Pontypool Changes Everything Part 2

After the third stroke and a third scan the doctors noticed that the affected area had changed appearance, shrinking from the size and shape of Sarnia to that of, say, Bewdley. Their prognosis this time was brighter. No organic damage. A part of her brain had been sealed off from the rest, and its contents needed to be coached out of the shadow they'd been cast in and reintroduced to the engines of their history: the physical context of their temporarily unavailable contents. The doctors thought that two years of therapy could bring her language back fully. When asked if she would be able to function as well as she had, however, they responded honestly: no. no.

Detective Peterson was given the impression that he had asked for too much and from then on he felt uneasy, like he was offending every doctor he consulted. Ellen kept her job as reeve and her secret position in the Wiccan religion. Detective Peterson knew this was the desire of the community - but only until the world replaced the role model that it had so wantonly destroyed. The sadness and, at times, the despair of the detective and the people of Pontypool were matched only by the millions of tiny tears shed by twenty-four thousand carp as they squeezed out their eggs and misted them with sperm. These tears lost their distinctive drop shape in the current of the river and were thus saved from appearing sentimental. They sank to the bottom and formed a rough fur of salted water over stones. Sediment.

The detective, on the other hand, took to sentimentalizing everything. He refused to treat Ellen differently, though she had become a different person, and he felt his own denial as a terrible sentence that he alone must unfairly endure. If her mood lightened, which it did sometimes in the afternoon, he felt a searing rage. And when, at night, fatigue caused her to repeat the words dead ... dead dead ... dead over and over again, he felt a calmness fall over the house. At these times he also felt joy. over and over again, he felt a calmness fall over the house. At these times he also felt joy.

A walk through the kitchen for him contained enough signs of their other life together that he sometimes ate out for several days in a row to avoid being confronted by a past that, as the doctors had said, could be expected to return someday - changed, reduced, perverse. This was what frightened the detective the most. The return. The return.

After her third stroke Ellen's therapy began to take, and her progress exceeded the expectations of the specialists. She was able to go out and shop for groceries, provided that she rehea.r.s.ed the shopping list before heading off. Ellen prepared for these outings tirelessly, and except for the occasional tantrum, usually triggered by having to make an unexpected decision, she was successful: decision making was often accompanied by terrible sensations.

Each shopping list disappeared from her when it was discarded. Along with it, the domestic life signified by the taxonomy was also lost. Ellen experienced these words and lists as thick, heavy blanks and their weight pulled at the muscles in her back. In order to make the words bearable she cored them with noise, a bright, p.r.i.c.kling noise that vacuumed the area inside and immediately around them. Doing this, she was able to lift herself from the couch or walk into the kitchen.

Soon, as she stood in front of a stack of frozen fish or sat over a pile of unsigned doc.u.ments, Ellen began detailing, with a meticulousness and energy she had never known, a catalogue of seals, made hermetic by the new shoots that were growing off the signs of her world. A pentagram of signatures burned against the side of a trout, its eye a frozen pea, the "P" that begins her last name.

A tomato was told to keep all of the events of her life before the stroke beneath the sheen of its skin. It was obedient.

In her tomato, in one of its tiny translucent seeds, Ellen has every plot of land she ever sold. Stored there are her various machines for telling the future.

She now studies future images in the afternoon, before the sun abandons her to suicide, and she translates them, using another set of machines sealed between the halves of an adjacent seed. Many of the images depict scenes of murder, but Ellen knows they only shock her to get her attention.

Occasionally, however, she will open a seal and a brief piece of song or snippet of conversation will make her laugh at some discrepancy. This is the mischief of her seals and machines.

10.

A Bull Market Ellen bites the tip of her tongue to squeeze the coffee from it and she tastes blood the moment she drops her mug. The sound of the mug as it spins and stops, hitting the leg of the table, causes her to cry. She bunches up the cold wet of her s.h.i.+rt and pushes her fists into her mouth. She clenches her eyes shut, feeling the blankness of the event scare her, and she hears the voice of a little girl in her mouth.

