22.

As soon as he turned to leave the room I thought of a thousand questions, a thousand things to say, but somehow the one thing that left my mouth was "Wait! Mr. Silver expects me outside at sundown. I can't stay overnight – or, I at least need to talk to him."

"Hm. Yeah, yeah that's what I thought," Philip said. He looked so tired.

"What do you mean… What did you think?" I asked, hysteria involuntarily leaking into my voice.

"He's dead. He's been dead for a long time," came the reply. It was short, final, and I didn't want it to make sense. I laughed… It seemed like the thing to do at the time.

"Oh, he's dead and you're not?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"That's what I said," his reply once again sounded final. "I ain't gonna waste my breath trying to convince you of something you can't take in right now. So get some rest, and I'll be back later."

And that was that. I lay there on that cot for a long time. Like a strung out parakeet, I sat in my cage scrabbling for sanity with a mind that was slipping. Eventually, I slept a dreamless sleep that I never thought I would experience again, and when I awoke I felt stronger; sane once more. It wouldn't last long.

23.

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He returned an unknowable time later with a plate of stale cornbread and pork 'n' beans. I nearly choked with laughter at the recursive meal. Phil looked at me; his expression somewhere between concerned and glowering. I told him not to worry about it, it was a long story.

We sat and ate in silence for a long while there in the Faraday Cage. Both of us seated only a few feet apart from each other on the cot, but forever away.

"How is it that you're still alive?" I asked.

"It's a bit anticlimactic," he paused, mopping up a bit of bean. "When you have two friends on the force and a friend with a logging truck who owes you a favor... well, it's a simple equation."

"You know that my staying in the cage doesn't prove you're real, Philip."

"I knew-- I know, but I can't solve solipsism, Thomas. That's kind of the whole thing."

I didn't know if his semi-Southern accent had faded, or if I was getting acclimated to it. I nodded, and he stood. He told me to get ready because we were going on a hike. So I did.

24.

My brother gave me appropriate hiking clothes, basic gear, a 9mm, and 2 magazines loaded with FMJ rounds. Phil had upgraded to some manner of handcannon. He told me that if we ran into any of the giant spider-things and they didn't get put down by his gun; flee.

Our destination was a place known as Listening Post Alpha, LPA for short. It was supposed to be a weather tracking station that served a secondary role of scanning radio frequencies for hunters and hikers in trouble. It had been abandoned for years, but after The End of the World as we Know it, had suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree.

"Why now?" I asked.

"Because I've got nothing left to lose. And I'm guessing you don't, either." He replied.

I nodded, and we left the checkpoint. The last residence of a decades-old ghost town. I saw a row or freshly dug graves by the highway, and what was left of my heart ached for my brother.