Far off, on a cliff that overlooked the camp, Cleese watched the compound come to life. He stood quietly and thought about how Wolf had a good thing going here. He was a good man and a competent leader and Cleese hoped that some of them would survive if and when this all got sorted out.

No sense in me f.u.c.king that up for him any further.

It was better for everyone involved if he just climbed back under the rock where they'd found him. Maybe someday he'd be able to sort out what the f.u.c.k happened here... but that day was not today.

Luckily, no one had seen him in the early morning hours as he helped himself to some ammo and the newly oiled SIG which laid tucked under his arm. As most of them were sleeping, he'd loaded a backpack with food and a few bottles of water and headed out. He figured now that he was properly armed and had a few provisions, he'd slip past the sentries and break out on his own. After that, he'd go someplace and figure out what he was going to do next.

He might even do the unexpected and head back into the city.

Standing up, he hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and hugged the SIG tight to his chest. Above his head, far off in the trees, he heard a red-tailed hawk cry out. Its tone was mournful and lonely. Deep down, Cleese felt he could relate.

With a last look back to Wolf's encampment, he walked off into the silent forest.

Friday Follies After having searched the compound for what seemed like several hours-checking the Cafeteria, the Video Library, the Cribs, and the Training Hall-Cleese finally got the bright idea to look for Monk over at Weaver's. He recalled how, on any given Friday night, the two men had a standard appointment and could be found at the same place every week (up on the roof) doing the same thing (getting drunk as skunks and howling at the moon). As he walked across the field, the evening dew soaking the bottom of his pant's leg, it would have been d.a.m.n near impossible not to notice them. Above the sound of the crickets and the soft breeze blowing, two painfully out of tune voices could be heard limping their way through what might have once been a song. It was pretty obvious that whoever it was couldn't have carried a tune in a Beacon's truck and didn't have the rhythm to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e.

Cleese immediately recognized the unfortunate thing being slaughtered as an old cowboy song. The voices rose to a crescendo and cracked like ice. One voice abruptly fell silent, audibly cut-off by the flow of liquid across its owner's palate. The other continued, its volume increased; emboldened more by the alcohol than by anything resembling talent.

"Yeeee-haaaaw!"

Monk.

Cleese found a rickety ladder propped up against the far side of the building. Silently, he climbed up and onto the roof. Once he'd negotiated the retaining wall that circled the top of the building and regained a stable footing, he simply followed his nose. The smell of scotch and cigars was unmistakable beneath the night's melancholic sky. From the sound of their drunken revelry, the party had been going on for a while. Monk was going to no doubt look and feel like s.h.i.t when he woke up in the morning. It was also pretty much a given that he was gonna miss the early morning practice.

"Gentlemen..." Cleese said from the darkness.

"Who dat?" Weaver said and attempted to climb to his feet. He made it halfway there but then teetered and fell back onto his a.s.s. Monk barked out a hearty guffaw, spraying a mouthful of liquor into the air in an alcoholic mist.

Cleese stepped leisurely out into the silvery moonlight; his legs drifting first into view like he'd materialized from behind a drape. The inky black shadows pulled back, casting his features in a soft, bluish tint.

"Ah, the prodigal son..." Monk said raising his bottle, "returned to claim his due."

"You two sound like you're having fun," Cleese said.

"We are. Ain't we, Weaver?"

Weaver lay flat on his back, like a tortoise, his arms and legs splayed akimbo.

"Weaver...?"

Monk looked over at the fallen man. A look of contempt spread over his face like peanut b.u.t.ter across a communion wafer.

Weaver made a deep snoring sound as a snail trail of saliva soaked into his beard.

"I think he's a casualty," said Cleese.

"Worthless b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Monk snorted.

"Mind if I sit down?"

"No... Of course..." Monk scooted over a bit to make room, a wholly unnecessary movement since the entire roof of the building spread out around them. He kicked at Weaver's legs, again calling him a worthless b.a.s.t.a.r.d under his breath.

Cleese sat and leaned his back against the retaining wall. As he plunked down, Monk handed him the bottle from which they were drinking. Cleese downed a good couple of fingers in one uninterrupted pull.

"Now that's a man drinking right there," shouted Monk, laughing and clapping his hands delightedly.

"I've had a fair amount of experience at this," said Cleese, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth and smiling, his eyes momentarily drifting off to another time and place. "Don't try this at home, kids. I'm something of a professional."

The older man sniffed another laugh and the two of them sat quietly for a moment, each absorbing himself in the night's idyllic calm.

"You guys been here long?" Cleese asked rhetorically.

"Long enough," Monk said sounding almost sad.

"Hmmm," was all Cleese could muster.

"Cleese," Monk asked after a moment, "lemme ask you something..."

"Sure. No sense in me being shy now."

"How the h.e.l.l did a guy like you end up here? I mean, you seem smart..."

"Looks can be deceiving."

"No, really..."

Cleese pondered his answer for a long time before he spoke.

