"h.e.l.lo!"

The voice is deep and torn; booming out around him it sc.r.a.pes the water.

"Helen!"

What the h.e.l.l? Les turns from the boat he"s loading with guns and drugs and babies. The Knockouts. The woman he had struck earlier, still in her pyjamas, is lying on her back, tucked under the hedge that Les has just walked by. She waves a hand that"s missing two fingers and bangs her knees together in what sounds like an attempt to strike out the consonant L. Les turns from the boat he"s loading with guns and drugs and babies. The Knockouts. The woman he had struck earlier, still in her pyjamas, is lying on her back, tucked under the hedge that Les has just walked by. She waves a hand that"s missing two fingers and bangs her knees together in what sounds like an attempt to strike out the consonant L.

"Helen!" The little bald man appears through the sliding door. He is not Helen. He is also in pyjamas that bear a long stripe of mud. He grabs the doorframe and launches himself, on hips that pop audibly, into a surprisingly quick flight across the yard. In seconds he is on the dock driving his open mouth at Les"s face. The zombie"s mouth is now telescopic in its reach, and migrating birds take off and land through a hole that opens on his cheek. Les clamps onto the fiend"s arms and propels him into the water. He then jumps into the boat and hauls on the rip cord. The Knockout emerges waist high at the rear of the craft. He has been screaming under water and his voice pierces the air, exploding past sluggish submarine vibrations. He leaps up into the boat, locking his teeth on Les"s knee, and grabs the gun from the seat. With a dorsal fin flip of his arm the gun flies up onto the sh.o.r.e. Les pulls on the cord again, knocking the zombie"s head from his knee with a speeding elbow. The engine finally blathers to life.

The propeller, it should be said, is entering the zombie"s stomach. It releases an underwater ticker tape parade around the man"s waist. His intestines blow their contents out into the lake like party favours unravelling and filling with breath, marking and limiting the excitement. A school of perch, with pointy hats that fall drunkenly over their eyes and straps that pull at delicate gills, is circulating through the loose ambergris. The zombie caves in over the cannon ball in its middle and folds in half on the bottom of Lake Scugog. The boat, something of a paintbrush now, is still tied to the dock. As it extends itself it floats a long feather boa of blood on the clear water. Les scrambles to the front to untie the boat, and after some jagged manoeuvring, made complicated by the interfering scalp of the zombie, the boat is soon cutting the lake into one of the infinite number of wakes that water places under all vessels. Les and his son are finally carried away, on a silver tray, out from Ontario"s zombies towards and horribly close to a fierce little island that is caught in a discrete destiny, one that"s strange to the rest of the province.

26.

What Is So Fine?

Ellen Peterson is not a zombie. She is standing in the dark, at the edge of a pool. She is not entirely sure whether she has walked here or whether magical inward steps have led her here to a place that she makes of herself. The surface of the pool reflects the full moon, and, Ellen thinks, it looks like a large plate in the centre of a satin tablecloth. Ellen drops to a crouch and places the tips of her fingers into the cool, still water. She wriggles her fingers and watches the reflected moon. It soon breaks into diamonds on the surface - diamonds she feels against the back of her hand. Ellen stops moving her fingers and the moon collects itself as white filings haloed over a magnet. Then it breaks again. This time clear in half. Someone is in the water. Ellen shrinks back from the edge. She focuses in the dark and silhouettes start to appear. A fallen tree lies across the bushes. This is familiar. A boulder, now lightly glowing, sits in the water at the far side of the pool. This is the carp pond. This is the carp pond. Ellen is relieved that she is in fact somewhere: a somewhere that she knows. Ellen is relieved that she is in fact somewhere: a somewhere that she knows. I am the reeve of this pond. I am the reeve of this pond. Someone is gliding through the water near the boulder. Ellen feels less threatened. She has jurisdiction here. Someone is gliding through the water near the boulder. Ellen feels less threatened. She has jurisdiction here.

"h.e.l.lo there."

Ellen stands on the bank, closing the front of her bathrobe: a reeve in a bathrobe is better than no reeve at all. The person in the water stops and turns toward her with a splash.

"Excuse me, h.e.l.lo, is everything alright in there?"

"What do you mean?"

The man"s voice is whiny and defensive. There is something disturbing in the question.

"I"m Ellen Peterson, the reeve of Pontypool. There"s a great deal of trouble in the area tonight, and I"m asking if everything is OK OK with you in there. Aren"t you cold?" with you in there. Aren"t you cold?"

