"Uncle Howard?" Sprague's uncle had been dead for two years. The cancer that claimed him had resisted every form of treatment available at the time. Dozens of mourners had attended his funeral, watched as he was laid to rest in the mausoleum at Serenity Gardens. "This isn't possible."

"I... can't... explain." he said, his words punctuated by uncomfortably long gaps. Sprague stared at him wordlessly, studied the glowing flesh that should be withered and wasting away. The corners of his mouth twitched as he strained to smile. His fingers remained rigid, his arms fixed at his sides. His eyelids drooped but he never blinked. "How... long?"

"Two years," Sprague answered, realizing instinctively what his uncle wanted to know. "It's been two years."

"Why... am... I... here?" Each word, each movement, had to be meticulously calculated and judiciously executed. Even with the treatment, the body processes lacked the fluid animation of life. They had degraded into clumsy mechanics, driven by an awkward automation mimicking vitality. "Why... was... I... brought... back?"

"I'm sorry, Uncle Howard," Sprague said, trying to repress both his grief and anger. "I don't know why." Sprague swallowed the heartache he had relinquished years earlier, reminding himself that the thing in the hospital bed could only be a shadow of the man he had known. "Those men can tell you why," he said, turning toward Ames and Chesterton. "Those men did this to you----to all of you."

Around the room, Ames' subjects exhibited a collective flash of recognition. Their medically-sustained solemnity deteriorated rapidly as the revelation gripped them. At once, all their misery and anguish and restiveness resurfaced. Something else emerged, too----an emotion thankfully absent until that critical epiphany washed over them. With newfound hatred, the corporeal undead struggled with the restraints confining them to their beds. They fought so violently that the adjacent skin tattered and turned a macabre shade of purple. Their glassy eyes bulged from their sockets.

Sprague recognized in their hostility a thirst for retribution, for justice and, maybe, for blood.

"Damn it, Sprague," Ames said, beckoning his private staff of assistants. Aides swarmed into the room, prepared to sedate the rebellious dead. Chesterton, savvy enough to appreciate a bad situation that might get even worse, quietly slipped out the door. "Get out of my ward, Sprague. Get out of my hospital."

Downstairs, lines of dead had formed in the corridors. They stretched through the emergency room, across the parking lot and down the sidewalk bordering Avery Boulevard. Troops crammed them into the backs of the black panel trucks, which ferried them to the airport. There, more troops loaded them onto Chinooks. When filled to capacity, the helicopters lifted from the tarmac, heading east to some unknown destination.

Sprague, now unemployed, joined in the crowd of spectators watching the dead depart.

~

Later that evening, Sprague rested on his sofa nursing a bottle of imported Irish stout. Cable service had not yet been re-established, but local television stations had begun broadcasting live reports from Arnesville that afternoon.

Officially, an unnamed pharmaceutical company had been to blame for the epidemic. An allegedly unsanctioned five-year study of a drug said to promote longevity had gone horribly wrong. Ten towns across North America had been affected, including Arnesville. Exposure rates, which should have been limited to 10 percent of the population, had exceeded 80 percent. Though the root cause had been determined, the catalyst that actually triggered the reanimation of the dead had yet to be discovered.

Government troops had begun overseeing an evacuation of all corporeal dead entities from the stricken municipalities. Remote camps had been established to help treat and reintegrate the victims back into society.

At 8 p.m. the president addressed both houses of Congress. Sprague, on the verge of sleep, roused himself to watch the historic broadcast.

"Everything," the president said, "will be... all right." Sprague sat up and perched on the edge of the cushion. He upset the bottle as he hunted for the remote control. "My friends at FEMA... are working with... the military," he continued. His speeches had always suffered from his sluggish tone and staggered delivery. Tonight, though, Sprague paid closer attention to his cadence and inflection. "We welcome... these people... with open arms," he said, his eyes oddly unblinking. His rosy cheeks seemed too red, like someone might have applied blush just before he went on the air. "And I... am willing... to ask my colleagues... in Congress," he stammered. His hands rested on the sides of the podium, completely motionless. "To grant full citizenship... to the victims... in return for... five years of... service to our country... in the United States Armed Forces."

The camera panned across the floor of Congress. Representatives and Senators applauded with mechanical synchronicity, their expressions lacking any emotional subtext. Sprague spilled onto the floor, crawled over to the screen as he scanned the audience. Though some of the older members seemed a bit disheveled, most projected at least the semblance of life. A few, though, had only just begun the treatment. Their ashen faces, their sunken eyes, their leathery flesh betrayed their lingering putrescence. Tonight, the dead governed the living. Tomorrow, the world would know no better.

Regardless of the morning's setback, unflustered by potential impediments, Bernard Chesterton, CEO of Therst Weber Pharmaceuticals, stood among the powerbrokers, contented with his coup.

The Purple Word

ERIK T. JOHNSON

Everyone I ever loved owned a cat.

I'd never thought about it until recently, now that I'm the only human left at the "Crumble-Down Farm," as the local children once called it.

My mother, difficult but always there for me, had an orange tabby named Charlie who seemed to be living his first life in a feline incarnation. She had to lift him up onto windowsills because he wasn't sure how to jump, and I once saw him fall off a table and land on his side. How he loved her, too. He was a marmalade shadow always at her side, even, she told me, keeping her lap warm while she sat on the toilet.

And Benjamin was my father's obese, white, deaf cat who shed rugs weekly and kept his tongue sticking out stiff as a little pink depressor. Benny was an affectionate, stupid animal who never used his claws on anything, not even furniture. He liked to play with grapes.

There are so many more I could name, each different than the next, cats belonging to my best childhood friend, my aunt Willa, both my grandmothers. And Joy's cat Winston.

She was a little Tonka truck of a cat with a thick African wildcat tail, and skin missing on her flank where some cruel boy had thrown hot tar. Everything about Winnie was round----marble green eyes, neckless head, paws. When Joy and I would leave her alone too long she'd grow angry and swipe at our feet and shins upon our return. But then she'd curl up with us later in Joy's bed, making our warmth sweeter with purring...

These trivial details are so important to me here in the attic. I roll them round me like a kitten with balls of yarn, trying to lose myself in the unwound threads of lost lives. If I stare at the snow that's fallen through the roof I see the cats so clearly, like pictures projected on a white screen.