Detective Peterson hears his wife's strange sobs and he pounds up the stairs, remembering as he gets to the top: Don't make a big deal of this, don't make a big deal of this. Don't make a big deal of this, don't make a big deal of this. When he reaches the television room Ellen is holding herself tightly, straining to keep the voice from her throat. The detective slips in beside her and gently loosens the knot of her arms. He guides her head onto his shoulder and encourages her to cry. She does, and it's the cry of a grown woman, full of softness for the little girl who is so scared. While he rocks his wife Detective Peterson realizes, without guilt, that none of this is Ellen's fault. He says, "Is banned, in cape." She looks up, grateful for the words; restored, she feels his affection diminish the barrier. The detective has failed to notice that he did not, in fact, say the words When he reaches the television room Ellen is holding herself tightly, straining to keep the voice from her throat. The detective slips in beside her and gently loosens the knot of her arms. He guides her head onto his shoulder and encourages her to cry. She does, and it's the cry of a grown woman, full of softness for the little girl who is so scared. While he rocks his wife Detective Peterson realizes, without guilt, that none of this is Ellen's fault. He says, "Is banned, in cape." She looks up, grateful for the words; restored, she feels his affection diminish the barrier. The detective has failed to notice that he did not, in fact, say the words It's It's OK OK, it's OK OK. Rather, he felt their effect on Ellen. At this point he feels ashamed, knowing how wrong he was to have blamed her. Detective Peterson scoops up the mug and asks Ellen if she wants another and she explains to him that she's already had two cups and maybe better not. He kisses her cheek and leaves the room, turning back as he steps into the hallway to ask if she wants to watch television with him later. She says that she would.it has been so long. Television has been a source of great anguish to her, but maybe now, with her husband sitting beside her, it would be like it was. Detective Peterson walks into the kitchen just as the phone rings. Rather, he felt their effect on Ellen. At this point he feels ashamed, knowing how wrong he was to have blamed her. Detective Peterson scoops up the mug and asks Ellen if she wants another and she explains to him that she's already had two cups and maybe better not. He kisses her cheek and leaves the room, turning back as he steps into the hallway to ask if she wants to watch television with him later. She says that she would.it has been so long. Television has been a source of great anguish to her, but maybe now, with her husband sitting beside her, it would be like it was. Detective Peterson walks into the kitchen just as the phone rings.

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Detective?"

"Yes?"

"We need a report on what happened this afternoon. The sargent has called in the RC RCs on this one. They think we got more than one killer. We gotta find Les Reardon."

"Purse s.n.a.t.c.h ... purse s.n.a.t.c.h ... f.u.c.ker ..."

Peterson lowers the phone and feels a wind across his face. Bits of words catch in the sunlight across the top of the stove like barbs off a wire. He swings the receiver through them and they part in eddies around his wrist. He brings the phone back up to his ear.

"What? Detective Peterson, are you there? h.e.l.lo?"

"h.e.l.lo?"

"Yeah, sir, what did you say?"

"What?"

"What did you say?"

"Say?"

"Yeah, what did you say?"

"Say?"

"Are you OK OK, sir?"

"Is barn, is messy."

"I think I'll come out there, sir, if that's all right. I gotta couple of things to do first, but I think I'll come out there. Is that all right, sir?"

Peterson thinks, Well, there isn't anything wrong. I'm fine for f.u.c.k's sake, I just can't seem to say so. Well, there isn't anything wrong. I'm fine for f.u.c.k's sake, I just can't seem to say so. And he says: "Dirty dump ... dirty day." And he says: "Dirty dump ... dirty day."

"Uh ... detective, we have a very serious situation unfolding in the region and if you don't think you can ... uh ... handle it right now ... I have to tell somebody."

"Dirty, dirty, dirty."

