The Lonely Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

worried.
    Retrieving his light source felt like a step in the right direction. It seemed he'd fallen into a wide rocky gully, designed to hold a decent spring-thaw stream but now home to a thin trickle which he could hear from ten feet away. Otherwise it was quiet. Very quiet, and very cold.
    He decided he'd gone far enough. Tonight would do. There didn't have to be a tomorrow after all. School was out a little early, that was all.
    He pushed himself backwards until his back was against rock. Then pulled the rucksack up between his knees and opened it. One of the remaining bottles had smashed — the bottom of the bag was soaking and sharp and the smell smoked up around his face. Shining the light, he saw there was no way he could just shove his hand in so he upended most of the bag out onto the ground instead. It took a while, but he found the packs of sleeping pills.
    As he laboriously pushed each pill out of its individual foil pimple, laying them in a pile on a useful nearby leaf, he swam through an internal checklist.
    Lost, check. Drunk, check. Christ yes. Great big check, in red.
    He'd paid his motel bill, mentioning in passing that he was heading back up to Seattle. Check.
    Anyone out hiking when it was this cold would have to be out of their fucking mind, and it was mid-week, out of season, and he'd headed away from known trails. Check.
    Push, another pill. Push, another pill. He peered at the pile. Was that enough? Better make sure. He kept pushing. An overdose wasn't weak if done the way he was doing it. It was manly. And being way out in the middle of nowhere meant he would never be found, even if it went wrong. He was the man in control.
    Oh yeah.
    The car would be spotted tomorrow, perhaps, and in a day or two someone would investigate. Not on foot but from the air, most likely, a desultory grid pass at best. On his last day in Sheffer Tom had bought clothes and back-pack in autumnal colours, to make it even less likely that some passing plane or helicopter would be able to spot him. If he'd shelled out for some proper hiking boots too then his ankle wouldn't hurt so much, but it hadn't seemed worth it. Just went to show. Always get the proper equipment.
    Anyway, a check in general. Checkety check.
    As the pile of pills grew, he was surprised to find that he didn't feel afraid. He'd thought he might, that the proximity of the act itself might make him panic, that he would fight death as she had. He found he merely felt very, very tired. Somewhere in the journey from the car to this random gully he'd lost any remaining sense of his life as a process. It had become simply an event; this event, in this place, now. It was dark, and getting late. It was for the best. It was okay.
    He was already very cold, his fingers thin and unmanageable. He started taking the pills, a couple at a time, washed down with more alcohol. He fumbled a few, but there were plenty. He took a lot, muttering in the dark. Bye bye Sarah, go find someone else. Bye bye William, bye bye Lucy. You'll hate me for this, I know, but you would have come to hate me soon enough.
    At some point he seemed to accept he was into the realms of fatal dose, after which it all became more relaxed. Everything seemed easy, in fact. The forest got a little warmer too, though it was possible he just wasn't feeling his extremities any more. Everything went fuzzy and liquid as he sat and swayed in perfect darkness. He was cold and not cold, bone weary and awake. Fear circled in the bushes but stayed just out of reach, until he was barely aware of anything and didn't bother to keep putting things in his mouth. He sobbed briefly, then couldn't remember what he'd been thinking about. Trying to follow thoughts was like walking alone down a deserted street where the stores were closing one by one.
    When his eyelids began to flutter he tried to keep them open, not with any sense of desperation, but as a child might push away the sleep he knew could not be fought. When they