In his teens Jack Cohen had felt incredibly superior to the grease stained kids who dropped out of Andrew Jackson High to go to the local Vo-Tech. Vo-Tech’s were considered the lowest of the low, even lower than the “special schools” because at least those kids were retarded. The kids who went to Vo-Tech’s were just stupid, a whole different level of humiliation. He was only marginally embarrassed when those kids turned up as the owners of their own garages, charging excessive fees to maintain his high priced sports car. What he wouldn’t give to have one of those mullet coiffed guys here right now, and he wouldn’t even laugh at the guy’s name stitched onto his coveralls.

It had never really been a problem that Cohen knew nothing about cars other than how to drive them. Sure they broke down occasionally but, since the advent of cell phones, you just called the auto club and waited for help. At first he hadn’t worried about this breakdown either. The car was a rental, so ultimately it was the problem of the ironically named Dependable Car Company. Besides he had his cell phone tucked into his pocket and several spare batteries in his luggage. Then he saw the terrifying “No Signal” message blinking on the display.

He should have expected it. He had seen nothing taller than a cactus for the last hour,

ever since the grizzled attendant had filled the tank and checked the coolant at the inevitable “last chance” gas station. Cohen had accepted his recommendation to buy bottled water for the next leg of his trip but had balked at the addition of a foam cooler and a bag of ice. He had saved a whole eight bucks.

He repeatedly paced from one end of the car to the other, considering his options. His retinas were already strobing with the sunlight reflected into his eyes from the windows and painted surfaces of the car. He couldn’t stay here. With the sun almost directly overhead there was no shade except under the car where a pool of some steaming liquid was collecting. The interior had become a solar oven, the fancy leather seats already too hot for contact, even through his slacks. He had heard that the desert heat could rise to 115̊ during the day and then drop to near freezing at night. The freezing part sounded pretty good right now. He even thought of setting the car on fire in the hope that it would attract someone, but the more he looked around, the more unlikely that seemed. Besides, he was a civilized man and civilized men didn’t do things like that.

There was no way he could walk the fifty miles back to the gas station even if it wasn’t high noon in the Arizona desert. He was in as good shape as a thirty five year old with a sedentary job could expect to be but it had been years since he had walked more than a few miles at a time, and that was on a treadmill in an air-conditioned gym. He had a bottle and a half of water and was dressed for a casual drive, not for a survival hike in the desert. The last time the subject of wilderness survival had come up was in the Boy Scouts, and the only lesson that stuck was to never let Elliot Shapiro’s father into your tent at night.

He opened the trunk and the doors gingerly, using his handkerchief to keep his skin from burning onto the metal. Fortunately he had a baseball cap in his luggage and some extra handkerchiefs he could drape over his neck to keep the sun off. He retrieved the two water bottles from the front seat and, just to keep from wondering about it on his walk, turned the key in the ignition a few more times. Nothing. He adjusted his sunglasses, made sure he had the water and the cell phone and started walking. He knew there was nothing behind him. He could only hope there was something ahead.

He had never been so hot in his life. It was worse then when the old men had urged him and his friends into the shvitz, those God-awful steam rooms where elderly Jewish men (at least they looked old, it could have been the long term effects of the steam) sat for hours suffering with delight. The road was paved, which made it a little easier to walk but he soon began to feel the heat seeping through the soles of his expensive cross-trainers. He wondered how people could live out here and then thought sometimes they don’t.

He stopped and looked back at the car. He had made some progress but it was desperately little. He started to doubt his plan. Not much water, the punishing heat and safety could be a hundred feet ahead or a hundred miles. Since he was a child he had read stories of incredible journeys; Shackleton returning from the Antarctic, Bligh sailing 1600 miles in a small boat with no food or water. But you almost never heard of amateurs doing that. Those guys knew what they were doing. And what about Scott, an experienced explorer who died only miles from safety?

He had the urge to run, to cover more ground, but knew his strength would fail even faster. Just put one foot in front of the other, slow and steady, sip the water even if you aren’t thirsty, but not too much. After a long time he risked a look back and could no longer see the car. He hoped that was a good sign. When he took the last sip of water from the first bottle he considered throwing it away. Still, it didn’t weigh much and if he found more water what was he supposed to do with it, carry it in his pockets? He crumpled the empty water bottle to fit in his pocket and kept walking.

After that things got hazy. It was the heat, the damn heat, like a throbbing that never went away. He thought he’d get used to it but from the moment the car had died and the air-conditioning switched off it had just gotten worse. The hot air was like a spongy wall that he had to press against with each step. He promised himself that he wouldn’t take a sip from the second bottle for at least a half hour, but that would mean checking his watch and perhaps the realization that almost no time had passed. He held off from cracking open the bottle for a long as he could, took one sip and replaced the cap. Still no signal on his cell phone.

One step after another. Each step like the last one. The road underneath his feet, the sun that never seemed to move towards setting, his clothes soaked with his sweat. Occasionally risking a sip of water from the dwindling bottle, and when that was gone there would be no more. He didn’t see a building or even a sign. He was afraid to stop and sit because he might never get up. He was going to die and it was going to be awful. Death by heat stroke and dehydration was not his first choice, or even his tenth. He hadn’t done anything to deserve this, but he wasn’t naive enough to think that mattered.

He’d be found, sooner or later. Then people who knew the area better than he did, or at least didn’t have to make the same life and death decision he had been forced to make, would critique his mistakes. He didn’t expect to make the headlines, but the story would be in the newspapers: “Man dies in futile attempt to walk to safety”, “If only he had stayed with the car.” Or “Man dies in car”, “House full of porn starlets only three miles away.” Or maybe both choices were wrong. Damn cell phone. Weren’t they supposed to work anywhere?

By the time the second bottle was empty it was becoming difficult to take each new step and his breathing was becoming labored. There was no more sweat on his forehead and that meant the end was near. He even thought it was an illusion when he saw a flash of light off to his left. He stepped back and saw the flash again, and again when he stepped forward. It had to be a window. A house. On the road ahead he saw nothing but the edges of the pavement converging at or near the spot where they would find his body. He began to feel dizzy and knew that even if that flash came from an abandoned car or a shiny rock he would have to try for it. He wanted to live and a desperate attempt to reach nothing seemed more life affirming than just continuing on the same road until his strength failed.

He left the road and slid down the embankment to the sand and began walking. Occasionally the light would flash again, calling him forward. He was staggering and tripping over things but he wouldn’t let himself fall. If he fell it would be all over. He had to keep walking and nothing could be allowed to stop him. He kept walking until it became automatic and he remembered nothing after that.

When he awoke it was dark and there was something wet and cool on his forehead. He tried to move but a woman’s voice told him to stay still.

“You’ve had a bad time,” she said. “It was a near thing.”

Cohen tried to talk but his mouth and throat were raw. An ice cube was pressed against his lips and he sucked hungrily on it until the water flowed over the parched areas of his mouth. When the ice was withdrawn he tried to speak again.

“Don’t talk,” the woman said. “I know what you’re wondering and everything is going to be fine. You’re not dead and you’re not dying. You’re in my home and you are going to be all right. I’m keeping the room dark because you’ve had enough sun for one day. I have ice water and moist cloths next to the bed and I’ll stay here with you as long as you need me. You’ve been asleep for hours and I think you’ll sleep some more. You’re going to be fine.”

He wondered again if he was dead. It was so dark and cool that this could only be Heaven and the woman’s voice was as beautiful and soothing as that of a ministering angel. She laughed gently, as if she had read his thoughts, and then slipped an ice chip into his mouth. He rolled it around with his tongue and drank down the icy water. When the chip was gone, he slept.

When he awoke the room was brighter, but with only as much light as filtered through the heavy drapes. He could feel the breeze from a ceiling fan even before his eyes focused on the rotating blades. As he tried to sit up the woman left her chair in the corner and gently dabbed his forehead with a moist cloth. She appeared to be in her mid to late twenties, with golden hair and a face in the exact proportions to please the eyes. Her eyes were blue, a light blue like cool water.

“Do you feel strong enough to sit up?”

He nodded again and she helped him to a sitting position. He took several sips from the glass she held to his lips. “I need …”

“I know,” she said, and her voice again reminded him of laughter and wind chimes.

She helped him stand, led him to a bathroom and gave him his privacy. After he was done, he washed his hands and face and studied himself in the mirror. His face was red but not burned and there was only the hint of stubble. He lifted the short sleeves of his shirt and could see the dramatic difference between his sunburned arms and the paleness of the protected skin. It could only be the same day or the next morning. Any longer than that and he’d be deeply burned, perhaps with lesions breaking open the overcooked flesh. When he left the bathroom she was waiting for him. She was dressed in a loose blouse and a flowing skirt. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

“I’m glad to see you’re stronger, Mr. Cohen,” she said, “or may I call you Jonathon?”

“Jack.” His voice was still a bit raspy but it sounded better. “Most people call me Jack.”

“I hope you don’t mind that I went through your wallet. I wanted to know who we were entertaining.”

“I don’t mind at all. You said ‛we’.”

She took his arm and led him out of the bedroom. With each step her hip brushed against him. When they reached the living room there was an older man sitting at a dining table next to a window overlooking the desert. He looked to be about sixty or maybe a sturdy seventy. His hair was white and he had a trim mustache. He looked fit, if not muscular.

