They say that when you see your resemblance, you have to run away from them because there is a possibility that one of you will die. But how could I run away when they are already in front of me?

I knew the rules, and I stuck to them the way sweat sticks to a working man's back. The Others had taken enough already, little Bailey from next door, my aunt Jemma from two towns away, and I was not willing to let them take me as well. I trudged down the street, the small trek from home to the food pantry treacherous enough to warrant the whole kit: armoured jacket, baseball bat, visor. The streets went to dust months ago, and the food pantry runs off expired cans and the shit that not even bandits want to loot. I bagged a tin of mushroom soup from 2013 and prayed it would tide me over for the next few days.

I rounded the corner, past the old liquor shop where an old government poster clung to the window on its blu-tack tethers. If you see someone who looks like you do not interact. Call: 0800... and then the number trails off where the paper's ripped. Not that the number ever worked anyways. I slowed anyway. Someone had scrawled beneath the torn number in marker, they hear you on the phone, and I'd never decided whether it was a warning or just another lunatic with a Sharpie. Either way, the idea of anyone answering that line at all was nonexistant.

The street opened up ahead of me, cars sitting where their owners had abandoned them, windscreens furred with dust in long lins with the windows smashed. A pigeon picked at something in the gutter, and it was the first living thing I'd seen in three days. I gripped the bat tighter, the grip tape tacky with old sweat, and kept to the middle of the road. Rule one: never walk near windows. Rule two: never walk near corners you can't see around. I'd already broken rule two once this morning, and that was one time too many.

The my footsteps started to echo. My heart flipped against my ribs. I didn't turn around. Rule three: if you can hear them, they've already been watching you for a while.

"Hello?" My voice came out thin, cracked from disuse.

"Hello?"

My own voice. I closed my eyes. The tin of mushroom soup shifted in my bag, a small hollow clunk, and somewhere behind me, a second tin answered it. Don't turn around. Don't interact. I could feel the breath on the back of my neck, warm and slightly uneven, exactly the way I breathe when I'm trying to be brave. Whoever, whatever, stood behind me was copying me so perfectly that I couldn't tell where I ended and it began.

"Please," I whispered, hearing it echo me in my own, terrified tone: it wasn't mocking me. It was just as scared as I was.

I don't know how long we stood there, back to back like duellists who'd forgotten how to count their paces. The wind picked up and rattled the liquor shop's window, and the poster's corner peeled free of its blu-tack and flapped like a dying wing.

"We can't both walk away," the voice said at last.

"I know," I said.

"One of us has to."

I opened my eyes. The glass of the liquor shop window, grimed and cracked, held a reflection of the street: the empty road, the dust, the poster, and me. Only me. Behind me, where a second figure should have stood, there was nothing. The footsteps started up again, this time moving away. And then, very faintly, from somewhere ahead of me, where I hadn't yet walked, I heard the sound of someone else's boots on the pavement, walking towards the pantry I'd just left.