"It is if you've pa.s.sed away," Wilder responds calmly. "You shouldn't let it alarm you too much. This condition, this reanimation, isn't unique to you. An explosion of this type of phenomenon has appeared all over the country in the past six months."

Sam looks back at his finger, at the ugly warped s.p.a.ce where his nail once sat. "Phenomenon?"

Wilder looks over his shoulder and, satisfied that the old man near the counter is paying them no attention, he says in a low voice: "We call them 'walking dead'. People who've died but for some inexplicable reason get up and walk around as if nothing happened, seemingly oblivious to their own pa.s.sing."

Sam scoffs. "That's crazy. I saw a movie like that. Zombies, staggering around a farmhouse, munching on human flesh. It made me sick. Are you trying to tell me that's what I am? A zombie?"

Wilder waves away the notion. "I a.s.sure you, Sam. You won't find yourself strangely enamored by human flesh and although I detest the use of the word 'zombie', it is probably the closest description of what you are. Not a monster, we don't think of cases like yours as being akin to demonic resurrection, rather a sickness or a virus that leaves its victims in a state of confusion."

"But..." Sam continues to shake his head, waiting for the punchline so he can go home to Linda. "That's insane. I'm not dead. Dead people stay dead, don't they?"

"They used to," Wilder says in a grave tone. "Until that meteor crashed in New Mexico. Since then it's been as you so succinctly put it 'insane.' I wish I had an explanation to offer you as to why you're sitting here listening to a stranger telling you you're dead, but I don't."

Sam's eyes narrow. "You could be pulling some kind of con on me. How do I know you're not?"

Wilder surveys the room again. "Put out your hand."

"What for?"

"Please, just do it."

Reluctantly, Sam slides his wounded hand across the table until it's close to Wilder. Wilder reaches into his pocket and withdraws a small black cylinder.

"What's that for?"

He hears a click and a six-inch metal blade springs from the top of the cylinder. He flinches and prepares to pull away but Wilder clamps a hand on his wrist and in an instant brings the blade down like a guillotine, severing the tops of four of his fingers, only the thumb remaining intact. The fingertips hop and scatter across the Formica.

"Oh sssshhhit!" Sam moans and inhales enough breath to power the scream barreling up his throat.

Wilder raises a finger to his lips and Sam catches the scream behind his teeth.

The old folks at the head of the diner look in their direction, shrug and go back to complaining.

"Look," Wilder says and points at Sam's ruined fingers. "Do you see any blood?"

He's right. Sam watches them for a moment. No blood, just dry stumps. More significant still is the fact that he feels no pain at all. Nothing. Not even the slightest ache.

I'm in shock, he tells himself but knows it not to be true.

He looks at Wilder who is busy collecting the fingertips and wrapping them in a pristine white handkerchief. "I'm dead?"

Wilder nods. "I'm afraid so."

Sam's face droops and he begins to blubber, Wilder's hand suddenly appearing on his shoulder. "I'm here to help you Sam."

Sam looks up; eyes dry because there are no tears available. "This sucks."

"What happens now?"

They are standing outside Sam's house, Wilder looking the picture of dignity, Sam looking dejected, shoulders hunched and head low.

"A car will come for you at dawn. There's no need to pack, anything you need will be provided for you at the clinic."

"Clinic?"

"Yes, consider it a rest home for the undead. You'll be taken care of there."

Sam frowns. "What will happen to me?"

"We'll monitor the progress of your... decomposition and do our best to compensate for it. You'll be made to feel at home."

"You mean I'll... rot?" Sam asks, voice brittle.

Wilder nods solemnly. "As all dead folk do. The only consolation is you won't feel it. There will be no pain whatsoever and you'll be doing science a favor."

"How?"

"By studying your post-mortem brain functions, we can try to determine the cause of this most peculiar phenomenon and perhaps attempt to find a cure."

"What do I tell Linda?"

Wilder looks at the house and back to Sam. "As little as possible. If you were to stay with her, she'd be forced to watch bits and pieces of you dropping off until you were nothing but a talking skeleton. That would be a lot more traumatic for her than your sudden 'disappearance', don't you think?"

"I guess."

"I guarantee it would."

Sam shuffles toward the steps leading to his front door. He stops, turns.

"What happens when the study is over?"

But Wilder is already walking away.

At the dinner table, Sam finds himself completely repelled by the sight of the b.l.o.o.d.y sirloin swimming in his plate and turning his potatoes a dark maroon. The longer he looks at it the less human he feels.

But I'm not human, am I? According to Wilder, I'm a zombie.

The thought makes his undead stomach turn.

As he sc.r.a.pes his chair back from the table, Linda fixes him with a puzzled look. "Something wrong with the meat?"

"Uh..." Sam begins, struggling to think of a convincing excuse. "No, it looks delicious. I'm just not feeling very well this evening."

"What happened to your fingers?" she asks, pointing at his bandaged fist.

"I... "

"What have you been up to Samuel? You have that look in your eyes that tells me you've been up to something."

"Nothing. Some idiot at the diner slammed the door on my hand. It was an accident."