“Edward, let me introduce our guest.”

Edward didn’t look happy. He stared at Cohen with a hostile gaze and refused to rise from the table.

“Edward, this is Jack Cohen.”

Edward made a snorting sound and muttered. “Figures.”

Still weak from being saved from certain death, Cohen was not about to respond to an old man’s anti-Semitism. Let him think what he wanted.

Cohen approached him and held out his hand. “I want to thank you. I would have died out there.”

Edward rose from the table and walked to the bar where he poured himself a whiskey. “Don’t thank me. She brought you in. As far as I’m concerned you could have lain out there until you cooked.”

“Edward!”

At first Cohen had thought that he was the woman’s father but, besides her calling him by his first name, her rebuke had the same effect on him as a slap across the face. So, an older man terrified of being cuckolded by his trophy wife, and by a Jew at that.

“Look,” Cohen said, “I didn’t come here to cause trouble. I appreciate your help and as soon as I can get a ride out of here I’ll be on my way.”

The old man looked skeptical even before the woman insisted that he stay until he was stronger.

“Rose, please.”

“I’m sorry Edward, but he’s a guest and he’ll enjoy our hospitality. You know that.”

The old man looked stricken, as if he could see it all in advance. The young wife slipping out of her cold marriage bed to join the (if he was allowed to flatter himself) handsome young visitor to spend the night making love and laughing at the old fool. Cohen could not deny that the woman was attractive. If she had a flaw it was not visible to the eye. Perhaps she resented or despised her husband. Maybe she had married for money and found the bargain more expensive then she had expected. It could be that this house, isolated by the desert and miles, even hundreds of miles, from fun and laughter and the admiration of other men, was more a prison than a home.

“Now you men relax and I’ll start supper. You must both be hungry.” She brought Cohen to the table and seated him three seats down from Edward. Before entering the kitchen she put a fresh whiskey in front of her husband and a glass of ice water in front of Cohen.

“Give the man a drink, why don’t you?”

“I think he’s better off sticking to water, for now.”

“Do you think it will make a difference?” The old man’s gaze was becoming feral.

“Maybe.” She moved the glass closer to Cohen. “Just water, for now. That’s all right with you, isn’t it?”

Cohen picked up the glass and took a sip. Before, in the bedroom, the water had tasted sweeter and purer than any he had ever had. That was to be expected; it had brought him back from the brink of death. But now that he felt stronger the water tasted just as sweet. He could hear Rose in the kitchen, humming to herself as she cut vegetables and dropped them into pots of water. Cohen grew uncomfortable under the old man’s gaze and looked around. The house was ringed by windows, each showcasing a different desert view. The hills were red and grey with the occasional startling green of a cactus or other desert plant. This part of the house seemed to be one immense room, separated into areas by a stone fireplace, wooden panels and strategically placed Mission furniture.

Cohen took another sip of the sweet water. “You have a beautiful home,” he said to Edward, who responded with a grunt and sipped his whiskey. “I don’t pretend to know much about these things but is it a Frank Lloyd Wright?”

“He was never here. It’s in his style though.” Edward took another drink of whiskey. His laugh was, again, more of a growl. “And you love it, all of it.”

“I was just admiring the house.”

“And Rose. You admire her as well, don’t you?”

“I’m not here to cause trouble. I’d leave right this minute if I could. Drive me to a town where I get a tow truck for my car and I’ll be out of your life. I don’t want to be here.”

“Even if I believed you, it’s too late for that.”

“It’s not that late.”

“It’s too late. Besides, Rose is making dinner for three. It’s too late for you to leave.”

Cohen continued to drink his water and decided the best course was to say nothing. Dinner was ready sooner than he had expected and confirmed, again, that beautiful Rose had few flaws. She started by bringing out a huge wooden bowl overflowing with a fresh salad. Several dressings were available and each was almost too appetizing to pass up in favor of another. As Edward and Cohen munched on the salad, Rose brought out the main course; grilled salmon, prepared to perfection with asparagus and mushrooms. Rose drank a chilled white wine, while Edward stuck to his whiskey and Cohen to his water.

When the meal was over, at the risk of infuriating Edward even more, Cohen had to tell Rose that the meal had been one of the finest he had ever had.

“Why aren’t you sweet,” she said, with her musical laugh. “I’ll accept your compliment and ignore the fact that a man who came so close to death would love any meal.”

“No, I mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a better meal. Where you a chef before … before you moved here?”

“No, but I love to cook and I’m glad you enjoyed it. Why don’t you two relax in the living room while I clean up?”

“Let me help.”

Rose laughed again. “Oh, no. At the risk of sounding old fashioned, let me do the woman’s work. You men relax.”

The two men moved to the living room, Edward seated in what was obviously “his” chair and Cohen taking one end of the couch. The room was incredibly comfortable and, despite himself, Cohen could not help picturing himself living there. It was obvious that Edward knew how he felt.

“Tough break.”

“Excuse me?”

“Missing your chance to help her rinse the dishes. Little domestic chores can be so romantic when shared.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

“Liar.”

“Look …”

“I know, you came here because you had to and you’ll leave as soon as you can.”

“That’s right.”

“Lie to me, I expect it, but don’t lie to yourself.”

Cohen sat back and didn’t try to engage the man in any more conversation. The uncomfortable fact was that he did feel like a liar. There was no denying that Rose was very attractive, in addition to be being a terrific cook, but if that was all there was to it he would have fallen in love with the Latina grill chef at the Steak Palace. It was as if Rose was composed of the best features of every woman he had ever known. Everything about her was wonderful; her voice, her laugh, her smile. She was a wife, a lover, a guardian angel. She was the woman every man wanted, and telling Edward anything else could not be totally honest.

After she finished the dishes, Rose joined them and they sat in the living room, talking about nothing in general as the sun finally went down. He didn’t need to talk about anything. Just the sound of her voice was enough. Finally she began asking more pointed questions.

“So, Jack, what do you do?”

“Do?”

“I mean what brought you to Arizona?”

Cohen laughed, afraid to tell her the truth and risk the look of boredom he had seen in so many women’s eyes. “Well, I’m in charge of branding for Petersen and Anderson in New York.”

Edward jumped on that one in the same growl he had used before. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s boring.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Edward, please.” Her rebuke was gentler this time. “Please, Jack, tell us what you do.”

“Well, we match up organizations that want to put their name on something and people who need money and have a building that could use a new name.” Seeing that neither of them knew exactly what to make about it he tried to explain. “You see, years ago, they used to name stadiums after the teams that played there and buildings after the companies that owned them. Then they started naming stadiums after the governors who got the funding and buildings after the tycoons who built them. These days, business being what it is, none of those approaches pays the bills. So, the names of buildings and stadiums are up for sale and you get the ‛Fruity Cola Arts Center’ and the ‛TeleCommCorp Sports Arena’. My company makes those matches.”

“How proud your parents must be,” Edward said.

“I’ll admit it’s a living and not a calling. I don’t pretend to be curing cancer.”

“So,” Rose asked, “what are you doing on this trip?”

“Why are you asking him that?” Edward asked. “Why bother?”

“I want to know, and he wants to tell me.”

“I told you it was boring.”

“Please,” she said, “tell us.”

“I was on my way to the Hopi Reservation. A company wanted some positive publicity and had the money to do it. Most of the money was recovered from a Swiss bank in a plea agreement with their former CEO. The reservation will get a new school and clinic and International Pressboard gets to convince people that they’re not just about pollution and embezzlement.”

“That’s wonderful. You’re helping educate and treat people in need. You are doing a terrific thing.”

“He was,” Edward said.

“I’m still going to do it.”

“You think so, don’t you?”

“No one knows the future, Edward.”

Edward laughed. “I do, and so do you.”

Cohen took another sip of his water and found it difficult to place it squarely on the coaster.

“You’re tired,” she said. “It’s time for you to turn in.”

“And how you’ve been waiting for that, haven’t you?” Edward growled.

“Oh, Edward, you know me better than that. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Rose brought him back to the guest bedroom and waited for him to use the bathroom. When she left him alone he turned in, wearing only his underwear. The room was as dark and cool as when he had awakened there earlier when all he knew was that he was going to live, if in fact he wasn’t already dead. He was tired and should have fallen asleep immediately but his brain would not shut down. The situation was volatile and when he heard the door open he knew that it could only be Edward with a kitchen knife or Rose in a lacy peignoir and either was trouble. He turned over and in the dim light made out Rose in a sensible bathrobe. She came closer and sat on the edge of the bed.

“You shouldn’t be in here.”

Rose laughed gently. “You think I’ve come to make love to you?”

“The thought had occurred to me, and to your husband.”

“Edward isn’t my husband.”

“He isn’t your father.”

“No, he isn’t. I haven’t come here to join you, Jack. I’m a one man woman, and Edward is my man. I came in because you should be asleep.”

“I can’t seem to fall asleep.”

“You’ve had a long hard day. Sleep.”

“Edward is really suspicious of me. He has no reason.”

She rested her fingertips on his forehead and, with no apparent effort, pressed him back onto the pillow. “Close your eyes. Sleep.”

“But … I … I …”

“Shhhhh, sleep.”

Cohen drifted off into sleep. He had never slept so peacefully, so dreamlessly. The only thing that crossed his mind as consciousness faded was the feeling that he was being sung to sleep.

