Adele reeled. What an awful thing to say! The witch cackled and pulled free. Her laughter rang up and down the aisles. Adele had wafted from the grocery store in a fugue.

If only they listened. If only they had believed and taken precautions, been more careful. She would have never let him out of her sight, not for an instant.

Grief, regrets, guilt . . . these led to her husband's death. He had taken to drinking at bars on the way home from work. One night he never made it home.

Adele wasn't a drinker. She had internalized, burying the pain then crawling into the hole, hiding from Life. But one day Life intruded and yanked that hole out from under her with more loss, and she found herself on the outside of everything, wandering past windows and looking in. Hoping to see her son. Hope was all she had left.

He bet she was pretty in another lifetime. Not that she was alive now. Her gray teeth gnashed at his cheek. Thrashing, he freed himself and his elbow bashed her nose, knocked it sideways. She looked worse. The prophet had looked sufficiently harsh before he mutilated her. Age combined with madness. Some women matured gracefully, accepting their skin with pride and dignity whatever their age. He would observe them, subconsciously examining the faces of crowds for his mother. The little boy inside of him pictured his mommy that way. He had a vague impression of a beautiful lady smiling, hugging him. It had to be her that he remembered.

The prophet clawed at Ziggy. She and the protester wouldn't leave him alone. He shoved his followers, snarling, and tromped away. The rabid stalkers tagged after him.

A door slammed open. An alarm jangled. Three guys in black burst out of the fire exit. As the door latched, they froze at the specter of three ghouls in the alleyway. The men were prepared to be apprehended. They were not prepared to be eaten.

"Ziggy?" asked the tallest. The computer caper's leader. "What happened to you?" His face was incredulous.

The other two merely gawped, speechless with revulsion.

"Bub," rasped their tongueless cohort. He meant bugs. He gestured. Like those.

The trio cartoonishly turned as a gathering hum crescendoed. A thick purple-black swarm blocked the alley.

Ziggy shrugged. He wasn't even curious about the mission.

Girlish shrieks ensued. The human savages feasted.

Three bodies lay strewn, grisly leftovers. And then they twitched, sitting up, clambering to their feet to sway. The revived activists groaned.

Their leader's name was fuzzy. Tim? Ted? Ziggy frowned. His mind functioned slower, thoughts torpid, bogged down in wet cement like mental quicksand. His grasp of mundane connections faltered, yet he might recall dining on his friends.

Was he alive? He still had enormous trouble to draw air into his lungs. The effort was similar to ramming a dozen forks in his chest. And equally effective. Were any of them alive, these walking wounded with their flesh ripped apart? How could they be? What kind of affliction was this that reduced them to mangled corpses who could still think and feel on some crazed demented level, and have boundless appetites like voracious beasts?

Like zombies.

But weren't zombies supposed to be mindless, driven by an instinctive desire for brains? Or brought back from a near-death state by a powder that rendered them obedient to a voodoo sorcerer's spell? There was no magic or hypnosis, no comic-book fantasy involved here. Just poison, Global Warming, and Evolution. He wasn't himself, that was obvious. He didn't know who or what he was anymore. It strained his brain to sort it out, to put coherent words together. He refused to go stupid and relinquish his surges of rational thought. It was part of living to adapt to change, but Ziggy could not resign himself to becoming less than human. He would fight this thing, resist with everything he had left!

His companions, male and female, ravenously assailed a duo of security guards tracking the thieves to the exit door. The raucous feeding revolted Ziggy, and he staggered from the scene of carnage with bile in his throat that tasted petrified.

Hearing grunts and klutzy footfalls, he ducked into the concealment of shrubs. A flash of exhaustion overwhelmed him. He crumpled to his knees and closed weary eyes.

The lids snapped up. Out of the alley hobbled a gang of blood-stained brutes. Swerving past his hideout, they clattered down the street demonstrating the lightfootedness of slapstick cops chasing robbers. Hunched in the bushes, Ziggy loitered in case they altered direction. Man Zero, the first infected, the source of their ailment, he held a sort of sway. The cretins were drawn to him, like a master.

The insects, too, and from them he couldn't hide. A throng accumulated behind where he crouched. Their irritating whine threatened to reveal his position. Ziggy's head swiveled. They had been fruitful indeed and multiplied. The swarm was huge. What was he, Lord Of The Flies?

Cuffing them midair, he hunkered as low as possible without lying prone. Growls alerted him that his flock of faithfuls had arrived. The male and female zombies raked at him but he dodged them and dashed forth, loping as fast as he could. It wasn't devotion. He sensed they might turn on him, finish him off. When he hurried so did they, a silly shuffling race. And wherever he went, the flies hounded his heels.

