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prodding me to “talk things out.” She just treated me like she treated everyone else.
    When I completed my sentence, a week of hard labor digging up garden plots, and confinement when not working, Liz asked me to help her organize and catalog the many books she was collecting. The knowledge of how to build and repair things, treat injuries, and grow and store food, for example, had to be preserved if we hoped to survive. Her thoughtful gesture made more of a difference than anything else. For the first time, I felt useful, and gained some hope I might find a place in this new world.
    Her only condition was I stop drinking. That was hard at first, but got easier with each passing day. The lure of finding myself once again surrounded by books, engaged in the meticulous but satisfying process of sorting and cataloging them, was a small taste of familiarity and comfort I wanted badly enough to fight my cravings and try to push away my apathy.
    A lot of new people started arriving as word spread of a sheltered community with a cooperative—rather than murderous—lifestyle. Sometimes it was a caravan with a few dozen people, and other times small groups of survivors arriving on foot.
    One day, I was taking a basket of food to the people guarding the southeast portion of the wall. I’d just delivered their meal and was trying to form intelligent replies to the casual chit-chat of the crew, when I noticed a group of six men crossing the cleared area outside the wall. One of the guards raised a hand, and the man nearest the wall raised his in reply and then motioned for the rest of the group to proceed toward the Compound. They had almost made it to the gates when a dozen zombies appeared from behind a cluster of shipping containers the builders were preparing to incorporate into the wall and cut them off. I was retrieving my empty basket from Joseph, a slight man who was an expert shot with a bow and arrow, when the men shouted and broke into a run. As they neared the wall, what I saw terrified me.
    No, it wasn’t the ragged, mutilated zombies that sent flaming daggers of fear into my gut. It was the man.
    He was about twenty yards outside the gate when I saw him. He looked exactly like I’d have expected Mason to look, if I’d only heard about the sadistic, sanity-breaking things he’d done, rather than experiencing them up close and personal.
    The late afternoon sun was quite warm, and they must have been pushing themselves to get here before nightfall, because he and a few of the other newcomers had their shirts off, folded and tucked into the waistbands of their pants. Perspiration plastered his thick, dark hair to his neck and the sides of his face. He got closer to the gate, and when he whirled, swinging a machete at one of the zombies, I saw a gruesome tattoo covering most of his broad back, some sort of winged demon which appeared to be ripping its way out of his spine. I thought he must surely be a demon himself.
    The zombies were quickly dispatched by Joseph’s arrows from behind the wall, and the deadly swipes of the demon’s blade, and the gate swung open enough to let the exhausted men inside. I stood, my back to the small gap in the wall from which I’d watched the battle, unable to stop staring at what I was sure was the physical embodiment of evil.
    As they passed, the man looked right at me. I started to close my eyes, but he gave a hoarse shout and lunged at me, drawing his machete back to strike. I screamed and ducked my head, only to stumble and fall. When I looked up, there was a decapitated zombie lying just feet away. It must have been in close to the wall during the fight, and slipped through the gap when we’d turned our attention to the new arrivals inside the perimeter.
    Mr. Evil had saved my life .

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    The community population had grown to a level I thought would make it possible to avoid him. When this proved incorrect, I became convinced he