The Postmortal

John receives a gun from a Texan client who fears society will collapse and constructs a bunker. It is a small automatic handgun that John is immediately drawn to despite his initial insistence that he doesn’t want to take it. He reassures himself that he will pawn it for food vouchers, but he keeps the gun and ultimately uses it to beat a Greenie who assaults him. With this, the gun becomes the mechanism of his change by empowering him to harm others. This first violent incident sets the trajectory of his life, causing Alison to flee from him in terror and die and ultimately leading him to become an end specialist. The gun represents power and individual survival, and John chooses to accept it, keep it, and carry it with him after he was first attacked by the Greenies and permanently scarred by them. He continues to carry the gun as an end specialist, as it gives him the power to protect himself, which he did not have before.

Birthdays are quickly subverted in The Postmortal, turned from something worth celebrating into something that is a weapon. The Greenies abuse birthdates, marking the cured by cutting the date into their flesh; efforts to cover up these wounds leave a mark, turning the date into a source of trauma.