It would be dark in an hour. She ought to seek a refuge for the night, yet Adele was unable to budge. The other mothers had gathered their toddlers and strollers and bags of essentials. The park was eerily desolate. And she was half-desperate, half-crazy enough to believe that if she stayed here a miracle could happen. If she left, disappointment was certain.

Wind ruffled an uncombed lock of hair on her forehead. She recalled brushing fine strands of a lush and shining mane, feeling quietly content. It had been a long time ago, but she could slip inside that younger version of herself and see out of her eyes the unblemished features in a dressing-table mirror. It was a grim contrast to this weathered sun-blotched complexion, the lines streaked by worry and time, engraved like rivers of tears from the deepest of sorrows. Round and chiselled in the wrong places. A stranger's countenance; a mask of regret.

She had been a vibrant individual. Now she was like a damaged toy. Hollow, useless, discarded and alone, having lost her purpose, her function: to make a child happy. It was what she needed to do, fulfill that promise, perform that duty, yet it was too late. It couldn't be fixed. Her heart was broken and could not be repaired. She didn't know how others could go on, why they bothered. She must possess a flaw, a manufacturer's defect.

Adele hugged herself and rocked, cold, so cold. It eluded her that the world was warming. In her secluded atmosphere, the climate was an ice age, somber as a windswept frost-coated plain where the sun never shone and the clouds wept splintered shards of glass.

That was close! I should have been more careful. Shut my eyes a minute and they're on me like ants swarming a dead beetle. I can't rest. Can't let down my guard. I can't even blink unless it's safe. Unless I'm in a secure location they would have to break into, which would provide some warning.

I can't be sure what's powering them, but they look like you-know-what warmed over. And I don't think it's the heat. They should be deceased, not walking around. They act like they would eat anything that moves. Anything. Unlike me, I don't think there's a scrap of life or humanity in them. I'm hanging on to mine with a deathgrip.

This plague of Fruit Flies, or whatever you could call it, seemed to originate with me. Or next to me. I just happened to be standing on the X, the wrong spot at the right time. I don't know why. It doesn't seem fair to have so many misfortunes in one lifetime. What did I ever do to deserve being abandoned by my family and kidnapped, to watch my own family die of poisoning, and then to be the first one doomed, the first carrier of an epidemic?

I have to keep going. Can't get sucked into despair. Can't let it win. I won't allow it to defeat my spirit and get the best of me. I've been lost before, but never totally, and I won't be vanquished now by fears or flies or walking stiffs.

An open door . . . does it lock? There. That should hold for a while. Nice. Very nice.

I need to avoid everyone, living or dead. I have to assume a scratch could transmit the illness. I've seen that it's contagious through the swarm or contact with its consequences, me and them. I'm just not sure if a scratch or bite alone would be lethal, or merely morph someone to my state. Maybe you need to actually die to be like them. I'm trying to decipher the rules, if this thing has any. It's insane. It just suddenly began, as if Nature had a spasm. Like a bull quivering to throw a fly off his back. I'm not planning to stick around and find the answers. If someone's infected, I'll leave them to fend for themselves. Call me a coward. I prefer the word loner.

I've always done this, talked to an imaginary audience on my very own private stage. More accurately, in the circus ring of my brain. As if I'm important, the main attraction. As if my life amounts to something. That's a good one. I'm about as worthless as they come. I couldn't even protect my wife and child. Other than them, I don't think I've made a difference to anyone, made the tiniest ripple with my presence on this planet. I just kind of watched from the sidelines and let things happen to me.

Is it any wonder? My mother, whoever she was, ditched me. She let me get lost or stolen and never came to find me. That smiling portrait of her in my head was probably fanciful thinking. I have this notion of her burying me like a turtle egg in sand. It would explain why I developed a shell for protection as a child. When Ma and Uncle were boozing, when the house reeked of bourbon and gin, I pretended I was a turtle with a strong shell in which to hide. Psychological child's play, perhaps.

Did I mention I was so average before today, I was invisible? At least my mother seemed to think so. I wonder if it's her I've been addressing my whole life. Hey, Mom, thanks a lot! Great job of being there!

When I say average, I don't exaggerate. Fair to middling, no more, no less. I have set no example for others; I didn't rate above average at anything. If they get me, it won't be a great loss. Yet there is something within me that won't be conquered. Maybe it's what kept me going thirty-odd years.

