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He and Gladys took the boy back home to Tom’s River, where he wheezed his final breaths in their arms. Throughout, Adam wore this betrayed expression on his face, like he’d died under the misapprehension that Conrad was God and could have cured him, but had chosen otherwise, to teach him a lesson.
Outside their manicured split-level ranch, sirens blasted. Carnage littered the streets. Inexplicably, his walking buddy Dale Crowther, slick with soap, ran naked down Princeton Road. But the animated dead stuck to old routines, and in the suburbs nobody visits their neighbors, so Conrad dug the shallow grave in the backyard next to the family dog’s bones unperturbed.
On the television the next night, they learned that the research institutes were close to a cure. With Martial Law declared and Civil Rights rescinded, the CDC had turned the southern prisons into laboratories, and begun experimenting on convicts. In thick Brooklyn-ese, Rosie Perez, the fill-in WPIX news anchor, a
“Isn’t that the lady from the lottery movie?” Gladys asked. Conrad shushed her by putting his hand over her mouth, and they’d sat erect and tense as metal tuning forks while a still photo of their daughter had illuminated the television. She’d looked younger and more pissed off than he’d expected.
“They shot her full of the virus and she’s not sick?” Gladys whispered. “Thank the Great Buddha. My baby, I love you so much. Momma loves you,” she told the angry woman on the glowing screen while Conrad inspected his hands, because the sight of his wife’s tears, when he was helpless to console her, was intolerable.
Then Rosie returned, and spoke off teleprompter. “So, basically, we’re killing a buncha prisoners even though there’s like, a million zombies out there we could capture and test instead. So if this Delia Wilcox winds up curing everybody, then I guess it was worth it. But if she doesn’t…” Rosie had looked directly into the camera, through the screen, at Conrad, and he’d felt like someone who’s done wrong, and been caught.
“Think about it, people! They can’t see and they can’t hear but they’ll still chase you twenty miles, ’cause it’s not your skin these fuckin’ things want. This virus eats souls. That’s not go
Rosie glared. Co
Conrad and Gladys got close enough to press their faces to the snowy screen, just in case Delia came back. She didn’t. After a half-hour, a rerun of America’s Fu
That night, Gladys shook him awake. The bed was just a mattress on the floor-he’d broken apart the cedar frame, along with the rest of the wood furniture, and nailed it against the windows and doors. They were living on saltines and defrosted vegetables. Some days it felt like camp, but mostly it didn’t.
“I’m dying, Co
His belly filled with cold and his heart slowed as it pumped. “You’re healthy as a cow, Gladys,” he told her, though in fact she was sweating now, her breath shallow, and he understood with increasing alarm that there was something he’d forgotten.
“It’s my heart. We’re out of the digitalis.”
“I’ll get it right now,” he answered. The digitalis-why hadn’t she reminded him?
“It’s no good, Co
“Stop this talk,” he answered, standing now, in the dark. Orange light played through the cracks in the windows, because something out there was on fire. “I know a little high school chemistry. We’ll cook it on the kitchen stove. What’s digitalis made of?”
“No, Con. I’m on my way, and you’ve got to promise me something.”
He ran his hands along the sheets, and found that they were wet with her sweat. “I won’t promise you anything. You tricked me, you coward.”
Gladys shook her head. “Stop that, Co
He looked at his wife, whose complexion had turned orange with the fire. Over these last thirty-nine years, she’d grown wrinkled and fat and timid. He hated her whiny voice, and her old lady stink, and her sagging tits. Mostly, he hated her worthless ticker. “I’m empty, Gladys. I don’t love anything anymore. Not even you.”
She shook her head in what he would later remember as amusement. You’re married to somebody that long, you know better than to pretend like love is a fish. “Oh shut up and find her, you big baby!”
In the morning he dressed her in her comfy bathrobe and plastic-soled slippers, then cut off her head just in case, and buried her next to the boy and the dog. By noon he was gone. Walking south, toward Delia.
III. He Finds the Dog
It’s only been two hours since he left the 7-Eleven, but his water is gone and he’s thirsty again. Dusk has settled like a tall man’s shadow, and though the prison is still two miles of dark, broken road to go, he doesn’t have time to set up camp for the night, so will instead persevere.
His back went out during that last fight, so his crab-walk is exaggerated, but at least his shoulder has stopped hurting and become numb. Veins along his neck shine bright blue and green with infection, and he wonders what those little virions are eating. His defenses probably, then his memories.
That’s when he hears the howl carrying across the broken blacktop. It sounds human-a soulful lament. He thinks it must be the thrumping bass of old world music since he can’t imagine there are any survivors left who’d be so incautious as to wail.
Then again, maybe it’s his imagination. Since he got bit, he’s been hearing voices. They don’t belong to Gladys.
– Sorry I bit you, mister.
– Could you help an old altar boy, Father?
– I saw the multitudes to every side of me, and their howls were loud.
He thinks it might be a disorder of the brain. He hopes so, at least.
“Maybe you didn’t even get bit, Con,” he says in the wrong voice. Gladys’ voice. “Maybe you just imagined it, and you’re totally fine.”
“No, Gladdy. I’m losing it,” he says as a second howl interrupts him. He spots the thing in the middle of the magnolia-strewn street. A black Lab retriever. A dog! It cowers with its head between its paws.
He can’t help it. He smiles and comes to life a little. A dog! He thought they all were dead-eaten up first by the infected, and then by the survivors. He shambles faster. Gri
As he crab-walks, he passes a crawling zombie without legs, that is chewing its own flesh-
I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.
– but is too decomposed to chase him.
When he gets to the pup he offers it his closed fist. Out of habit, he pulls back when he sees the thing’s chewed-up snout and bloated, white eyes. It doesn’t try to bite him, and he’s confused until he realizes that it smells his infection and knows they are kindred. So he does the dog a favor. With one hand, he takes it by the chin, and with the other he draws the butt of his shotgun and smashes it over the mutt’s skull. It whines, just like a real dog.