Another voice to her left.

"Why, if he"s cold will he freeze?"

The voice, so tremulous, makes her shiver. The question somehow hasn"t been put to her rhetorically.

"Well, no, I don"t think he"ll freeze."

A third voice in the bushes behind her.

"Are you lying to him? Is he going to freeze?"

The voice is so frightened that Ellen covers her mouth.

The man in the water has slipped behind the boulder and he holds its sides with his hands.

"If you"re lying to me then you could hate me."

Ellen drops her hand. She feels the pull of sadness in the light that has emerged on the surface of the tree hiding these people.

"I don"t know you; I couldn"t ... hate you."

The head and shoulders of the man to her left glide into view at the centre of the pool.

"You don"t hate him yet. But if you don"t know him will you stab him with a knife?"

The man behind her squeals sharply, and he flees crashing through the trees. Ellen can"t quite believe this conversation. She has no idea how to meet its requirements.

The conversation that she is having isn"t, of course, normal.

That conversation would have its several partic.i.p.ating members. .h.i.tting a variety of vocal registers using a tiny lexicon. This lexicon has migrated to them from Parkdale, and they communicate through it with the sonic sensitivity of birds. They repeat the words Helen, help Helen, help and and h.e.l.lo h.e.l.lo in an evolution of the alliteration that"s more like an imbrication, shingling the words over a now silent H. And exactly who is stepping down into the pond and repeating the phrase "messy car, dirty bird"? Ellen has not detected the eighteen silent beings that surround the pool, hiding in fear among the trees. Each of them moves three words from cheek to cheek, like loose peas in a whistle. in an evolution of the alliteration that"s more like an imbrication, shingling the words over a now silent H. And exactly who is stepping down into the pond and repeating the phrase "messy car, dirty bird"? Ellen has not detected the eighteen silent beings that surround the pool, hiding in fear among the trees. Each of them moves three words from cheek to cheek, like loose peas in a whistle.

"What do you mean stab you?"

Ellen"s robe rides in a terry cloth wake around her as she steps through the water toward the boulder.

"That"s what I said. That"s what I meant."

Ellen stops still as three other beings float out from under branches that overhang the pool"s edge. They move steadily in the moonlight, forming a guard around the boulder.

"He means what he said. Now you want to kill him."

"No. I don"t."

"If you don"t want to kill him, does that mean that you want to run him over with a car?"

One of the silhouettes yelps as if struck and dives to the side.

"I ... I ... don"t want to hurt any of you."

Ellen is aware that the pool is now occupied by at least a dozen of these strange people.

"Not hurt? Not hurt? Do you mean not hurt now, but later? Like in the morning you"ll want to punch all of us? Punch us with a cannon?"

"Or a missile?"

"Or ... or ... maybe poison?"

"And angry now? Are you angry now?"

Three zombies splash at the water in a strange seizure that ends in one of them attacking another. The zombie being attacked strokes the back of his a.s.sailant with a consoling hand. The a.s.sailant bites uncontrollably at the man"s chest, opening a honeycomb of muscle and flesh. The victim soon slides under the water, and his mouth, the last cup on his body to be filled, glides away to drown. Ellen feels a panic lock her.

The killer stands up straight and exhales heavily, sending a piece of tongue flipping into the water. A woman directly behind Ellen speaks.

"Say sorry."

The killer shakes his hands in the water. He closes his eyes, and in an emotional outburst that is small and painful he rolls his head back.

"I can"t."

Ellen steps forward, her heart pounding in her chest. She raises open hands across the water and moves slowly toward the killer.

"You don"t have to be sorry."

A teenage girl jumps out of a tree and stands in a moonlit path that drops into the pool.

"He doesn"t?"

Ellen feels a carp slide itself like a cat against her ankle. A mile long. She catches her breath and waits for it to pa.s.s.

"No, he doesn"t have to be sorry."

Another carp swims into Ellen"s joined heels. She turns her foot, letting it move between her calves. It"s slippery and fat and it tickles. A group of eight zombies moves quietly off the bank into the water. Several of them ask the same question at once.

"It"s OK OK that he killed Albert?" that he killed Albert?"

Ellen scoops water up onto her dry lips. She notices the little b.u.mp of Albert"s floating tongue.

"It"s OK OK. It"s OK OK."

27.