I hear them, rattling the door, thumping the exterior wall, scrabbling to get in.

I am trying, I am really trying to make sense of everything. Nobody will believe this until it's too late. The heat has made us all mad, including the insect population. Or is this to settle the score after we killed off the bees and butterflies, disrupting the Food Chain? Seemingly minor, that colossal error steadily caused things to unravel. It may start with a single loose thread. You tug it and the world comes undone.

My arms itch. Oh jeez! I'm rubbing them together like a fly! Am I turning into one???

Absurd. It was nothing. I guess I'm entitled to some awkward behavior considering the circumstances.

Corporations created this mess. They had the money, so of course they had control. They continued to tinker, engineering stronger species, like they manipulated crops. Only it didn't stop at bees or butterflies, it spread. And what resulted was about what you'd expect when tampering with the natural order. One mistake led to another and another and another, until my family died and with them my heart.

Bitterness and self-pity are all I've got. I'm basically waiting to die too. And I don't mean from old age. What chance do I have? They're going to keep paying it forward, and there will only be more of them, folks turning, devolving into grotesque shambling nightmares.

It's the screams that make me cringe.

And fear. The fear of dying but not dying.

Being a zombie, if that's what in fact I am, has its advantages. I won't have to worry about rules. Or if my hair is thinning. I can wear the same clothes for a year.

I can't believe I once cared which side scored more goals or baskets, more touchdowns or runs. I can't believe I wasted so many hours of my life drinking beer and feeling sorry for myself.

I'm so hungry. I can't stay here. I'm shaking again.

The street looks clear. I need to keep going. Dawdle too long and I'll find myself surrounded. The one thing I seem to be good at is surviving. I'm still kicking. But what for? Another opportunity to die? Maybe that's all we really live for, the chance to cling to life.

I need to find somewhere to hole up, before those things are everywhere. I'm jumpy from stress. How I yearn to curl up in a warm bed and slumber without tension. What I wouldn't give to simply relax. Amazing how life can change just like that. There were signs but we ignored them. Like symptoms of Cancer. It doesn't go away when you tell yourself it isn't real.

What's that? Footsteps. Run!!!

My legs are so heavy and slow. Am I dreaming? I wish I were. I could slap myself a thousand times and behold the same madness. There is no going back.

Faster . . . One was hiding in a doorway. Striving to enter a building. He grabbed me to sink his teeth into my face. I panicked and punched him. There are more now. It won't take long. Several months, a year, and whatever isolated individuals are left will take their own lives at the sheer fruitlessness of going on, the futility of barren hopes.

The wretch is stumbling after me, way too energetic for a corpse! How it manages to hunt and feed while decaying by the minute is a mystery. They go through the motions of living, yet most are dead. And I am merely delaying the inevitable.

Ahhhh!

Oh no. No! Stay away, you stinking rotter! What dismal luck. My ankle twisted stepping off a curb, and the ripe stiff (who probably already stank before dying) is only a few steps from munching my remains.

I have to limp as best I can, laboring to pour on steam, but the thing back there is advancing. I may as easily succumb to a solitary biter as an entire horde. The slightest weakness could be fatal. A single mishap and I'm done for. It's survival of the fittest and I'm falling apart! I'm in shreds, the walking leftovers of a flesh-eating virus! Was that a whimper? If I start blubbering, it's all over.

The worst part is losing hope. I just can't picture a future. I'm hanging on and I don't know why or how. The world is barbaric and crude. There is nothing of value, only chaos. It was that way before this calamity ever began.

Ha, that was rich! The echo of footbeats sent a shudder up my spine until I perceived they were mine.

A snort, perilously near. That wasn't me. Uhhhh! Great, peering behind I stubbed a toe and tripped. This is it, this is all it takes!

Stay calm. Take a breath. Ahhhhh!!!

The thing clumsily pounced. I rolled to meet it. These things are sure tough for being dead. Yuck, strings of slobber and mucous are dripping to my eyes. I'm struggling for my life and a distant memory surfaces: wrestling in Gym Class, the coach yelling that I was as useless as a fish on dry land. Yeah, I would never be an Olympic athlete I knew, so why bother? Wish now I had trained for this. Again though, why bother? My ma and uncle used to tell me, "If humans were meant to be heroes, they'd be born with capes. Don't be a hero, just stay out of trouble."

