Zombies - Encounters with the Hungry Dead Part 21

"But you know what this means, Thad? It means it's spreading. That was not supposed to happen. That was not in the plan, okay? This could be the end of the f.u.c.king world, and all because you're an a.s.shole."

Thad tried to say, "I'm not the one who-" but his mouth couldn't do it, and then she hung up the phone.

Elsewhere in the house, someone was screaming. He heard pounding footsteps, thumping, more screaming. Something crashed and splintered. A dog was yipping right outside his door, then there was a kind of squas.h.i.+ng sound and the dog wasn't barking anymore. He was so tired. A man was yelling, his voice starting out low and spiraling up through the octaves into some unrecognizable high-pitched keening and then he, too, wasn't barking anymore. Thad thought he should probably take a nap. The cacophony outside the door was only growing, getting on his nerves, so he turned on the stereo and turned up the volume. Hits from the '80s. Duran Duran was singing about girls on film.

He lay down on the floor, the white s.h.a.g rug, and closed his eyes.

As he drifted off he thought again of the girl. Andrea. He remembered, now, what had bothered him when he let her so-called friends out of the house: none of them had asked after her. They had abandoned her to him, a stranger with a notorious reputation, the date-rape scandals, the thing with the underage girl. Maybe they had noticed something wrong with her. Maybe she had creeped them out. Maybe they had known her for all of three hours. But it didn't seem like the right thing to do. It was an unusual thought for him to have. It seemed connected somehow to his memory of being locked inside the foul-smelling trunk of the car, bound and gagged and convinced he was about to die alone, with no one who would remember him for long, or care. The thought flickered like a candle flame and went out. And now he was back in the closet with the girl, breath mint taste of her mouth and tongue, the faint tang of tequila, and the cigarette smoke in her hair. And maybe there had been something strange about her, the limp, sluggish weight of her, but he hadn't paid much attention at the time. What he had noticed was the feel of the breast in his hand, the firmness of her thighs, the roundness of that a.s.s, and it was all melting into the others, so many others, sweet young yummy flesh, the warmth and musk and tenderness that he believed could somehow save him, sucking it all up between his teeth, bodies writhing and opening beneath him, and he plunged inside one after the other after the other, and somehow it wasn't enough, not yet, he needed more, he was digging himself into their flesh, he was opening them up, he was cracking their bones to get at their marrow. He was burying himself alive in blood and meat and bone and hungry, so hungry, so hungry- He opened his eyes.

The world had gone all jittery. Shapes and colors came in at him at weird angles. But he could smell the spilled blood and chunks of meat scattered through the rest of the house and that was all the direction he needed. He stood up. He took a moment to orient himself as best he could.

Then shambled out to see what the others had left it.

PART TWO POST EMANc.i.p.aTION.

13/ Adam Golaski The Dead.

Gather On The Bridge To Seattle.

THE RACc.o.o.n WASN'T EATING GARBAGE-the can hadn't been knocked over-it was eating another racc.o.o.n. From across the yard, Roger could see that the racc.o.o.n's little mouth glimmered with gore. Roger unlocked the trunk of his car, unzipped a narrow case and removed a shotgun. He looked for the racc.o.o.n with his flashlight-it was no longer standing above its cannibalized mate. He jumped when the light fell on the racc.o.o.n-large as a dog and shambling toward him. Roger called out, once, a single profanity-eaten up by the surrounding woods. The racc.o.o.n wasn't startled, didn't draw back or run as any racc.o.o.n would when confronted by a man. Roger cursed again and shot the racc.o.o.n. It burst open, as if rotten.

The phone in Roger's mobile home rang.

Roger dashed up the back step into the kitchen where he'd left the portable. He glanced at the wall clock-a little past eleven-then at the caller I.D.-his sister Vivienne. "Viv," he said. "Oh, h.e.l.lo, Martin," he said. "Is everything all right?" he asked. He said, "Fine. Martin, what's this about?" Roger set the shotgun down on the kitchen table. He picked up a pizza crust left from his dinner. He took a bite. "She's sick?" He tossed the crust down. "How long have you been at the hospital?" The light above the table dimmed. "I don't know what I can do." Roger pushed the kitchen door shut. "It's fifteen hours," he said. "She asked?" Roger looked again at the wall clock. "I'll leave in a few hours." "No? OK. I'll be on the road in an hour. Still, I won't be there until tomorrow evening." "Five o'clock. I'll call from the road." "Yes," Roger said, "I'll call."

