"Hey, Crayola king, life is long." he said, and then his features de-melted into a smile. "But don't chuck the bait, you'll lose it," he grinned, leaning in. His breath reeked of old, stale fish.

Yeah, Benni, no shit. Take a hike, talk like that, it didn't matter. I'm the king, right? I know what your thinking; but its not true. I've read about kings. They had a different power, the power of fantasy.

The rain drizzled down, reflecting in the weak sun that shone over the high, distant wall, its buildings gleaming whitely above on the hill.

When I was a boy, growing up in the South Bronx, the rats were about the only thing that could create any response in me, the only power life allowed me to believe in. They lived in trash, they scrambled according to unknown laws of deprivation and deceit, and they were unwanted.

It wasn't just the kind of response solicited by well-meaning merchants locked into their accounting or those damn gun-fiends who turned in your best friends cause they were narcs. It was like, I knew that I should have been one of them, but garbage was the only thing that mattered to me. It was the raw material of life. Now, I've read big name philosopho-goers, not like this riff-raff that surrounds me. I’ve thought about the big things they said. They were important men, they had big important ideas. But after the disintegration occurred, no one could really handle big thoughts any more. It all went to the level of guns, garbage and survival.

Benni wasn't a bad kid. His trenchcoat supposedly had some power or other, but it hadn't spared his weathered, beaten face or his gapped, decaying teeth.

"So, what? Should I go?" I asked him, although it was a useless question. I knew you had to go. Change and opportunity are scarce resources in this world, ruled by the endless deprivation.

"Go? Hey, man, you want to stay the rest of your life down here, I got no problems with that!" he snorted, hawking up a big wad of the black spit.

"The paatchen..."

"Screw the paatchen, man. What are they? Nothin. Like shootin at bottles with legs. The rex give you guns, food, an in a coupla years you get to be citizen, get one of them big houses up in the center. Bingo..."

"Bingo lost it," I said. He didn't know. Benni turned silent a minute. I mean, he had made it, with honors. Everyone knew he would, big guy like that, arms like trees, brain of strategy. He was the golden boy of the west 20's pit... everyone knew he'd make it out.

But he came to me one night, two months ago. I don't know how he got out... it was even harder than getting in, which was impossible. Over in the teenage wasteland, I knew he had made some friends, they probably did him up.

He didn't look like I remembered at all. He was fat. The life of a citizen. But his eyes... they were really messed up. It was like, they never looked out, only in. Big, puffy, inward-turned fish-eyes.

I don't know why he came to me. I don't think he even recognized me, he was just talking. Flailing. I could have been a wall. When people like that come to you, you know they're lost.

"Jeeze... well, what happened?" Benni pulled me out of my reverie. I didn't want to tell him, Bingo had made me swear. So I lied.

"Something... he got sent out again..."

"No, man. Bingo could never've gone out that way..."

"He just wandered off. Got separated."

"How the fuck you find out? Who told you?"

I could see I shouldn't have even brought it up. Once more, I was living in garbage, the world of lies, lies on top of lies. And I was king of that world. Administrator of untruth. Declarer of dead thoughts.

Back in my old hut, built into an old junk yard, the life I was leaving flooded through my senses, avoiding me. Evicting me was more like it. The tubs of crayons filled the room with the oil waxy smell of color, pushing against my skin. In leaves, 'fallen like in autumn', my drawings lay in piles against the walls, pressed as if by a violent sideways surge of gravity into obscure niches.

I saw the rex coming, blocking the dim sun from the window, his big dog leading the way. Armed to the teeth, his eyes hidden behind the dirty brown leather helmet with his numbers bar-coded on top, it was hard to see him as another person. Just a removed, distant, blank figure, doing its job. Its function. I just didn't like the way I was suddenly the target of that job, that function.

The knock on the tin door. I reached into my neck-bag and pulled out one of my four remaining death-sticks. The dog growled. I held it to my lips, hesitating, wavering. Would this be the last sight I ever witnessed, the last fear of the unknown confronting me? The smell of my crayons, the presence lurking beyond the door... bringing the match closer. A perfectly illegal way to die, of course, a chance at a last hopeless gamble whose only outcome resolved nothing but ended the game. Roulette sticks, death sticks... 50% chance of death. Try as many as you want. Quick and painless. The perfect black market item.