Peterson places the phone back in its cradle. He hears his wife call his name and he jumps. A flash of rage fills his chest. He runs into the living room and s.n.a.t.c.hes the TV TV Guide Guide before das.h.i.+ng up the stairs. By the time he reaches the top he calms again. He hears Ellen singing softly to herself. The song is very familiar. He can't name it. As he enters the television room and lays the before das.h.i.+ng up the stairs. By the time he reaches the top he calms again. He hears Ellen singing softly to herself. The song is very familiar. He can't name it. As he enters the television room and lays the TV TV Guide Guide in her lap he asks her what the song is. She tells him and he smiles, remembering its source. He hums a bar as he flips the macrame throw over the top of the television screen. Ellen suggests a television show and the detective pretends to consider it - he's going to watch whatever she wants, and eventually smiles at her choice. The television pops on and the Rembrandt hues of a soap opera appear. This is the program they had decided on, and as they settle in each other's arms to begin watching it they both feel an identical discomfort. Without discussing it Ellen switches the channel until she finds something. It happens to be exactly what the detective would have chosen. in her lap he asks her what the song is. She tells him and he smiles, remembering its source. He hums a bar as he flips the macrame throw over the top of the television screen. Ellen suggests a television show and the detective pretends to consider it - he's going to watch whatever she wants, and eventually smiles at her choice. The television pops on and the Rembrandt hues of a soap opera appear. This is the program they had decided on, and as they settle in each other's arms to begin watching it they both feel an identical discomfort. Without discussing it Ellen switches the channel until she finds something. It happens to be exactly what the detective would have chosen.

Night Court. A rerun. A rerun.

As Bull looks for a place to hide a mop, the Petersons nod to the closet that waits off camera.

11.

Nadia Comaneci The moon breaks into little pieces and sprinkles itself as confetti onto the front lawn of the Peterson household. A man in uniform steps up to the front door. He lays the back of his hand flat across the doorbell and by sinking his second knuckle he depresses the b.u.t.ton.

Inside the house, up the flight of stairs that the front door opens to, is the television room. Detective Peterson sits up on the edge of the couch, straightening his arms to his knees. His head turns in the direction of the door. His eyes are new. Near him a wounded caribou pulls at a leg wedged in ice. Ellen looks to him, in the way she has had to these last few months, and when the bell rings a second time he turns on her, clasping one hand around her face and the other across the back of her neck. He attempts to shush her, but his teeth are too wet and his bottom lip is too sloppy.

The Honeymoon in Aphasia is over.

Detective Peterson's difficulties speaking have spread out to his face, and now, in his panic, he feels that he must escape through the only door left open: his own mouth.

Ellen scrambles to resurrect the barrier between them - He is sick, really sick He is sick, really sick - and she rolls her tomato backwards from the corner of her mouth, subtracting the afternoon. - and she rolls her tomato backwards from the corner of her mouth, subtracting the afternoon. Something is wrong with my husband. He's holding my head like a newspaper. Something is wrong with my husband. He's holding my head like a newspaper. The detective drops Ellen's head from his hands, giving her neck an a.s.saultive twist, and he leaps from the couch. He pulls a painting off the wall and throws it across the television. Ellen has a sudden impatience with her own disorder and she belts her better self into action. She rises off the couch. The detective drops Ellen's head from his hands, giving her neck an a.s.saultive twist, and he leaps from the couch. He pulls a painting off the wall and throws it across the television. Ellen has a sudden impatience with her own disorder and she belts her better self into action. She rises off the couch. He's willing to break his own neck to stop me. He's willing to break his own neck to stop me. She pushes her husband back against the wall and runs up the hall and down the stairs. She pushes her husband back against the wall and runs up the hall and down the stairs.

Before she can reach the bottom her husband's body rolls against the backs of her legs. She knows the level this has reached. So fast. He's going to break his neck to stop me. He's going to break his neck to stop me. Ellen sweeps aside her disability with a flat hand on her husband's back and she vaults over his pommel horse body. The detective spins and swipes at her ankle before she reaches the door. Ellen sweeps aside her disability with a flat hand on her husband's back and she vaults over his pommel horse body. The detective spins and swipes at her ankle before she reaches the door.

The man on the other side enters the scene by slamming his body against the barrier. Ellen has rolled out of the way and the new man in her life is wrapped around the old one. The uniform pulls his head back to take in what he holds in his arms. No time. A hot mouth clamps onto his lips and sinks its teeth to close them. The uniform feels the power of an industrial press punching into the centre of his face.

Ellen scuttles backwards down the hall, and as her husband flicks his head she hears the snap of both men's necks breaking. The detective drops the body to the ground and he turns his damaged upper torso toward Ellen. His mouth is full and he releases the contents down his s.h.i.+rt, hissing across b.l.o.o.d.y teeth. His bottom lip jumps up to make a consonant but falls short and swings slack across his chin. He sways his head, grinding the break in his neck. Ellen thinks she sees a wolf appear in shadow across the back of his throat and she fires at the blue moon of his uvula.