They were right. It seems ironic to me as I'm tussling with a dead guy. The lengthy hours spent studying . . . then slogging away in a career that no longer exists or bears significance. Rendered moot - not by the collapse of a civilization that neglected to learn from History - by a simple shift in culture. My livelihood was replaced, after years of producing windshield wipers, by glass that doesn't need to be wiped. Rainproof Glass, resistant to water. For every step forward, it seems, someone or something gets trampled underneath.

Add unemployment to my list of achievements.

I'm brilliantly trying to choke the cadaver and he claws my cheek. It isn't like I was uninfected, but I'm far from thrilled. I'm alive and he isn't. What's the difference? My brain grapples with the question, mentally mimicking my physical plight, and an epiphany strikes with a bell's ding, signalling the round's end. Zombies don't pay attention to bells, so we keep brawling until I heft a chunk of brick and dent his skull. It's a trick I picked up from watching the dead lurch and lunch on the screen.

Humor, my trusty Defense Mechanism.

In the excitement I almost forgot I had an epiphany. That's how dim-witted I've become. What was it? Squinting, I can glimpse the tail of a frail wisp, a transparent inkling . . . Oh yeah, I was nibbled by Fruit Flies, whereas my fellow infected were chomped by humans. The Fruit Flies didn't kill me. Technically I'm not a zombie, I just look like one. It's a good disguise, but it hasn't fooled them.

This scourge is one of many. We tipped the balance, and we are the victims of our own undoing. Most of the survivors of this plague will doubtless suffer from any number of maladies. Contagions have been springing up daily. Skin lesions and breathing disorders. New cancers. None of us can endure unscathed. None of us are intact. And we did it to ourselves. Cheerful, isn't it?

Pushing aside the contused cadaver, I'm barely able to stand. Ohhh. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh . . . Ohhhhh.

That was fun. Dizzied, my legs flaccid, I tumbled down a flight of concrete steps. More pursuers bumble past above. I'm curled in a ball, the fresh gashes on my elbows and knees scarcely noticeable amidst the numerous festering fly wounds. I'm sure that I'm a sorry sight, blending in with The Deadbeats, these rank remnants of humanity prowling the streets without a pulse.

Tears are flowing. What can I say? I'm human.

I can't subdue the tide. Unashamed, I'm overcome by wrenching sobs.

She cried abjectly, alone in the park, arms embracing herself, a poor substitute for the child she had yearned decades to hold. She couldn't bear the pain, couldn't go on this way. Her life was a bleak expanse of sorrow. To have known him so briefly, his expressions, the small trusting hand in hers, and to have lowered her guard - to have failed him for even a second . . . It was too long. That was the time it took to lose him.

She couldn't allow herself to live without her baby one more day. One more hour. It was too long. Too long. Too long. The words chanted in her mind, taunting, inviting, accusing. She clamped hands to ears but couldn't shut them out.

Digging in the folds of shabby garments, she reverently smoothed the stained and creased photograph of a smiling family. Father, mother and son. But that was a long time ago. Too long. It was too long to believe he would be back. She wasn't crazy. Quite the opposite. Insanity would have been a blessing, a reprieve from guilt and regret. She had to accept that she would never see him, touch him, again.

She had encountered the palm-reader in recent years. The woman was like her, a homeless denizen of the street. Jolene occupied a corner and spewed dire end-of-the-world messages. Adele had squeezed her arm to demand, "How did you know?"

The psychic's eyes cleared for an instant. Recognition flared. "I gazed inside your soul, down to your pith!" she rancidly spat. "Where the devil dwelled!"

Adele had rushed from the corner, bile scalding her throat.

"You can't outrun them!" bade the harpy.

Did she mean the cult? Adele fretted for weeks, paranoid of every face, every person she met on sidewalks, crossing intersections. It was in the past, she eventually realized. She was safe. As safe as a woman could be without a roof overhead.

Adele withdrew a rusty chipped knife discovered in an alley behind a dumpster. Its blade held the brownish bloodstains of battle. She traced the steel edge with a fingertip. The dagger would serve as a fitting instrument to end her world, her private Hell . . . this tragic bereft existence into which she had been deposited by her own tainted birth in a devil-worshipping cult. It was there she met her husband, Zeke. They had escaped together when they learned she was pregnant. After the Midnight ritual where she was drugged and laid out on an altar as one of Satan's brides. Desperately praying the baby was Zeke's, Adele had refused to believe anything else, rejecting the fortuneteller's words. In her heart she knew the truth.

Maybe the black sedan that picked them up along a highway had been a little convenient. Maybe the house, car and cash inherited from a relative she had never heard of seemed a bit serendipitous. Then the luck soured. Their boy vanished. Zeke died. She lost the house to a corporation over property taxes. The psychic had been an omen.

