The Dead

watching him get put down every once in a while.”

“I thought you were searching for the ultimate truth and all that.”

“That too.” Dennis paused. “Aren’t you interested in the truth, Gary?”

Gary laughed. “Not till it comes up and sinks its teeth into my leg. Then, just maybe.”

Jeff Purzycki was very much alone-unless you wanted to count the two hundred and fifty corpses on the other side of the gym’s double doors. But Jeff preferred not to think of them as company.

He hadn’t been the only warm body when he arrived. Jack Bingham, the man Jeff had been sent to relieve, was there, as well as an assistant coroner, and three Italians from North Jersey who’d had relatives on the plane. The family members and the coroner had gone in to look at some of the stiffs in the zippered black body-bags.

While they were inside, Jack had told Jeff that none of the bodies had been claimed; the airline situation had made it impossible for anyone to come over from Italy. Because of potential health hazards, the corpses were going to be moved out the following afternoon to a big out-of-business meat-packing plant up in Long Branch.

“Good fucking riddance,” Jack had said. “Get ‘em the hell out of here.”

Jeff laughed. “What’s the matter? Scared?”

“Nah. It’s just-I don’t know. I was here alone for a while, and I thought-”

“Thought what?”

“Forget it. I must be cracking up.”

Before Jeff could press him any further, the coroner and the others came out, and Jack left with them. Jeff wasn’t particularly concerned about what Jack had said. Jack had always been a crazy son of a bitch.

Now Jeff was wandering around the gym lobby, inspecting the basketball trophies in the glass case and the plaques on the walls, remembering his futile efforts on the court back in high school. After a time he pulled up a chair and sat down, got the paperback he’d started out of his lunchbox, and began to read.

The book was a big fat wad by one of his favorite authors, a man who, regrettably, seemed to have been losing his mind lately. Jeff had slogged through almost to the end before learning that the menace, which adopted such less-than-terrifying forms as Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf, could be defeated by belief in anything, literally anything. Faith in the Tooth Fairy would do. Biting into the monster’s tongue and thinking of jokes would also. Reaching the point where it became clear that the monster was actually a giant (shivers!) spider, he tossed the book back in his lunchbox and got out a sandwich-pastrami and Swiss with pickles.

Sirens in the distance. Nothing unusual about that, considering what the rest of the night had been like. But this time the wailing just went on and on. He decided to call the station.

There was a pay-phone in the lobby, but he had no change. Carrying his half-eaten sandwich, he left the lobby and went around to the parking-lot, got into his station wagon-summer cops didn’t rate patrol cars-and called in.

“Train wreck,” Sgt. Masterson explained.

“Another? Where?”

“Same place.”

“What? Was it deliberate?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“How many dead?”

“Don’t know that either.”

“You guys need me?”Jeff asked.

“Just stay put.”

Jeff hung the mouthpiece up and sat in silence, finishing his sandwich, mulling over what Masterson had said. Then he got out and went back toward the gym lobby.

As he rounded the corner of the building, he saw three teenagers by the lobby entrance, one in the process of going inside.

They want a peek at the bodies, Jeff thought.

“Hey!” he cried.

They bolted. Shaking his head, laughing quietly, Jeff jogged up the walk and went back into the lobby.

Suddenly he was aware he had to take a leak; he’d had several beers before coming on duty. The john was halfway down the dark hallway adjoining the lobby; he started toward the corridor, then paused-he didn’t want to come back and find those kids inside. Turning, he noticed a chained padlock hanging from one of the doors. Closing the doors, he chained the release-bars together, then went to the head.

When he returned, the lights were sputtering. He’d been considering going back to his book-he had, after all, invested so much time in it already-but decided to wait until the power company got its act together.

What to do in the meantime? He had a transistor radio out in the car. He could get it and listen to K Rock up in New York. But would there still be all those bursts of static?

He made for the doors, remembered the padlock, and started fishing for the key ring Jack had given him. Looking at the keys, he couldn’t remember which one opened the padlock. Oh well; he could just go through and try them. There were only thirty or so of the little-

A faint crackling noise reached him. He looked back at the doors to the gym.

Plastic crumpling, he thought.

The meaning of that did not sink in at first. Then there was suddenly a frozen place in his stomach.

Too many horror novels, he told himself. Still, he listened closely. For the next minute there was only silence. Had he heard anything at all?

With a shrug he went to the lobby doors and started fitting the keys to the lock. But at length he paused, his thoughts wandering back to that noise.

And the way Jack had been behaving.

I’m telling you, too many fucking hor-

The sound again.

Jeff straightened, leaving the last key stuck in the lock, the other keys jingling as the ring swayed back and forth.

“There is nothing going on in there,” he said. Determined to prove it to himself, he turned and crossed resolutely to the gym doors, looking in through one of the little square windows.

The gym lights were off; the only illumination came through the door windows on the far side, flecks of it gleaming off the black plastic shrouding the bodies. The foreground was completely dark.

He thought of going in and turning on the overheads; the situation would be much less unnerving if he could see very clearly how those two hundred and fifty corpses were doing just what corpses should. His hand drifted to the handle of one of the doors-

And drifted back again. He simply couldn’t muster the will.

But hell, what did that matter? Why make such a concession to his fears?

The lights steadied. He returned to his chair and sat down, determined now to try and submerge himself in his book. So what if it called itself a horror novel? There hadn’t been too much evidence of that. Certainly nothing to put him more on edge.

If they come after me, he thought, I’ll just think about the Tooth Fairy.

Yet he hadn’t read much farther when the lights went dead. A silvery moonglow came in through the lobby doors, startlingly bright, though not enough to read by. If only he’d brought his flashlight; that too was out in the car.

He recalled that he’d left the keys in the door. Now was as good a time as any to work through them again-

Before the shit hits the fan, Jeff? Before those soggy ole wops come clawing out of those bags and pay you a little visit?

“I must be cracking up,” he laughed nervously.

And then remembered Jack saying exactly the same thing.

Laying the book down, he walked back to the door, pulled out the key in the slot, and started trying the rest. He was almost through the bunch when one of the wrong ones snapped off in his trembling hand, leaving the business