Read Pilliars in the Fall for Free Online Page B

left.
    Maybe this was a psychological condition that people went through when the shock of reality had finally crept up on them. Maybe it happened when they just hit their limit and were overwhelmed by the circumstances. Or maybe it was a state they fell into after suffering some trauma. Maybe it was simply what happened to people after giving up the begging and scrounging altogether. Whatever it was, they were just plain out of it. They were clueless, witless, emotionally devoid and completely detached people that that stood staring. They were blank, done with living.
    In parking lots they didn’t look to see if a vehicle was coming. They would just amble in front of you and never realize you were there. They would mindlessly walk down the center of the road, regardless of the sporadic traffic of the few remaining people who had or could afford gasoline. The zombies were heedless of their own self preservation. Every once in a while you would see one stop to look at nothing for a while with their unseeing eyes. Maybe flashing back to better times that happened at that specific place, but it was now only a distant memory for them that didn’t even make them smile. They never noticed the streets they blocked, or the hazards they created; the zombies didn’t have a clue that there was anyone even in the neighborhood, themselves included.
    I wondered when it was that the condition set in, thinking how scary it was if those same people were driving around in cars and trucks in that same stunned mental state. Maybe it was a blessing and a curse when most people’s cars finally ran out of gas. It made us watch real close for people who cruised through the intersections as we made our way out of town.
    Our world now was like a ramped up and modern version of the Great Depression. In the “good” parts of town I almost expected there to be bare fist boxers along with small time swindlers, gangsters, exotic dancers and bootleggers all mixed together with our current crop of people just trying to get by. It still hadn’t happened yet though.
    Clint was his usually quiet self on the drive back to their home. While I wasn’t exactly a chatterbox normally either, my silence was a little more noticeable and seemed out of place. I dwelled on it for just long enough to know that things were bad for everyone and there was nothing I could do about it, and then I started to integrate myself back into the conversation.
    Blake and Danielle were telling us about the out-processing from the Army with duplicate forms and irritating triple checks of belongings and gear that had been signed out to them years before. It was nice to hear a story about mundane problems that I had no first hand experience with and I got lost in their long answers to my few polite questions.
    It was mid afternoon when we finally pulled back into the Fenner’s driveway. The blinds in the front room were open and a wisp of smoke was trailing out of the fireplace chimney.  Kathy must have been waiting at the window because she was outside and hugging Blake and Danielle before the truck could roll to a stop. Clint and I made way for their reunion as we grabbed the bags out of the back and took them inside.
    That evening we enjoyed a nice, if somewhat meager dinner, lit by the phenomenon of real, honest to god electrical power from the utility lines, a more uncommon than common occurrence these days. After the plates were cleared, the dishes got washed quickly not knowing when we would lose the  unreliable power to heat the hot water tank or run the well pump. Afterwards, we all sat around the dinning room table sipping on hot tea, cold water, or in my case, coffee.
    I again was doing more listening than talking until Danielle asked me directly about the current events happening around us.
    “I don’t know,” I responded to her thoughts on the way things were going. I wasn’t just blowing her off, I really didn’t have an answer and there must have been a cue in