The rex pounded on the door, his speech decoder warbling his voice. They all had their voice boxes removed, replaced with the voice of the authority they had sworn to. I took a hurried last glance around and lit the stick, inhaling deeply.

The room spun, knocking into my brain, into my head. My heart sped up. This was the one, I thought, emotions pumped by adrenaline, I was on my way to the eternal forgetting, the end of the pounding in my head , the beginning of a whole new non-life, the perfect escape attempt. I reached out, steadying myself against a pile of books, philosophy, comic magazines, everything... it tumbled over me as I slid to the floor.

The rex kicked in the door and the light shone in upon me.

The blur of a huge, slobbering hound baring its teeth, come to take me home.

I was beginning to suspect it wasn't true, just a panic attack at the thought the stick might have been the one. Old twentieth century psychology textbook: "...and the study concluded intensive stimulation within drug addicts of endomorphic activity based solely upon an imagining of the act of drug use..." The rex was not some heavenly figure of hell, with his cerubus... I've read enough Berkeley to know that a stone, while it is not a stone, is still very real.

He turned me over, grinding my face into the old books and crayons with his foot, pinning me as he applied fisticuffs. I inhaled deeply, trying to embrace their smells, hoping that it would serve me well in the future, that it would take me back here, make it all real. The stick had failed, I lost. Life won, this round. But I had three more left.

"Get up. Cray 1227-36, draftee 3,237 a-6, do you accept the terms of your registration." His voice was mechanical, grafted.

"No." I said. "Let me go."

He didn't even respond. Just pulled me to my unsteady feet and dragged me out, pushing me towards the hill, the wall behind which I’d never been, the castle of the other side.

The big sign above the iron gate said kafka-310. I had a badge-implant slid under the skin of my arm, so deep I couldn't get it out. Trapped within tall spiked walls, hundreds waited. All around me, others pressed in, dirty, unwashed, fighting. They all seemed glad to have been chosen, ready for the chance to get out to the perimeter and prove themselves, ready for the glorious white house's just waiting for them. Ready to become citizens.

But that was all years away. Benni said, two years minimum. Bingo, though, had said nothing. He had just babbled, his eyes never meeting mine, even in the dim light of the karo lamp.

"King!" I turned. Jestins was there, big muscle-bound iron man. He was from the north, I met him once when he bought contraband from us. northern 40's I think... right on the perimeter.

"Jestins..." I nodded. I know I should have been happy, making alliances, maneuvering for the future. But I felt imposed on by his presence. I wanted to be alone. In this realm, in this processing tank, everything was subject to other laws. I was subject only to myself. King of myself. King of garbage. And I liked it.

"You get picked up?" I asked. I didn't really want to know.

"Fuck no, King. I told em. I told em myself. I came up here, two, three weeks ago, pounded on the door. Fucked up a rex dog pretty good, told em I wanted to go, they couldn't stop me. Finally let me in."

That surprised me. Jestins was a good, normal guy. What could make him want to get in so bad?

"They got in, ten, fifteen of em. A month ago. Took out Billi, Trez, a bunch of us. Goddamn goin to fuck em up... Jani. Bit her on the fuckin toe, one of the zomb's, she got the fever, died. Man, I couldn't hold her down. Hid her for awhile, but fuckin Jaz narced on me, they came, shot her up but good."

He fell silent a moment. Jani... his partner? I think she had a kid by him... Trez, him I knew.

"They got Trez?"

He wiped a tear away with his huge meaty paw.

"Trez... they were ten or so, came at night, it was rainin. Fuckin horrible things, man, if they weren't so dead..."

I could see in his eyes a confusion. It was old, a memory he had that he could never really remember. Things didn't used to be like this, it said: the dead, they never came back. Like Jani, Trez, Bingo... they never came back. But the paatchen, nobody knows how anymore, no one wonders why. The only scientists we have today are weapons builders, putting together old computer and gun relics into new combinations. After the disintegration, they just appeared. Manhattan was lucky. It was surrounded by water. That was then. Now, there was only desert.

"Hey, its ok. Don't get so worked up. Be smart." I thought he was fucking crazy, from my point of view. I walked away, left him there. I didn't know what else to say.

Every morning, this one rex by the gate would open up a slot and food would pour out. It was good bread, metal-tasting water and prot-paks. The big farms up on the north end churned out staples of algae and wheat. Outside, we'd gotten what we could by raising our own small animals, cats and dogs that bred quickly. Our group had a small family of rabbits. We raised em till they breeded, ate the old. And the black market in algae was very plentiful.

