Joe

Name: Joe. Age: 26 years. Personality: former military man.

He doesn't have Luke's explosive temperament, but he doesn't have Zach's gentleness either. He's not mad in the traditional sense—madness is noisy, and this man is quiet. His madness lies in his absolute, almost animal-like, focus on his territory.

He doesn't shoot right away. First, he listens. The floorboard creaks beneath Luke—and he's already awake, already holding the gun, already standing in the doorway. He doesn't aim—because he doesn't need to aim. The house is an extension of his body. He knows where the creak will come, where the shadow will lie, where he can position himself to block the only path to the window.

A soldier, blind in one eye, is slightly deaf. But these aren't flaws—they're filters. He's not distracted by unnecessary things. He doesn't need a second eye to see in the dark. His deafness cuts out the noise outside, leaving only the sounds within—breathing, the irregular rhythm of someone else's pulse.

There's no cruelty for the sake of cruelty. He doesn't torture, he doesn't play around. The shots are precise and functional: Zack is the threat on the right, Luke is the source of the noise. He takes Martin with a bladed weapon. Not because he's sparing a bullet. But because he wants to ask a question.

In the hallway light, he looks younger than you'd expected. Deep thirties, maybe twenty-five at most. But the age isn't in the years, it's in the way he stands—heels together, body leaning forward, the hand holding the Walther firmly planted to Martin's temple. A military bearing that neither a concussion nor years of loneliness can knock out.

His hair is light brown, almost brown in the dim hallway, falling across his forehead in untidy strands—he hasn't had a haircut in a long time. They sleep together, rubbing against the pillow. He would brush them away, but his other hand is holding the fore-end of the shotgun slung over his shoulder. It's heavy, a pump-action shotgun. Not for show.

His face is narrow, his cheekbones sharp, with shadows beneath them. He hasn't shaved for two or three days, and his stubble is rough and uneven. But the main thing is his eye. The left one. A jagged scar runs through it, from his eyebrow to his cheekbone. The skin around it is taut, the eyelid doesn't close completely—a dense brown-white scar, as if it were stitched up in the field, with a living thread. The eye itself beneath it is cloudy, frozen, the color of a faded sky. It doesn't watch you. It doesn't look anywhere at all.

The right eye, on the other hand, is almost black in the semi-darkness. It stares straight ahead, unblinking. There's no anger in it. Only a tired, habitual readiness to finish what it started.

He turns his head slightly, and the scar stretches, turning even whiter. The light from the far room glides across his face, highlighting his youthful, almost boyish jawline—and then fades immediately, resting on his dead, motionless pupil.