Roger stared at the shotgun on the table; he let his eyes un-focus over the dull gleam it gave. He thought about the racc.o.o.n, and of how sick it must have been, and of how it sickened him. He tried to recall what had woken him. The phone wasn't what'd woken him, neither the racc.o.o.n-he was surely accustomed to the noise animals made during the night. The prospect of the drive did not appeal to him, but for Vivienne to ask him to make the trip, all the way from Decker, from Montana to Was.h.i.+ngton, to Seattle, was extraordinary.

With the cell phone he'd been given by his employer, he called Peter and asked him to cover his route. Peter said he was feeling ill and didn't think he could do it; Roger pressed and Peter agreed. Roger said, "I'll leave the keys to the truck and the freezers on the driver's seat." Roger went out, carrying his shotgun and a ring of keys. He returned the shotgun to the case in the trunk of his car. He checked the freezers-three freestanding units. He unlocked the generator shed and topped off the fuel. He added gas to the truck's tank, too, and placed the keys on the driver's seat. After he'd shut the door to the cab, he reopened the door and took the key for the padlocked generator shed off the ring. The time was just before midnight. He set his alarm clock for one AM, and lay down.

Roger slept, but hardly.

He called his boss: "I won't be able to make the deliveries this morning," he said.

His boss said, "You can't call in sick."

"Peter's covering the route."

"Pete's only been out with you once or twice. You can't have the morning off."

"Don't hand me that, Harry. You can help Peter if he gets lost."

"You can't just call in like this."

"Harry, I haven't taken a day off in the two years I've worked for you. I've covered for everyone, I've even covered for you. Peter will do the route. He'll do it tomorrow too. I'll pay him out of my check so don't worry about payroll."

"Okay, okay. What's this about, anyhow?"

"Personal."

"Are you all right?"

"I'm okay."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No, but thanks. I have to go."

The sky brimmed with stars. A shooting star, another. A bright, raspberry cloud of light flickered in the sky. Roger squinted at the cloud, perplexed by the sight-not Northern Lights, he didn't think. An animal moved behind the trees that bordered Roger's yard.

Roger filled a thermos with coffee. He hadn't been away since he'd first moved out to Decker. He locked the windows and behind himself the front door. The leaves of the big cottonwood rustled; a sound like a brook. Stars fell, one after another: a shower. Roger had never seen a shower so full, and would've stopped to watch, had he the time. The gra.s.s and the trees were black. The car turned over smoothly; the gas tank was full, the oil clean, tire pressure good. Roger kept his car neat. On the pa.s.senger seat were a handful of CDs, all gifts from Vivienne. Vivienne was the only family who kept in touch with Roger since his move. He drove off his property, onto the dirt road that began his daily delivery route. In an hour, Roger would be on the highway, headed away from his customers, away from Decker. With enough coffee, he thought, and some No Doze he'd buy at the gas station in Lodge Gra.s.s, he might not have to sleep.

Roger's car was all he'd kept from his former life. The car didn't belong in Decker, and he rarely drove it, a black Saab sedan, a forty-thousand dollar car purchased when forty-thousand wasn't a whole lot of money for Roger to spend on a car or on anything else. When he left San Francisco, he decided to keep the car because it was solid. A powerful engine, four-wheel drive, and black.

The roof of his car reflected the stars. Roger picked up 314.

Spread out, sixty miles north, a little south of the Yellowstone River, were the foundations of fur trading posts. Crumbled dust foundations. To the west of Custer is Junction, which was no more a town but a graveyard, left to its own except for dinosaur bones. Buffalo grazed the plains. Roger drove through the Wolf Mountains with his stereo off. What was dead in those mountains lay still; the wolves ate their kill. Long stretches of 314 were unpaved. Roger's high beams bounced and blurred ahead of his car. Rodents scurried to the sides of the road. He drove as fast as the road permitted, steering wheel firmly gripped as the irregular road wrenched the car right and left, toward black trees and boulders. The Rosebud battlefield, the little rivers.