When he awoke the room was light and he felt better than he had in years. In the bathroom he found that several large fluffy towels had been left next to the shower, along with a fresh cake of soap and a terrycloth bathrobe. After his shower he dressed in his freshly laundered clothing and joined Edward and Rose at the breakfast table. Rose had cooked for them and, of course, breakfast was magnificent with hand squeezed orange juice, perfectly prepared scrambled eggs and fluffy blueberry pancakes.

Rose picked delicately at her breakfast. “I love to watch men eat,” she said.

Even Edward seemed to be in a better mood, possibly due to the substitution of gourmet coffee for the whiskey of the night before. He had a hearty appetite and cleaned off his plate, washing it down with his second mug of coffee, as Cohen was wiping up the maple syrup with the last fragment of pancake.

“Another wonderful meal.”

That got a laugh from Edward. “Everyone gets one.”

Cohen expected another rebuke from Rose but she was silent.

“Well, I think it’s time to talk about getting out of here.”

“You relax and digest your meal,” Rose said, “then we’ll discuss what comes next.”

The men again retired to the living room and waited as Rose did the dishes. It was an hour before Cohen excused himself and made a trip to the bathroom. When he returned, Rose and Edward were standing at the dining table.

“Everything come out okay?” Edward asked.

“Sure, thanks.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want an unfair advantage.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Edward looked to Rose and, apparently getting her approval, lifted a cloth napkin off the table exposing a chrome plated revolver.

“Okay, fun is fun, but this is too much.”

“It’s time,” Edward said.

“You’re going to shoot me?”

“You misunderstand,” Edward said. “That is your gun. This is mine.”

Cohen stared, not willing to accept the implications, at the identical gun tucked into Edward’s waistband, only revealed when he lifted his shirt.

“There’s no need for this.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said, “but this is the way it has to be.”

“Edward, I don’t know what the hell Rose told you but nothing happened between us.”

“I know that,” the old man said. “I know it better than you. But now it’s time to decide who gets her and who doesn’t.”

“Is that what this is about? Who gets her? Shit, you can have her. I don’t want her.”

“I told you before, lie to me but don’t lie to yourself.”

“Edward, I’m willing to leave and never come back. I never touched her and I never will. I’m attracted to her, sure, but I’m not going to shoot it out with you to get her.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Rose said.

“Why don’t you just shut up!” Nothing up to his point, not even his ordeal in the desert, had been tougher than yelling at her. It felt like a combination of kicking a puppy, bursting a child’s first balloon and slashing the Mona Lisa. Even now he couldn’t get himself to accept the idea that she was the driving force behind this. “If this is the way you two get your kicks you can get someone else. I just want out of here.”

Rose came around the table and Cohen felt himself backing away. She wasn’t the first woman he had met who tried to get her boyfriend to beat the crap out of him, but most of the others had been high school skanks or tattooed biker babes. This was different. Edward was right. He couldn’t deny that part of him was perfectly willing to kill for her, and that frightened him even more than the thought that Edward was planning on winning this duel.

“I am not going to shoot anyone.”

“Jack, you have to understand that Edward has no reservations about this. He will shoot you.”

“Tell him not to.”

“I can’t.” Was that genuine regret in her eyes?

“Then I’ll just leave.”

“There’s no car for you to use. You know you can’t walk to safety, but even if you could Edward would be after you in five minutes. Could you outrun him all the way to the Hopi reservation? Can you outrun a bullet?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“It’s the way it has to be.”

“We’re wasting time,” Edward said. “Let’s get going.”

“Take your gun, Jack. Take it and use your head start. Five minutes. This is not a game or a joke. It’s life and death.”

“But not yours, right?”

“No, not mine. Yours or Edward’s.”

“Bitch.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, but it doesn’t change anything.”

Cohen picked up the revolver. He knew nothing about guns but he was sure he knew something about people. He pointed the revolver at Edward. “Fine, now put your gun on the table and give me your car keys.”

Edward laughed in his face.

“Do it!”

Rose spoke to him as she might have to a child. “Jack, there aren’t any bullets in your gun.”

Cohen fiddled with the unfamiliar gun until the chambers snapped open. They were empty. “Shit!”

“I appreciate your initiative,” Edward said, “but you’ll have to do it our way.”

“You said you didn’t want an unfair advantage. Do I get bullets?”

Rose led him to a sliding door overlooking the desert. Through the window he could see, their brass casings reflecting the morning sun, a half dozen cartridges carefully lined up on the rail post.

“Five minutes.”

She slid open the door and then shut it as soon as Cohen stepped out into the sun. The morning sun was only a few degrees above the distant hills. Was it possible that in less than twenty four hours he had forgotten how awful it could be? The sun had not even begun its climb to the hottest part of the day but he was already blinded by the blazing sun and felt as if he was being cooked in God’s broiler. Rose was right, he’d never be able to walk to safety, but he wasn’t through being clever. He looked right and left as he carefully gathered up the six cartridges and fitted them into the chambers. The narrow porch, bordered by the glass shell of the house and the wooden railing, ran to the corners of the house and probably went all the way around. He looked back and, sure enough, they were watching him. Crazy bastards. He had just over four minutes left.

He descended the few stairs down to the sand. He had no intention of playing hide and seek against a maniac with a .357 Magnum. While Edward had the home field advantage and seemed eager to kill him, Cohen had the same plan as always; to get as far away from those two lunatics as he possibly could. Once Edward came after him he’d do the one thing they’d never expect. Instead of running off into the desert in a panic or trying to set up an ambush, he’d circle back to the house. By the time Edward realized he’d been tricked Cohen would have had time to commandeer a car and would be long gone.

That plan lasted about ten minutes. From his position behind a shrub he kept expecting to see Edward searching for him, but the older man never appeared. With every minute that passed he could feel his strength failing. He had no water this time and if he waited too long Edward would find him in no shape to fight back. He risked moving from his position, staying low and keeping watch for Edward. When he caught a glimpse of the roof of the house he began to crawl. It took him another minute to reach a spot with a clear view of the side of the house from which he had emerged fifteen minutes earlier. Edward was sitting on the stairs.

Cohen dropped to the ground, his face pressed against the hot sand. It was like the old man had read his mind. Edward was hemmed in by the railings and it would be difficult for him to move out of the way if Cohen started firing. The range was the real problem. Cohen had never fired a gun in his life and he had no confidence that he could hit anything at this distance, which he estimated to be thirty or forty feet. He would have to break from cover and run towards the old man, who would immediately start shooting in return. Edward probably spent his days practicing with the Magnum, shooting at cacti he took to be Rose’s imaginary lovers, and might easily pick him off before he could get close enough to hit anything. If Cohen managed to dodge the incoming bullets, and that was a big if, he might just manage to kill Edward. Then what? An old man dead on the steps of his own home, killed by a stranger, and a grieving widow who’d say God knew what to the police. He could wind up surviving the shootout only to die in prison.

Keeping low he began circling around to the back of the house. His plan could still work, if he could open a back door. He suddenly thought of Rose. Would she be in her bedroom waiting for the victor or would she be at the window, ready to warn Edward of Cohen’s approach? Was he prepared to silence her? The thought of raking the pistol across that beautiful face filled him with revulsion. How was it that, even now when he knew what a bitch she could be, the thought of hurting her was more than he could bear? He realized that, deep inside, he hoped she was rooting for him.

The back of the house didn’t have stairs but the floor of the porch was only several inches above his head. Cohen tucked the revolver into a back pocket and began pulling himself up. It was an ugly scramble but he managed to get a leg up and then climb the railing as if it was a ladder. He paused for a moment to see if his activity had alerted Edward, but there was only silence. Before looking for a door he peered inside and saw no one. Rose was probably near the front, watching Edward and expecting, as the old man did, that the action would take place on that side on the house. The first door was locked and he tried, without success, to lift it out of the tracks. He moved to the next door but the result was the same there and at the door after that.

When he was within ten feet of the corner of the house he decided that he could circle the house, coming up behind Edward and take him by surprise. The alternative was breaking a glass door with the butt of the pistol which would alert Edward. The element of surprise still seemed to be the only thing he had going for him. He drew the gun and peeked around the corner. The side of the house was clear. As he approached the front corner of the house he took a few deep breaths. The air just kept getting hotter and hotter.

Cohen turned the last corner, knowing that in a few seconds he might have to shoot if Edward refused to drop his gun. In the movies it was so easy for the hero to wing the bad guy, disarming him without any real damage. If Edward refused to drop his gun Cohen would have no choice but to shoot and there was no telling where the bullets would hit. Maybe he’d be lucky, he thought. Maybe the older man had been felled by the heat and was now sitting unconscious on the steps. He moved slowly forward until he reached the door from which he had exited the house. Edward was no longer on the steps.

He heard rapid footsteps behind him but it was too far to the stairs. His only chance to live was to throw himself over the railing. He heard a yell of triumph behind him and then an explosion at the same time he caught a blood red flash at the limit of his peripheral vision. He hit the ground hard, throwing up a cloud of sand that left him running blindly into the brush. Before he could clear his eyes he collided with shrubs and cacti, cutting his arms and legs. There was a second explosion behind him and he turned and fired blindly. He had no hope of hitting the old man but he hoped that it would provide him the seconds he needed to lose him.

