We are born. We die. Somewhere in between we live. And how we live is up to us. That’s it.

For an instant I saw before me the young girl this used to be.

There’s nothing worse than delivering bad news to women. I hoped I wouldn’t get good at it.

But I was still determined to protect her. It might be the one good thing I would ever do in my life. I wondered if God would even notice.

This place is Hell’s waiting room.

‘Eighth one this week,’ he said.

This guy was a humorless bag of nothing but.

Even now I can’t describe the fear that contaminated my blood like black ink.

There’s no better way for a woman to punish a man than to make him sleep away from her.

I was a spectator who had gotten free admission to a freak show.

She gave herself a hard twist and fell into a sitting position, staring at me with those maggot-filled doll’s eyes.

I turned to her, my whole body hard with tiredness and regret.

You shouldn’t have done that, Dave.

I’m not a bad person.

I thought if I loved you enough I could change you. I was so stupid.

Remember. Observe, assess and act. No hesitation. No remorse.

‘There’s no time for right or wrong,’ I said.

During our time together in this place Holly didn’t outright avoid me or treat me rudely. But she wasn’t—how do women like to put it? She wasn’t emotionally available to me.

I felt a lunatic’s laugh welling up inside me.

Dude, don’t die out here.

She smiled at him like a freshman invited to the senior prom. It made my blood boil.

It’s not about winning, it’s about doing what’s right. And yes, we will do what’s right.

I like to think she hates my guts a little less every hour.

I don’t know how these things died without benefit of a bullet to the brain pan. They seemed to exist in an eternal twilight of longing.

She played me with a bad hand, and I fell for it every time.

‘Can’t you see what they are?’ I said. ‘They’re all dead.’

I wanted to see the bullet coming, wanted to know the exact moment of my death.

I heard them tearing at it. It was the sound of mortality.

The people inside the gym didn’t stand a dead drunk’s chance.

A riverless silence made the air heavy.

People talk about survival. What they mean is killing the other guy.

I knew then I was going to die in the street without ever seeing Holly again. All because I tried to help an old woman, proving for all eternity that no good deed goes unpunished.

The sound of him drinking was indescribable—like dirty runoff down a storm drain.

Sal turned, an eye stalk hanging from his teeth.

Drive. He’s already dead.

You can’t get the blood out.

His eyes were like two wafers of slate, grey and lifeless.

Smiling, he handed Landry the bloody aluminum bat Warnick had used. ‘Time to die, old man,’ he said.

I don’t know why I told you all those things, but I did. Maybe it was because I’m a drunk, and sometimes drunks like to confess.

Did you ever think it won’t be the undead who kill us, but ordinary people?

What I learned in this tragedy was the eternal lesson of good people going bad.

Her voice was small and distant, like she’d already left the room.

When I lifted up the skin, a fat kidney worm dripping with gore raised its bald, blind head and glared at me.

If you’d saved the girl, you’d be a hero. Next time.