"What were you doing at the diner?"

"What?"

"You never go there anymore. Why today?"

"Just felt like it, that's all. Jesus, what's with the third degree? I can't go for a coffee anymore?"

"We have plenty of coffee here."

"So I wanted to get out of the house for a while, okay?"

She levels him with a gaze brimful of suspicion. "I see. So you go to a diner you haven't been to in years, hurt your hand and now you won't eat your dinner. Would you not be at least a little suspicious?"

Sam shrugs.

Linda clasps her hands beneath her chin. "Who was that man today?"

"What man?"

"The one you were talking to outside."

"n.o.body."

"He certainly seemed to upset you."

Sam looks at her, incredulous. "You were listening?"

"I thought it might be important."

"It was nothing. Life insurance."

"I see." Linda says, but it is clear she doesn't buy into his stuttered explanation. She recommences her a.s.sault on the meat before her; filling her mouth with the almost raw sirloin, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Sam looks away in disgust.

"I'm off to bingo in about a half hour. Want me to put your dinner in the oven until you feel up to it?" she asks when she's finished.

A b.u.t.terfly of panic flutters against Sam's chest. "Bingo? Tonight? Do you have to go? I thought... "

She gets up from the table. "Thought what?"

He shrugs, defeated and gets to his feet, wincing inwardly at the crack of his knees as he does so. "Nothing. I... maybe you can skip it just for tonight, eh? We'll have a quiet night at home."

"I never miss bingo," Linda says, frowning.

"Well, one night wouldn't kill you would it?"

"Just what is wrong with you, Sam? You look like death warmed over. Is something the matter?"

Wilder's voice fills his head like Muzak on an elevator descending into the darkness: If you were to stay with her, she'd be forced to watch bits and pieces of you dropping off until you were nothing but a talking skeleton. That would be a h.e.l.l of a lot more traumatic for her than your sudden 'disappearance', don't you think?

"No. Nothing wrong," he mutters and wrenches himself away from the table.

He shuffles into the dark living room, propelled forth by his wife's exasperated sigh, and thumbs on the television. The white noise fills his head like angry wasps.

With trembling hands he slides open the cabinet beneath the television and squints to make out the t.i.tles of the videos stacked atop one another in uneven piles. At last he finds the one he's looking for and, trying his best to ignore the gruesome pictures on the cover, shoves the tape into the gaping maw of the VCR.

Swallowing dryly, he clicks the b.u.t.ton on the remote and eases himself into a recliner. His bones feel like kindling as he struggles to get comfortable.

On the screen, in gloomy black and white, he watches a black car winding its way toward a graveyard and wonders if that's really where he should be. A graveyard.

Dead.

Buried.

Worm food.

He shudders, his chest tightening at the thought of that black car waiting outside his house in the morning like a patient vulture.

They're coming to get you Barb'raaaaaa.

He switches off the television and sighs, coughs, hacks up bits of brown papery matter. Winces at the sight of them coiled atop his bandaged hand.

He forces himself to swallow a knot of fear.

They can't hurt me, can they? I'm dead.

The thought offers him little comfort as he sits there alone, cloaked in shadow.

Dawn creeps silently through the world and Sam jerks himself from non-sleep with a stifled cry. The room glows with hazy orange light that might, under any other circ.u.mstances have seemed warm, comforting, but now looks like the reflected light of a funeral pyre.

d.a.m.n Wilder, he thinks miserably, I should stay with Linda. G.o.d knows she's a tyrant at the best of times but... I still love her! This rare admission makes him sure he has felt his rotten heart kick but it might have been nothing more than a memory.

He slowly, carefully gets to his feet to a chorus of snaps and cracks and walks stiff-legged into the kitchen. Thankfully, Linda is still sleeping. He remembers hearing her come home, the feel of her lips brushing against the taut dead skin on his forehead. Rather than wake him, she opted to leave him sleep in the living room and now he aches for her for the first time in years. The ache becomes an almost physical pain, sparking doubts in his mind about the validity of Wilder's claims. If he can feel sorrow, loss, love... doesn't that make him alive?

No. He looks at his bandaged hand, the discoloration on the gauze. He thinks about his severed fingers, discarded like nail clippings with not an ounce of pain. His nerves are dead, of that there can be no doubt and soon he will shed his skin like a snake, sloughing off his ident.i.ty to become nothing more than a cadaver exposed for all the world to see and study. The thought frightens him. Just how long will he remain aware of what they are doing to him? Once his eyes shrivel in their sockets and he can see no more, how long will his emotions, his loneliness take to die? If he has to lie on a cold table knowing what they are doing to him despite being spared the sensations that come with their needles and hooks, he does not want to be capable of thought.

Will they take care of that too?

I can't do this.

And yet he knows he has to. There are no other options available for him now that he knows the truth. All he can do is accept his fate as it has been written and go blindly into the jaws of science. He can only hope that when he finally abandons this crumbling vessel that sags on his bones like an over-worn suit, something infinitely better awaits him on the other side of somewhere.