"s.h.i.t, Monk... It wasn't like I had much of a f.u.c.kin' choice. Back in The World, there were some bad people looking for me and if they found me it was going to get pretty ugly. That and Masterson made it pretty clear that if I didn't get into that chopper, my life was going to get even more... uh... complicated."

"He does have his way."

"Besides," he continued, settling in and making himself comfortable, "I'm a man pretty much all out of options. I've been poor as dirt for most of my life and the only thing I've ever been good at was hurtin' people and crackin' wise. Add to that the fact that I get lippy when I drink and you get something that's pretty limiting in the job market."

"'Wanted: drunken a.s.shole. Must be good at talking s.h.i.t and f.u.c.kin' s.h.i.t up," Monk said chuckling. "Yeah, there's not a lot of call for that."

Cleese nodded and continued, "If the truth were to be told, my life has always been a bit of a steaming pile and it was never going nowhere good. And then," he paused, grinning, "and then, Masterson showed up on my doorstep with a card and some candy and he brought me to this sunny little corner of Adventure Island."

He waved his hand, the motion encompa.s.sing the entire compound.

"This... Well, this just seems to satisfy both my unique skill set and my inherent need to be loved."

Both men laughed out loud.

"Here, I do something I'm sorta good at," Cleese continued, "and I potentially stand to make a grip of cash."

Monk nodded slowly in the darkness as if he could somehow relate. Yeah, the money was there, but then again, so was Death. Before Monk could consider the concept further, Cleese let his train of thought go on along its track.

"Now, don't get me wrong. I don't plan on growing old doing this s.h.i.t... least not as old as you!"

"Heeey, f.u.c.k you!"

"I'll make my scratch," he continued, grinning, "and when they try to f.u.c.k me-and don't think I don't know that they'll try and f.u.c.k me-I vaporize, like Casper the Unfriendly Ghost."

He paused for a second and looked toward the spot in the dark where Monk sat.

"And besides, where else but here could I meet a caliber of people such as yourself? I mean, G.o.d knows where I'd have to go to find men of such high moral fiber."

"You could try a prison," said Monk and he laughed.

Cleese smiled silently and for a moment both men sat quietly again, basking in the still of the night. Far off, an owl hooted and a sudden rustling of wings was heard. A second later, a rabbit's cry broke the silence and was abruptly cut off. It sounded a lot like a woman screaming.

"You ever think about buying it, Cleese?" Monk said with a yawn. "You know, about dying?"

"I try not to dwell on it, Pal," Cleese laughed as he spoke. Absentmindedly, he swirled the remaining liquor in the bottle in his hand. A small whirlpool was created in deep brown liquid which dissipated when he stopped. A lone bubble rose to the top and then burst.

"No, really. Quit bulls.h.i.tting around and answer the f.u.c.king question."

"No, I find it hard enough to keep my mind focused on just what's in front of my nose. I leave the afterlife to the greater minds."

"I do. Well, I have been... lately."

Cleese eyed him and raised an eyebrow.

"Oh?"

"Thinking about it, I mean. I sometimes wonder what lies beyond all of this. I used to think it was s.h.i.t like Heaven or h.e.l.l, but now, what with The Dead getting up and walking around and eatin' motherf.u.c.kers... It all just kinda puts a weird spin on the ball."

"What d'ya mean?"

"Well, before all of this s.h.i.t went down, someone just died and, if you were a religious man, you accepted the fact that he went before Saint Peter at his Pearly Gates. You were judged and spent the rest of eternity either palling around with G.o.d or having hot pokers shoved up your a.s.s by Old Scratch. It was just what we were told back when we were all in Sunday School and our heads were still soft. Only now... we've found out that dead isn't always dead and sometimes G.o.d makes other plans."

"Do you believe in that-G.o.d, Heaven, the s.h.i.t those guys in the polyester suits tell you every Sunday on television?"

"h.e.l.l, I don't know... I will say this though... Over the years, there have been times when I did believe, believed with all of my heart. But then... then this s.h.i.t happened. And there are times now when I look into the eyes of one of these dead f.u.c.kers and I wonder..."

"About?"

"About what they are. What they see. What they feel. If they think."

Cleese nodded, but remained silent.

"Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be one of them, how terrible it must be. To lose everything you are and only be left with that hunger, that f.u.c.king need. I wonder how I'd feel. I... I can't imagine it. I won't let myself. All I know is that I wouldn't want to ever become something like... that." He looked at Cleese and then looked away. "And then I think that if there is a G.o.d that he must be a real son of a b.i.t.c.h to let this all happen. How much must He hate us? How much must we have let Him down?"

"Well, lookit you... The Deep Thinker."

"f.u.c.k you! I'm being serious."

