Pontypool Changes Everything

The long pier in Port Perry floats its spine out into Lake Scugog, and among its ribs bob long sanitary sailboats with their own spare and polished spines. Seagulls lead each other’s capes in and off the tips of these skeletons, keeping the temperature just past winter with their cries. A great deal of soap floats in white castles out from the orange waterlines of the boats and they repel the surface slicks of gasoline like poles meeting. A boy wearing an outsized captain’s hat that loops off his head sits on the edge of a boat watching the patterns of gasoline as they leap clear on the smooth woven surface of the water. A giant goldfish, in fat flames, appears below. The boy catches his breath. The carp is almost as big as he is. The two creatures hang in the air marvelling at their equal volume, sharing the suspension, the yellow light of gills and the white ring of an ankle. The carp leans off the surface and carries its glow to the bottom, disappearing from the boy, who looks up at the seagulls that have brought their paper flight to within feet of him. He thinks that if clouds could shit they’d shit seagulls. He notices an empty boat floating close to shore across the harbour.

Les Reardon opens his eyes and watches a seagull at his feet tearing through the back of a perch. He slams the side of the boat with his foot, but the seagull doesn’t move. He flaps both his legs apart, hitting the sides, and this time the bird jumps into the air. It rises a foot or two and then returns inverted, standing this time with the tip of its beak through the forehead of the fish. Les leaps up and, missing the bird, squishes the desiccated fish in his hands, sending it in a slurp up into the air and overboard. The seagull hangs above his head, screaming, and finally lifts backward.

On shore Les discovers he has difficulty walking. He steps around sloppily on guitar-shaped legs until a succession of steps brings him out of the sand and onto a brown lawn. An elderly woman, in a purple silk bathrobe, is standing on the clean bare floor of a bare room that looks out at the lake through a tall window. She watches the man who has just appeared in her backyard. He appears drunk. Filthy. She slides the door open a few inches, sniffing at the outside before speaking.

“Hello there. Can I help you?”

Les waves at her as he steps forward. He approaches the woman deceitfully. She only has time to say “Oh my!” before he knocks her to the floor. A little bald man in pyjamas appears squinting at the bar in the corner of the room, and he takes three quick steps toward his fallen wife. He is also knocked over by Les.

This couple distinguish themselves from the Killings by being the Knockouts.

13 Cholera

Les pulls over in the little grey car he stole from the Knockouts. He steps out to fill it with gas. As the numbers are flying through their eleventh dollar an attendant lurches from his booth. Les recognizes him. Zombie. Les massages the trigger of the nozzle with his finger, recognizing the weapon. Gun. The zombie attendant stops within two metres of Les and is confused. Its circular mouth rotates a few degrees and clicks into a new position, tightening an aperture of skin along its rim. The zombie may or may not be preparing to attack. Les flips the nozzle from the side of the car and in two sprinted steps he drives the hooked tube down the attendant’s throat. He pulls the trigger, jetting gasoline into the zombie’s stomach — its lizard — instantly killing the organ. The pump clicks off automatically as the fluid washes back into the zombie’s mouth. Les steps up onto the low concrete island, tossing the hose against its recoil wire, toward the creature that has collapsed. Unable to close its mouth, it cacks from the back of its throat and lays its upturned hands in the crude water that it has released onto the ground. It looks down into the dark pool growing around its hips and sees the red lights of the car reflected there. As Les pulls away from the island the zombie turns its hand over on the surface of its fecal blood, caging the car too late. The silver bumper drifts to the edge, disappearing into the gravel.