Disclaimer: Again, I repeat, do I look like Ray Bradbury?

By the way, thank you for reviewing, if you did so. The warm, fluffy, puppies in my tummy wish to give you thanks. From here, of course.

The girls name was Rachel, and for reasons unknown to him, she never left his thoughts. The more he thought about her, the more he realized, he was scared of her. Well, maybe not her exactly, but what she made him remember, the vision of a man who wanted to die. It was terrifying to him.

He tried to push her from his mind. The Reverend sat nearby, whittling of all things, on a block of wood. Granger was propped up against a rock of sorts, thinking as he often did. Rachel was watching the portable television, checking out the newest fireman's chase of a man who would not get away. Dr. Simmons sighed.

"What?" Montag asked.

"Hmm, me?" Dr. Simmons looked around a little bit, "Oh, I was thinking about all of the chases those firemen have. Ever since the city fell, their antics seem a little desperate, like they're posing for a public spectacle."

"Well, of course they are, man!" Fred said from the fire, which he was stoking, "There is no end to what they'll do to fire up the men to their cause."

"Sure there is. Beatty hid that I had a book for all the time he knew, until someone else sounded the alarm." Montag cut in, "they'll protect their own if they feel they need to."

Granger called from his rock, "They caught another wrongdoing book reader. You wouldn't believe how many there is. Think that perhaps it isn't all just a farce and they really were readers?"

Montag, "I don't know. When we get back into a populated area, I'll contact Faber. He knows some of the networks, out-of-work scholars and theologians, but I doubt that that many people have turned to the page over the screen."

The Reverend spoke up for the first time, "There could be. War does strange things to a person. I was in a platoon during a war once, and it caused me to turn to the clothe. It could cause a lesser man to turn to a book fro solace from the violence and destruction."

Montag, "But the people have been trained against reacting to that. I talked to a woman once, and she was going to move on if her husband died, without a second thought."

"Oh the barbary," Rachel said, "women have been moving on after the deaths of their husbands for centuries. Some of them killed their husbands to get into power. Keep up with your history."

"yes, but, well, she wasn't going to give it a ceremonial mourning period, just run right off and feel the love," Montag sighed, "Anymore, you die, and you're carted off to be cremated within the hour. No mourning, no customary black, no tears, just death, and then gone, probably to fertilize some field."

All went silent. Death was not always a happy topic, even though Montag was publicly dead, executed by a Mechanical Hound in a city that now resembled baking soda. He was in no fear of his life. The others, however, some of them had not left civilization so easily, and death was still a possibility, not only to them, but to the information stored in their minds.