"Look," Cleese said, "I don't know s.h.i.t about religion or Saint Peter or any of that stuff. I mean, I've seen a couple of Cecil B. DeMille films, but I ain't no scholar. I just always thought that anytime someone says that he knows what G.o.d or whoever is thinking, then odds are that man is full of s.h.i.t. Personally, I think it all falls together like this: Truth or G.o.d or The Big Stuffed Panda whoever or whatever it is that you think is running this dog and pony show has a lesson that he wants us all to learn before we die. He's taken all that you need to learn that lesson and broken it apart, like a jigsaw puzzle, and spread them out across different schools of thought. Science has a piece. Religion has a few. Fable, literature, philosophy... They all got a bit. Sometimes, a piece can be found in a holy place or even in a dirty joke. We may be stumbling on one of them right now with this conversation."

Monk nodded while Cleese took a second and re-wet his palate.

"h.e.l.l, you never know where you're going find one of them puzzle pieces."

"I think I found one up a wh.o.r.e's cooter once," Monk said with a wry grin.

"Yeah, and how is your mom?"

Monk thrust his middle finger into the air.

"Anyway, our job, the way I see it, is to listen carefully to what everyone has to say-The Jews, The Hindis, The Christians, The Muslims, the scientists, the philosophers, the writers-and find those pieces that help us define our puzzle. When we think we've found them all, or as many as we can, then it's our job to put them all together and try to figure out what exactly we're supposed to know. I'll tell you one thing... It's not going to church every Sunday and sitting quietly with our mouths open-like baby birds-waiting for someone else to regurgitate up the answer to all of our prayers. In the end, you die and you move on... to whatever. h.e.l.l, who knows? Maybe, you get judged as to whether or not you squandered this life, this gift that was given to you."

Monk sat quietly and stared off into s.p.a.ce.

"I don't know," Cleese sighed. "This whole zombie thing... I kind of agree with Chikara and her Budo Warriors. It's a test-a challenge, a wrinkle in the fabric, a monkey in the works-that we all gotta rise up to confront and to defeat or be crushed under its wheels. I believe that it's only through challenge and hardship that we can forge our souls into something more than what we are now. Adversity does indeed temper the spirit."

"Wow..." Monk said quietly, "now look who's the Deep f.u.c.kin' Thinker."

"Well, you asked," Cleese said with a resigned shrug.

"No... no. I'm impressed. Who knew that kinda thinkin' was goin' on in that lump of s.h.i.t housed in your skull?"

"Yeah, well again, f.u.c.k you." Cleese paused for a moment and then looked up. He raised the bottle in a silent toast and took another drink. "How about you? How'd you end up in this little corner of Paradise?'

"Me?" Monk smiled in the dark. "Well, I'll tell ya... After being a Merchant Marine for more than my share of years, I ended up working as a longsh.o.r.eman on some docks in Anacortes, Washington. I was offloading cargo and doing some repair on ships that sailed down the Strait of Juan de Fuca from the Pacific Ocean. It was grunt work mostly, but like you, I'd sorta run out of options and decided to spend some time up in the Pacific Northwest; getting rained on mostly."

Again, he looked off into the distance and breathed in deeply.

"Anyway, I was working on the docks during days and picking up overnight watchman shifts for BP at their Cherry Point Refinery every now and then. So, one night, I'm at the refinery and an alarm goes off. Work shuts down immediately so they can investigate. Long story short, it turns out that all h.e.l.l's broken loose back in the world and that h.e.l.l had come calling at the front gate. Soon, it was every man for himself."

"There was a lot of that going on..." Cleese said quietly to the wind.

"Yeah, no s.h.i.t. Anyway, I say 'f.u.c.k it!' and hop in my ride and hightail it the f.u.c.k outta there. I head back to where I was staying and did my best, trying to lock it all up tight. I did ok considering I ain't much of a carpenter. Later that night, I'm laying in the dark and hearing almost continuous gunshots and screaming. Now, I'm no dummy-despite what you've heard to the contrary from the idiots here-and I knew, from what I'd seen for myself firsthand and from what was coming through on the television, that every one of those gunshots and every one of those screams had a story behind them. And none of those stories was having a happy f.u.c.kin' ending."

"Yeah, no s.h.i.t."

"So, I did what a lot of people should have done and that was grab what I could in the way of supplies and head for the G.o.dd.a.m.n hills. That part of the country, it's pretty easy to do that."

Cleese nodded and rubbed at his eyes. Monk had, up until now, been pretty tight-lipped regarding his past. He was not going to ruin this opportunity to learn a little something about him by interrupting him now that he was on a roll.

"I manage to find this empty cabin up near the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The place was this nice "A" frame timeshare or some s.h.i.t; loaded to the gills with food, water, and was as remote as h.e.l.l. I didn't encounter too much in the way of UDs up there, but believe it or not, I had my share. I ended up staying there until I finally ran out of food."

Monk paused and seemed lost in the memory.

"Y'know... I could have lived like that forever. Isolated. n.o.body to give me s.h.i.t. h.e.l.l, man, it was as near to f.u.c.kin' bliss as I've ever experienced."

Cleese smiled again, knowing the place where that feeling from came all too well.