“I am listening.”

“No you’re not,” he says, and he opens the jacket to reveal his bloody shirt. “I didn’t do it. I was there, but I didn’t do it.”

Hans says nothing. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel while he stares at the blood, and after a while he stares out the windshield. Jerry lets him think. He can’t remember this morning, but he can remember that Hans likes to really think things through. He takes another mouthful of water then puts the bottle back into the bag. Finally Hans looks at him. “Are you sure about this?”

“Very,” Jerry says. “Somebody is going to find her soon and the police are going to think it was me.”

Hans shakes his head. “Listen to me, trust me, this is all some plot out of one of your—”

Jerry shakes his head. “You’re still not listening. They already think I killed somebody, and I’m not talking about Sandra.”

“You know about Sandra?”

“That she’s dead? Yes. That I killed her? No. It wasn’t me, but that’s not who I’m talking about. Yesterday I had to go to the police station,” Jerry says, and of course he doesn’t really know it was yesterday—maybe it was last week. Or last month. “This other woman the police questioned me about, she was the florist for Eva’s wedding.”

“Oh shit,” Hans says.

“What?”

“They’re asking you about Belinda Murray,” Hans says, and here comes the concern Jerry expected from him two minutes ago.

“You know her? Wait, wait, did I know her?”

Hans doesn’t look just concerned but worried too. He starts drumming his fingers faster. He checks over his shoulder as if looking for somebody watching them. “You took . . . well, you took quite a liking to her. You wandered out of your house once and went to see her at work.”

Jerry shakes his head. “You’re making that up,” he says, trying to figure out a reason why Hans would, and coming to the conclusion he wouldn’t. “Even if you’re not, visiting her at work isn’t the same as killing her.”

“You’re right, it’s not the same,” Hans says, and he looks away. He stops drumming his fingers.

“What?” Jerry asks.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, there’s clearly something you’re not telling me.”

Hans turns back towards him. “It’s like you said, Jerry, it’s not the same.”

Jerry shakes his head. “Just tell me.”

Hans shrugs, then sighs, then runs his hand over his smooth head. “Well, the thing is, Jerry, you also visited her at home.”

“What do you mean I visited her at home?”

“I mean exactly how that sounds. It was when you went to see her at work. She gave you a lift back to your house, but she swung by her house too. So you knew where she lived.”

Jerry keeps shaking his head. It can’t be true. However, there are so many things happening that seem impossible, yet he knows they aren’t. Things like waking up this morning in the home of a dead woman, to finding a bloody shirt under the floorboards of his house.

“They never found her killer,” Hans says.

“You think I did it?”

“I’m not saying that,” Hans says.

“What are you saying?”

Hans looks out the windshield a moment. He does that Hans thing that Jerry has seen so many times before; he can almost see the gears turning inside his head. Finally his friend looks back at him.

“The night she was killed you rang me. You were lost and confused, and I picked you up on the street and you had blood all over your shirt. Just like now. I asked what had happened, and you said you didn’t know. I drove you home. I helped you back through your window. I sat with you on the couch and you remained quiet for some time, then you begged me not to call the police, and when I asked you what you had done that required the police to be called, you refused to answer. I . . . for some reason, for some stupid reason, I didn’t call them. Because you were my friend, and what was done was done, and I didn’t call them when I should have.”

For a few moments Jerry’s mind is blank. Absolutely blank. It’s sensory overload. Too much information all in one hit, and he and Henry and even Captain A are all switched off into darkness, but then one simple piece of information sneaks in and reboots his system: he is Jerry Grey and he is a monster.

“Jerry?”

“It’s Henry’s fault,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“Henry wrote those books and it made me crazy. I became one of the monsters he kept writing about. I really did it? I really hurt these people?”

“I can’t make the same mistake again, Jerry. I’m sorry, but I have to take you to the police. We have to let them figure out what’s going on, and most of all we have to make sure you can never hurt anybody else again.”

W MINUS TWO

The rehearsal last night went well. You may be a sandwich short of a picnic in the upstairs department, as your grandfather was always keen to say (before it became a picnic short of a barbecue, then a picnic short of the Pope shitting in the woods—that was a red flag there), but everything went off without a hitch.

The church—boy, you’ve been there so many times this week you might need to start paying rent. Father Jacob is a priest hovering somewhere between sixty and old age, a down-to-earth guy who seems to have never laughed at anything in his life. He’s pretty okay for a priest, but you’ve never really been a priest guy. Add that to your list. You’re not a car guy, a priest guy, a jeans guy, or a religion guy. You’re a dessert guy. You’re a running-out-of-sandwiches guy. Every time you step into that church here comes Henry Cutter, the failed horror writer to darken your mood by playing the Something bad is right around the corner game, probably because right around the corner is the graveyard. Horror Hack Henry, would you like to take over?

“I do,” Eva said, and the crowd was smiling and some, like Eva’s mother, were weeping. Weddings had always made her weep.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Father Jacob said, then smiled and looked at Rick. “You may now kiss the bride.”

Rick kissed his bride and the crowd started to clap. Everything had gone off without a hitch—even Jerry had walked his daughter down the aisle perfectly, the right pacing, the right smile, the right amount of pressure on her arm as hers interlocked his. It was a long kiss between the new husband and bride, and people started to laugh, and then the happy couple turned towards the crowd and they smiled.

Soon the wedding party was moving down the aisle, people throwing confetti into the air, an usher waiting at the door, and that’s when it happened, the front doors busting open as the zombies piled in, the doors hitting the walls so hard that wood splintered everywhere. Dozens of zombies who had just clawed their way out from the graveyard behind were coming into the church.

“I do love a good wedding,” the first zombie said.

“Brains,” said the second one.

“Good point,” replied the first one. “Brains.” Then another said it too, and another, and the word was catching, because soon it was on the lips of all the dead people. The other things on their lips were the living as the zombies tore into them, and within seconds Eva and Rick were running for their lives. . . .

Thanks, Henry, that’s enough. Don’t give up your day job!

You don’t really think that’s what is waiting for everybody on Saturday, but you can’t shake the feeling something bad is going to happen because it’s been a year of bad feelings, hasn’t it? Both Sandra and Eva are being extremely encouraging, and seem to have a lot more confidence in you than you have. In the church Sandra keeps squeezing your hand and telling you everything is going to go great, and she seems so happy, which makes you happy. Being in the church with your hand in Sandra’s, and your arm around Eva, watching them smile, watching them laugh, it gives you a sense of completion. This is the way life is meant to be. Yes, things are going to change, but right now, right in this moment, your family is happy and that’s all that matters. In fact, this week’s episode of you sneaking out and getting confused is a good thing. If you think of the Big A as a pressure cooker, then letting out some steam to walk into town means it’s not going to blow anytime soon.