Policy Now the pool is becoming crowded with quiet zombies. They all seem to like being submerged up to their chests, so when they enter the water they sink to their knees in the mud and stone of its black bottom. Ellen is standing and she appears elevated on an artificial surface. Ellen notices that some of them have turned their backs and are busily working at something on the bank at the water"s edge. The soft fan of a tail runs against her shin. The carp is sitting on the floor of the pool, stationary. It caresses Ellen"s leg, and she is reminded again of a cat.

Nearly all the zombies have turned their backs on her. A woman working beside the fallen log turns her head to a man beside her.

"It"s OK OK to kill biting, y"know." to kill biting, y"know."

The man remains hunched over.

"And I know it"s OK OK to tear f.u.c.kin" f.u.c.kers" heads off." to tear f.u.c.kin" f.u.c.kers" heads off."

The woman pulls from her spot and turns to Ellen.

"Is it OK OK?"

Ellen can see mud dripping down the woman"s chin. It looks like the chinstrap of a warrior"s helmet.

"Is what OK OK?"

All of the zombies stop, some of them grab the tree branches above their heads. A rhythm of ripples on the water"s surface smoothes. Ellen slips farther under, to her knees. She feels the little plosive blast as her carp propels itself off her thigh.

"It"s OK OK to ... uh ... sure, it"s to ... uh ... sure, it"s OK OK."

"How about killing them?"

Ellen feels a carp"s face in the upturned soul of her foot. It extends its sucker mouth and kisses her there. Ellen answers the question through a smile caused by a second carp on her other foot.

"Killing them is alright."

"And slapping and slapping all the a.s.sholes in their heads?"

"Yes. Yes. It"s OK OK."

"What else is alright?"

The carp have now settled into a synchronized kissing and Ellen drops her hands to her sides. She feels the soft drapery of fish moving along the insides of her wrists.

"Anything."

"Can"t I ask?"

A zombie becomes agitated and turns from the bank.

"If she asks are you going to hit her in the a.s.s?"

"No, no, she can ask whatever she wants."

"Can I too?"

"Yes."

"OK, OK OK. Is it OK OK to have a policeman banging on the door?" to have a policeman banging on the door?"

"Yes."

"Me too, me too. Um, I don"t have a question."

"Will you bash his face in if he doesn"t have a question?"

"No. No, I won"t."

As they turn and lobby questions at Ellen she finds herself struggling, with some success, to configure the affirmation. She begins to focus her eyes on what it is that they"re doing on the bank. A busy geometry of forms begins to emerge. It sits lit on the surface of the dark and appears like a computer language, a dense and complex glyphic architecture. The patterns emerging are uniform all around her. Ellen recognizes something in the tightly braided wall. She remembers doing things. After she got sick. She remembers emptying an ice cube tray into the sink and filling it again. Returning it to the freezer. And the terrible waiting for the water to freeze so that she could refill it with fresh water. It was in filling those awful hours that Ellen built, out of the contents of a cupboard, her library of seals. She recalls her surprise, her astonishment, that she was able to create and retain an infinite machine on a single shelf in the pantry. The complex stability of the number six in a can of pears, each half-fruit changing. The not-yet-ten in tiers across the cookie bag. The disappointing threes risen into a number only guessed at, but always guessed correctly, by a red hexagonal tower in the shadows. And when she had finished visiting her shelf she would check the ice cubes. And if they were not yet frozen, maybe nearly, little windowed boxes of water, she"d sit at the kitchen table and feel comfortable that she had set things in motion.

On the surface of the white cupboards a scroll of light marks fly rapidly from left to right - the stories released by the machines behind their doors, and Ellen memorizes each one. Some days they are the long, incomprehensible speeches of angels. Sometimes they detail the death of a child. And other times they list all of the things that Ellen hasn"t said yet. If these marks were to stop moving and rise in relief from the cupboards, and lift off like a new wall, slipping through the floor to line the banks of a pond in the dark, then Ellen would be looking at them over the shoulders of busy zombies. She strokes the head of a giant fish banging against her knees and opens her legs. These poor people have all suffered strokes. A These poor people have all suffered strokes. A zombie approaches the pool carrying a large, full garbage bag. She empties the contents out onto the surface of the water behind the working zombies. They reach, without looking back, to scoop up eggsh.e.l.ls and plastic bottles. zombie approaches the pool carrying a large, full garbage bag. She empties the contents out onto the surface of the water behind the working zombies. They reach, without looking back, to scoop up eggsh.e.l.ls and plastic bottles.