Everyone I ever loved is gone.

They were in town at The Egg Festival when the blue sky was overwhelmed by an infinity of stunning purple. An impostor sky.

A stomach virus saved me from this plague. I was home sick at the farm and saw it through my window. It moved like a time-elapsed movie of an approaching storm, abnormally quick and arching itself over the horizon until there was just a glowing purple above the world. It shone bright as sunlight, but the sun was nowhere in sight. It only lasted a few days but was so immense it seemed years from end to end. It brought cold with it too, and that first day was like January in Maine. When it left I heard dogs howling all over the countryside, then the howls got dimmer and dimmer. They left for some other dog place.

But the cats stuck around.

The farm is so quiet. I like that. The old gray wood doesn't creak; it's pliant and spongy beneath my heavy steps. It makes me feel I could lay my head anywhere and sleep, as if the whole place is one great bed. I'm on the highest hill in the county with a view of the land all around. There are plenty of trees around the house, with overgrown grass in the summer to make me feel far from civilization. The nearest town is five miles away. I don't know if anyone lives there any longer. There's a highway close, but it never bothered me. It sounded like the ocean.

Last month was November. After the impostor sky left and the blue returned, the leaves died. I let them fall and pile up all over the yard. Flakes of red, orange, green, and yellow, like the down of an enormous tropical bird. One day at sunset I sat on the back porch in great-grandmother's rocker listening to the zombies complain down in the valley. I watched the leaves shiver, the trees scrape back and forth. And then I saw a small white and black cat I'd spotted around a lot, walking funny along the tree line fifty feet away. As my eyes followed him I realized he hobbled because he was missing one back leg.

It must've come off in a fox trap.

He disappeared behind a log pile without looking over his shoulder.

The next day I did something I'd never done before: I went into town to get cat food. I knew it would be difficult because by then I was sure everyone I knew was walking around dead. When the wind blew strong from the south I could smell them rotting and hear their moans. They seemed to be trying to articulate a particular word their ruined mouths couldn't make clear. It sounded something like:

Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh...

Somewhere in that hellish sound was Joy's voice. She was at The Egg Festival with the others. Once she got her finger caught in our Chevy's door. The howl she made, I never wanted to hear it again. I strained my ears to find it among the wailing as they shambled below Crumble-Down farm.

Like trying to pick out one raindrop's splash in a thunderstorm.

How did I deal with this? What was I thinking?

A white paw batting black grapes across a pink rug... a marmalade tail... two lidless marble eyes rolling across my mind, the slices of darkness in the middles spinning like the propellers of a plane that can't take off...

The road to the store was deserted as the sun slid down. The Egg Festival signs hung with bright pictures of Chickens from poles along the way. There was a poster for an omelet-eating contest in Gentry's Mercantile's window. I parked and saw the store's front door swing back and forth.

No breeze.

Something had just walked through.

Out or in?

I entered slowly. Vegetables were stacked in display cases, some covered with colorful mold resembling coral reef formations. Cans lined the shelves orderly as barcodes. Rotten eggs were on prominent display in a small refrigerator. A thin layer of sawdust like wooden snow had been recently disturbed by shoe tracks. Each step I took announced itself with a thud. I walked back to the front and looked out at an empty street.

I'd never looked for pet food at Gentry's before, but I figured it must be in the back.

I passed the frozen meats when I heard ice falling.

Mr. Gentry wriggled from a refrigerated display case the size of a child's coffin. His skin peeled off in lasagna strips, tiger-striping his face deep purplish red. One eye was missing. The other gaped unblinking as a cave mouth. I ran to the back and grabbed a case of cat food. When I turned round he was halfway out, massive torso hanging down towards the floor and head just an inch above it. He'd forced his three hundred pound, six-foot-five body into the five-foot long frozen meat case. His legs were smashed and twisted completely around and he'd got his toes caught under something.

"Needed cold," Gentry coughed wetly. He lashed out at the ground and thick bloodstreams dripped from his open mouth.

I stepped back in shock, more at hearing him speak in that state than seeing him that way. The shelf came down. Steel bars cut hot into my back as I hunched over and shielded my head with my hands.

Through the ringing in my ears I could hear footsteps.

I shifted into a push-up position beneath my burden. Sticky blood ran into my eyes and I could feel the lumps growing on my head.

One Mississippi...

Something scratched at the floor before me.

Two Mississippi...

Moaning from above.

Three Mississippi...

I pushed myself up and scrambled out from under the shelf, tripping over scattered cans and standing up right before stumbling over the mess of Gentry's head.

A case or two had landed on it and one eye lolled like a panting tongue. Another loose can had hurled smack into the middle of his over-ripe face and the bottom stuck out of there, where mouth and nostrils had been. Even then a noise percolated in his throat and his bloody scabby hands were like two red crabs having epileptic fits, clawing at the floor with overlong nails.

Don't panic. Think: white whiskers tipped black at the ends... gray ears erect like teepees... soft body warm as cup of tea curled on lap...

Twin headaches burst out from the epicenters of my temples. I picked up another case and walked toward the streetlight shining through the front door.

One foot away from the exit I remembered the footsteps...

I spun around to an empty room.

Something tapped me on the scalp. A blood-drop. A widening dark stain spread across the ceiling. I heard footsteps again. They came from above.

Floorboards hit me seconds before the bodies. Two women with dead meat faces knocked me on my back. They didn't seem to notice me as they faced each other over my legs. They lay on their bellies, each on a pillow of red guts spilling from their open stomachs. Without lifting their skeletal arms they bit at each other's mouths. No tongues. No lips. I'd never seen lesbians before. The stench of their hisses and grunts was unbearable.

I shifted my hands behind me and pulled myself to the door. The movement caught their attention and they tried to bite my legs, but when I saw I couldn't sneak away I jumped up, knocked them down, and ran to the truck. Night had fallen, blue and cool as a freshly washed sheet.

About to turn the key in the ignition, I asked myself what I was doing in thisnightmare.

I wanted to feed those cats. Small mouths lined with sharp teeth. Rough tongues coated in medicinal saliva.

Looking up I saw lights in the houses, and figures shuffled back and forth past the windows. I heard things crashing to the ground in the apartments. Still bodies must've started stirring at once. I took a crowbar from the truck, determined to get that food.

It seemed hundreds of lost shadows crossed the street, thrown by zombies in the windows. I walked through them to the store and kicked open the door, crowbar in hand.

As other doors creaked open and doorknobs rattled in the street behind me I breathed deep and plunged in.