This one guy, though, was different from the other rex I’d seen. He was old, thin. He sat in his little booth inside the gate. You could talk to him, but he wasn't silent like the other rex. He'd talk, but only in strange, meaningless sentences. I guess his program got garbled, they put him out here. He never gave any information, all he knew was that it wasn't time yet.

I spent a lot of time gazing through the gate. The whitewashed walls and streets of the city rose behind, I could just see the tiny ants moving from house to house in the distance. There was some kind of order to their movements, but I could never exactly discern them.

When I was drawing with my crayons, I had noticed the same thing. But the order I could not perceive was coming from within me. When I put up a drawing on the wall and stared at the colors and shapes, it seemed to speak to me. And I heard it, through my own voice. But those people, beyond the gate, the citizens; I could not understand their voice. Was this what Bingo experienced, living amongst them, having become one of them? I wondered about that sometimes.

We slept in rough straw beds and old mattresses along the side of one wall, under an overhang. Hundreds of us. I kept to myself, avoiding the jostling and machismo. There were a few tough women in the recruits, they protected themselves well. The men respected them, especially after two were found dead one morning, Nangrin, a strong, short dark skinned lady, sleeping peacefully nearby, spotted in their blood. It was a jungle.

The gatekeeper watched all of us, together.

Eventually we were pulled out, one by one, but we never went through the gate. I’d never seen people respond so smoothly to a process of reorganization. Lines formed, we were weeded out by height, size, weight. They stripped me of everything, even my pouch, my last three death-sticks. Even the one I’d stashed inside my shirt.

On a big hill we camped out in various tents. Rex ringed the perimeter. I thought about leaving, but the badge-plant in my arm would lead them right to me.

Unless I cut my arm off.

I toyed with the idea, for awhile. Sitting and waiting. But life without an arm was the same as life with an arm. Still life.

They gave us special guns, trained us in their use. A fight broke out, a shoot-out between old rivals from outside. Three dead. The Mondo-canes, the Hatfields, I had heard of them. Tougher, strong arm gangs from below the village. Wall Street area. They played hard. Ran black-market items all the way up to the 90's. Just waiting for the chance, waiting for their guns. The rex hauled the bodies off, stuck them up on poles. We walked by them every day on the path to the mess tents.

After a week, school began. We learned of the trenches, the command, who gave and took orders. The kinds of attacks, numbered a10-b35. Strategy, synchronicity, efficiency, and order, maintaining: how to, in the midst of chaos, and under the movements of the paatchen.

And, of course, we studied the paatchen, the undead.

We studied the varieties and types, their relative strengths and weakness. We memorized their habits, the way this one wandered, that one drove in towards its target. The danger of a bite from this rotting denizen of the undead, the complications of a scratch from that one. Inside our heads, small reference chips were planted. We could refer to visual matchings, taken directly from our cortical nerves. We were never without reference.

The implantation was difficult. The first couple of nights, I had electronic nightmares, gibberish fast forward and slo motion rewinds. After that, headaches that continued for weeks.

Studying the paatchen, I felt, again, the tiny blue spark of interest that I had felt reading all my old books. But this was different. I realized, they were real. They were here, now, abstract, and yet... not. They were like characters in a book, the zombie, the wolfmen and wolfwomen, the vampyric breed, all the classes of monster derived from the human... but they weren't trapped by the text. They always escaped.

I wondered about their lives, when I lay in my bunk at night, the snoring of the multitudes around me lulling with the sound of oceans and water. What did they do? Did they have feelings? Were they alive, even in death? Did they talk, communicate with each other? Were they plagued by doubts, worries, unknowns, or were they just hungry? Driven like an animal, unaware of complication, of what death means, of thought; it had a desirability around it.

Where had they come from? I’d heard so many different folk-tales, so many reasons, all the way from being sent from the heavens, to emerging from large cracks in the earth, to science lab experiments in the late 20th century... it was impossible to find a shred of truth or falsity in any of these. On the other hand, I had met many pragmatists, people like Benni, for whom thoughts of origins never plagued their brain. Acceptance, the ability to deal with the here and now... was this what I was also admiring in the paatchen?