Lodge Gra.s.s, greasy gra.s.s, the first full-service gas station on Roger's route. The needle still at full, Roger topped off the gas. Two truckers stood mesmerized by the meteor shower, ball caps tilted back on their foreheads. Roger bought No Doze and poured water into a little cone. The clerk said, "There's stars falling all over the North. The radio says it's something special." Roger nodded, waited for the clerk to count his change. As Roger broke open the box of No Doze, a news item caught his attention: a man presumed dead, and in that state for some hours, was revived. A good omen, Roger thought. At the gas station, Roger had a brief window of cell phone reception, so he dialed Martin.

"I'm on the road," Roger said. "I'm calling so you'll have my cell number." Roger said, "I should go," but before he ended the call he asked, "How's Vivienne?" Bad, was the answer. "Do the doctors know what it is?" Roger asked. Only that it's an infection.

From Lodge Gra.s.s: Rt. 90 all the way to Seattle. The highway was empty. Roger kept his high beams on and an eye out for deer and bighorn sheep, apt to simply be in the road. Roger watched for their eyes. He pa.s.sed Garryowen, Crow Agency, and Hardin. Billings would soon emerge as a cl.u.s.ter of light. South of Billings, opposite Boothill Cemetery, near The Place of Skulls, was Sacrifice Cliff, where two Crow rode on the back of a single white horse, a horse blindfolded so it could be made to ride off a cliff. Two young Crow returned from a hunt to find their tribe dead by smallpox. They mourned, singing, yelling, clutching one another on the back of a blindfolded white horse. The place where the white horse went down. A blind horse, snuffing, kicking dust, led by two anguished Crow off the edge of a cliff.

The city of Billings was electric lights and dark industrial shapes, all set in a cup of mountains and rim rocks. The traffic around Roger grew heavier. Trucks, mostly. Roger wanted a real breakfast, but knew he couldn't spare the time. He'd stop in Billings, though, relieve himself and buy an egg and sausage sandwich from a gas station.

All along the highway were parked cars. People had driven out of Billings to get a better look at the star shower, still in full. The sky carried an aura, a hint of color, a haze of red.

When Roger moved to San Francisco, five years before, Vivienne came with. The realtor who sold Roger his home a.s.sumed Vivienne was Roger's girlfriend, and was visibly relieved when Roger corrected her: "She's my little sister." Vivienne's room in Roger's house-the guest room-was small but sunny and featured floor-to-ceiling, built-in bookcases. Vivienne bought books with Roger's money and quickly filled those shelves. Roger's room was large and always felt empty, except on the nights when Vivienne, afraid or drunk or sad would sleep in Roger's room, curled into the green leather chair set beside the fireplace.

Roger exited the highway for the first gas station he saw with its lights on and topped off the Saab's tank. He liked the needle at full. He washed the car's windows and lights. He borrowed a key for the restroom in back, where he washed his hands and face as well as he could with the soap-grit provided. The paper towel dispenser was empty, so he dried himself with his un-tucked s.h.i.+rt. Inside the mart he found a sausage sandwich, which he heated in the microwave and ate while he picked up a gla.s.s jar of peanuts, several tall bottles of water, and two apple juices. The clock above the microwave read 2:17. He added elk jerky and crackers to his purchases.

Outside, a man stood by the pumps, lit by fluorescent bulbs peppered with moths and flies. He leaned over and removed the cap from a bright red gas can-Roger heard the ping of a spring-release. A star fell, died behind the mountains; the star shower was over. Another man, wearing a John Deere cap, emerged from shadow, from behind the last pump. Something in the way he walked-the angle at which he held his head-struck Roger as off. Roger put his groceries down on the roof of his car and took a step toward the pumps. The man with the gas can, bent over, pumping gas, touched the bill of his hat, acknowledging Roger. Roger nodded, took another step toward the pumps. John Deere moved like a man short on sleep, someone just up from the thick of a dream.