With one eye clear he took up a position behind a cactus but Edward was too smart to keep following him and had probably fallen back to the house. Cohen was gasping for breath; too exhausted to run anymore. He was spitting out sand and trying to sweep his right eye clear. He had minor cuts on his arms, legs and sides but he was still standing so the old man had missed with both shots. By all rights it was Edward who should be worn out, but the old man was tough. Someone had once told Cohen that there were two types of people – those made of wood and those made of iron. The old man was made of iron, tempered in this desert. Cohen didn’t want to be shot at again, but his other choices were to wait here until he was overcome by his need for water or try to walk to safety, with less chance of making now then he had before. It was his move, and the old man was waiting for him.

Cohen worked his way back towards the house. He took a different route than last time, under no illusion that Edward would be sitting on the steps, waiting for him to sneak up.

When he reached the house there was no sign of Edward. Time to be clever again.

“Edward!” He waited a minute and called again.

“You looking for me?” The answer came from his left.

Cohen moved towards the sound of the old man’s voice, as he knew the old man would be homing in on him. “Can we talk?”

“Talk all you want.” The voice was closer.

“Any chance of calling this off?”

“Sure.” The voice seemed to come from just the other side of a clump of twisted shrubs. “Just step out and we’ll talk.”

“You mean step out and you’ll kill me.”

“Then why ask?”

“I like to hear your voice.” He moved slowly to his right.

“You think you can shoot at my voice and hit me?” The voice had moved. Edward was probably still moving.

Cohen was about to speak again, but suddenly he knew that Edward was about to fire. He steadied the gun in both hands, firing once and then moving quickly to his left. A return shot came through the shrubs and Cohen charged towards the sound, firing again. There was another shot from Edward but the old man had made a mistake. The shot went past Cohen and he caught a glimpse of his opponent running behind a cactus. Cohen ran to cut him off and fired as he saw the old man break cover.

“Edward, drop the gun!”

As Edward turned and raised his gun Cohen could see blood on the old man’s shirt. He was hurt but he was still trying. Cohen gripped the gun in both hands and fired. Your rules, he thought, not mine. There was a fresh burst of blood from Edward’s chest and the old man was punched to the ground. Cohen moved forward, hoarding his last shot, to where the old man lay dying. Edward was gasping for breath but still trying to raise his gun. Cohen stepped on his gun hand and held it down until the old man’s grip failed. He kicked the gun out of Edward’s reach.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” Cohen said.

The old man laughed. “You know better. I knew it would happen sooner or later, but I’ll miss her so much.”

Cohen crouched by his side. He was going to live, at least until the police started asking questions but, unlike his survival trek across the desert, there was no sense of triumph. He had killed a man and it was all for nothing.

“You could just have let me go,” he said, “and you could have had her all to yourself.”

“It doesn’t work that way, you’ll see.” It took the old man more and more breaths to gather the strength to speak. “You’ll see when men come to challenge you. You’ll do anything to keep her.”

“I’m leaving, just as I planned to.”

“You can’t. You love her, as I love her and she needs you now. You can’t just walk away and leave her all alone. I envy you.”

The old man’s head fell back to the sand and he stopped breathing. Of course the old man envied him. He was still alive and, as far as Edward knew, was going back to the house to have sex with his girlfriend. In a way Cohen envied him. What did he have to look forward to but a police interrogation and possibly a life sentence? Nothing would ever be the same again. All his plans and dreams were gone because of two people’s sick and twisted relationship.

Cohen rose and walked towards the house. He was going to leave. He was going to get away from this insanity, even if it meant driving into the hands of the police. Better to admit what he had done than to spend the rest of his life waiting for the safe to fall on him.

Rose was waiting at the house, sliding open the door for him and guiding him to Edward’s chair. Cohen was too tired to be insulted and let his body sink into the comfort of the cushions, cradling the gun in both hands. She left for a few seconds and returned with a glass of ice water.

“I knew it would be you,” she said. “Edward was good, but he was old and tired. He wanted to live but he knew his time was up.”

She offered the glass to Cohen and he wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything, other than Rose herself. He didn’t so much want to drink the water as dive into it, knowing that his sweat-stained clothes would be stripped away as he broke through the surface, leaving him to swim through the clear water as it bathed his naked skin. He pushed the glass away. Drinking the water seemed like a betrayal of the crime he had just committed.

“Edward is dead.”

“I know,” she said. “Only one of you was going to come back alive.”

“He meant nothing to you.”

She smiled that wonderful smile again. “He was everything to me, and I was everything to him.”

“But now he’s dead and you’ll go on without him.”

“Yes, I’ll go on without him. I’ll go on with you.”

“You’re insane. You were both insane. I don’t want you.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“I don’t want a woman who would make me kill to get her.”

“There was no other way. You feel sorry for Edward, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

“There’s no need,” she said, trying to bring the glass to his mouth, only to be refused again. “We had wonderful years together. If you feel guilty about shooting him, remember he would have killed you. He’s killed many times. He killed to get me, and he’s killed to keep me. Just as you killed to get me, and, when the time comes, you will kill to keep me.”

She reached forward to stroke his forehead but he pulled back as if her delicate hand was a venomous snake.

“Jack, no, I’ll call you Jon. You’ve always wanted to be called Jon, haven’t you? Jon, you’ve won and the prize is yours. A beautiful home and a beautiful woman. An oasis from the world with a companion who will make you happy every day of your life. Think of what that means. The sun will rise and set on us. Each meal will be a feast. We will sit in this room and read books and talk for hours. Then we will make love with an intensity you’ve never known and life will be a daily wonder.”

“As long as I kill any man who comes along, whether he wants to take my place or not, until one of them kills me and leaves me to rot in the desert.”

“Isn’t bliss worth killing and dying for?”

“For as long as it lasts.”

“Each day here will be more wonderful than any week or month you’ve ever experienced. It will all be worth it, I promise you that.”

“You think I’m going to stay here, with you?”

“No man has ever chosen to leave. You won’t either.”

“And how many men will I have to kill?”

“There’s no way to know. Edward killed eleven, not counting the first.”

“Eleven men?”

“Yes, but that was over the thirty years he was here.”

Cohen looked at the water. He wanted it, but it was just another part of the trap. Once he started drinking it, she would win. “How many years did you say?”

“Edward was here for thirty years.”

“With you?”

“Yes.”

“And he killed the man who was here before him? How long was that man here?”

“He wasn’t as lucky or as skillful as Edward. He was only here sixteen years.”

“With you?”

“They were all here with me.”

“And there was a man before him?”

“Yes, for almost twenty years. The man before him was here three years. I don’t think his heart was in it.”

“But he killed the man who was here before him; a man who had killed the man before him?”

“That’s right.”

Cohen tried to laugh, but he throat was dry and felt as if it were lined with sand. “Lady, I’m not going to bother to point out that you haven’t been here, much less alive, for the last seventy years, but they didn’t even build houses like this back then.”

“A house should reflect its owner. This was Edward’s house. It will be the kind of house you want before you know it.”

“Oh, so it wasn’t a Frank Lloyd Wright house when Edward got here, but the kind of house that the previous man wanted.”

“That’s right.”

“And I guess that before that it was another house, and before that another house. But you’ve always been here, just like you are now?”

“More or less. A woman should be what a man wants as much as a house.”

“So before it was this house it was, what, a Greek Revival, or a Tudor? And before that a farm house, and before that a ranch house, and before that a log cabin and before that an adobe hut until I guess it was a pueblo with some dumb bastard of a Hopi killing strangers to keep them away from you.”

“That’s not a bad guess.” Her smile seemed to tell him that everything was going to be fine, more than fine. “Now drink your water and in time I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

Cohen looked into the glass of water, water sweeter than any he had ever known. He wanted the water, and he needed it. He couldn’t survive, even in the air-conditioned house, without it.

“Fine,” he said, “but first there’s one thing I have to do.”

Before she could respond he used both hands to raise the gun until the muzzle was pressed to the soft skin of her throat, just below the chin. The barrel was pointed slightly upward so that the bullet would either blast through her throat, carrying chunks of her spine out the back of her neck, or go directly upward into her brain, exploding outward through the skull. He pulled the trigger, firing the last cartridge. The explosion, confined to the house, was louder than any he had experienced in the desert. His eyes were blinded by the flash and his ears rang with the blast. His strength gone, he lay back in the chair and let the empty revolver slip from his fingers to fall soundlessly onto the thick carpet. It was the hardest thing he had ever done. Now all he could do was rest.

Rose brought the glass to his lips, and this time he drank deeply. She gently poured the cold water into his mouth until he was strong enough to hold the glass by himself. He continued to drink as she rose from her seat and ran her fingers through his sand encrusted hair.

“When you finish that glass I’ll bring you another,” she said, smiling at him. “You’ll have time for a nap and a shower before dinner. I’m making your favorites.”

Cathy Epstein could not resist relocating some of the floral offerings. Since some people had so many, while others seemed to have been forgotten, it didn’t seem wrong to take a few flowers from one to leave for someone else, at least those she could reach. It had never bothered Cathy that she was only five foot three, even when co-workers kidded her about it, but it made it tough to reach past the first few levels of caskets. She looked in vain for a ladder or step-stool and finally had to accept that those higher up in the mausoleum would have to do without.