The already taxed anatomy of the detective surrenders utterly to the bullet and his head lifts from his shoulders; clear of them, it flips like a coin. The head drops to the floor, sitting against the door on the empty sock of its neck, and looks directly at Ellen. The look, though inanimate, is fresh with the experience of abjection, of failure. This look, familiar to the followers of zombies, is not entirely new to Ellen either. And if she weren't so tightly packaged with terror she would, probably, cry.

12.

Fish and Boy The long pier in Port Perry floats its spine out into Lake Scugog, and among its ribs bob long sanitary sailboats with their own spare and polished spines. Seagulls lead each other's capes in and off the tips of these skeletons, keeping the temperature just past winter with their cries. A great deal of soap floats in white castles out from the orange waterlines of the boats and they repel the surface slicks of gasoline like poles meeting. A boy wearing an outsized captain's hat that loops off his head sits on the edge of a boat watching the patterns of gasoline as they leap clear on the smooth woven surface of the water. A giant goldfish, in fat flames, appears below. The boy catches his breath. The carp is almost as big as he is. The two creatures hang in the air marvelling at their equal volume, sharing the suspension, the yellow light of gills and the white ring of an ankle. The carp leans off the surface and carries its glow to the bottom, disappearing from the boy, who looks up at the seagulls that have brought their paper flight to within feet of him. He thinks that if clouds could s.h.i.+t they'd s.h.i.+t seagulls. He notices an empty boat floating close to sh.o.r.e across the harbour.

Les Reardon opens his eyes and watches a seagull at his feet tearing through the back of a perch. He slams the side of the boat with his foot, but the seagull doesn't move. He flaps both his legs apart, hitting the sides, and this time the bird jumps into the air. It rises a foot or two and then returns inverted, standing this time with the tip of its beak through the forehead of the fish. Les leaps up and, missing the bird, squishes the desiccated fish in his hands, sending it in a slurp up into the air and overboard. The seagull hangs above his head, screaming, and finally lifts backward.

On sh.o.r.e Les discovers he has difficulty walking. He steps around sloppily on guitar-shaped legs until a succession of steps brings him out of the sand and onto a brown lawn. An elderly woman, in a purple silk bathrobe, is standing on the clean bare floor of a bare room that looks out at the lake through a tall window. She watches the man who has just appeared in her backyard. He appears drunk. Filthy. She slides the door open a few inches, sniffing at the outside before speaking.

"h.e.l.lo there. Can I help you?"

Les waves at her as he steps forward. He approaches the woman deceitfully. She only has time to say "Oh my!" before he knocks her to the floor. A little bald man in pyjamas appears squinting at the bar in the corner of the room, and he takes three quick steps toward his fallen wife. He is also knocked over by Les.

This couple distinguish themselves from the Killings by being the Knockouts.

13.

Cholera Les pulls over in the little grey car he stole from the Knockouts. He steps out to fill it with gas. As the numbers are flying through their eleventh dollar an attendant lurches from his booth. Les recognizes him. Zombie. Zombie. Les ma.s.sages the trigger of the nozzle with his finger, recognizing the weapon. Les ma.s.sages the trigger of the nozzle with his finger, recognizing the weapon. Gun. Gun. The zombie attendant stops within two metres of Les and is confused. Its circular mouth rotates a few degrees and clicks into a new position, tightening an aperture of skin along its rim. The zombie may or may not be preparing to attack. Les flips the nozzle from the side of the car and in two sprinted steps he drives the hooked tube down the attendant's throat. He pulls the trigger, jetting gasoline into the zombie's stomach - its lizard - instantly killing the organ. The pump clicks off automatically as the fluid washes back into the zombie's mouth. Les steps up onto the low concrete island, tossing the hose against its recoil wire, toward the creature that has collapsed. Unable to close its mouth, it cacks from the back of its throat and lays its upturned hands in the crude water that it has released onto the ground. It looks down into the dark pool growing around its hips and sees the red lights of the car reflected there. As Les pulls away from the island the zombie turns its hand over on the surface of its fecal blood, caging the car too late. The silver b.u.mper drifts to the edge, disappearing into the gravel. The zombie attendant stops within two metres of Les and is confused. Its circular mouth rotates a few degrees and clicks into a new position, tightening an aperture of skin along its rim. The zombie may or may not be preparing to attack. Les flips the nozzle from the side of the car and in two sprinted steps he drives the hooked tube down the attendant's throat. He pulls the trigger, jetting gasoline into the zombie's stomach - its lizard - instantly killing the organ. The pump clicks off automatically as the fluid washes back into the zombie's mouth. Les steps up onto the low concrete island, tossing the hose against its recoil wire, toward the creature that has collapsed. Unable to close its mouth, it cacks from the back of its throat and lays its upturned hands in the crude water that it has released onto the ground. It looks down into the dark pool growing around its hips and sees the red lights of the car reflected there. As Les pulls away from the island the zombie turns its hand over on the surface of its fecal blood, caging the car too late. The silver b.u.mper drifts to the edge, disappearing into the gravel.