No. I think I was attracted to their deadness. They truly were not alive. I tried to gaze through the veil which separated us, tried to see them clearly, to perceive of the dead as they truly are... but my vision was obscured. I could not recognize the voice speaking on the other side as anything but my own.

Perhaps I was looking for a voice I would recognize, that was not my own. I don't know.

But when sleep came, and the morning, all my thoughts disappeared. The days were filled with activity, confusion and distraction.

"Cray 1227-36, stay alert." the rex walked by, slapping me on the head. I was a recalcitrant student. My mind wandered from the texts, the diagrams. I dismantled and assembled my gun with distance. Slower than the others. I ate alone.

Jespins got divided off, split into a smaller group. I expected he was rex material. I was too small, thin, footsoldier material. I was more expendable. That was fine with me.

The endless stretches of time that took place in the training camps were not like time had passed outside. Every morning was the same, and it confused the clock of memory. Every second seemed indistinguishable from the others. I remembered nothing, all I had were a few dated tests, a few papers and scraps of notations to indicate that any time had passed at all. I kept them in a bag under the bunk. I never looked at them.

The wall stretched forever, high upon the banks of the old Hudson. The dunes sloped down, then up again in the distance. At the bottom, old barges and decayed fallen bridges were covered and uncovered by the wind and sand. Far off, I could see the beginnings of the trenches.

"Cray 1227-36, transfer in three days." the rex handed me papers. I set my gun down and sat against the wall. Flac glanced over at me. He was my patrol partner. I could see he was somewhat glad to get rid of me. He raised his thick eyebrows.

"Where you going?" he said, his voice rough and gravely.

I looked at my papers. "Brownsville trench."

Flac looked away and spit. Didn't say anything more.

After three days of staring, I left. Flac had already shot three paatchen on watch, I never even saw them.

The road we took, about thirty of us, was almost indistinguishable from the dunes. Sand constantly blew and drifted over the tracks. Every now and then, trucks rumbled past us, taking supplies and officers back and forth. And once, a group of five rex overtook us.

There was another recruit that I took a liking to on the way. He kind of reminded me of Bingo, a friendly, outgoing talkative guy. He had an old book with him, a vonnegut.

"Keno. wait up a sec." he slowed down, wiping the sweat off his forehead. the sun continued its beating from above.

"‘Sup, King."

"Can I take a look at your book again?"

Keno threw his pack down with a grunt.

"That's the third time today. Its gonna get fucked up."

"I wont fuck it up, man. I’m careful."

"If you were careful, you wouldn't be reading while were out in the middle of paatchen territory," he said.

I watched him open his pack in silence, unsure exactly how to respond to that. So what, I thought, mustering whatever tiny scraps of dignity still existed. Its a free world. But I knew he was just messing with me. It was his kind of personality.

He pulled it out and closed his pack. We started walking again.

"Here. Why ya read so much, King?" he glanced at me sideways as he handed me the book. I could tell he really wondered about me.

"I don't know. They're about real people, real things... ow!"

He punched me on the arm, almost knocking me over.

"Sorry to crush your fantasy, man, but that's real. What the fuck you think these guns're for?"

I tried to tell him, but I couldn't figure it out myself. I knew they weren't real, but the things they talked about were more real to me than even walking in the desert right now was.

We walked in silence. The crunch of boots on dry sand blew away in the wind. I looked at the book again. The cover had been torn off, and there were missing pages, but it was in remarkably good condition. The pages were only somewhat brittle, they didn't crumble into dust at the slightest touch, like most of my books had. I read them once, then they were only a collection of tiny words that blew away in the tiniest breeze. I opened it to the page I had left before.

'Deadeye Dick,' it said, 'was an honorific often accorded to a person who was a virtuoso with firearms.' I glanced over at Keno. He was an expert marksman. The book said he was a 'deadeye dick', that was probably why he kept this book. I felt vindicated; he felt he was more real because of it, because of the book. I knew it, I knew it was true in my heart. I read on, but pages were missing. The beginning of a new chapter.

'To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: watch out for life. I have caught life, I have come down with life.' I thought about that. It was true, a trueness beyond here and now. It seemed he was saying life was like a disease, that once you catch it, it's terminal. I folded the book into my sack and continued walking, thinking of that.

