Without thinking, Bill waved his hand. Red and gold pushed through his skin. It popped open the truck door behind Mary.

"Waita*" she said.

"I have to think," said Bill.

Mary floated out of the truck gracefully, and landed on the leaves with a plop.

"There is something else inside of me," Bill told her. Something had jarred loose the blood clots on her ruined ear, and a fresh gout of the stuff ran down the side of her neck, staining her already-ruined dress.

"I know," said Mary.

"Just leave me alone so that I can think," said Bill. "I have...a lot...."

"All right."

Mary turned her back, and waddled off through the forest. She nearly crashed into a pine tree. She corrected herself, holding her hands out like a blind woman.

He leaned back against the seat, closed his eyes again.

"Sleep," he said. "Come on. Sleep again."

But he knew that wasn't coming.

Bill sighed. He waved his hand and the driver's side door popped open. He eased himself down onto the forest floor. When his feet touched the dry leaves, he realized that he hadn't moved a muscle. The red and gold had brought him down.

"All right," he said, feeling the energy push back into his stomach like a gentle wave. "Let's...let's...get some thinking done. Have a lot to think about, uh huh uh huh."

Bill coughed as he strode to the doorway of the cabin. The leaves crunched under his feet. There was a lot to do.

Thirty-Six.

In the cabin, He lay on the bed and tried to concentrate.

The ceiling, the rough exposed logs, grew dimmer and brighter as the sunlight shifted outside. Gold and red and green and white fused together to make the light. Bill could make out each one of the colors, extract it from the full spectrum. He could make the ceiling canary-yellow or blood-red in an eyeblink, altering his perceptions with the ease of breathing.

He closed his eyes.

And, the question that he'd ignored for the past few hours, the one that was they key to everything that had happened or anything that would happen, whirled through his brain: What the hell had happened to him?

The pressure of the red and gold energy pressed at his guts.

"My name is Bill Wilfong," he said. "I'm nineteen. I'm married. I'm married to Constance Wilfong. That's still a part of me."

He opened his eyes and sat up . Yes, everything felt like himselfa"eyes, ears, nose, feet, hands, toes. He was still a part of himself. The magic or whatever the hell it was hadn't removed him too far from his essence. It was still right there in front of him, radiating its pathetic energy. The red and the golda*the blood and the suna*that was where everything was. Right there in front of him.

Bill staggered into the kitchen. There was no refrigerator in the cabin, he remembered. Nothing that would keep a Coke cold enough to drink. Too bad, because his mouth and throat felt like they were coated in sand.

"Crap," he said.

He flopped into a chair near the cheap plastic table. How long ago had it been since he'd sat down with his wife? Just earlier that day, wasn't it? And she'd produced those couple of hot dogs without anya*

A rap on the window interrupted his reverie.

"William!" cried a voice from outside.

"Mary. Leave."

"No," she said. "You're one of them. You have to look. Have to...help me."

He looked up to the window. She pressed her fat ruined face against the window, her eyes wide, her chains tinkling against the glass.

"Look behind me," she said.

"Go away," he said.

"No. No, I'm not leaving you."

Bill sighed. "Come on."

"No. I'm not leaving until you come out and look."

They stared at each other through the glass. The red and gold wanted to lash out at her, but he restrained it. Barely.

"Please," she muttered.

"All right," he said.

Bill stood up from the table. He allowed his feet to move on their own volition, instead of making them hover above the floorboards. He could have sprouted roller skates or tank treads or any other means of locomotion, but he made himself walk.

He went out of the cabin, pushed through the leaves to the window where Mary stood.

"Yes?" he said.

"Look," said Mary. "Look. Everyone's dead." She flailed her hand in the air behind her, indicating the clearing next to the cabin.

It was full of bodies.

"Damn," said Bill, as he looked away.

His brief attention brought him only one specific detail: the dredlocked man's head staring up through the trees, with its bottom jaw ripped off. The very white teeth glowed against the blood and the pink of his flesh. A dredlock stuck up from his head like an antenna.

He turned away before the rest of it could burn into his brain.

Hundreds of bodies, in every contortion imaginable. And the smell. The red and gold kept it from overloading his brain, but it was still there: a combination of slaughterhouse, morgue, and sewer.