As she began strolling through the corridors, heading for the exit, she was unable to resist letting her fingers trace out the engraved names and dates and the sad little messages. So many Loving Fathers and Beloved Wives. The building was fairly new and she found no war veterans and few children in those poor sad little boxes behind the uniform marble plaques. She was so wrapped up in her reading that she didn’t notice the casket in the aisle before she tripped over it.

There were three empty caskets removed from the bottom row and placed flat on the floor, their lids left open. For a desperate moment she hoped that she had stumbled on a pending funeral but there was no way to ignore the fact that caskets came filled but now the bodies were gone. Unless, she thought, the bodies had never been put in them, like at that crematorium in Georgia, and then someone found out and they came here and pulled them out and, finding them empty, left them there while they tracked down the wrongdoers. Yeah, that was it, because otherwise there were body snatchers running around who might not appreciate being caught in the act. She quickly detoured around the empty caskets but, as soon as she turned a corner, she found another empty casket and then another. It was months until Halloween and April Fools Day was the week before. What other reason could people have for stealing bodies?

Hidden cameras, she thought, please let there be hidden cameras. I’ll sign any release so they can put me on TV for people to laugh at if only there are hidden cameras. She pulled back at the sound of footsteps. If the two men she saw, walking by in an intersecting corridor dressed in their Sabbath best, had ever worked in reality TV it must have been quite a while ago.

The strength went out of her legs and she slid down against the wall. She turned and rested her cheek against the cool marble, hoping that it would clear her head. She had to get out of there. She had to reach the exit and get outside where she could start screaming uncontrollably. Unless the “people” she had seen, and the ones she now heard walking in the adjacent corridors, were outside as well. She had only seen a handful of empty caskets but, if there were more, if they were emptying out from the front and then back into the depths of the mausoleum, what hope was there? There had to be hidden cameras, or some student film group using unoccupied caskets and guys dressed as zombies. It simply wasn’t possible in her normal rational world for people to be leaving their caskets and walking around. Of course, that was it! How could a dead person, even if they could move, get the casket out of its container so they could exit? So this couldn’t be happening. Maybe it was a dream. Why not? It was all too strange to be real.

She had no sooner worked up the courage to start creeping towards the exits when she saw how it was being done. Two men, perhaps the same two she had seen walking by, were pulling a casket from the bottom row in another corridor and opening the lid. If she believed, even a little, that there was a rational explanation for what she was seeing, why wouldn’t her legs move so she could step out and say something to them? The worst that could happen, under those circumstances, was to ruin a single take of their film. She could no longer wait to get outside. It was time to scream. She backed away from the action and, even as she felt the scream about to explode from her lungs, a hand was clamped over her mouth. It didn’t smell of rotting flesh but she knew when she saw the face of the decaying corpse holding her down the last thread of her sanity would snap.

“Don’t make a sound,” the man whispered in her ear. “If you scream they’ll be all over us. Just back up and follow me.”

She couldn’t move. It didn’t make sense that a reanimated corpse would be whispering in her ear, but it made as much sense as the dead men and women methodically opening caskets to free the others.

“I’m not one of them,” the man whispered. He loosened his grip enough for her to turn and see his face. He looked very much alive.

They slowly moved back into the corridors where they hoped they would not be heard or found, being careful to make as little noise as possible. The only door they found was to an unlocked storage closet where they sat in total darkness until their eyes began to get accustomed to the light seeping in under the door.

“Sorry if I scared you back there,” he whispered.

“I couldn’t be more scared. What’s going on?”

“You know as much about it as I do,” he said. “Where were you headed?”

“I was following the exit signs.”

“That won’t do you any good. They’re all over that part of the building. I’ve been searching every hallway for a fire exit but I haven’t found one. Don’t mausoleums have building codes? This place is a deathtrap. Oh, sorry.”

Cathy laughed, a bit. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just so glad you’re here. Who are you?”
“Allen.”

“Cathy, with a ‛c’.”

“Well, this doesn’t look good,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have a gun or a flame-thrower on you.”

“I was hoping you did. What are we going to do?”

“Figures.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You can tell me,” Cathy said.

“It was my wife. She used to tell me how women could do anything. You know, climb mountains, cross frozen wastes. Then when something broke it was suddenly my job to get it fixed.”

“Is your wife here with you?”

“She’s here. She’s always here.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Today was her birthday. Just my luck. If she had been born an hour earlier I’d have come here yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, about your wife I mean. At least you had time together. Sometimes I wish I had a man around, especially for spiders and pickle jars. God, I wish I had a hundred men right now, all with machine guns. What is going on here?”

“I have no idea. If you have any theories, I’d love to hear them.”

“I can’t think,” she said. “You know, if this is a joke or you’re making a film, you can tell me.”

“You don’t know how much I wish this was all some kind of gag. We have to get out of here. We have to find a way out, even if it means running past them.”

“Oh, God, no!”

“If we can’t sneak out we’ll have to make a break for it. If old movies have taught me anything it’s that zombies don’t run. Do you have a car?”

“A car? Yeah, I just bought one to celebrate my promotion.”

“Great, I came by bus,” he said. “Can your car go fast?”

“With both my feet on the gas pedal, you bet.”

“Good, because I don’t think this is a time to stand around waiting for public transportation.”

“But what do we do when we get out of here?”

“Run like hell,” Allen said. “We’ll get the police, set off fire alarms, anything we can do to get help. Then it’s someone else’s problem. You know, if it turns out that this really is some kind of movie shoot or something, we could be wind up as world famous assholes.”

“I’ll take that chance if you will. Allen?”

“Yeah?”

She reached out and he took her hand. “You won’t leave me behind, will you? I couldn’t stand it.”

“Of course not.” She came into his arms and held him close. Then he whispered in her ear. “You have the car keys, remember?”

He felt her laugh, and cry, against his shoulder.

“Don’t leave me behind,” she said. “I’m so scared.”

“I promise. We’ll get out of here together. Now, let’s see if the coast is clear.”

“No, don’t go. We can wait until they leave. Maybe someone else will see them and send for help.”

“That’s not a bad idea, except by then it could be wall to wall zombies in here. Besides it will be dark in a couple of hours and I’d rather take my chances when I can see where I’m going. Just let me check.”

He managed to extricate himself from her grasp and crept to the door. He listened for a moment and then gently turned the handle. As soon as the door started to move it was suddenly pulled open and Allen tumbled out. Cathy screamed but he was already being dragged into the corridor. Foul smelling hands grabbed her and pulled her out into the light.

“Oh, God, no!” she screamed. “Allen, Allen, help me!”

Allen could not help her. He had already been dragged to the opposite wall and was being held by three of the zombies. Cathy was pushed against the same wall, but it only took one to hold her in place. Her strength and resolve had collapsed and she could make no attempt at escape. The zombies surrounded them and in their midst was chubby man with black curly hair. Allen did not recognize him but knew his type. The studious boy who was revered by adults for his grades and then beat up in the playground for making everyone else look bad.

Cathy was sobbing. “Oh, please, please don’t hurt me. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Yeah, just let us go,” Allen said, “and you guys can go about your business.”

The chubby man stepped forward. He wore a ridiculous looking cape over his shoulders and in his right hand held a shiny golden sphere about the size of a baseball. It seemed to consist of interconnecting metal bands or rings and, although Allen could not see them clearly, there were letters or symbols inscribed on the bands.

“I can’t let you go, not now. You’ll run and tell and bring others before I’m ready.”

“We won’t,” Cathy sobbed, “I swear it.”

“Of course you will, anyone would. In time I won’t care, but right now I’m just beginning to assemble my army. It’s too soon for anyone else to know.”

“Look,” Allen said, “you can let us go. Sure we’ll tell people, but they won’t believe us.”

“I can’t take that chance.”

“Then let the girl go.”

Cathy was curled up in a ball, covering her face with her small hands, still crying.

“No one is going anywhere.” His voice trembled with anger. “I will not permit it.”

“And who the hell are you?” Allen tried to pull loose of their gripping hands but, dead or not, they were too strong.

“I am the Lord thy God,” the chubby man said. “I am the master of life and death. The holder of the keys to eternal life.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Am I? Look around you. Who else could do this? Watch.”

The man held up the metal ball and deftly turned a ring a few notches with his thumb. He pointed at a sealed vault and two of the dead men broke open the crypt and pulled out the casket and opened it, revealing a corpse in excellent condition.

“Now watch, both of you! You! Woman! Watch this.”

Cathy curled into a tighter ball, sealing her eyes with her hands. “Please, no, I can’t.”

The man turned a ring and the zombie behind Cathy pulled her hands away from her face and turned her towards the open casket.

“Oh, no, please, no.”

“Watch.”

The man turned more rings and Cathy screamed as the corpse’s arms left their peaceful pose to grip the sides of the box. For a moment after climbing out of the box he looked around in confusion, ignoring or unaware of the man’s commands to move. With the turn of another ring the newly risen man jerked as if struck by an electric charge and moved where he was directed.

“You see,” the man shouted, “you see? Who else can do that? I am God! I am the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega.”

“It isn’t you,” Allen said. “It’s that ball.”

“And who found it in a junk box in an antique store,” the man asked, “tossed there by people too stupid to understand it? Who bought it for three dollars when he was only eleven years old from people who thought they were cheating a stupid kid? It took me all these years to learn its secrets. Years of painstaking study, making notes on every symbol, every combination while people laughed at me and called me names. Who will laugh now that I am the master of the dead and soon, through them, master of the living? It’s time for me to stand with my feet on the necks of those who tormented me, a colossus standing astride humanity. And now it is time for you to die and join me.”