"Evening," Roger said to the man with the gas can, but with an eye on John Deere.

The man with the gas can released the pump trigger, stood and replied, "Morning, more like it." The man with the gas can then heard what Roger heard, a sickly sound, a rale, something unhealthy between breath.

John Deere fell upon the man with the gas can. Roger ran toward the two men; the man with the gas can yelled out in pain; Roger hit John Deere hard with his shoulder. John Deere's head hit hard against a pump, then hit the ground with a sound like a soggy sponge thrown against a tile floor. The man with the gas can started to complain-"son of a b.i.t.c.h bit"-but stopped when he got a look at John Deere.

The side of John Deere's head had collapsed, as if the skull was ceramic, as if there had been nothing inside-but, splattered against the pump was blood and tissue, a s.h.i.+vering jelly.

The man with the gas can vomited. Roger watched: The man wasn't vomiting because of the gross corpse; he was sick, abruptly, violently ill. The man said, gasping and bewildered, "He bit me," and held out his arm. Roger jogged to the gas mart, opened the door and shouted to the clerk, "There's a man sick out there." The clerk glanced at one of the monitors behind the counter-two men, and both looked to be in bad shape. The clerk couldn't quite comprehend what he was seeing and began to ask, but Roger was gone. He wouldn't wait anymore. He didn't have time to get involved. He put his groceries on the pa.s.senger seat of his car and drove. Without the stars flas.h.i.+ng across the sky, the night was very dark indeed.

Roger drove out of Billings. Though the star shower was over, cars were still parked alongside the highway. A pickup with its doors open wide offered a glimpse of a woman awkwardly asleep on the front seat. People wandered on the median: the headlights of stationary cars lit up men and women who appeared lost-at least, uncertain. Strange sights.

A car pulled onto the highway toward Billings. With his rear-view mirror, Roger watched the car drift from lane to lane. Perhaps a few six packs brought along for star gazing. Or sick. Roger let his mind go to worry: his sister had once been quite needy, but since Roger had left, she'd pulled herself together. To ask Roger to come and see her, well, she must really be sick. Roger put this out of his mind.

He considered the possibility that the police would connect Roger with the incident at the Billings gas station-as Roger was indeed connected. Perhaps the clerk would say something suggestive, "He was in an awful hurry to get out of here," or the police would watch video and see Roger kill John Deere. Roger admitted that to himself: He did kill John Deere, though, he added-and this he said aloud, "His head shouldn't've been like that." Roger felt a nervous-sick, took a swig of water, pressed the gas pedal, and brought the speedometer's needle to 90. If the police came, Roger would probably stop. But he didn't want to think about it anymore so he didn't. He didn't allow himself to think about the incident.

Two years ago, during Roger's first month on the job in Decker, at the warehouse where frozen food was loaded onto the truck Roger drove, enormous cuts of meat but also meals in boxes, vegetables and microwavable burritos, there had been a terrible accident. A truck driver named Davis, a fork lift, a crate, and a cracked palette. Roger heard wood split, a shout, a scream. A crate-three-hundred pounds of frozen food-had crushed Davis's gut and abdomen. Davis's legs lay separate from his body, pumping ever-weaker gasps of blood. Roger knelt beside Davis; Davis was alive; he whimpered and gripped Roger's hand. Davis wept, whimpered and begged. Davis cried because he knew he was dead. Roger had never seen anything so horrible and he muttered, "This is the most horrible thing I've ever seen," but he thought: "I can bear it."

As Roger drove past the Laurel exit, he turned on the radio, let it scan through the empty stations, numbers flicking from one end of the dial to the other without a word or a note, FM and AM-not too unusual, but-a little unusual. A tractor-trailer rushed past, rocking the Saab in its wake. Roger slowed his car, down to 85, and shook his head at the truck driver. Too dark to drive like that. He reached for a CD. Without looking to see which of his sister's mixes he'd picked up, he opened the case, popped out the CD, and slipped it into the player. When he and Vivienne lived together in his San Francisco apartment, he often came home from work to find his sister getting ready for a night out, music loud, sometimes with a girlfriend, both checking their makeup, both dancing, both teasing Roger for his suits. Roger hadn't minded. He liked to see his sister happy. He turned off the music.

