Dean palmed the pack to the delivery driver. "Help yourself. Bears. Stop shitting me. You ever see a bear out here?"

"No. But I've never seen a submarine, either, and I believe they exist in the world, someplace."

"You do, huh?"

"Yeah. Seen pictures. Anyway, I'm just saying, and shit, it's dark. We need to put a lamp out here or something. Can't see a damn thing." He lit a cigarette for himself and passed the pack back to Dean, who set it down on top of a crate.

"You got somewhere to go?"

Scott nodded. "Two large sausage and mushrooms. Going towards no man's land, out towards Andersonville. Fucking hate that, driving out there."

"Why?"

He popped his neck and sighed, taking another drag. "I always figure that's where I'll get a flat tire, or that's where the transmission will finally drop out of the Civic. It's only a matter of time, man, and I know my luck. It'll happen there."

"So what if it does? You've got a cell. I'd come and get you, or Pete would."

"I don't like it, is all. My sister's boyfriend, you know Ben, he used to live out that way, and he talked about it like it was weird. You know. Because of the camp."

Dean leaned his head back. "Oh yeah. The camp. I guess, sure. That could be weird. I think it'd be worse to live up north, near the battlefields. You hear cannons and artillery and shit. The camp was just . . . I don't know. Jail for POWs. And it's a park now. You seen it? It's all pretty and mowed."

"Man, people died there."

"People die everywhere." Dean crushed the cigarette against the wall, even though it was only half smoked.

Henry saw it first. He said he saw it, anyway. He said it was there, back by the sheds where they stored up the dried out dead until they could be dumped into a pit. According to him, it was a man-sized thing with black hole eyes and no soul inside it. According to him and his starved-up brain, the thing moved all jerky, like it wasn't used to having limbs. Like it wasn't used to having legs, or feet, or nothing like that.

Like it was man-sized, but no man.

"It staggers," Henry said. "It shuffles along and it takes them-it pulls them out the low windows, pulls them out in pieces and it, Jesus Lord, amen."

"What'd you see, anyway?" we asked, all gathered around close.

"It had an arm or something. A leg maybe. We get so skinny you can't tell, by looking in the dark. You can't see if that's a hand or a foot on the end of it, just that it's long and there's a joint in the middle. But the thing I saw, it had a limb of some kind, and it didn't bite it, didn't eat it or anything like that. It peeled it, just like a banana. It used these white, long fingers to pick the skin and just strip it on down until there was nothing there but bone."

The rest of us gasped, and one or two of us gagged. "Why?" I asked him.

"I haven't the foggiest. I haven't any idea, but that's how it happened. That's what it did. And then, when it finished yanking the skin away, it hugged on the bones what were left. It pulled them against its chest, and it's like they stuck there. It's like it pulled them against himself and they stayed there, and became part of him."

"Why would it do something like that-and better still, what would do something like that? It doesn't make any sense."

"I don't know," he said, and he was shaking. "But I'll tell you this-I'd gotten to thinking, these days, that maybe dying wasn't the worst thing that could happen. You know how it is, here. You know how sometimes you see another one drop and you almost feel, for a few minutes, a little envy for him."

"But not now," I said.

"No, not now."

"Lisa called in again," Scott said, putting the phone down and looking like he wanted to swear. "Third time in two weeks. Remind me again why she's still on the payroll? She's not that hot."

Dean shrugged into his apron and kept one eye on the cash register, where Lisa usually worked. "She's been sick, I think. Something wrong with her. She's been throwing up; I heard her in the bathroom a couple of days ago. That means we're short again, right?"

"You're not going to cover for her this time?"

"Can't." Dean adjusted the temperature dial on the side of the big pizza oven and felt a kick of heat when the old motor sparked to life.

"Can't? Or won't?"

"Whichever. I've got things to do tonight. I covered her with a double the last two times. You take this one."

"No. And you can't make me."

"Well then, I guess they'll be short tonight. It can't always be my problem," he complained, even though he knew why everyone acted like it was. He and Lisa had gone on a couple of dates once, and everyone treated them like it had been a secret office romance or something.

But Pete's wasn't an office, the dates hadn't been secret, and there wasn't anything much in the way of romance going on. Dean liked Lisa and he called her a friend, but it didn't seem very mutual unless she couldn't make it to work. He wondered if she was really sick and hiding it, like it was something worse than the flu.

The phone rang again as soon as Scott put it back on the hook.

"Christ," he complained. "We don't even open for another ten minutes. You answer it."

"No. You get it. If it's Lisa I don't want to talk to her. She'll try to rope me into covering for her, and I won't do it."

"Fine." He lifted the phone and said, with his mouth too close to the receiver, "Pete's Pizza Place, would you like to try two medium pizzas with two toppings for ten bucks?"

Dean walked away, back towards the refrigerator. He yanked the silvertone lever that opened the big walk-in; he stepped inside took the first two plastic cartons he found-green peppers, and onions, respectively. Both sliced. Whoever had closed had done a good job, he thought. Then he remembered that he hadn't gone home until one in the morning, and that the handiwork was his own.

"I'm here too damn much," he said to the olives. The olives didn't answer, but they implied their agreement by floating merrily in their own juices.

He stacked the olives on top of the green peppers and onions so that the three containers fit beneath his chin. With his hip, he opened the door again and carried the toppings out to the set-up counter and began to lay them out.

"Fucking A," Scott swore, still scribbling something down on the order pad kept next to the phone. "Another one."

"Another one what?"

"Another delivery, all the way out in Andersonville."

"That's not that far."

"Yeah, well. You know why I don't like it."

