The Zone Read Online Free Page A

getting a shot off. Police officers often envision death, but it is the heroic sort, going out blazing away. To be maimed without even firing back is an unspoken disgrace, even though it is usually unavoidable. Cooper was taken out fast based purely on where he had been standing-his role had put him in the epicenter of the kill zone.
    His death had struck a spark of pride within me: it made me realize how close I was slipping off the cold gray edge. The shambles of my life was bad, terrible, but to let it drive me to suicide was too much. It would mean that the House killed me, and I was the last of the team still standing; if I went down, then we lost. That didn’t make sense even to me, but it was still true, down in the bone. Some things don’t have to make sense to have weight: I had to survive, because to do otherwise would let the others down. Cooper had had the advantage: he wasn’t the only survivor, but I was, and that closed the suicide option.
    So I wander around, watch documentaries, read my history books, glower at the world, and speak to no one. It is a sham of an existence, but it deprives the House of a win, and that is reason enough.
     
     
    Chapter Two
    The strangeness started for me on a Thursday; ‘strangeness’ is an unwieldy term, but it was the best choice because I wasn’t completely sure if the world was getting strange, or I was. That’s a real danger after the emotional roller-coaster I had been through and the long gray glide through life that followed: too much time alone can take small problems and make them large.
    That fact in mind had moved me to develop habits in this broken-mirror retirement of mine, and lacking any outside structure for my days I created my own, a mix of self-discipline and inclination. Although by nature a night owl I was careful to remain mostly oriented to a daytime schedule, as I suspected that operating at night might be similar to drinking heavily: a comfort at first, but doom in the long run. Habits to control my day, lists to direct them, and a journal to serve as a point of perspective were the tools I employed in my sanity program. Some days they helped.
    Being a night-owl was out, but I still didn’t get up until around eleven because I hated mornings, and slept best when in sunlight when I managed to sleep at all. One of my self-imposed rules was to use my entire place rather than just live on the surprisingly comfortable sofa in front of the TV, and so I woke up in my bedroom. My place, once my uncle’s pawn shop, was a cement-framed brick building built in 1920. According to the cornerstone with the date it had initially been a fine jewelers, and they built it like a safe, a two-story rectangle with a slightly pitched roof hidden behind brick ramparts (I’m not kidding, they even had the little notches, stylized archer fighting positions). The second story was an apartment, just a small bedroom, full bath, and kitchenette; my uncle had used it for storage, but the beer bash weekend had resulted in new insulation, new drywall, and a base coat of paint in ivory, ready to accept paneling, wallpaper, or paint. Still ready, because I had never bothered to decorate at any level; even in my bachelor days I hadn’t been one for nesting.
    My bedroom had an Army cot with a pillow and poncho liner, a beige plastic clothes hamper, a particleboard dresser from Target and a beat-up student’s desk I had brought from home and which I used to set stuff on, mostly guns. There was a window centered in the long wall; I normally liked sunlight while I slept, but I had tacked a sheet over it because the bars made it feel like jail. The window had iron bars dating from the days as a fine jewelers, good solid metal set into brickwork. The bedroom and bath were separated by a short hallway which ended in a iron ladder bolted to the bare brick wall leading to a steel hatch in the ceiling that opened to the roof; I kept a gas grill up there along with a lawn chair, the sort