CHAPTER TWO
I navigated the streets at random, but I never really did feel lost. Although we were physically separated, we were all still connected on many levels, and I was still picking up some random thoughts from the others.
It might have been Eddie's sense of direction I was getting, or maybe just the others basic knowledge of the town, but I actually felt a practiced rhythm in my pace and walk. I found my way to downtown, and I realized that it was like Christmas with unlimited money. Since society as we knew it had collapsed, at least for the time, I decided that it was okay to just walk into the stores and take whatever I wanted.
I looked down Main Street for a long time, just standing in the middle of the road, the yellow line drawn between my feet. Far down, where the shops were just ending, I could see someone lying on the street. I walked out to the person, and marked it for what it was: a dead body. It was not any of the Losers, and I did not know who this was.
Her hair was thrown across her face, and her shirt, although mostly intact, was covered in blood, and it had spread on the ground, also staining her shorts, arms, and legs. Flies buzzed, busily feeding off of her flesh and blood. There was a horrible smell, and I fought the urge to puke.
(Andrea Fisher)
I had picked up a name, but it still didn't mean anything to me. And that's why it meant so much to me.
I was suddenly struck, for the umpteenth time, just how distant I was from them. They had probably all gone to school with
(Andrea)
this girl, and they might have known her, maybe been assigned to work with her or to share a book with her. I had never known her and I never would. It was just one more way that I could never be like them.
I did not see any more bodies, but every time I stepped outside of a shop, she was there, drawing my eyes to her and only her, and I would feel worse and worse each time.
By the time I stepped out of the jewelry store, wearing a lot more gold and silver jewelry then I could ever be able to afford (and most of which I would casually discard upon walking outside), I felt simply awful. My eyes returned, seemingly on their own accord, to the body of the girl I had never known.
A slow tear rolled down my cheek as I realized that I could never be like them.
Maybe this was the same self-deceptive depression that I had felt earlier, but my common sense was buried beneath a strong self-pity that made me furious.
I realized with a start that whatever connection I had with the others had been neatly severed. I could no longer feel any of their presence in my mind. I was, for the first time in a long time, completely alone.
I glanced nervously towards the sun, and marked the time to be around 2:00. I still had a few hours to try and find my way back on my own, or to re-establish a connection with them. But I felt disoriented now, and every time I tried to think, my eyes wandered back to Andrea's dead body.
I stood, swaying slightly with the sun beating down on me for God knows how long before Stan finally wandered along. I looked up and tried to shout out to him, but my voice locked down. I tried to send him a thought, but that, too, seemed to be locked, even more completely then my voice. My knees collapsed out from under me, and I guess he heard my landing on the concrete, because I saw him come running over, shouting something, before I passed out.
