After the Apocalypse Read Online Free

apartment building. Something about this place made him feel vulnerable.
    Eventually he rummaged through the apartment. The bedside table held neither handgun nor D batteries, two things high on his scavenger list. He went back down the dark stairwell and stopped well back from the doorway. Out in the middle of the street, in front of the building to his left but visible from where he stood, was an offering. A box with a bottle of whiskey set on it. Like some kind of perverse lemonade stand.
    Fucking dickweed.
    If the guy had found a handgun, he could be waiting in ambush. Cahill figured there was a good chance he could outlast the guy, but he hated waiting in the stairwell. There were no apartments on the first level, just a hallway between two storefronts. Cahill headed back upstairs. The apartment he’d been in before didn’t look out the front of the building. The one that did was locked.
    Fuck.
    Breaking open the lock would undoubtedly make a hell of a lot of racket. He went back to the first apartment, checked one more time for the zombie, and peed in the empty toilet. He grabbed a pillow from the bed.
    Cahill went back downstairs and sat down on the bottom step and wedged the pillow in behind his back. He set up his bottle and his lighter beside him on the step, and his pipe on the other side, and settled in to watch. He could at least wait until dark, although it wasn’t even mid-morning yet. After a while he ate his soup—the can opener sounded louder than it probably was.
    It was warm midday and Cahill was drowsy warm when the guy finally, nervously, walked out to the box and picked up the whiskey. Cahill sat still in the shadow of the stairwell with his hand on his pipe. As best as he could tell, he was unnoticed. The guy was a tall, skinny black man wearing a brown Cleveland football jersey and a pair of expensive looking, olive-green suit pants. Cahill looked out and watched the guy walk back up the street. After a minute, Cahill followed.
    When Cahill got out to the main drag, the guy was walking up Superior toward the center of downtown. Cahill took a firm hold of his pipe.
    “Hey,” he said. His voice carried well in the silence.
    The guy started and whirled around.
    “What the fuck you want?” Cahill asked.
    “Bro,” the man said. “Hey, were you hiding back there?” He laughed nervously and held up the bottle. “Peace offering, bro. Just looking to make some peace.”
    “What do you want?” Cahill asked.
    “Just, you know, wanna talk. Talk to someone who knows the ropes, you know? I just got here and I don’t know what the fuck is going on, bro.”
    “This is a fucking penal colony,” Cahill said.
    “Yeah,” the guy laughed. “A fucking zombie preserve. I been watching out for them zombies. You look like you been here awhile.”
    Cahill hadn’t bothered to shave, and last time he’d glanced in a mirror he’d looked like Charles Manson, only taller. “Lie down with your hands away from your body,” Cahill said.
    The black guy squinted at Cahill. “You shittin’ me.”
    “How do I know you don’t have a gun?” Cahill asked.
    “Bro, I don’t got no gun. I don’t got nothin’ but what you see.”
    Cahill waited.
    “Listen, I’m just trying to be friendly,” the guy said. “I swear to God, I don’t have anything. How do I know you’re not going to do something to me? You’re a freaky dude—you know that?”
    The guy talked for about five minutes, finally talking himself into lying down on his stomach with his arms out. Cahill moved fast, patting him down. The guy wasn’t lying: he didn’t have anything on him.
    “Fuck man,” the guy said. “I told you that.” Once he was sure Cahill wasn’t going to do anything to him, he talked even more. His name was LaJon Watson, and his lawyer had told him there was no way they were going to drop him in the Cleveland Zombie Preserve, because the Supreme Court was going to declare it unconstitutional. His lawyer had been saying