Cathy began begging for her life as two of the zombies started to move in response to a turn of the wheels. He turned the rings another notch as they hesitated.

Allen saw a chance, a desperate chance, but it was all they had. “Hey, zombies,” he yelled, “are you going to kill us or what?”

“Oh, God,” Cathy screamed, “what are you doing?”

“Are you going to kill us or not? Your master commands you.”

The zombies began to move, then stopped.

“First us, then someone else, and then more and more people.” Allen looked around as he spoke, addressing all of them, hoping that some could still understand him. “Maybe it will be your families next, your wives and your kids.”

The man spun the rings and the zombies began to move in slow jerking motions. The power of the ball drove them forward but something was holding them back.

“How soon before he has you strangle your own kids? Is that the kind of people you were? You were decent men and women and you all left people behind, your friends and families. Is this what you want for them, to be hunted down and killed for some lunatic? Is this what you want for yourselves, to be slaves? I know it hurts, I know he’s got some kind of power, but I can see you fighting it. Fight it! Fight for your wives and kids. Don’t let him turn you into killers. Don’t let him turn you against those you love. No matter how painful it is, one moment of courage and you’re free and all the people you love will be safe.”

The man turned the rings more and more. “Kill them,” he screamed. “Obey me!” He turned the rings, pouring pain into their reanimated bodies, but they would not move.

“We’re not your enemies,” Allen screamed. “He’s the one who’s hurting you and he’ll keep doing it until you make him stop.”

The man pitched backward as several zombies seized him from behind while those he had commanded to kill Allen and Cathy wheeled and jumped him from the front. The man turned the rings again and again but only two of zombies fought to protect him while the rest either stood by or joined in the attack. The man frantically turned the rings but either he had lost his power or, in his terror, he had forgotten how to use it. Allen pulled free and he rushed to Cathy. He wrapped his arms around her head so she would not have to see what was happening and could not hear the cracking of bones and the screams of the dying man.

When they dropped his limp body to the ground he was as dead as his killers, but there was no one left with the knowledge to restore him to a semblance of life. As most of the zombies stood by, one picked up a marble plaque and smashed it down on the golden ball, scattering pieces of metal and tiny springs across the floor. The most recently resurrected man returned to his casket and lay back down in his former position. More than before he seemed to be at peace. All the others walked away, searching for their eternal homes.

“Cathy, it’s over.”

“No.”

“It is, we’re safe. Look.”

“I can’t.”

“They’re gone. We’re alone.”

He helped her to her feet and they walked slowly towards the exit. Cathy was shaking and had to keep one hand on the wall to keep from falling. Allen deliberately slowed the pace so the zombies would have time to reach their destinations. He wasn’t sure if she could take the sight of zombies roaming the corridors and returning to their caskets.

“Is it really over?” she asked.

“Yeah, really over. That maniac is dead, the ball or whatever it was is smashed to pieces. We’ll be out of here in a minute. I don’t know what we’ll tell people. I just hope your car hasn’t been stolen.”

“I love that car,” she said, her voice weak. “I know it’s stupid but I went right out and bought it when they promoted me. Everyone said it was too sporty, but I’d always dreamed of having one just like it.”

“I can’t wait to ride in it.”

“My mom always worried, but I told her ‛Mom, I’ll be okay, really.’.”

As they reached an intersection Allen steered her to the left to follow the exit sign but Cathy drifted to the right.

“Hey,” he said, “it’s this way.”

Cathy easily pulled free of his hands, as he was worried about gripping her too tightly. “I couldn’t wait to drive it,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Allen followed her until she turned into a dead end. She pulled free again as he took her arm. There were three caskets on the floor, two already re-occupied.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what? Cathy?”

She walked unsteadily to the empty casket and lay down inside. She placed her hands on her chest and exhaled one last time.

“Cathy?”

Beside the casket lay a marble plaque. “Catherine Epstein,” it read. “Beloved Daughter, February 11, 1975 – April 8, 2002.”

There was not a sound in the room, other than the voices of the speakers. No humming from the cold lighting or the sound of the air being recycled. The cameras and microphones recording the session were behind the walls, undetectable from inside. The interview room was illuminated to a uniform glow; just enough to show the curve of the walls in the egg-shaped room.

In the exact center of the room was the interviewer, facing the only two men in the room. She wore an unadorned dress colored a shade of blue scientifically determined to be the most soothing for her subjects. Her delicate hands rested on the arms of her rotatable chair, never far from the bank of buttons on each side. To her left were the three women from beyond the Barrier, nearly indistinguishable from one another with the same black hair cut in a short bowl cut, the same pale skin and identical black skin tight dresses which revealed enough to show that they were, indeed, female. You could, if you were willing to take the time, tell one from another, but not enough was known about the world beyond the Barrier to know if there was, in fact, any difference between them at all.

The two men were easily distinguishable. The one on the left, slightly closer to the

interviewer, was currently talking. He was dressed in a saffron caftan long enough to reach, but not cover, his sandaled feet. He had been talking for several minutes when the second man interrupted him and was admonished by the interviewer.

“Our rules,” she said in her usual soft tones, “specify that each of you would have ample time to speak, but that only one of you would speak at a time.”

“Your rules,” the man growled, “not mine.”

The second man had what appeared to be a three day growth of beard, in contrast to the hairless skin of the man he had interrupted. His clothes were made of primitive, crudely assembled, material. He wore heavy boots which he ground, flat footed, on the carpeting.

“Our rules enforce order,” the interviewer said. She did not appear to be at all disturbed by the way the man looked at her, in contrast to the saffron robed man who generally looked near her, rather than at her. “You agreed, when we invited you here, to abide by them.”

The man chuckled. “Invited?”

“No one is forced to be here,” she said. “We did select you and bring you here without warning. However, you were given the chance to return at once, rather than stay.” She then vaguely indicated the other man and the three nearly identical women. “This gentleman,” she continued, “also decided to stay, as did our three guests from beyond the Barrier.”

The grizzled man turned his attention to the three women. “This Barrier seems to be keeping us from some interesting people. I’d like to see that place someday.”

The three women from beyond the Barrier did not register any discomfort at his statement, although the robed man blushed and looked away.

“The Barrier,” the interviewer said, “exists to protect those beyond it. They have separated themselves from us for a reason. Now, our first speaker will continue. If you interrupt again, we will have to stop the proceedings and immediately send you back to your home.”

“Are you sure you can do that?” the man asked.

The interviewer raised one hand slightly and rested a finger on a button. “If you interrupt again, I merely have to press a button.”

“Then press it,” the man said. “You ignored me long enough for me to have a good look around. It wasn’t all that difficult to pull a few plugs.”

The interviewer smiled. “That is impossible. You are a barbarian compared to us. You are as primitive compared to us as we are to those …”

“Beyond the Barrier,” the man continued. “Yes, I know. You’ve said a great deal about their superiority, their advancement. They came here to watch the show, to study us, even you, like ants. Trouble is, people tend to underestimate ants. I may be a barbarian, compared to you, but you should realize that you didn’t pull me out of a cave. I’ve seen computers and wires and you haven’t advanced as much as you think and, as for your lovely visitors, well they’re not on their side of the Barrier now, are they.”

“Sir,” the interviewer said with a sigh, “I’m afraid I’ll have to make good on my warning. It is time for you to go.”

It was only after a full fifteen seconds had passed and the man was still sitting there that a wave of doubt passed over the interviewer’s face. “What is happening?” she asked.

“You mean what is not happening,” the barbarian said, “I will leave soon, but at a time of my own choosing. But before then, I intend to give you something more to study. You think you can put me under a lens and examine me as you choose. Maybe in your world but, for now, this room is my world.”

The interviewer was visibly trembling. “What are you going to do?”

The barbarian looked directly into her eyes. “I’m going to rape you,” he said, “and your three lovely friends.” He then chuckled and looked to his left. “Oh, and maybe this guy, just for the fun of it.”

The robed man gasped in horror at the suggestion and maybe a more civilized man would have been distracted long enough to allow the three women from beyond the Barrier to escape. They rose as one and reached for the controls on their left wrists, but the barbarian was too quick and stunned them before they could act. They were still human enough to succumb to a focused blow to the side of the head. They fell to the floor and lay there, helplessly groaning. The interviewer was a lesser target since she could not leave the room without reaching a door or being removed by the same mechanism that had failed to eject the barbarian. The man in the saffron robe was helpless. He could not escape, fight back or protect the women. The barbarian barely looked at him. Then he went to work.

There were only two people in the room when help finally arrived. The interviewer lay semi-conscious on the carpet next to her chair, while the man in the saffron robe was curled up against the curved wall. The barbarian was gone, no one knew where or how. The three women from beyond the Barrier were also gone, presumably back to their home – wherever or whenever or whatever that was. There was no known way to contact them. They arrived when and where they chose and gave no explanation. Then they left the same way.

A doctor was summoned and examined the interviewer first, as she seemed to be in the most need of care and not through any show of chivalry. That had disappeared, along with violence and hatred, long ago. Those emotions belonged to a world that was a distant and alien as the world beyond the Barrier.

“I think she’ll be alright,” the doctor said, “but we’ll have to take her to the clinic.”