Les leaves Manchester with nearly half a tank of gas and he makes his way south through wicked Canada. He has isolated a part of himself that he commits to sanity, and from here he has decided that the difference between his relapsed psyche and the outside world is so negligible that to worry about losing touch is not the most urgent game. In fact, Les is sure that the behaviour of the world is somehow blueprinted by his paranoia. This is not a new delusion, he realizes; and it's a delusion with more benefits than liabilities. Les knows that the balance does expire, and he prays that the world will one day be worthy of a new prescription, another antipsychotic medication. But for now the difference is both negligible and essential. Les lets his contaminated body drive while he watches the shadows of barns for any signs of Helen.

In the years prior to his breakdown, actually since childhood, Les knew that a terrible thing was waiting for him. He detected it first in adults. He remembers clearly watching their panicky faces, their overwhelmed expressions, and thinking that they were all so frightened. He watched the adult world battle against his awareness, deny it, and react angrily if he acknowledged it in any way. In fact, as he grew older and the disastrous world grew closer, he decided that he would never act out the tiny little cartoon of adult exhaustion. He would live in ruin if he had to, but he would never pretend that his every living moment wasn't heading in a painfully wrong direction - and one day, when the entire human race is seized with the first pangs of consciousness, it would look to him who had suffered.

Throughout school Les struggled to hide his disorganized inner world and its hot painful cuts, and he survived, barely, giving his teachers and parents a rough facsimile of what they wanted. It would take years before these people would finally give up on him, and when they did Les felt a great relief. The first thing he did, as a relieved person, was get his trucking licence, and soon, after landing a good-paying, secure job with the city, he began to haul its garbage in the very early morning.

Les enjoyed his job so much that he began to mythologize it. That was when the war in Ontario began. At first he was surprised at what was happening. The body bags hidden in people's garbage shocked and frightened him. He checked newspapers for anything on missing people, but he found only stories about other wars: race wars, drug wars, the war on poverty.

The adult world squirmed closer to him. Not knowing yet; not reporting. Les started to notice that the body bags sometimes weren't sealed and a pale yellow arm or leg would arch across the gutter.

Then one day he watched a co-worker through his side-view mirror. Stepping off the back of the truck and swinging down to scoop up the bags, the worker rolled, with the side of his boot, the tiny round corpse of an infant back into an open garbage bag. This was the turning point. Les knew that he had been wrong all his life. Not only did people know about the panic that scratched their world, they had been secretly coordinating, conspiring with it. An Underground that knew all about this, knew all about Les, was preparing to wake up the world and invite it to a Canada's Wonderland made of bodies. Giant bloodslides. Houses of torture where children's kidneys are twisted like sponges in the fat hands of musclemen. There would be buns crammed with the cooked knuckles of teenagers, and a king, sitting on a mountain of kings, eating his own shoulder.

Les turned the truck around, leaving the worker, bag in hand, calling from the curb. This was the day of his breakdown. He was taken directly to the Clark Inst.i.tute. After a month that he can barely recall he entered the strange tent city of the ICU ICU. He wandered alone, silent, among the shrouded beds, occasionally stepping out onto an impossible acreage of tile that restrained patients with its emptiness. Tall windows held back an aquarium of nurses and doctors who swam around each other in turquoise water, feeding on plants and communicating through unstable bubbles that burst across their cheeks. Les felt nothing in these weeks. No one spoke to him.

