The Sleeping Dead by Richard Farren Barber Page A

through the front of Café Reynauld had subtly altered. It was gray. It seemed to lay a thin blanket of dust on every surface it touched.
    To die , Jackson thought, idly tapping his teeth with the tips of his fingers. Would it be so terrible to die? He felt Susan’s arm pressing against his and realized they had both been quiet for what must have been five minutes now. Staring out of the café windows and wrapped in their own thoughts. He would have given everything at that moment, everything —even getting Donna back—just to know what Susan was thinking. But he was too afraid to ask.
    If he could just lie down where he was sitting and never wake up again, he would do it. If dying was that easy, he would embrace it. The realization felt like a revelation. Life changing. Life ending.
    He breathed out.
    And breathed in.
    And breathed out.
    And breathed in.
    Each time now it was a conscious decision. Each time he felt he had the option to simply stop. Jackson knew it wasn’t as easy as that, he knew that on one level his body would conspire against him and even if he could hold his breath long enough, if he could override the natural urge to keep on breathing, at some point he would slip into unconsciousness and then his body would simply pick up again and drag him back into life.
    “Do you want to die?”
    He didn’t know who asked the question—whether it was his or Susan’s. He listened, waiting for a response, curious what the answer would be, who it would come from.
    Was this what it felt like to take drugs? Everything felt disassociated; happening to someone else. There was no euphoria. No bliss. No ecstasy. There was just… this , a drab sense of nothingness. A sense that the party was over and everyone else had already left.
    “I don’t think so.”
    The voice came from his right. He took the words one by one and pinned them together like a small child building a Lego tower, and when it was constructed, he nodded to himself as if this feat was worthy of praise.
    “Why?”
    A long pause, long enough for Jackson to think that Susan wasn’t interested in replying.
    “Because,” Susan said.
    Jackson waited for more, afraid that there would be no more, that this was the extent of her explanation.
    “Because I’m not ready to give up yet.”
    He looked at her. She glanced back.
    It would have to be enough. For now. For him. They would continue because Susan wasn’t ready to give up.

 
     
     
    16
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    After walking for ten minutes, they fell into silence. Jackson stole brief glances across at Susan. Her features were set in the same granite expression she had carried since they left the café.
    They headed out of town. Walking in the center of the road; winding between abandoned cars with their doors wide open.
    “Where is everyone?” Susan asked.
    Jackson couldn’t answer. None of it made any sense. Up ahead he saw another one of them —Susan had started calling them the sleeping dead. An old man slouched back against the side of a house, eyes closed, hands clasped tightly together in prayer. Just like the others, there was no sign of what had killed him. It looked as if he had simply decided to give up.
    There was something about the sleeping dead that Jackson found more disconcerting than the suicides. At least he could understand the suicides. He knew what it felt like to need to destroy himself—the gray patches when the voices swarmed over his thoughts. But the sleeping dead added another layer of mystery.
    He tried to turn Susan away from the old man but she had already seen him. They were only twenty paces away from him now.
    Jackson stared at the man as they drew level with him. He tried not to. He stared into the distance where the traffic lights bravely flashed from red to amber and onto green, and then back again, directing a nonexistent flow of traffic. He focused on the sequence as if it were completely alien to him. He watched the lights. And then he found himself