On the road ahead, two. little, lights.

Roger hit the brakes hard, glanced at his rear-view mirror-he was alone on the highway. The tires held the road, his belt held him: he did not hit the bighorn sheep that lay in the road. He'd seen the animal's eyes, made gold by his headlights. The sheep's hip was crushed, its hind legs bend, hooves in the air. With its forelegs, the sheep dragged itself toward the car.

That the animal had been hit (very likely by the truck that had pa.s.sed Roger a few miles back) did not trouble Roger much; certainly, he would not have gotten out of his car to stare if that had been the whole story. Roger was troubled because the animal was calm. There was no fear in its expression, no struggle in its movement. He'd seen animals similarly injured, mostly deer, and always they had looked terrified.

He let the sheep get quite close before he snapped out of his uncomfortable reverie it's as if it's dead and got back into his car.

A sign for Red Lodge distracted Roger; he recalled the only fact he knew about the area, that in 1943, the Smith Mine exploded, killing seventy-four miners. He thought of the sheep again, and he wished he'd shot it. Not to free it from its misery, but because it was horrible. In San Francisco, there were bad periods with Vivienne. He thought of the night he'd woken to find her standing in his bedroom doorway. He'd waited for her to say something, but she'd stood without moving, dressed in a pair of his pajamas, for long minutes-he'd glanced at his clock-3:07, 3:08, 3:09, etc.-until 3:20. He'd gotten out of bed, had put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her face. The illusion that she had no eyes was shockingly vivid, even now, as Roger drove I-90 toward western Montana, toward Seattle where Vivienne lived and was now sick in a hospital. She'd had eyes, of course, dull, blank, surrounded by puffy, gray skin. The illusion had disturbed Roger, but he blurted a cry when drool had dribbled from her lower lip, a great elastic strand. "Vivienne," he'd said. She'd closed her eyes, reopened them- eyes alive again-and she'd said, "What it is, Roger?" When Roger hadn't answered, she'd laughed and returned to the guest room. Some weeks, she'd done that every night. A few nights had been worse and once she'd screamed so much a neighbor had called the police (Roger had been glad when they'd shown up, banging on the door, if only so he could show Vivienne-asleep by the time they arrived, of course-to someone else, so that someone else could say, "She looks fine to me").

Roger drove slow for a few miles. A group of bighorn sheep, cl.u.s.tered at the side of the road, appeared to be normal. He brought the Saab back up to 85, drove fast past Greycliff, Springdale, McLeod, and Livingston. Just outside of Bozeman, a car merged onto the highway. Its left taillight flickered, a loose wire, a red wink in the dark. The car exited, turned sharply onto an unmarked dirt road. Roger was once more alone on the road. The sky became silver blue. Roger ate elk jerky and peanuts. He'd been on the road for six hours. He tried the radio again.

A few miles from Main Street, Bozeman, in a trailer park, a teenaged boy, sixteen, woke up. His girlfriend, Dorie, was asleep beside him. His mind felt smoke-filled, vague; his skin stung and was slick and gritty. The night before- generic smokes, beer, and finally-finally!-s.e.x, though stupid, frightening s.e.x-Dorie yelped with pain and his o.r.g.a.s.m came too quick and all over her thigh, and when she'd looked at the mess she'd said it was, "Absolutely disgusting." But he was not hungover sick, not embarra.s.sed or guilty sick. "Dorie," he said, just before his eyes rolled up and he felt his brain s.h.i.+ft, slip inside his skull, felt things liquefy.

Thought-as he'd known it-was gone from his head. He pawed at Dorie's body, curious, her neck and her face, and skin came loose as he did. He ate a little bit of Dorie, but quickly lost the thread of what he was doing, wandered away from Dorie, into town.

Outside, the gra.s.sy mountains were white, their snow-covered peaks gray. The sky was empty. The teenaged boy was not alone in the park. Others walked sluggishly from their trailers. They had no interest in each other.