He was eventually moved, through the aquarium, into a proper room with a proper roommate.

When Helen visited him the first time a thousand emotions sprang to life in his chest, and with each visit these emotions, unnamable and new, began to crawl to a surface. When the doctors spoke to him Les described the War in Ontario as the twisted invention of a paranoid mind, which, more than being precisely what they wanted to hear, Les knew was true. The Underground didn't exist. He told the doctors this. He told the doctors less of what he actually believed. Les believed that the War was merely a bad interpretation made in a diseased body. Yes, but what was it actually an interpretation of? Les vowed to himself that he would do exactly what they told him. He would devote himself to becoming stable and sound so that he could be a more reliable interpreter. He hid from them this fact: that the War would always be for him a sign of what it could never express. He also devoted all of his new emotions to Helen.

These emotions, brilliant and strange as they -were, were also very painful. They collected themselves - safety in numbers - around the finger that Les pointed at his girlfriend. They all became love. When Les returned home, Helen had the disturbing sense that in the bright light of his new devotion she had somehow lost her substance. For Les, Helen had never had more substance. She existed as the luminous form of an entire emotional spectrum.

And then, as she was about to enter the second month of her first pregnancy, she left him.

14.

Getaway Cars The first car dealers.h.i.+ps of Brooklyn start to appear. Les scans the swooping parking lots, trimmed by drying lightbulbs and coloured flags, for zombies. A man standing at the side of the road balances two heavy plastic bags. He watches the car approach and he steps out onto the road precisely as it pa.s.ses him. Les looks in his rear-view mirror and sees the man step across the centreline. Some are not zombies. Some are not zombies. He slows the car, wondering if he shouldn't grab this opportunity to talk to an uncontaminated person. He remembers the Knockouts. He slows the car, wondering if he shouldn't grab this opportunity to talk to an uncontaminated person. He remembers the Knockouts. Opportunity. I'm contaminated. Opportunity. I'm contaminated.

Brooklyn soon disappears with the same chrome mirage that brought it into view. Past Green River, the drive will begin to congest into suburban corridors - corridors that drop, like champagne dribbling from gla.s.s to gla.s.s down a pyramid, into Parkdale. Helen. Helen. Traffic lights change the relations.h.i.+ps between cars and Les waits anxiously at each red, not looking at the vehicles beside him that have become carriers, little Trojan horses, breachable barriers. Traffic lights change the relations.h.i.+ps between cars and Les waits anxiously at each red, not looking at the vehicles beside him that have become carriers, little Trojan horses, breachable barriers.

As he descends down Dufferin Street, toward Parkdale, Les turns his hands inward around the steering wheel, sliding its grips deep into his palms. He's braver. The miracle of his thinking is refreshed. He can distinguish between his strategies and his delusions. Negligible difference. Essential. The child in the back window of the car ahead is not a weapon of war, but he bears the mark; his parents, though, might just be slack-jawed cannibals looking for a parking lot to pull over in so that they can twist off his little blond head and share his face.

That's possible.

Les feels the galvanizing effect of knowing the difference. The mad patterns and buzzing geometry sneaking over him are protective prisms of light, deflecting poisons, redirecting unexplained intrusions. The zombies, on the other hand, are as immediate as hornets. Les flips down the sun visor, where he had earlier stashed Helen's address, and pulls the piece of paper from behind an elastic band. He unfolds the page across the steering wheel. Number 3, Temple Avenue. Helen and our son. Helen and our son.

And some c.o.c.ksucking writer.

At King and Dufferin Les pulls into the McDonald's parking lot. He watches panhandlers mill around in front of the Hasty Market. A young woman steps out of Money Mart. A tall, thin man in a fat man's suit pushes off from the golden arch he had been leaning on and walks toward the grey Datsun. Les examines the face closely. A gaunt, black face. Startled eyes. A slightly open mouth. He lifts a cigarette to his lips and fingers that are medicated scissors, broken and soft, flatten across his mouth, sloppily reinforcing the seal, which is never made. The man inhales and exhales through his teeth. Les sees a keener man in the sharp corners of his eyes, a man who has paid close attention to the way people watch him shuffle. He has taken great care that the shuffle be guided intelligently. Not a zombie. Not a zombie.

