I climb free and rise, slowly, my bones hurting, every muscle screaming, my skin torn and dusty.

The sky is grey.

I stagger away, feeling nothing at all. Around me the dead are walking. Their eyes are hollow and aching. Mine are probably the same.

Trudging down the road I realize that this is the tree that I used to climb. And there is the wood where I wandered once and saw that fox. Past that copse, there is a stream that we used to swim in and tickle trout; and that is where we used to hide, Tally and I, where I cut my knee when I was nine and would not stop crying.

Further on I pass by the church and its great walls, with the cross had fallen down and people around it, standing in pools of stained-glass shards. As I move nearer they cry out for me to help but then I see the old pastor’s face beneath the rubble and it is grey and very cold.

I turn away and walk until I can hear them no more.

I walk until I cannot walk, and when I am lying in the dirt I realize that I cannot die because I already have.