Grants Pass Read Online Free

against death.
Letters embroidered on his breast spelled his name: Brown. Their eyes were all
gone, ragged crimson holes left in their place.
    It hit me like a soft blow to the
midsection, standing there looking down at the Browns. This was it. The world
was at an end, and I was left, somehow immune to the plagues. And except for
the bird still staring at me, I was alone.
    I lay down on the grass next to Mrs.
Brown, curled an arm around her waist. Her flesh was hard beneath my touch, feeling
more like stone than muscle and skin. I closed my eyes. Prayed the lord my soul
to take.
    When I woke again, the air was
cooler, the sun a dim orange eye sinking beneath the buildings. The bird was
still there, watching. But now it had been joined by three others, all arrayed
in a neat line along the ridge, all gazing down on me. Were they ravens? Crows?
I didn’t recall ever seeing anything but the ubiquitous pigeons in the park
before. The pigeons were all gone, leaving only these black birds. The lines
from Poe’s poem rolled through my head, and I knew. They were ravens.
    A series of shots echoed across the
park, unnaturally loud in the stillness. I scrambled to my feet and was running
towards the sound when another volley of shots sounded. I didn’t care if it was
a madman. It was someone alive.
    I found him near the edge of the
park, blood still pumping in arcs from the hideous wound that had consumed most
of his face. Surrounding him were at least a dozen ravens, all dead. The
closest was still bleeding, its thick blood blending with that of its murderer.
    As I watched, a group of ravens
spiraled down from the sky to form a circle around the fallen birds. As one,
they began to vocalize, the noises coming from their throats rising and falling
like song. Were they mourning?
    “ A group of
them is called an unkindness,” a voice said from behind me.
    I whirled around, blood hammering in
my ears. Sitting on a park bench was a man who appeared kin to the mourning
birds. His hair was long, as black and glossy as their feathers. He had skin
paler than anyone I had ever seen, tracings of blue veins mapping his life. His
eyes were fixed on me as intently as the raven’s had been, a deep sapphire; the
color of the sky at dusk.
    He lifted himself off the bench with
a dangerous, feral grace, his steps eating up the distance between us with
disconcerting rapidity. He was wearing brand new combat boots and a pair of
black jeans slung low on his slim hips. His chest was bare but for a tattoo,
its ink faded, obscuring what it had originally been.
    “ He was
going around shooting the ravens,” he said, gesturing to the corpse in the
middle of the circle of mourning birds. “He must have reached his target or
something, because he turned his gun on himself.” He slipped through the ravens,
who shifted slightly to allow him passage, though they didn’t break their song.
He knelt down and began to pry the gun from the dead man’s fingers.
    “ You can’t
do that!” I protested.
    He worked the gun free and wiped it
on the man’s shirt, tucking it into his waistband before pillaging the corpse’s
pockets for ammunition. “Why not? He doesn’t need it anymore.” He slipped back
through the circle of ravens again. “There’s no law that says only the good
guys survived.”
    I found that I couldn’t look away
from the gun, this murder pressed against his pale flesh. “Have you seen anyone
else alive?” I asked.
    He shrugged, muscles sliding
smoothly under his skin. “There was a baby in the building I was in, crying.
But the door to the apartment was locked and reinforced, and I couldn’t break
in.” He was quiet for a moment, rubbing his fingers against the stubble on his
chin. “There must be others, but I haven’t seen them.”
    His accent was strange to my ears.
“Where are you from?”
    His lips curved in a half-smile.
“That obvious, is it?” He laughed. It was a harsh noise when juxtaposed against
the song of the