He then tried to examine the robed man, who whimpered and shrank from his touch. Nothing in any of their lives had prepared them for this scene.

“Is he gone?” the interviewer asked. She lay on her back, staring blankly at the featureless arc of the ceiling. Her clothes were in shreds and the men who had come to rescue her must already know what had been done to her. Could they even understand what had transpired? The viciousness. The animal behavior. The very thought of it was alien to them.

The men looked around and saw six overturned chairs and only two people. They assured her that her attacker was long gone. That it had taken so long for anyone to realize that something was wrong was a testament to the naive peace of their world.

“He’s probably gone back where he belongs,” she said. “It’s what he left behind.” She crossed her arms across her mid-section, as if she could already feel the life growing inside her. She looked across the room at the saffron robed man and thought that he was the lucky one. The sperm swimming blindly up from his rectum through his intestines would find no home. They had no future. In a way, she thought, she had no future either. How could she go on with her old, carefully ordered, career as she prepared to unleash barbarian life on her world?

“They’re gone, too,” she said, looking at the three overturned chairs. She would never, could never, forget what she had seen. The barbarian had not been ashamed. He was probably incapable of such an emotion. He had wanted each of them to see what he was doing. He had moved calmly and deliberately from one victim to the next, tearing entry points in their clothes and then violating them. Whether the three women from beyond the Barrier even understood what was happening to them could not be known. Later, one by one, they had roused themselves and, without rising from the floor, activated the devices that had been out of reach as the barbarian took each one in turn. Now, they were gone, carrying his seed beyond the Barrier, making a mockery of its power.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said. “We’ll take care of everything.”

“No,” she said. “He’s taken control and there’s nothing any of us can do. We thought that, in another thousand years, they’d open the Barrier and welcome us. Now, his seed will make a wasteland of the land beyond the Barrier and when they come back it will be to make us pay.” She gently touched her belly. “Maybe we’ll be ready for them.”

It was in the early 1980′s, as the full horror of what had actually taken place in Viet-Nam began to surface, that Ted Boyd first saw the name of his old friend in the newspaper. Captain Philip Crane’s name would appear more and more often through the next few years as the charges and counter-charges flew. The newspapers covered the court-martial daily and the feature articles investigated the alleged massacre from nearly every angle. Military minds and social scientists, radicals both left and right, individuals and think tanks all had their views printed. Boyd wasn’t consulted. After all, his association with the accused had terminated nearly fifteen years before.

“I didn’t know you grew up with any celebrities,” his wife said. They were seated on the living room couch, sipping wine, as their dinner simmered in the kitchen.

“I’d hardly call poor Phil a ‘celebrity’.”

“Poor Phil?” She laughed. “Excuse me but ‘Poor Phil’ had his men herd 35 men, women and children into their huts and burn them alive.”

“War changes people,” Ted observed, “but I still can’t believe he could do such a thing. He’s in a mess of trouble, though. I wish there was something I could do to help him.”

“Why should you? You haven’t seen him since you were kids.”

“That doesn’t matter. I still feel I should help him. After all, we took the Oath together.”

“The Oath? When did you give up drinking?”

“The Oath, not the Pledge.” There was a note of embarrassment to his voice. “When we were kids we belonged to a club.”

“Let me guess!” Sheila turned sideways, tucked one leg under the other and took a sip of wine before continuing. “You met in an rickety abandoned tool shed by the old swimming hole. You wore patched clothes, had a secret handshake and on the door of the shed was a sign that said ‘NO GIRLS ALLOWED’ with the ‘S’ turned around backwards. Am I right?”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said, “but I didn’t grow up in a Norman Rockwell painting. We lived in Brooklyn and the ‘old swimming hole’ was an open fire hydrant. There was no secret handshake, we met in an open space under the porch, and there was no sign on the door. In fact, that was no door.”

“But no girls were allowed.”

“Of course not. That’s only natural, or it used to be. God knows what kids do today. We had an all boy’s club and dreamed of finding some girl willing to play ‘Doctor’. It probably influenced my choice of professions. Today they probably have co-ed clubs, hold consciousness raising sessions and play ‘environmentalist’. Don’t look at me that way. Didn’t you have all girl clubs when you were little?”

“Did we? Mister, we were the tea party champs of Central New Jersey. We must have tied a bib around the neck of every teddy bear in Somerset County. I still have nightmares about those days. For years I was convinced that Betty Friedan would confront me at work with a photo of me and my tea set.”

“But they were all girl parties, weren’t they?”

“Of course they were. We would have had to tie a boy to a chair to get him to join in. So you took an oath, did you? Did you sweat then like when you promised to love, honor and obey me?”

“I never promised to obey you,” he said, “it just turned out that way. Actually I can’t tell you about the Oath, that was part of the Oath. I shouldn’t even have told you that it exists. In fact, now that I’ve told you I have to …”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Just then, as he started to say (as the old joke went) “kill you”, he had the funniest feeling.

“The oath doesn’t ‘exist’, it ‘existed’. Past tense. That was twenty years ago.”

“Present tense.” He turned up his right sleeve far enough to show her the ancient scar on his wrist.

“You sealed the oath in blood?” Her face wrinkled in disgust. “You told me that cut was from high school wood shop.”

“That was my cover story. I couldn’t tell you the truth.”

“You’re making this up, aren’t you? This is one of your stupid jokes. I don’t believe any of this. Besides, it was years ago, and oaths are not forever.”

Ted poured them both some more wine. “If that includes the one about ‘forsaking all others’ I can start breaking it now. A lot of women would be thrilled to have me.”

“You’d have a tough time thrilling them with two broken legs.”

“See what I mean? An oath is forever.”

The single ring of the kitchen timer interrupted the conversation and it was not until most of the chicken had been devoured that Sheila revived it.

“I suppose you were the organizer and president of the club.” She made a vague gesture with her knife as she spoke.

Ted drew back as the tip of the knife traced loops in the air. He could make no connection between the gesture and the subject of the club’s organizer. “Sorry again. That was Nick.”

“Nick who?”

“Not Nick Who, Nick Hobart.” He laughed at his own joke, and he laughed alone. “He got us together, found the place under the Thompson house, wrote the Oath, everything. I haven’t thought about Nick in years. He’s probably running a big insurance company by now, or the Mafia.”

“Sounds like a good old boy.”

“All of a sudden I’m from Alabama? He was just one of the guys. I hope he made out okay. We all felt sorry for him back then.” Inexplicably he lowered his voice. “His parents drank. We never went to his house because his parents were always sloppy drunk. They’d come out, stinking of booze, and try to chase us away. I can still see them, with their pasty skin and scraggly blond hair. They always reminded me of big pale worms.”

“Hey, I’m trying to eat,” Sheila said. “So he organized the club to get away from his family?”

“I guess so. He roamed around the neighborhood like a lost soul, until he organized the club and had somewhere to go every day. He was this dark little kid with black curly hair and our parents said that he looked like a homeless puppy. I’ll show you a picture later.”

The photo album was in the basement closet and Ted emerged with the dusty book in his hand and most of the rest of the dust on his clothes. He dusted himself off and settled on the couch to flip through it. Overhead the dishwasher was churning. It took a while to get to the club picture. First they had to pass through the infant pictures, the first day at school pictures and the various “first holiday” pictures. Fortunately, the club picture came before High School graduation and the Army.

About a dozen small boys were posed in front of an old brownstone. They were thin and gawky and they were blinking in the bright sunlight. There was little subtlety to the black and white photo, but it was clear enough to show them in the years when they grew at a rapid rate, but not in a coordinated fashion. Some were all legs, others short but wide.

Ted pointed to one tall boy. “That’s Phil Crane.” There was little to compare with the ramrod straight office pictured in the paper.

“Is that the house you used as a clubhouse?”

“No, that was my old house. We wanted to have the picture taken in front of our clubhouse but my dad didn’t want to risk a fight with Old Man Thompson. He was the neighborhood pain in the ass. If a dead leaf landed on his property he’d threaten to sue the owner of the tree it blew off of.”

“If he was such a crab apple why did you meet under his porch?”

Ted started to speak but stopped to think. “I don’t know. Maybe for the adventure of it. You know, the risk of him yelling at us. He never bothered us though. Maybe he liked kids more than adults, or maybe he just didn’t care what happened under his porch.”

Sheila was already bored with the subject. “Which one is the famous Nick?”

Ted sat up straight and held the picture in front of him. His finger scanned the faces from side to side and down the rows. “Nick is…is…is…is not in the picture. Damn, I was sure he was there when my Dad took the picture. Maybe there’s another picture.”

Sheila pulled the remote from where it had slipped into the cushions of the couch and switched on the TV. “It doesn’t matter. It was all years ago, anyway. You’re a doctor, Nick is probably organizing unions instead of boy’s clubs and the rest of the boys are plumbers, mechanics or whatever. Except the mass murderer, of course.”

“That’s not fair. You can’t judge what another person does in that kind of situation. There was a war on and we don’t know the whole story.”

“You were in the Army,” she said, “but you didn’t kill any innocent people.”

“I was a medic, in Iowa. How dangerous could I be?”

Sheila shrugged off the subject and settled back to watch the show. Ted settled in beside her and tried to watch, but the thought of Nick and the rest of the boys would not leave his mind.

