Zone One

The dreams changed once he made it to his first big settlement. He was no longer late for the final exam of a class he didn’t know he’d enrolled in, or about to deliver the big presentation to higher-ups when he suddenly realized he left the only copy in the backseat of the taxi. His dreams unfurled in the theater of the mundane. There was no pulse-quickening escalation of events, no stakes to mention. He took the train to work. He waited for his pepperoni slice’s extraction from the pizza joint’s hectic oven. He jawed with his girlfriend. And all the supporting characters were dead. The dead said, “Let’s stay in and get a movie,” “You want fries with that?,” “Do you know what time it is?,” while flies skittered on their faces searching for a soft flap to bury eggs in, shreds of human meat wedged in their front teeth like fabled spinach, and their arms terminated at the elbow to showcase a white peach of bone fringed with dangling muscle and dripping tendons. He said, “Sure, let’s stay in and snuggle, it’s been a long day,” “I’ll take the side salad instead, thank you,” “It’s ten of five. Gets dark early this time of year.”

He downward-dogged in a drop-in yoga class as the skel next to him broke in half while essaying the pose. No one remarked upon this sight, not him, not the dead teacher, not the enthusiastic and limber dead around him, and not the bisected skel on the floral-patterned hemp mat, who flopped grotesquely through the rest of the hour like a real trooper. He got into his street clothes in the locker room as the yuppie skel beside him dragged an expensive watch over his wrist, grating the fresh scabs there. On impulse he purchased a deluxe combo juice at the cafe on the way out and decided not to say anything when the pimply skel dropped a banana slice into the blender. He hated banana. He drank it anyway, blowing into the striped straw to dislodge a plug of pulp, and stepped out to the sidewalk into the rush-hour stream of the dead on their way home, the paralegals, mohels, resigned temps, bike messengers, and slump-shouldered massage therapists, the panoply of citizens in the throes of their slow decay. The plague was a meticulous craftsman, dabbing effects with deliberation. They were falling apart but it would take a long time until the piece was finished. Only then could it sign its name. Until then, they walked.

He took the subway to the commuter rail, curling his fingers around the pole still warm from the skel who had grasped it moments before. In the advertisements lodged just above eye level, airbrushed heads of the dead hawked trade schools and remedies. Some of the dead entered the train politely and others were quite rude as they shouldered into the car when he tried to gain the platform. Everybody trying to eke it home. On the commuter platform he made sure his monthly pass was secured in the nook in his wallet and he pictured the night ahead. Order in from his go-to takeout spot, pop open one of the beers, and watch the reality show he’d DVR’d three days before. He woke up as the train left the tunnel and they were out of the underground.

The only unsettling thing about the dream was that he’d never taken a yoga class in his life.

This series eluded the category of nightmare. He awoke refreshed, or at least aloft in a routine state of morning dread in equilibrium for months. The new vintage of dreamscape left him feeling curiously indifferent. The dead small-talked, recited speculation over tomorrow’s cold front, numbly caromed from task to task as they had before, but they were sick. He recalled a theory of dreams from the old days that declared them wish-fulfillment, and another declaring that you are every person in your dreams, and each theory seemed equally plausible and moot and in the end he didn’t spend too much time analyzing. He was a busy man these days.

To the next grid, and Godspeed. His unit squeezed MRE bacon-and-eggs paste onto their tongues-amber with brownish-red swirls-and packed up their gear. Kaitlyn deposited her celeb bio on the windowsill, as if gifting it to the next guest at the sun-splashed resort. They almost made it to the stairwell when she remembered the motion detector. She went back for it. That happened a lot these days. It was nice to know it was there even though it hadn’t sirened once since the start of their tour.

Their new assignment was Fulton x Gold, Mixed Residential/Business, a few blocks east. It started as a no-bother drizzle but Mark Spitz pulled on his poncho on account of the ash, and the others followed suit when the rain intensified.