All I could do was stand there, pen clutched in one hand, stopwatch in the other, my brain wobbling somewhere between awe and despair as a rain of envelopes fluttered from the heavens like some grotesque parody of snow.
I might even have been admiring the aesthetic of it—because say what you will about the apocalypse, at least it has a sense of drama—when I noticed him.
The first man.
Not a zealot. Not a crazed competitor. No. One of ours. One of the so-called loyal survivors who had pledged his trembling oath to the man in white like the rest of us. He had been pale and quiet before, just another background character in this sad opera of blood and fire.
But now his eyes glittered like coins dropped in a beggar's palm. His lips trembled with words that were less prayer and more arithmetic. Ten million crowns.
Ten. Million. Crowns.