Roger was nearly to Bozeman. He dialed Martin's number: The news broadcast he'd found had been hysterical. "Martin, it's Roger." Alongside the highway were parked cars. "Martin, calm down." A man stood by a car, his hand up, a weak wave, but there was something so totally wrong in the way he waved. "Shut up, Martin. Shut up. How's my sister?" Roger clenched his teeth. "You stay there with her. You tell her I'm just eight hours away." Roger pulled the wheel to the left, let his cell phone drop to the floor, just missed hitting a car stopped in the middle of the highway. "d.a.m.n it!" he shouted. He reached for the phone and said, "Martin, what's going on?" but the call was lost.

Roger kept his radio off, to focus on driving. More people had parked their cars on the highway. A motorcycle lay on its side. A man and a woman were hugging. Roger slowed to 45. He hoped the traffic-if it could be called traffic-would clear once he was past Bozeman. Eight hours away. Roger wanted to be with his sister now, not in eight hours. He felt ridiculous and angry for leaving her. He reminded himself that he had his reasons and thus cleared his head. Had Roger turned on his radio, had Roger's antenna picked up a signal, he would have heard the news that a connection was being made to a worldwide star shower and several new diseases, or one disease with a variety of possible outcomes, a disease that affected not just people but mammals of all sorts. There was a warning about dogs and a story about a horse that tore off the leg of a little girl.

But Roger didn't hear the news, he drove in relative silence, cautiously until the traffic did clear up, just past Bozeman. He accelerated, brought the car up to 85, spied the green dinosaur logo of a Sinclair, and decided to stop in Belgrade to fuel up. He was more than a quarter down, and he didn't like that.

The gas station appeared unattended, but the pumps were on, so Roger filled up. As he stood by his car, he watched the window of the gas attendant's shack. A flicker on the gla.s.s; not someone in the station, headlights. The car weaved, and for a sick moment Roger was sure it would crash into the tanks, until it jerked away, tumbled down a dirt path, the gated entrance to a ranch, the gate wide. The pump clicked off. "h.e.l.lo!" Roger shouted. He screwed on the cap, took half a dozen steps toward the shack, stopped and cried out again. He walked back to the car, opened the trunk, contemplated his shotgun for a moment, picked up a tire iron and a flashlight instead.

He did not go into the shack. He shouted once more, saw the gla.s.s door rattle against his voice, s.h.i.+ned the light into the room. A few racks of maps were tumbled over. A coffee pot was smashed on the floor. He couldn't see over the counter. "This'll be on Sinclair," he thought, until he heard breathing, ragged like he'd heard before, in Billings, from the John Deere man.

"I'd like to pay for my gas," Roger said to the attendant, who'd come around the corner of the shack. Roger kept the beam of his light low on the man.

"I said I'd like to pay." He raised the beam up, from crotch to chest, chest to face- When the light hit the attendant's face the attendant screamed-squealed, really, a wet, porcine cry. The attendant raised his hands up, presumably to block the light but didn't actually cover his eyes, only held his hands up, on either side of his face.

The left side of the attendant's face showed bone, had the look of something chewed and raw.

Roger moved toward his car, tire iron raised and ready, but he attendant did not move, only screamed. Roger wanted to smash the attendant's face, to shut him up, to feel his head turn to mush at the end of the iron, but he saw no practical reason to do so, and so got into his car, and drove onto the road that led back to 90 West. The attendant squealed and squealed, hands up, tongue circling chapped lips, round and round, well after Roger was miles gone, past Churchill and Amsterdam, past Manhattan, fast approaching Three Forks. There, between Manhattan and Three Forks, Roger calmed enough to pull the car to the side of the road, found the presence of mind to get out of the car-tire iron firmly in hand-and retrieve his shotgun and the boxes of sh.e.l.ls from the trunk. Once these comforts were on the back seat, Roger checked to see if he was close enough to b.u.t.te to get any reception on his phone.

