above his older scar. And he could see us. But his eyes were dead. We tried talking to him, we all did, but there was never any response, no form of recognition.

We all hobbled over to the scene of the intrusion. Amanda stayed behind with Billy's head in her lap. We stopped, huddled, before the face-down body of Trish's slayer. The one who shot Billy. Nigel turned him over with the toe of his boot. "The Man," he said. He was the only one with us now who had seen him before. The Man was dead.

"We don't know what could still happen," Nigel mumbled. "We need to leave the arena. Now."

Without a word, we stumbled back to Amanda and Billy. Amanda was crying, Billy was staring at the ruined arena ceiling, a trail of saliva running down his chin. Nigel carried Trish's body out through the hole in the back of the arena wall. We had to leave Henry. We stumbled out into the warm night, the same night it had always been in The Other.

We buried Trish's body in the soil at our park. Our shooting range. Someone found a large wagon in a front lawn, and we towed Billy inside it. No one knew where to go, no one cared, so we broke into the first house nearest the park. Everyone fell where they stood, and we all slept. I woke in a few hours, and couldn't get back to sleep. I pulled my tired and aching body to standing, and perched myself with my rifle by the front door. I could hear Billy babbling, "duh-duh-duh." I didn't know what to do. True, we could just keep on surviving as we are, but it didn't feel right. It felt like we needed to do more.

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Copyright © 1995, Monica Israels
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