The Collection

It was then that he noticed the bodies on the ground. There were four of them, and they lay facedown on the sidewalk as if they had simply fallen there while walking down the street. The three bodies closest to him were en­ tirely unmoving, trash and light debris piled up by the wind in drifts against their sides and shoes, but the body farthest away -that of a young woman- seemed to be trying to get up. Josh took a quick step forward.

'No!' Lydia yelled at him from the car.

He looked back at his wife. Her face was bleached and I terrified, her eyes wild with fear.

'Let's call the police!'

He shook his head. 'She's alive!'

'Let's get out of here!'

He waved away her protestations and quickly moved for­ward toward the struggling woman. But she was not strug­gling. She was not moving at all. The head he had seen trying to raise itself was merely the fluttering of a paper sack f that had caught on the woman's hair. The arms attempting to push the body upward were junk food wrappers which had blown against her side and were gyrating in the breeze.

Josh stopped. In a strange objective instant, he saw the en­tire situation as though it was happening to someone else- the abandoned town, the crazy man at the gas station, the bodies on the sidewalk-and it suddenly scared the hell out of him. He backed up slowly, then turned around, hurrying.

Lydia jumped out of the Blazer, screaming, hitting at her legs. His heart leaped in his chest as he rushed forward. 'What is it?' he demanded. 'What happened?' But he had already seen the pieces of lipstick-stamped tissue clinging to her legs. Her peeked around the open door, looking into the car. The empty McDonald's bags on the floor were moving and writhing, making whispery crackling sounds. A bent paper straw thrust its way insinuatingly upward through the mess on the floor.

He slammed the door. 'We have to get out of here.' He pulled the tissue from Lydia's legs and felt the thin paper twist sickeningly in his hands. He threw the tissues to the wind, which carried them away, then wiped his hands on his pants, grimacing. 'Come on.' He grabbed Lydia's hand, leading her down the street. She was still crying, and he could feel her muscles trembling beneath his fingers. They ran across the asphalt. And stopped.

A line of paper was inching toward them, moving against the wind, toothpick wrappers riding atop lunch sacks, crum­pled envelopes and discarded Xerox sheets creeping in tandem-along the ground. Josh swiveled around. Behind them, pages from magazines, spent teabags, cigarette butts, price tags, and grocery sacks rolled with the wind. Above them, in the sky, fluttering Kimwipes and paper towels swooped low over their heads then looped upward to make another dive. His pulse raced.

'In here!' He pulled Lydia to the other side of the street, across the sidewalk, and into a convenience store. Or what was left of a convenience store. For all of the racks and shelves had been tipped over, thrown into the narrow aisles. Rotting food lay on the floor, smashed preserves and spilled soft drinks hardened into glue on the white tile. The store was dark, the only light coming through the front glass wall, but it was quiet, free from a maddening howl of the wind outside, and for that they both were grateful.

Josh looked at his wife. She was no longer crying. There was an expression of resolve on her face, a look of determi­nation in her eyes, and he felt closer to her than he had in a long time. Both of them moved forward spontaneously and hugged each other. Josh kissed her hair, tasting dust and hairspray but not caring. She nuzzled his shoulder.

Then they pulled silently away, and Josh grabbed a nearby display, pushing it against the door. He shoved another small fixture against the door, pressing it hard against the glass. The makeshift barricade would not hold forever, but it would buy them a little time, allow them to think. This was crazy and unbelievable, but they would be able to get out of it if they used their wits.

'Think!' he said. 'We need to think! What can we-'

Fire.

'Fire!' he cried. 'We can burn them! They're just paper.'

Lydia nodded enthusiastically. 'We can kill them. It'll work. I'll look for matches. You check by the counter for lighters.'

'See if you can find any charcoal or lighter fluid.'

She moved toward the back of the small store, stepping over and through the mess, and he hopped the front counter, rummaging through the pile of impulse items on the floor. He noticed that there were no paper products behind the counter.

He was digging through a pile of overturned keychains when, from the back of the store, Lydia screamed; a shrill, hysterical cry so unlike any sound Josh had ever heard her make that it took his burdened brain a second to make the connection. Then he was off and running, vaulting over the front counter and dashing down the nearest aisle to the rear of the building.

She was standing before the row of wall refrigerators which lined the back of the store, mouth open, no sound coming out. He followed her gaze. Behind the glass doors of the refrigerators which had formerly housed beer and milk and soft drinks were the dead naked bodies of eight or nine people, crammed together like sardines. They were facing outward, eyes wide and staring. Toilet paper was wrapped tightly around each of their mouths and wrists and ankles, making them look like hostages.

He instantly grabbed her around the waist, turning her around, away from the sight. He clenched his hands into fists, letting his fingernails dig into his palms, concentrating on the pain in order to clear his mind of fear as he stared through the frosted glass at the bodies. There was terror in each of the dead eyes looking back at him, terror and an even more horrifying fatalism, as if, at the last moment, all of the victims had realized the inevitability of their deaths.

He pressed closer, and it was then that he noticed the cuts. .Paper cuts-some long and straight, others short and curved-crisscrossed the chests, legs, and faces of the naked men and women. There was no blood, and the cuts could only be seen at certain angles, but the patterns they formed looked too regular to be random, too precise to be anything but deliberate.

The cuts looked like writing.

Josh put his hands firmly on Lydia's pliant shoulders and led her up the aisle toward the front of the store, away from the refrigerators, looking back as he did so, afraid of seeing a stray movement out of the corner of his eye. But the bod­ies remained still, the toilet paper wrapped around them un-moving.

'Stay here,' he said, leaving Lydia by the front counter. He dashed quickly up and down the chaotic aisles until he found a book of matches and, buried under the sacks of charcoal, a tin of lighter fluid. He ran back to the front of the store. Papers, he saw, were conglomerating against the win­dow and door, fluttering in the wind.

And fluttering against the wind.

He opened the red plastic childproof cap of the lighter fluid. He wasn't exactly sure how he was going to do this, but he was damned if he was going to let the papers get either him or Lydia. He glanced over at her. She seemed to have recovered somewhat and was not dazed with shock as he'd feared she'd be. She seemed cognizant, aware of what was happening, and he thought that she was a hell of a lot stronger than he would have given her credit for.

He pulled away one of the fixtures he'd used to blockade the door. 'We're getting out of here,' he said. 'Think you can make it?'

She nodded suddenly.

He pulled away the shelves. Just in time, he noticed. There was a line of used and dirty Q-tips coming into the store from under the door, sliding silently along the floor, swab to swab, like a giant worm.

Here was a chance to try out his weaponry. He took out a match, struck it, then sprayed lighter fluid on the Q-tips and tossed the match. The tiny swabs went up in flame, twisting into charred blackness. There was agony in their death movements but no sound, and the unnatural sight sent a cas­cade of goose bumps down his arms. He took a deep breath. 'Let's go.'

He pulled open the door and leaped back, expecting a flood of paper to come flying into the store, but there was nothing, only wind and dust, and he realized that the papers must have seen his fire demonstration. He looked at Lydia. 'Can you hold the lighter fluid?'

'Yes,' she said.

He handed her the container, took out a match, and grabbed her hand. They walked outside. Around them, above them, papers fluttered and flew in the strong wind, but there was an empty circle surrounding them, and the cir­cle remained the same size as they moved across the street toward the car. The newspapers which covered the