White Horse

queue.

The week dribbles by.

Every day I listen to the elevator rattle to the bottom floor. When the doors open I say, “Good morning, Porkchop,” because it makes me feel better to imagine he’s still there. I don’t drop quarters in the dispenser now: it opens freely. I take a paper, try not to notice the faint Jenny stain on the concrete.

Upstairs I go, not bothering to set my apartment alarm. It’s pointless. There’s no one to call and verify that I’m me. The newspaper goes in a pile. War, more war, and mass death fill the front pages now. The secret is out. People finally noticed everyone they know is sick or dead. The other pages are thin on content and advertisement- free. Even the funeral home ads have tapered off, their employees buried in their own coffins.

I lie on the couch. I wait for death, or something like it, to pound on the door and make me an offer I don’t have enough heart to refuse.

On a day I suspect is a Friday, knuckles strike my door. My body rolls off the couch, staggers to the peephole.

“You gonna let me in?”

Sergeant Morris.

“No.”

“Then I’m gonna have to kick your door in, and I’m really not in the mood for door kicking today. It’s been a shit night and I lost two people. So, how about you let me in?”

She strolls in on pipe cleaner legs, carrying body bags under her eyes.

“You gotta see the shrink,” she says. “We agreed on that.”

“You look like shit.”

“Nice place. How long you think it’s gonna hold?”

“‘Hold’?”

She helps herself to my couch, leans back, eyes wide open like they’re propped open with toothpicks. “We’ve got three kinds of people out there that we’ve been seeing. Dead people. They’re the biggest group. We’re burning them now. It’s for the best. Otherwise they stink and rot. We load them into the wagons and drive them to the public pool at the YMCA. The outdoor one. We drained it couple of months ago. Turns out it’s the perfect place to burn corpses. Community bonfire.”

She laughs.

At first I’m horrified: How can she be laughing at burning bodies piled into a community pool? How can she joke about that? It’s a tragedy. Horror. There is no comedy in that scenario. Then I see it: the funny. The absurdity. And I laugh, too. The mental image of all those people, some in their designer suits, people who used to walk around like they were more important than the swarm; regular people I’d pass in the supermarket who minded their own business just like me; people from work; people living completely different lives, all of them heaped into that concrete shell and doused in—

“What do you use for accelerant?”

“Gasoline,” she says between outbursts. “It’s free now. We just take what we need.”

—gasoline, going up in flames, is hilarious. “I thought you quit smoking.” “I did, until the plague got me and I died. I figured I got nothing to lose now.” It’s like July Fourth, with real baby-back ribs —and grownup ribs, too. And I can’t stop. The volcano is erupting and my laughter flows down its sides in great fiery rivers. Burning people. In the community pool.

We laugh until we’re doubled over. And then something changes and the horror comes back and we start to cry.

“This is fucking bullshit,” she says, “I’m a soldier. Soldiers don’t cry, especially if they’ve got tits. It’s hard enough as it is.”

“The other two types?” When she squints, trying to figure out what I’m talking about, I remind her she said we were down to three types of people, and the dead ones were just the first.

“Two more types, right. You and me, the living. The ones who aren’t sick. For whatever reason, we’re the lucky ones who seem to be immune to this thing. Or unlucky, maybe. I haven’t decided yet.” She sits up straight, stares at the TV. The president is giving a press conference with what’s left of the press. “And the others.”

“‘The others’?”

“Come on, you have to have seen them. The ones who got sick but didn’t die. At least, not straightaway.”

I think about Mike Schultz eating the mice. One day he was sick, the next he was supplementing his diet with test subjects. I think about my father and his Mr. Hyde routine. There’s no way I can twist that to make it sound normal.

“I’ve seen some. How bad is it?”

She nods at the TV, reaches for the remote.

“Human beings are no longer compatible with life.”

These words are heard around the nation. Heads turn like sun-flowers to the sun. A split second after the gasping chorus sweeps the crowd, the president of the United States realizes his microphone is not turned off.

We watch his eyes widen, his mouth sag, as he takes in the truth, and now everybody left knows our leader has no faith in any of us.

He clutches his face. He is Edvard Munch’s Scream.

Sergeant Morris buries her face in her hands—that’s how bad it is. “I always thought I was a survivor, but now I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. I wish I knew…”

“Knew what?”

“How this shit all went down. How it began. The war, the disease, everything. I wish I had a neck to crush. Maybe that’d make me feel better about all this. Barring that, I wish we had the things we need. First sign of trouble, everything got looted. Drugstores first.”

“And electronics.”

“I know, right? World turns to shit and people steal big-screen TVs. Like that’s gonna save them.”

The world is broken, its contents smithereens. Therapy won’t change anything. I don’t want to sit around and talk about how I feel about losing everyone. I don’t want to shred my psyche to pulled pork, then pick through the strands looking for that moment when I began to fail everyone I loved. I don’t want to lie here on this couch and wait for the end of all things. And it’s coming, the end; the president knows it, the woman next to me knows it, and I know it. The end is coming. I don’t know if this is Armageddon, because there’s a distinct lack of religious people shaking their fists and yelling, “We were right! We told you so!” There’s no leader stepping forward to pull us together and stamp bar codes on our foreheads. If there’s a beast, we’re it. My religious studies have fallen far from the wayside, but I’m sure that possibility wasn’t accounted for: man as his own Antichrist.

A thin stream of air seeps from my lungs. “I’m not going to see your shrink.”

“I can compel you.” No conviction in her voice—just deep-boned weariness.

“You can try, but you’re overtaxed. I’m not going to do it. If you make me, I’ll just sit there and say nothing.” I take a deep breath, try not to think about losing everyone. “That sounds like a bullshit reason for coming here, anyway.”

“You’re right,” she says. “It’s partly bullshit. Truth is we could use more uninfected heads and hands. You’ve got both.”

I like that idea. I want to be more than a part of my couch. And I tell her so.

“I can get drugs,” I say. “Medication.”

“Legal?”

“More or less.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Maybe,” I say. “But does it even matter anymore? I can’t sit here and do nothing.”

She shakes her head. “You’re stubborn as hell. Nick’s gonna love you.”

My heart stops. “Nick?”

“Our therapist. Good guy. Delicious. Makes me wish I was interested.”

Heart starts. “My best friend James was gay, too. I miss him like crazy.”

She smiles, tight and small. “No, I’m not gay. My husband was one of the first casualties of this fucking war.