That afternoon, an old woman rode by, escorted by four silent rex. She sat blankly on the donkey, moving as it moved. She was clothed in old rags, her wrists were bandaged and bloody. Her face was withered and cracked, very pale, yet burned by the sun. Her eyes seemed to see nothing. They were empty, white pale pupils, albinoed and cataracted.

We watched in silence as they passed us, back towards the perimeter. It was a strange encounter. None of us had seen anyone other than ourselves for the past three months. Jesmins, one of the leaders, ran back and followed them, talking to the rex. They brushed him off, but he kept at them, pushing and prodding. One of them finally turned and spoke some words to him, then shoved him back towards us and continued on.

Keno told me later what had happened. She had been found in a cave of one of the vampyrs, tied captive with three others, all dead. apparently, they had been kept as food. The vampyr had been killed by a scouting party, not too far from the trenches. They must have brought her all the way from manhattan. I wondered if I knew anyone who knew her. There were many people who just disappeared, were never heard from again.

We finally reached the Brownsville trench. Just as we arrived, I heard my name called and turned around. Jespins sat in a truck, motioning to me.

"King, man, you out here?" he said, smiling at me.

"Yeah. Just got here."

I could tell he was doing all right. He had an officers cap, his own truck.

"Well, you gotta be careful. Its real bad out here."

"Bad?" I knew what he meant, but I felt awkward. He was suddenly an officer and all.

He held up his hand, talked to his radio for a second, gunned his engine.

"Gotta run. Take care of yourself, King. Ill see if I can get back to you soon."

I waved him off, watched the truck disappear in the distance, then turned and walked into the trenches.

Id seen the paatchen before. They made their way through the walls every now and then, in the night, when they were most active. Their eyes glowed red in the dim light, it was the first thing one ever saw of them. It had something to do with being dead; light catching the old deflated corneas filled with dried blood... or the others, not so undead. The big hairy men and women with their white canines, the bloodless seekers of others blood, the small disfigured hunchback gnomes, I’d seen more variations than most, since I lived close to the perimeter areas. But these were more, hordes of them, gathering beyond the walls and trenches which snaked off into the distance like creeping vines, obscuring the horizon.

Over the days, I grew fascinated with them. Obsessed? Ffixated? Maybe those are good words. They walked, never talking, some stumbling, others prowling, motivated by a hunger neither of us could see. I looked back into the trench-post, saw the organization, the efficiency. In front of me, wandering figures, moving in and through the piles of dead.

I settled down to life in the trenches. Months passed. We mostly slept and did busy work during the day, digging more trenches, carrying ammo, setting up new posts, unloading supplies. I got intense feelings of claustrophobia. There was never anything to see. Just sand, dirt, boxes and men toiling under the ceaseless sun.

Night was better. When I was on watch, the stars came out, and the air was cool. I’d traded with other men, and had my own three books. I examined them sentence by decaying sentence under the dim light of my pen light.

I never shot at paatchen when I spotted them. I woke up Keno, and he always enjoyed the target practice.

Once, a few hundred feet down trench 38, some paatchen got in, killed everyone there. Keno was on watch and shook me awake, screaming in my ear. I woke up, just as he hit the spotlights. A hoarde of zomb's walked silently towards us, bleached in the light, and I jumped up.

I glanced over the top of the trench and saw another group of about five coming at us from the top. Keno was frantically loading his weapon. I hit him hard and he followed my gaze. I stood frozen, unable to act. He let loose a burst of rounds, hit three of them. We stumbled back along the trench. It was another good hundred feet to the other post. They were almost upon us.

"Shoot em! Shoot em fer Christ’s sake!" Keno yelled at me, his face distorted with fear, bursting, spitting red. I stumbled backwards, fumbling at my gun. He moved behind me, and I let loose with a couple bursts. I saw one of them fall, but I knew my shots had gone far wide. I wasn't even trying to hit them.

He grabbed my gun, swearing, yelling at me to load his. I unlocked my ammo belt, but the rounds fell everywhere, scattering in the dirt. I scrambled for them, putting them in one by one with shaking hands.

We rounded a corner, retreating. Keno kneeled down, and I heard all five rounds go off, one after the other. The group above us were almost on top of us, the lead z sliding down into the trench mot five feet away from us. Keno grabbed his gun back away from me and blew a huge hole in its chest. There was no blood, only greenish rotting flesh and bone. It lay still, slumped over.

