The Waiting Room (24 page)

At another lighted window, another form appeared, and its head turned in my direction.

I thought,
This is perfect! Here I am in this town made up of the dead and I want to leave and my car's stuck in the mud and they're all looking at me!

Just as the sanitation workers had, and the woman in red, and the girls in pink taffeta.

"Mind your own
p
's and
q
's," Madeline had told me. I was beginning to understand what she was talking about.

The mud around the Malibu was studded with rocks. Most of them were small and flat, like small pancakes, but there were a few as large as fists. I bent over, picked up one of the fist-size rocks, muttered, "Sorry, Malibu," and smashed the driver's window with it. I unlocked the door, opened it, brushed away the broken glass, and climbed into the driver's seat.

The scenario I expected then—following in the old Hammer Films tradition—was that I'd first have trouble starting the car. And while I was trying to start it, I'd glance up and see the dead all around, coming my way, arms outstretched, mouths wide open. Then, when they were within twenty feet or so of the car, I'd get it started, breathe a sigh of relief, put it in gear, hit the accelerator, and listen to the sickening, soul-deadening sound of the tires spinning in the mud.

That was the scenario I expected. That, in its predictability, would have been satisfying, even comforting.

This, however, is what happened:

The car started easily enough. I listened to it idle a few moments, thought it was idling slow and rough. Then, before turning the headlights on, I looked again at the houses across the street. I saw that there were people at all the lighted windows now, their heads turned in my direction. I turned the headlights
on, bent over, and looked to the left at the side door of Anton's house, the door that led into the mudroom. That door had a window in it and I could see that a light was on in the kitchen. I could also see a number of people there, in the doorway beyond the mudroom.

I put the car in gear and hit the accelerator.

The engine died.

"Shit!" I whispered, put the car in park, and turned the ignition to "on" again. The engine roared to life. I put the car in gear again, my foot on the brake, hesitated, looked once more at Anton's side door. The kitchen light was off now, but I could see a group of people clumped darkly together behind the door. I straightened, took my foot off the brake. Again the car stalled. I hit the dashboard. "Dammit!" I barked, and turned the ignition key again. The car roared to life. I floored the accelerator, listened to the engine thump, looked at the side door again. The clump of people was outside the door. I looked straight ahead. Like strange, tall hedges that had sprung up between the front of the car and the houses across the street, clumps of people appeared at the perimeter of the headlights.

I frantically put the car in gear and floored the accelerator. The Malibu shot forward a few feet. And the engine died.

"It's your torque converter," I heard.

I shrieked, reached desperately for the key, banged my knuckles against the steering column, found the key, turned it. Nothing. "Dammit, goddammit!" I breathed.

"It's your torque converter, Sam. It's your torque converter."

I tried the key again. Again nothing. "Dammit!" I realized that the car was in drive. I put it in park, tried the key; the engine roared to life.

"I can fix it, Sam."

"No, you can't," I whispered, as if to myself. "I can fix anything now."

Plop!

"I got my own garage now, Sam."

"No, you don't," I whispered.

Plop!

"I got my own garage now, Sam."

"You scare't, boy?"

Plop!

I whispered to the Malibu, "Go, please. Go!" And I floored it, it shot forward a few feet. And the engine died.

"You scare't, boy?"

"Shit, yes," I whispered, turned the engine on again, put it in gear, and pulled very slowly out onto the street.

Again the engine died. I hit the steering wheel furiously, the horn blared, my heart began to race. I fumbled for the ignition, turned the key. Nothing. I tried it again. Still nothing. I took a breath. "Calm down, Sam," I whispered. "Calm down!"

I heard, to my left, outside the broken window, "You gotta put it in park, Sam. Put it in park."

I put it in park. "Thanks," I said.

"Ain't nothin'," he chuckled.

I glanced at him. He had the long-handled axe raised high over his head.

“What are you doing?!" I squawked.

"What's he doing?" a woman said.

"What's he doing?" a man said.

Anton's axe crashed through the Malibu's roof and ended up only a couple of inches from my head.

"Gotta eat!" Anton shrieked. "We all of us gotta eat;
this
is what I eat!" And he pulled the axe out of the roof. "This is what I eat, Sam! Even zombies gotta eat, Sam! This is what
zombies
eat!"

"Zombies?" someone said.

"Jesus," I muttered. I crouched low in the seat and groped desperately for the key in the ignition.

Again Anton's axe crashed through the roof, above the back seat now. I found the key, turned it. The engine fired up.

"Zombies!" Anton shrieked. "Zombies gotta eat, too."

"Zombies?" someone said.

I was still crouched very low, my torso on the passenger's side of the seat. Again the axe came crashing through the Malibu's roof.
 
I groped for the gearshift, just an inch or so up from where I could safely reach it.

"Zombies got to eat, too!" Anton shrieked.

"Zombies?" a woman asked. I heard a strange kind of sad confusion in her voice.

"Zombies eat
people
!" Anton shrieked.

I straightened a little, grabbed the gearshift lever, pulled it to reverse, and found that because I was still prone in the seat, I had almost no control over the accelerator pedal; I was able to touch it only lightly, so the car moved slowly and erratically across the street.

Again the axe head smashed through the Malibu's roof, near the top of the windshield; the windshield cracked in a crazy zigzag pattern.

Anton shrieked, "I'm gawna
eat
you, Sam! I'm gawna
eat
you, Sam!"

"Zombies?" said the same woman, with the same kind of strange, sad confusion in her voice.

"Zombies?" said another woman.

