"Thank God, they need me. God bless those cats. Thank God. Thank God..."

See, now I had cats like everyone I ever loved... and I knew a little of how they must have felt having t heircats, and it meant that in some way I still shared my life with those people, like they weren't really gone.

There was a herd... I counted at least twenty----some reddish, some black, some brown, some white and barely distinguishable from the landscape. They crept up the hill, no doubt risking sinking with each step. I thought I recognized some, but not all. I figured they were starving smaller cats----they had to be light as balsa to tread on such fragile ground. I got the food out in expectation of their arrival.

Not long after I saw Peg Leg.

I'd gone to the cellar for some dwindling firewood. I was about to hit the attic, to use fallen roof for tinder, when the cat stepped out from behind a rusty old wheelbarrow. He didn't say anything, just looked at me with those violet eyes, now dyed a deeper purple.

He had a muzzle of blood.

I put down the logs.

"I bet you've been living down here all this time, haven't you?" I asked.

If he'd stuck around the house it would've been easy for him to get down to the cellar. After all, he knew how to get through the hole in the screen door, and there were mice to eat living in the walls.

Peg Leg hobbled closer and sat down, looking up at my face.

"What do you want?" I asked him, stooping down to his eye level.

He kept staring at me. Then he got up and went over to the trapdoor that led outside.

I followed him and opened it outward. Snowy air blew in and stung my face. The cat climbed up the ladder leading to the eastern side of the house with difficulty, pulling himself up by front paws and swinging one back leg after him. I followed when he'd reached the top.

We stood in a few inches of snow. That side of the house is protected by an awning where there was a porch ages ago. All round the sheltered area were five and six foot high walls of glimmering snow.

And the cats.

Fifteen lay at our feet glazed with frost. Friend Lee was missing, and the cat with no eyes, too. They were huddled together, as if still trying to keep warm in death.

The snow came down----they'd be buried in a few hours.

"Is this what you wanted me to see?" I asked Peg Leg.

He looked at me with a quiet I could feel. It choked my heart.

Raised his little face to the endless dark air.

I saw the herd of unknown cats I'd expected. They crawled to the awning as though drawn to Peg Leg. But something wasn't right.

Cats have heads and eyes and tails and legs. These were just oval mounds of fur moving over the snow.

The wall before me burst open in a cocaine sneeze explosion as a co-worker of mine staggered out. I'd thought the auburn hair atop his head was a rusty tabby I used to see sometimes. But it was Vitolo the guitar-playing mailman walking through the snow.

Under it.

They got stronger with the cold, and now they had enough energy to make it up the hill...

I lifted my shotgun and fired. The shot went through a gaping hole in his chest and into the snowbank behind him. He stopped as though startled. Purplish-black blood sprayed from the snow as another zombie appeared behind the first. It was a little girl with no head. She kept treading forward, her pale flesh flapping like she was made of tattered surrender flags.

I raised the gun and pumped it. The girl pushed Vitolo forward. He slid onto the gun so the barrel stuck out his back, and threw blue arms around me. If shit could take a shit, he smelled like that. I thought he winked at me but it was a black beetle crawling around in his eye. He tried to speak but had no lower jaw and wretched a spluttering sob, repeated over and over like one stuttered word. I kicked his feet out from under him and he fell spread-eagled, taking the shotgun down with him.

Its barrel pointed up at my mouth.

The headless girl tumbled onto Vitolo's body and the one finger left on her tiny dead hand curled around the trigger and tightened.

I stepped back and threw a hand out to knock the barrel away.

Wave good-bye, hand.

The shot clanged in my head. My face stung as though a thousand angry bees had been loosed from the barrel. I started down the ladder and tried to use both hands. One was a phantom and the floor came up hard against my cheek.

Above, the zombies broke through the pristine snow. Their putrid shadows fell in first and then their bodies. I heard a broken melon noise as one crashed headfirst.

I ran for the door and up to the attic. Crumble-Down Farm's spongy gray steps shook and groaned. I'd never treated the stairs that way. I felt I was stomping on my mother's face. Noise in Crumble-Down farm! Another first. My, how things had changed...

I shut the attic door as well as I could. Through the holes in the roof the freezing storm blew against me. Snow lay in heaps round the room. I grabbed an old shovel, and piled it against the door. Packing it with one hand was slow painful work.

I couldn't tell how smart they were. Maybe if I'd made it up fast enough, they wouldn't find me.

What about the blood trail from the stump at my wrist?

I sat down, leaned against the snow, and stuck my arm deep into the pile. As a red circle grew round it I felt weary. I put my good hand to my face. It was there, but singed by the blast that maimed me.

The snowflakes in the air faded and bits of cold night blew into my eyes until I couldn't see. I grew numb.

Fell asleep.

I don't know how much time passed. Something soft hit me on the nose and I jerked awake, throwing my left hand out for the gun.

But I had no left hand.

It was Peg Leg. Relief woke me from my daze.

There must be a cat-sized hole somewhere in the shadows.

"What do you want?" I asked him.

He climbed on my chest and put his paws on either side of my face and his nose to my nose. His eyes were so icy, so purple.

Impostor eyes.

I wept. The tears stung my blasted cheeks.

He opened his jaws to speak for the first time and a strange meow came out. It sounded as though he was trying to articulate a human word but had the wrong mouth for it:

Woo woo woo oooh...

He was such an unusual cat. The purple sky must've gotten him the way it got the others. Perhaps it took longer for him to change... I stroked his head and he lay down on my lap. I felt I was being lowered into icy water.

I tried to think, to focus: furry head lapping at toilet water... Mother... purring under a plaid cotton sheet... Father... tiny cries at birds outside a window... Joy... broken wings versus fangs... nobody had a dog... all the dogs got away...

I heard sodden footsteps on the stairs, and bodies tumbling down steps...

~

Now the zombies have reached my door. Their nails and bones scrape the wood. Their fists pound. They want in. They want me to share myself with them. So far the door has opened a half-inch or so as they push it against my body's weight and the packed snow.

And I know what Peg Leg wanted all this time. To draw them to me. And I can hear them answering his call. I was never close enough to hear what they were saying so clearly.

The word is you.

That's me.

And here I am.

Sabbatical in the Ohio Methlands

JOE MCKINNEY

Not reallyzombies.

Not like in the movies, anyway. To begin with, they're alive. And they don't eat their victims. They'll rape you, rob you, murder you, sure, but not eat you.