Keno pulled his knife out and hesitated a moment. There were only three left. One rounded the corner, and he threw the knife right into its head, catching it in its eye. It stumbled, hesitating, before turning confusedly into the wall and walking away, wandering blindly, its hands outstretched.

I reloaded my gun and held it out to him. He took it, avoiding my eyes. We retreated another ten feet and sat, watching. The other two rounded the corner, and were turned into instant meat.

He didn't talk to me the rest of the night.

That night, Keno slept while I was on watch. I sat in the dark, scanning the horizon through green binocs. I don't know how it happened; I feel no responsibility, I place the blame outside of myself. If these trenches weren't here, if none of this existed.. it wouldn't have happened.

But it did.

I must have been thinking of the book, lulled into the pattern of my own thoughts. I must have drifted off into sleep, for I remembered a strange dream.

The old woman was coming towards me on the donkey. I recognized her, though I also knew I had never seen her before. the donkey was dead, I could see, but it also carried her well. And when she came up close to me, she looked at me, as she had before.

The desert was still, and there was no sign of the breezes. only the hot sun washed us, and seemed to cause the stillness.

Her eyes glanced at me, into me. They were the eyes of everyone I had ever met, and I saw also my own eyes in there, gazing back at me.

She opened her mouth, an old, withered toothless hole of blackness. It was filled with black dust, dust which sucked light into it. And though no wind or breath or sound issued from it, I could feel the pull, the tug of its power. It sucked at the edges of my body, and I felt myself disintegrating from the edges. My clothes shredded and took with them my skin, and the muscles separated from each other, following. My body crumbled, and I was

rolled into a small comforting ball. I felt myself enter the blackness and diffusion, and I found a home there.

Then she started snorting, and I couldn't figure out why. the breeze returned, trying to force me out of my home. I resisted, but they were too strong. I cried out, I wanted it to stop, I wanted to stay there, but I could not.

I was suddenly back in my body, leaning against the cool trench wall. Keno was making a strange noise in the dark. I turned my flash on, and gagged. A wolf-thing was bent over him, chewing on his throat. It was completely ripped open, blood flowing everywhere, and there was still breath coming from his lungs. His hands struggled feebly against the huge furry thing, but it did not even feel the blows.

Its face turned into the light, and I saw the huge canines, glistening with blood, its nose, eyes and mouth spattered with flesh and red. It bared its lips, grinning at me, but its eyes... they were small, cold and hard, glowing yellow and red. There was nothing behind them except cold hard steel.

I stuttered, trying to call out, but the words halted in my throat. I felt behind me for my gun, and fell backward, away from the scene before me. The gun was heavy, but I lifted it up, forced the bile down in my throat, choked back the sobs. I shot at it once, twice, missed both times. It turned away from Keno, crouched down, and leapt.

I aimed straight at its approaching form and pulled the trigger. I shot all the rounds, I just kept shooting. It was torn apart in the air, but its momentum caught me full in the chest, knocking me down. I felt my arm buckle under its weight, I heard the snap.

I lay under it, not moving, feeling the warm sticky blood flow over me, smelling the strong musky scent of the beast. It did not breathe.

I must have lain there for hours.

I woke in a bed, whiteness all around. Rex stood around, watching the medic-bots perform their function. My arm was bandaged, unmovable.

I don't remember much else aside from the hourly injections which brought sleep.

In two weeks or so, I was given back my gun and uniform. Sent back out into the trench. I had a new partner, Johnny b., but we never talked.

One morning, I awoke to the sun on my face. Johnny b. was still asleep, curled into a protective ball.

I peered over the edge of the trench, straight into the blinding ball of sun.

I took a step up out of the trenches. It was a strange feeling. somewhat like what I imagined dying to be. Layers of oldness shed from my shoulders, dropped back into the graves of the trenches, falling behind me, out of my sight, out of memory.

Elation pulsed through my blood. The wind seemed musical, brushing over and through the loose clothing.

I took a step forward, and another. And every step, I felt, I was writing my own path. I had a plot, a purpose, and I could see ahead a network of trails, leading through and around the piles of dead, the soldiers and paatchen entwined in the brotherhood of decay.

I thought I heard a voice, and turned my head in that direction. Off to the north, away from the trenches. In the direction of the paatchen camps.

I smiled to myself. It had seemed as if I had heard a cool inviting whisper on the dry desert breezes.

I had heard it, and I had recognized it.