Les leans into the pa.s.senger seat and waves his hand through the window. The panhandler begins talking anyway, making a face, "Yes, I know, but we need to talk." And for a second, Les falls for the solicitation. The man accidentally slips, losing his target, and Les repeats the hand wave, this time cutting it short, stopping the panhandler in his tracks. Les looks up and the panhandler has already hopped up the step in front of the Money Mart. Les gets out of the car and a loud roar rumbles up his legs. He looks over his shoulder as a military truck moves along King Street and turns down Spencer Avenue. Another follows. The panhandlers don't look. Across the street a table of cowboys with long grey hair lean over their early morning drafts and watch the small convoy. One of them, cool looking in mirror shades and white mustache, interprets the scene for his friends. Les and the man lock eyes and they share a reptile's wink across a common lateral lid. Les feels the tiny pop of disconnection as he breaks eye contact. Not a zombie. Who will be the first? Not a zombie. Who will be the first?

Les's question is answered almost immediately. A loud squawk comes from the laundromat across the street. A man's jean jacket falls open across a red T-s.h.i.+rt. He kicks his white cowboy boots back into a washer as he is pushed backwards up and onto it. Another man in an unders.h.i.+rt wiggles with a ferret's body onto the chest of the cowboy. He sits up, a tattooed incubus, and when he turns to look through the window Les sees a familiar face. His eyes poke out through the chipped blue "a" of "Laundry," and his pupils, like hard clots, shake once across Les's car. Behind the lower curve of the "a," a bleached tongue licks the s.p.a.ce inside a blood-rimmed wheel. Les starts the car and pulls past the laundromat. Everyone at the intersection, including the panhandlers, is watching a storefront puppet show in which men act like pit bulls. Joined at the mouth, they break each other's necks.

As he turns the car down Spencer, Les feels each house pa.s.s. They're being subtracted from the distance between him and Helen.

Temple Avenue.

He is unable to turn on Temple. Four large trucks surrounded by military personnel block his access. He parks the car illegally on Spencer, at a fire hydrant just before Springhurst. It's now or never. Les goes through backyards, scaling fences until he has counted from the number 9 9 backwards to backwards to 3 3. All of the drapes are closed, and behind them no lights are lit. Les knocks on the door. Nothing. He steps back into the yard and looks at the upper windows. He calls up.

"Helen!"

Nothing. He calls louder.

"Helen!"

Over the roof where the sky lets the house pa.s.s into the front yard, four men with rifles surround two full-blown zombies. The soldiers look up, spooked by the voice calling Helen Helen coming in over their heads. The zombies echo the voice in words they bark at the soldiers: "Helen!" "h.e.l.lo!" "Help!" They are agitated by the alliteration and their barks become frenzied: "h.e.l.ly!" "h.e.l.lo!" "Helen!" "Hessy!" The soldiers open fire, peppering zombie torsos with firecrackers. The bullets that enter the zombies cause them to turn slightly. This changes the trajectories of the missiles, so that as they exit they fly toward the front of the house and hit several inches away from where they would have had the zombies not been there. A little plaster gnome shatters where a summer rose might have been cut down. Once free of the bullets, the zombies stand still. Les, on the other hand, jumps clear into the air. He runs for the door with his elbows out like fins on a battering ram. coming in over their heads. The zombies echo the voice in words they bark at the soldiers: "Helen!" "h.e.l.lo!" "Help!" They are agitated by the alliteration and their barks become frenzied: "h.e.l.ly!" "h.e.l.lo!" "Helen!" "Hessy!" The soldiers open fire, peppering zombie torsos with firecrackers. The bullets that enter the zombies cause them to turn slightly. This changes the trajectories of the missiles, so that as they exit they fly toward the front of the house and hit several inches away from where they would have had the zombies not been there. A little plaster gnome shatters where a summer rose might have been cut down. Once free of the bullets, the zombies stand still. Les, on the other hand, jumps clear into the air. He runs for the door with his elbows out like fins on a battering ram.

At the outskirts of this scene a small observing crowd has a.s.sembled. Among them are three people in the early stages of the disease. They step back and look at each other meaningfully. They've been given something: "h.e.l.lo. Helen. h.e.l.lo." And further back, in a house on the corner, a full-blown zombie sits at an open window howling "Helen!" across southern Parkdale.