Lifting the knife, blade down, she braced herself and murmured an appeal for mercy. Soon her torment would have to end.

Reduced to the most primitive of needs, Ziggy utilized supreme effort to scale the stairway. His stomach craved sustenance. Yet food would not replenish his will or hope. It could only fuel and satisfy the body. Perhaps lend false comfort. Without hope, there was no nourishment for his emotions. Depression must overpower the instinct to survive.

He scratched at his sores. The man's skin crawled from within. He wanted to bay in agitated frustration. He was a wreck.

At street level, listening for danger, he detected a scuff. Then a rustle. Moist eyes scoured the vicinity, seeking to identify the furtive sounds. His proximity was a hot zone; he had to stay alert. Posture rigid, he pondered whether to duck back down the stairwell or attempt to flee. Before he could decide, a figure hove into view with a mane of tangles and disheveled layers of clothing. Their eyes locked. The prophet halted. Her jaw went slack. An arm elevated like a shotgun to point at him. "You!" she hissed.

The condemnation sliced through internal organs. He buckled as if stabbed, hands to his belly. Remorse tied innards in knots for not sparing his wife and child. For callously not caring about the world, letting all of this happen. Everything. He felt that somehow he was the cause. It didn't make sense, couldn't be true. Yet he felt that he was a vessel of death and destruction. He shouldered the cumbrous weight of responsibility for the world's demise.

Absolute silence shifted to noise, a flurry of commotion. Fruit Flies revolved around him, blanketing the air. Their hum vibrated like mini-bombers as they clogged ears, filmed eyes and skin, streamed in and out of his nose and mouth.

Above the buzzing of insects, a grunting and gnarring of beasts echoed. He knew they would find him. Blindly the fly lord confronted ranks of zombies, numbed by the circulation of his puny minions. Mute, he couldn't address the monstrous horde. Instead he gesticulated broadly, arms wide as if in welcome. He surrendered to their justice.

A shroud of flies funneled toward the sky and churned there like thunderclouds to witness Armageddon.

The prophet was first to reach him, growling with the ferocity of an insatiable appetite. Self-preservation unleashed a violence that Ziggy had believed himself incapable of, and he slashed her visage with fingers curved to talons. He threw her to the pavement by the hair and rendered the harridan null as if she were a roach. Whatever abominable darkness lurked in his depth, it was a surprise to him. This ruthless yen to stay alive at all costs seemed foreign. He had regarded himself as neither good nor bad, a man without distinction. But here he was combatting a legion of goons bent upon rending him to pieces. Was saving yourself heroic? What if he inadvertently saved the world too?

He stood erect, huffing, and faced the ghouls. Save the world? Not a chance. He retreated.

Adele chided herself for hesitating. Coward! She commanded herself to plunge the blade and quit behaving like a wimp. "Do it!" the woman lamented. She had no reason to live. Her arms tensed. This was it. Mind focused, breath composed, channeling a state of peace, she drove the knife downward.

A grating unintelligible shout interrupted her arc of triumph against the twisted threads of Fate.

The woman winced, blade suspended, and glanced aside in aggravation. A large man sprinted across the park to the playground. He collapsed in the sand at her feet. A pathetic croak issued from a dry throat pitted by innumerable bites.

Adele sighed and lowered the knife. It would have to wait. "Hey." She nudged the guy with the toe of a worn shoe. "Are you okay?" Of course he wasn't okay! He had been lacerated from top to bottom. He looked like a dog's chew-toy! The injured man lay moaning and panting. "You need some help?" She didn't know what she could do, but it was polite to offer in these situations.

Ziggy's hands groped sediment. The woman was alive. They would follow him directly to her. What had he done? He tried to push himself up. One fist clasped something other than sand. The man blinked at an object, a faded toy. He experienced a pang of nostalgia. An obscure recollection. It meant something. The sentiment evaporated.

Her knife fell. "That's mine!" The homeless lady tussled over the plastic wind-up turtle.

Ziggy couldn't let go. He didn't know why, but he just couldn't release the turtle. It stirred something profound.

Weeping, Adele pleaded with the man to give back her son's favorite toy. She would bring it to this park where she had brought him, arranging the turtle on the sand where he liked to bury it. The toy made her feel close to him. It was a connection, like this square of symbolic land that she visited religiously . . . a pilgrim traveling to a holy shrine. A public place, it belonged to everyone yet was special to her.