Grant pulls the car over beside the field near Pontypool. He reaches into the back seat, sliding an open briefcase onto the floor. He fishes a pair of binoculars out from between two sacks full of fresh corn.
“Right over there. Holy Christ! Those are goddamn cannibals! I can’t believe it.”
Grant reaches down and pops open the trunk from the dash.
“Get the equipment out of the trunk, Greg. Let’s shoot some of this stuff.”
Grant opens the car door without removing the binoculars from his eyes. They bump against the door frame as he rises from his seat.
“I don’t know, buddy. This just might freak me out. Look at those bastards. Real-life wackos. Zombies. Killers. I’m a bit freaked out. Hey! Where’s the camera?”
Greg walks around the car, scanning the farmer’s field. He can see four cows in a far corner. And about halfway back from them, near an overgrown pile of collected stones, there’s a dark shape. He can’t quite make it out. Then he sees what is clearly an arm lift up and fall against the side of the mound.
“Woo-hoo! Holy shit! Those suckers are alive! Greg! Greg! Did you see that?”
Greg opens the trunk and lifts out the camera case. His hand hovers over a plastic gas container. He touches the handle, lifting an oily film onto his fingertips. He slides his thumb across the ends of his fingers. He feels sound between the surfaces. Sound? He leaves the trunk open, just in case, and hauls the equipment around the car, placing it in the tall grass that grows along a ditch where Grant is standing, still looking through the binoculars, his mouth hanging open. He looks out briefly to locate Greg and the camera. He speaks in a whisper.
“OK. OK. Let’s keep our voices down. Those suckers are alive out there. I don’t know how safe we are. These are predators. Hmmm. I’ve never seen… Jesus… let’s… uh… let’s get back in the car.”
Grant reaches behind and flips open the car door. He lowers himself, slowly, still looking through the binoculars. He lifts his legs, carefully, one at a time, up off the shoulder of the road.
“Put the… uh… equipment in the back seat and get in the car, Greg. I don’t wanna do anything stupid.”
Greg follows the order, running his hands uncertainly across the surfaces of things before he moves them. He walks to the back of the car. The trunk is open and he looks at it, feeling a momentary confusion at the fact that he can’t open it. Open it. When it’s open. It’s open for him to open it. He lays his hand on the trunk. The weight brings it down. Greg looks self-consciously through the rear window and closes the lid. When it clicks he has to pull his hand off with force. He feels the effort as a kind of pain. He has the powerful sensation that he has had to do this, to lift his hand from the closed trunk, in contradiction to some obvious sign. As he walks up the passenger side of the car his face flushes. He feels that he has acted perversely. He pictures, as narrowly as possible, the series of actions that will return him to the passenger seat.
“I don’t get it. These freaks aren’t doing anything. What the hell are they doing?”
Grant reaches down to a panel beside him and flips a switch that locks all the doors with four simultaneous plunks.
“Maybe they’re playing dead. I can see you, you bastards. I know you’re not dead. So, c’mon, let’s see some action. Do something. Maybe it’s a trap.”
Greg looks up across the road and squints his eyes. He’s afraid. He feels the need to comprehend something complex. Anything. He tries to picture a car on the highway. Its four tires. They rotate. The weight of the car bearing down. The weight that doesn’t stop it. Of course, it doesn’t stop. The wind rises up over the windshield. The air pressure above the hood of the car is higher than at its sides. Greg feels a rush of relief. Something is coming back to him. He tries to picture the driver. An easy one. Someone he knew in high school. Dead now. Heart failure. I’m remembering him.
“Maybe we should’ve brought a gun. Damn! Look at these fools. These sacks of shit are harmless. What the hell are they doing? Havin’ a siesta?”
Greg’s relief is short lived. He feels his heart rate speed up with questions: What was that? What’s happening to me? I may not be able to even ask these things in five minutes, what the hell do I do? His heart begins to bang in his throat. This is the disease. I’m finally getting sick. Do I tell Grant?
“Awright, Christ, let’s move on. Maybe we can find some zombies with a little more life, eh?”
The car starts and eases up a hill, slowing and stopping at the top. Grant hands Greg the binoculars.
“Here, buddy, you keep an eye out with these. Let me know if you see anything.”
Greg takes the binoculars and rolls down his window. He raises the binoculars to his face and holds his breath. A light orange fuzz hovers in two connected egg shapes. In the left egg shape a tilting oblong of white floats in the orange. He moves so that both egg shapes share the oblong and he adjusts the focus. A tiny pattern of red diamonds rises sharply and disappears into a field of tall corn. The oblong is a house, back off the road at the edge of a heavy forest. A dog — a German shepherd — is jumping and barking, straining against a tether. Beside it is a fuel drum mounted on a concrete platform. On the small lawn, at the front of the house, are four silhouetted figures. They all have pipes stuck in their mouths. Wisemen? Dwarfs?
The view through the binoculars is cool. The lemon-coloured leaves on the undersides of branches are crisp. The sky is fixed through the trees in an ice-blue lattice. A refrigerator. Greg shivers.
Greg turns the wheel between his eyes and loses the field. It blurs and he lowers the binoculars.
“Hey, you know where we are?”
Greg’s left arm is swollen from the sun and he tries to brush the heat off with a cool palm.