The car thudded into the curb and stopped. The engine again threatened to shut off. Either I took a chance or Anton was going to split me in two with that long-handled axe. I sat up quickly in the seat, grabbed the wheel, turned it hard left, and touched the accelerator. The car lurched forward, the engine again threatened to shut off. I touched the accelerator.

"Zombies?" I heard. A half-dozen or more voices
were saying it at once now, the voices of the women and the men and the children who had come out of their houses to watch the trespasser make his get-away. And each voice had that same sad confusion in it, so their voices together were a loud lament, a wail—
Zombies?
they were saying.
We aren't zombies! We're human beings!

And, at last, the Malibu sprang to life and I found myself pulling away from Anton and his long-handled axe at twenty miles per hour, then thirty, then forty, and I realized that I couldn't see anything, only the vague flat plane of the road and the dark clumps of weeds and grasses to the side of the road, and I whispered to myself, "Oh my God, I'm going blind!"

Then I grimaced at my stupidity, flicked the headlights on, and I wasn't blind anymore.

At the beginning of Haywire Street I stopped quickly, looked right, then left—"Courtesy will prevail, Sam," I thought Madeline would say—and turned left, rocketed past the Ashley Falls Hotel, where a human form, head turning as I sped past, stood at each of the windows. And I passed the Ashley Falls Hardware Store, doing fifty or fifty-five now (smiling to myself in thanks to the Malibu for its miraculous resurrection), where all the lights also were burning, and where there were a dozen or more people standing, watching, then past the Coffee Cup, where a man dressed in bib overalls stood just inside the door with a bowl in his hand and a spoon held halfway to his mouth, and then out of Ashley Falls and onto that narrow winding stretch of road where Anton had found me a million years ago.

~ * ~

I had figured it out. All of it. The whole thing. At some fork in the road I had made a wrong turn. Somewhere on my way from Manhattan to Brookfield I had missed a turnoff and so had ended up on a road that led to . . . Ashley Falls. And South Canaan. And God knew where else. But they weren't
real
villages—they were places where the dead hung out and pretended to be alive and tried to do the things that the living do.

I smiled to myself on that lonely, narrow, twisting stretch of road which, I figured, would take me soon enough into what masqueraded as South Canaan, Connecticut. I smiled. I'd figured it out. There were no secrets anymore. No one was going to pull the wool over my eyes again. I had my car—I was beginning to feel very proprietary toward it—and my life, and a purpose, and I knew precisely what this world that Abner had gotten himself into was all about.

~ * ~

A route sign slid past, caught briefly in the glare of the high beams.
U.S. Route 7
,
it read. "Sure, sure," I whispered. When I glanced in my rearview mirror I could see nothing and I imagined that as I passed over the road, it disintegrated behind me, it got swallowed up. If I were to turn around and go back toward Ashley Falls, the same thing would happen only in reverse. As I sped forward, a kind of reality—a
masquerade
of reality—would build itself up in front of me and then disintegrate in back of me.

But then I looked into the rearview mirror and saw
headlights. I thought they were a pickup truck's headlights, because pickup trucks' lights are set higher up, so they look brighter than normal headlights.

I thought,
Well, that's someone else who's gotten himself caught on this road,
and I pictured the road disintegrating behind him, instead of me. And then I thought, as the headlights gained on me,
No, you idiot, that's Anton Kenney and he's going to split you in two with that long-handled axe.

So I mashed the accelerator pedal to the floor and felt the Malibu gain speed with aching slowness, from 60 to 63 to 65 to 68 to 72. And that's where it stuck. At 72. With the headlights of what I assumed was a pickup truck just a car length behind.

"No way you're going to catch me, Anton," I whispered. That's when the flashing red light appeared, the siren wailed, and I realized that it was not a pickup truck behind me but one of those mammoth old Plymouth Furys the cops used to use.

I was not about to be fooled. "Cop, sure!" I whispered. "Tell me all about it." And, to coax a few more miles per hour out of the Malibu, I breathed at it, "C'mon, baby, c'mon!" In response the Malibu's engine started thumping loudly, and it slowed from 72 to 50 to 25 to 15 in a matter of a few seconds.

What could I do? I pulled over. And the Fury pulled over. Its siren went off, its pulsating red light stayed on. And I waited. And waited. And waited. All the while in a sort of fit of resignation;
Yes, I
told myself,
they are going to pull the wool over your eyes, Sam. Because you're a fool.

"Got a license, boy?"

A small burp/grunt of surprise escaped me; I turned my head and looked at the man standing beside the car. He was wearing what looked, in the glow of the Fury's headlights, like a regulation deputy sheriff's uniform—black leather jacket with chromed badge, gray shirt, gray pants, black, highly polished shoes, gun belt and gun—a very big gun, a .45. His face was a regulation deputy sheriff's face—white and nondescript. His hair was neatly combed, short, and black.

"Sure I've got a license," I said, feeling grimly playful. "I wouldn't drive without one."

"'Sthatso?" the deputy said, and he produced a flashlight from his gun belt, bent over, and shone it around the interior of the car. "You got a hell of a car here, don'tcha?"

"It gets me around," I said, and wished that my voice were steadier.

"Does it, now?" he said, and continued to shine the flashlight around the interior of the car. Finally he said, "You got contraband in here, boy?"

I guffawed. I couldn't help it. "Sure," I said, "I've got STP in here, and mescaline, and eight kilos of hash, and a half ton of coke, and eighteen bushels of horseshit."

"Do ya, now?" he said. He was clearly a man of few words.

"I never lie," I said. I was certain that this rural cop was what Anton was, and Anton's wife was, and all the others in Ashley Falls were. And that's why I was feeling so grimly playful. I was thinking,
Hell, at least I can have a little fun before I die
.