Dean cocked his head, dropping the olives into their usual spot with a sliding click. "Because you're a superstitious bastard?"

"That is correct, sir. It's the same house, I think. I told the guy he couldn't have his order for another hour at least, but he didn't care. So. Fine, I guess. I'll drive it out once we finally get open, and at least it's still daylight. Where's Pete?"

"He's not coming in until noon. He'll be here then, though."

"Okay. Cool. So it's just us until then?"

"Yep." Dean abandoned the conversation for the refrigerator again. This time he emerged with crumbly sausage balls and a fat sliced stack of pepperoni. He wasn't concerned about the lack of help; they'd opened the store alone before, and it wasn't too bad.

"I thought I heard someone out back, a few minutes ago. I thought maybe it was Lisa, but I don't know why."

"Lisa just called in, though."

"Yeah, I know. I don't know why I thought it was her. It turned out to be nobody, I guess." He stopped talking there, even though it sounded like he wanted to say more.

Dean dropped the pepperoni rounds into their appropriate spot and wiped a little bit of grease on his apron. "Out back? By the dumpster?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe it was a bear."

"You're an asshole. It wasn't a bear."

"It wasn't Lisa, either."

"Smelled like her."

Dean frowned. "What?"

"It smelled like her, I think that's what it was." Scott tweaked the pen and the order pad between his hands and leaned back against the counter. "She wears that rose perfume sometimes, she puts it in her hair."

"How often do you get close enough to tell?"

Scott slapped the order pad against the counter and left it there. "You know what I mean-she wears it strong because she doesn't want her mom to know she smokes. You can smell it in the back, in the kitchen, when she goes through there to take a break."

"I know what you mean, yeah. Okay."

"Well, that's it. That's what I smelled. But she wasn't there."

"Nobody was there."

"That's what I said. Nobody was there. But I felt like someone was watching me."

Dean raised an eyebrow that didn't care one way or another, and went back towards the refrigerator for another armload of toppings. "Must've been that goddamn mythical bear."

The thing out back, behind the sheds, it's getting bigger. Charles has seen it now, and the Sergeant too-they both say it's bigger than a man, and either Henry's been lying or the thing is getting bigger.

We talk about it more than we should, maybe. But there's nothing else to talk about, except how we want to go home and how much we'd love a meal. So we tell each other about the thing like it's a campfire story, as if we're little boys trying to scare each other. Except we don't want to anymore, really. We're scared enough already, and now we're just trying to understand what new, fresh horror has been imposed upon us.

As if this were not enough.

We are all so hungry, and we know there's no prayer for food since our captors haven't got any either, even for themselves. If the guards can't feed themselves, then we prisoners are done for.

In our bunks, smelling like summer in a charnel house, we gather and talk and wait. At night, we cluster close together even though all of us stink of death and bodies that haven't seen a bath in months. It's better than cowering alone and listening to the knock-kneed haint come walking by.

We think it grows by consuming us-it eats the starved ones up and walks on borrowed bones ill-fit together. And so many of us have wasted away, and so many more are bound to follow.

In another month, that thing will be a god.

"Hey," Lisa said. Her long brown hair was tied back behind her ears, elf-style, and her eyes were more bloodshot than blue.

Dean thought maybe she was looking thinner every day, like her collarbones jutted sharper out of her tank top and maybe her tits were settling closer to her ribcage. "Hey. Welcome back."

"Sure," she said, but it didn't make much sense as a response.

At supper rush she manned the cash register at the end of the counter, and Scott leaned in over Dean's shoulder. "She looks like hell."

"Yeah she does. Told you. She's been sick."

"That doesn't look like sick to me, exactly."

Dean shifted his arms to push Scott back, out of his personal space. "What do you think it looks like, then? What are you saying? You think it's drugs or something?"

"You said it, not me. It looks like it, though. Look at her. And you know what-she's gone to the bathroom three times in the last five hours."

"You've been counting? That's fucked up, man."

"I've been counting because I've been covering the register while you've been making pizzas. It's not like I've been taking inventory of her bladder or anything." He tapped his foot against the counter's support and chewed his lower lip. "I'm thinking, it could be crystal meth, or something like that. Meth makes you skinny."

"Meth makes you wired too," Dean argued. "She's been dragging. I think she's just been sick. I wonder if, do you think it's something like cancer? Christ, what if she has AIDS or something?"

"Did you ever fuck her?"

"No. Didn't go together that long."

Scott raised a shoulder and crushed his lips together in a dismissive grimace. "Then who cares?"

"I do, sort of. She's all right. Don't be an asshole about her. Hey-the phone's ringing. It's for you."

"I don't want to answer it."

"Well, you're going to." Dean turned his back completely, absorbing himself in the scattering of green things onto the crust and paste.

After a few seconds of being ignored, Scott took the hint and picked up the phone. "Pete's Party Palace, what's your request?"

Dean returned to making pizzas and shoveling them onto the slow-moving conveyor belt in the oven. Lisa stayed at the register and didn't seem to notice much of anything that wasn't right in front of her.

He watched, though. He waited for her to take a break, and then he followed her-back outside to where the dumpsters are pillaged by the creatures who come up from the edge of the woods.

By the time he reached the doorway she was struggling with a cigarette lighter, so he offered her his.

"Thanks," she said, and she leaned against the bricks.

Dean joined her. "I've been wanting to ask you," he started, but she cut him off.

"Thanks for covering for me the other night. I appreciated it. I wasn't feeling good, is all."

"That's cool. No big deal. I wanted to ask you, though, if something's wrong. I mean, really wrong. I know we're not that tight or anything, but if you need something, all you have to do is say so."