"Martin, it's Roger," he said. He looked around: beyond his headlights there were only black shapes and much nothing in between. "Martin, what the h.e.l.l is going on?" Behind Martin's voice the clatter of wheeled, metal furniture, the flash of brushed steel. "You're moving her where?" Vivienne was being moved upstairs, Martin said, because, "... more secure." Roger shouted-he didn't realize he was shouting, the noise from Seattle so loud, "Why secure?" Roger remembered Vivienne violent, coming home to find the gla.s.s-top coffee table shattered, Vivienne a mess on the floor, that vacant stare. "Is it Viv?" he asked. Martin shouted back, a "No," but wasn't speaking to Roger. Martin's voice lowered said something like "another patience," and the call died. Roger redialed, hung up-the road again, he needed to be there.

He thought he'd heard police sirens more than once, checked his mirrors, but all the way to b.u.t.te there was no one else on the road, and even for Montana, even so early in the morning, this wasn't normal. Roger scanned through the radio stations-near b.u.t.te there'd be something. He picked up a top 40 station, all pre-programmed, even the DJ, but otherwise there was nothing. Roger opted for silence.

Off the highway, down in b.u.t.te, men crawled along the jet-black slag walls, moved over the walls on all fours. A woman walked from a bar to the wall. Her walk was straight-backed, rigid. She grabbed a man from the wall, plucked him from the wall by his foot, dropped onto him, her knees snapped a rib, and she took a bite of the man's cheek. He did not struggle. He moved as if he were still crawling on the wall. A young mother, her child strapped into the backseat of her car, an '81 Rabbit Volkswagen, swerved onto Harrison Avenue, toward I-90. She'd never catch up to Roger, but she'd follow, miles behind, all the way to Seattle.

Behind her, Our Lady of the Rockies, a statue of Mary, mother of Jesus, ninety feet tall, usually brilliant white and lit by floods at night, was dark; all the flood lights were shattered. Mary was a dim shade, her face blank.

The sky, for the first few hours of Roger's drive, had been distracting with stars and with lights falling to Earth. Then the sky went dead, exhausted, and for hours was gray-black, pasty, murky. At 5:13 a.m., the sky got purple and clouds stretched low were visible and the mountains, too, vivid. The shadows of pines and rippled rock cast deep black lines. Roger had made good time-by driving between 85 and 95 most of the trip-yet he felt late, felt an anxious grip on his stomach and groin. All around were cars, most pulled over, like the sightseers' cars back in Billings. By 5:45, the sky was a deep pink.

And ahead, a car-for an instant Roger was sure the car was moving- maybe slow-but as he approached-fast-he saw that the car was stopped and that its front end was just off the road and touching the front end of another car. He jammed the brakes. He thought, I don't have time to see if anyone's okay, and, I don 't care. Roger sat behind the wheel, finger on the door-lock, engine clicking, ignition off. 5:49 a.m-still ten hours to drive-the clock went dark, came back to light, blinking 6:00 a.m. "Close enough," Roger muttered, and without another thought he stepped out the car, shotgun in hand.

"Is anyone here?"

No response. The sky was empty, growing gorgeously pink, hints of a clear blue sky appearing up high, well above the mountains. A bull, a small shape near the tree line to Roger's left, walked toward the road, something about its gait unhealthy-and Roger heard the sound of gristle, chewed. For a moment he thought it was the crackle of a fire, and carefully examined the cars-the cars were fine, a little dent where the b.u.mpers kissed, it looked to Roger as if the cars had slowly rolled into each other. He walked around the cars-glanced at the bull as he did so and saw that it was closer and that its flank was smeared with mud. The chewing sound grew loud and Roger caught a whiff of something foul, feces. Not the sweet smell of manure; more acrid.

On the other side of the stopped cars was a man wearing nothing but black dress socks. His pale skin was covered with excrement and dirt and blood. His face was buried in the stomach of a still living deer. The deer strained to keep its head off the pavement, its legs kicked. The man was holding the deer down-his strength- "Stop," Roger said.

The man jerked his shoulders, pulled his head up out of the deer's gut, then released the deer-it struggled to move, but its viscera was spread around the naked man's knees, the deer, falling out of itself. Roger shot the deer in the head; it gave a great kick which broke open the naked man's head- and a woman sat up in one of the cars and thrashed around, maybe an epileptic- her head hit the dash and broke apart like gla.s.s, its contents, thick liquid.

