Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology by Anthony Giangregorio Page B

and Maddie couldn’t tel if that meant please come home or please don’t take me up on an offer which was real y just made for form’s sake , and she spent sleepless nights trying to decide and succeeding in doing only that thing of which Jack had accused her: deciding not to decide.
    Then the weirdness started, and that was a mercy, because there was only the one smal graveyard on Jenny (and so many of the graves fil ed with those empty coffins —a thing which had once seemed pitiful to her now seemed another blessing, a grace) and there were two on Deer Isle, bigger ones, and it seemed so much safer to stay on Jenny and wait.
    She would wait and see if the world lived or died.
    If it lived, she would wait for the baby.
    That seemed like enough.
    And now she was, after a life of passive obedience and vague resolves that passed like dreams an hour or two after getting out of bed, final y coping . She knew that part of this was nothing more than the effect of being slammed with one massive shock after another, beginning with the death of her husband and ending with one of the last broadcasts the Pulsifers’ TV had picked up—a horrified young boy who had been pressed into service as an INS reporter, saying that it seemed certain that the president of the United States, the first lady, the secretary of state, the honorable senator from Oregon (which honorable senator the gibbering boy reporter didn’t say), and the emir of Kuwait had been eaten alive in the White House bal room by zombies.
    “I want to repeat,” the young reporter said, the fire-spots of his acne standing out on his forehead and chin like stigmata. His mouth and cheeks had begun to twitch; the microphone in his hand shook spastical y. “I want to repeat that a bunch of dead people have just lunched up on the president and his wife and a whole lot of other political hotshots who were at the White House to eat poached salmon and cherries jubilee. Go, Yale! Boola-boola! Boola-fuckin-boola!”
    And then the young reporter with the fiery pimples had lost control of his face entirely, and he was screaming, only his screams were disguised as laughter, and he went on yel ing Go, Yale!
    Boola-boola! while Maddie and the Pulsifers sat in dismayed silence until the young man was suddenly swal owed by an ad for Boxcar Wil y records, which were not available in any store, you could only get them if you dialed the 800 number on your screen, operators were standing by.
    One of little Cheyne Pulsifer’s crayons was on the end table beside the place where Maddie was sitting, and she took down the number before Mr. Pulsifer got up and turned off the TV without a single word.
    Maddie told them good night and thanked them for sharing their TV and their Jiffy Pop.
    “Are you sure you’re al right, Maddie dear?” Candi Pulsifer asked her for the fifth time that night, and Maddie said she was fine for the fifth time that night (and she was, she was coping for the first time in her life, and that real y was fine, just as fine as paint), and Candi told her again that she could have that upstairs room that used to be Brian’s anytime she wanted, and Maddie had declined her with the most graceful thanks she could find, and was at last al owed to escape.
    She had walked the windy half mile back to her own house and was in her own kitchen before she realized that she stil had the scrap of paper on which she had jotted the 800 number in one hand. She dialed it, and there was nothing. No recorded voice tel ing her al circuits were currently busy or that number was out of service; no wailing siren sound that indicated a line interruption (had Jack told her that was what that sound meant? she tried to remember and couldn’t, and real y, it didn’t matter a bit, did it?), no clicks and boops, no static. Just smooth silence.
    That was when Maddie knew—knew for sure.
    She hung up the telephone slowly and thoughtful y.
    The end of the world had come. It was no longer in doubt.