"We are ruined," said Mary. "Don't you see?"

Bill clutched the side of the cabin, commanding the red and gold to keep him from vomiting.

"Do something," said Mary.

He staggered away, holding his hand over his nose and mouth. One arm braced him against the rough side of the cabin. The red and gold swirled out of his spine to help him but he didn't let it. He staggered along, Mary's eyes burning into his back.

"What the fuck," he said, after reaching the other side of the cabin. He stopped and rested his elbows on his knees, letting the nausea pass.

He heard Mary's shuffling steps behind him. She moved with all the grace of a grazing cow.

"Go away," he said.

"Oh, Christ, you have to help me," said the fat woman, her breath sawing her throat. "Get me out of here. I'm trapped and I can't even kill myself..." Bill listened as her rant turned into a series of bawling, choking sobs, followed by the thud of her falling onto the ground, maybe ass-first and maybe head-first, and rolling a short distance on the dry leaves.

Bill shook his head. "Go away."

She answered with a wail.

"God help me!" she screamed. "I did nothing to deserve this! Why did fucking Septimus...why...oh...."

Bill realized that he was standing in a shallow depression. He took a couple of steps back, and saw the a distinctive tire tread imprinted in the dirt.

"Jeep," he said. "This is where we had the Jeep."

"I want to die! To die!"

"SHUT UP! If you can't shut the fuck up, then GET OUT OF HERE!"

Before he could control anything he was doing, one of his hands shot up. The red and gold wormed out of his skin and surrounded Mary.

"No," she said. "Don't want to go, don't want to leave...."

Bill clenched his fist.

Mary launched into the air like a missile.

Bill looked up to see how dim sunlight caught the gaudy tangle of her necklaces, making them flash like flares. One of them disentangled from the mass around her neck and fell, hissing through the leaves of an oak beneath her.

Bill watched for the several seconds it took her body to shrink down to the size of a beetle, and then to a fly, and then to a speck on the blue canvas of the sky.

The red and gold came back into his hands, where it sat smugly before diffusing back through his body.

"Shit," he said.

He felt a twinge of guilt. She hadn't deserved that. Poor bitch was rightfully upset: being killed, then resurrected, then pretty much killed again. Who had she been, back when she was a human being?

"Already dead," said Bill. "You did nothing. She was already dead. Don't worry about it."

And, speaking of the dead....

"Okay," he said. He felt the red and gold moving restlessly through him, like an animal pacing inside of a cage "What do you want?" he said, holding his hands up in front of his face, watching the wan autumn light draw glowing red lines between his fingers.

Bill waited for an answer. The red and gold tumbled into his hands, making his fingers twitch, but gave no answer.

"Silence on the demon front," he said. "What the fuck are you? What can you make me do? I'm still William Wilfong. I am married to Constance Wilfong..."

A thud! interrupted his monologue.

"Oh, God," he said. "What the hell."

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Bill pinpointed the sound's source. It came from the back of the trailer. And he knew what it was: a fist hitting the metal.

"Oh no," he said, and turned toward the tractor trailer.

The cab was a bright cerulean blue, something he hadn't noticed. The trailer was a typical corrugated metal box, with the words DETAIL VAN LINES printed in slanted block letters over the sides.

The pounding continued. Underneath it, as quiet as the hiss of dry leaves on the branches of dead trees, he heard the sound of voices speaking in whispers that echoed from the metal.

Then the pounding stopped.

Then, footsteps. Hundreds of shuffling footsteps, scraping over the metal floor of the trailer. Quick steps and slow steps and dragging steps and light steps.

The dead were restless.

He sighed, took a deep breath, looked through the trees. The autumn sun was setting. Red and gold sunlight matched the red and the gold inside of his body.

A voice sounded over the footsteps. The words came muffled, but Bill heard the distress in the voice. Must have been disconcerting, being trapped back there with a hundred recently-departed acquaintances. Maybe it smelled bad, too.

Bill clenched his fists.

"Let's get started," he said, and marched to the back of the truck.

Thirty-Seven.

Things came together quickly.

Before he knew it, night had fallen.