The naked man, flailing, attempting to keep upright, reached for Roger, clawed at Roger's pant leg. That was when Roger began to think of those people-the John Deere man, the gas attendant, the woman in the car, and the naked man-as dead. Clearly they were not without animation, but they were not alive. Roger shot the naked man.

The bull was now at the side of the road. It's flank was not mud covered but an open wound-a great, wet hole-and Roger knew that it too was dead, that the dead were not just people but animals, too-the racc.o.o.n-and this gave Roger a terrible, lonely feeling-desperate. From now on, he would only stop for gas. The bull bellowed. Roger got into his car and drove away.

In no time at all, Roger drove past Anaconda, where the dead were lost in the Washoe Theater, confused by the golden deer painted on the theater's curtain, by the copper fixtures that dimly shone, by the rams' heads carved into the ceiling. Those still alive in Anaconda-a dog and a brother and sister, hid from their mother, who knew where her children were, but could not remember how to open door to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

There are stretches on 90 through Montana where the mountains are far from the road-always in view, but distant. Once far enough west, the mountains move in, the road curves up and among them. Snow drifts in May. When Roger saw the opportunity to fuel up, he did. Gas pumps were rarely manned and were often old-no slot to swipe a card. This worked. If a station looked disorderly or dark, Roger fueled up and left, no worries. He would have welcomed the sight of a police cruiser in his rearview. Once, a car pa.s.sed, headed east, the back piled with household belongings, and two girls huddled together in the backseat. The driver's expression a warning: the dead were everywhere.

Forty miles outside of Missoula, Roger's cell phone received a flicker of reception, and immediately the phone rang. Roger dropped speed, from 90 to 80, and answered, "Martin."

It was not Martin, but Vivienne.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"About eight hours, Viv. Less."

"Oh eight hours I'm sick I don't know if I can hold on to my thoughts Roger eight hours that's a long time and Roger the thought of you your handsome eyes where is my memory?" something metal hit the floor; someone shouted, Vivienne screamed.

Roger didn't shout into his phone, didn't cry out his sister's name. He dumped his phone onto the pa.s.senger seat, reception gone.

Two years before, the day after he left San Francisco, he stopped in Missoula, early in the afternoon. He stopped because he still had a day or two before he had to be in Decker, where he'd gotten a job delivering frozen food. He stopped for no other reason than to sightsee, which he did, he wandered aimlessly, amazed by how good it could be in a city that was not cosmopolitan, that was not San Francisco or New York, the two poles his life had him caught between-had once had him caught between. Spokane had been nice, had shown Roger a little city, emptier on a workday than he'd thought possible and Missoula was like that, too, though less industrial, more kind. He ate a fish taco in a restaurant where people could still smoke, and he liked the way people were dressed, some for office work, surely, but many more for enjoying the place they were in and nothing else.

That Roger was romanticizing this place was evident even as he was doing so; a stop at a dingy bar cleared his head, kept the idea that maybe he'd settle in Missoula from fully forming. Afternoon light slanted into the dark bar decorated with license plates and empty bottles, some quite old, all beneath a film of dust. A few obvious alcoholics sat at the bar, a grad student who either thought the alcoholics were n.o.ble or who was a young alcoholic himself, and a skinny red head who turned out to be the bartender. She served Roger his beer, washed some gla.s.ses in a metal sink, then disappeared into a back room, the door marked with a sign that read: "hot dogs $i." A man in a once s.h.i.+ny baseball jacket turned to Roger and began to talk, without an invitation to do. He told Roger that he accepted his people's defeat, "Indians," he said, "didn't have weapons as good as yours and that's how it goes, I accept that, that's okay. But you should know, you might not have known this, but we have Custer's leg."

Roger, amused, asked, "What?"

"Custer's leg. The Blackfoot. We have it in a bag."

"The whole leg?"

"It's dust now."

The Blackfoot opened his mouth-presumably to smile-but without teeth, what his open mouth indicated was unclear.