Hours later, when the news came on, he got his first glimpse of Crane under arrest. In a taped report, filmed that afternoon, he was seen being escorted into a Federal building for questioning. He was in Class A uniform, his medals proudly displayed and he held his head high. He did not look worried or ashamed. He was a disciplined soldier marching among inferiors.

This is how I always saw him, Boyd thought. Not as the awkward child in the photos, but as the strong, self-assured man he would be one day. It was what he had seen the day they had taken the Oath. It was why they clung to Nick. Before Nick came to them they were kids, and there were times when they felt that they would always be kids. No one had ever told them before that they would not always be powerless. Their parents had told them, in effect, that no matter how big they got they would always be children.

Nick built a new world for them, a smaller world in which they could be the big men. He told them that they were now bigger than their parents, because they inhabited this new world; a world closed to adults. At first they resisted the idea, then they treated it as a game, but in time they came to believe it. It no longer mattered that their parents dictated their schedules, or chose their clothing or decided on their diet. All that no longer mattered. They were no longer children, but prisoners of war, and time would soon liberate them. Their new world would grow with them, and they would always be the biggest men in it, because no one else would ever be let in. They would always be bigger then those around them, and they would always prosper, if they were faithful to the Oath.

No matter how far apart they had drifted nothing could break the bond of the Oath. Not even death. They had sworn that, too. Chuck was dead. He remembered that now. Ted had been in the Army when the letter arrived from his mother. Chuck, the woman he had married to beat the draft, and their baby were all dead. There were things the letter didn’t say, but when he got home it was rumored that Chuck had killed them and then himself. Why? No one knew. Perhaps the baby hadn’t been his, or maybe there were other reasons.

Was Allen dead? No, of course not. He had called out of the blue six or seven months before and left a message on the answering machine. He was leaving the country, he had said. He had wanted to say good-bye, and to tell Ted that he would always be his friend. At the time, Ted was puzzled by the message. He had not heard from Allen in years and could not understand why he had received the call. Ted had never found out why Allen had left California.

Sheila was asleep, lying on her side, her head resting in his lap. He knew now that he should never had told her about the Oath and the blood ceremony. These were secret things, not to be shared with others. He had kept the secret and he had prospered. Medical school, his internship and residency at the hospital and now his private practice had come easily. He had never thought about it before, but they were gifts for his faithfulness. He wondered if he had betrayed the Oath by talking about it with Sheila.

For a moment there was a rush of fear. He felt as if, starting with the next day, his life would begin to unravel. He looked down at Sheila’s sleeping form and wondered if his conversation with her would cause him to lose all he had gained. He had been given so much, and had never had to give anything in return. Even on that day so long ago they had questioned Nick about the price of the Oath. He had promised them so much, and they knew that no one gave you anything for nothing. Even Nick admitted that when he reminded them of the terrible price their parents continued to exact for each small favor. Nick had laughed and told them that some day they could do him a favor, but to a child “some day” means forever, and they were pleased to know that payment would be deferred into the unforeseeable future. They looked to each other for assurance, but each knew that they felt the bargain to be a fair one, and agreed to the Oath.

He remembered the rich smell of moist earth in the cool shadows under Mr. Thompson’s porch. As the bloated flies buzzed around them Nick calmly cut his wrist with a straight razor. He displayed the bloody wound to his astonished friends and then passed the razor. Each boy, trembling at the thought of it and wincing at the sudden pain, then cut his wrist and mingled his blood with that of the boy before him before passing it on to the one after. The blood had passed from Nick to Chuck, from Chuck to Phil, from Phil to Allen, from Allen to Ted and then on and on until it reached Nick again. When the joined blood made a complete circle they took the Oath. They swore to be loyal to each other and to protect each other. They promised to follow their comrades to Hell if necessary. Then Nick told them that the blood and the pain made it binding forever. That no change of heart could release them from their obligation. Now and forever, they were bound as a circle.

Ted relaxed and knew that it was all right. Sheila didn’t understand, girls never did, and soon she would forget he had ever said anything. She looked so peaceful as she slept that he could not bear to disturb her. I love you, he thought, so sleep safely in my arms. They were bound by an oath but, like so many others he had taken, it had come later. Many times he had looked down at a patient, sleeping more soundly than Sheila, and thought of his oaths. There had never been a conflict, but as he watched Philip Crane being shuttled into the Federal Building he finally understood that there was only one Oath, and that it would always come first.

Sheila had fallen asleep long before Crane appeared on the screen. She hadn’t seen his face as they took him into the building. Would she have understood the meaning of that satisfied smile? Without the image of that smile in her mind she slept a deep dreamless sleep.

Thanksgiving just wasn’t as much fun now that the dead had come back to life. The kids huddled in the middle of the living room behind the closed drapes so they could not see the corpses of Grandma and Grandpa Van Dyke who were still knocking on the front door and rattling the doorknob. They were dressed in the same formal , though antique, clothes in which they had been buried.

The kitchen of the two bedroom north Jersey home was way too small for all the people busy with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, yams, creamed onions and other delicacies being prepared for the dinner that was to start in another two hours. Every burner on the stove, and the oven, was occupied with something steaming or bubbling. The sink was overflowing with bowls and pans and utensils and the kitchen table was covered with plates and platters of all types. Every movement caused one person to bump into another. They didn’t do this often enough to establish the kind of well choreographed routine that families used to have when three generations lived under one roof. These days they managed to get together like this only once or twice a year for Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter. It didn’t help that one of their generations had returned from the grave to rejoin them after so many years. Still it was somewhat comforting to be in such close contact with the living.

“You know what I can’t figure out,” Aunt Betty whispered to the milling crowd, “is how they got all the way to New Jersey. I mean they were buried near the old farm in Pennsylvania.”

Her daughter, Lucy, stopped mixing the potato salad. “That’s what confuses you? About how they got across the Delaware Water Gap? What about how they found this house? How about how they came back to life? And how did they get out of their caskets? They were buried in caskets, right?”

“Of course, they were buried in caskets,” Aunt Minnie, Betty’s younger sister, said. “We’re Christians, not … I don’t know.”

“If it was just them …,” Aunt Betty said, “but, I mean, they’re all over. They’re everywhere.”

They froze at the rustling sound just outside the kitchen window. It was a tableau worthy of Norman Rockwell. Five women standing still, the pans and implements of the holiday feast in their trembling hands, as they waited for the next horror to occur. Betty’s daughter-in-law Andrea (“Who really should have learned to cook before she married my son!” Betty used to say) held a potato masher in her fist as if it would be an effective weapon against the returned dead. Hiding behind her was Minnie’s teenage daughter Peggy, who was almost banned from the kitchen due to her ever increasing number of tattoos and piercings. Short of scientific proof that the various dragons and mandalas and stainless steel pins had been applied to her body in the most sanitary and hygienic method available Betty would not allow her touch any of the food being prepared. She had been folding the cloth napkins before the noise out back.

There was a rattling noise as someone pulled futilely at the screen door. Aunt Betty’s eyes were closed and her lips moved rapidly as she prayed fervently for the nightmare to end.

“They’ve circled the house,” Andrea said.

The rattling ceased and there was a rapid tapping. The women closed ranks and moved back towards the living room. A sudden rattling at the front door made their heads turn in unison.

“Oh, my God,” Andrea gasped, “they’re all around us.” Andrea closed her eyes and prepared to die. Just seventeen and, to her secret shame, still a virgin.

“Hey, let us in.”

“They’ve never spoken before,” Aunt Minnie said.

Lucy went to peek out the kitchen window. By leaning over the sink, opening the curtains an inch and looking out at a steep angle she could see the outside of the door.

“It’s Jeff and Cathy!” she said. “Let them in.”

“It’s a trick!” Aunt Betty said, and immediately clapped her hand over her mouth. None of them had dared speak louder than a whisper for hours, as if their dead loved ones didn’t already know they were in there.

Lucy rushed to the door and, after checking through the window, started to let them in.

“Don’t,” Aunt Betty said. “Don’t open the door. Please.”

“We can’t leave them out there!” Lucy said.

More rapping on the door but all eyes were on the front door. Had the walking corpses outside heard them? Were they now circling the house looking for live people or a door that might be opened? Beyond that fear, what about other people’s uninvited guests? What about the dead slowly circling their neighbor’s houses? Would they abandon their desperate attempts to reach their families and gravitate to the only live people still out on the streets?

“Come on,” Jeff pleaded, rattling the doorknob, “come on and let us in.”

Lucy made her decision and opened the door. Cathy burst in and rushed into Aunt Minnie’s arms, taking comfort in her mother’s ample frame and making room for her husband who was carrying the bowl of ambrosia they had promised to bring. Lucy slammed the door shut and then double checked to make sure it was locked.

Aunt Betty recoiled slightly as Jeff handed off the bowl to her. The outside was sticky and she didn’t know what to think.

“Sorry,” Jeff said. He took the nearest chair and slumped into it to catch his breath. “Some of it slopped out when we were climbing over the fences. I tried to hand it to Cathy but she dropped it.”

Minnie guided Cathy into the living room and sat with her on the couch. The children rallied round and were helping comfort her. Those still in the kitchen could hear her crying. Reaching the house had been an ordeal. They only knew about the return of people’s late lamented family members after they left their house. They hadn’t turned on the TV or radio before leaving their house on Long Island because they were running late. The first they heard of it was on the car radio a half hour later and both thought it must be some kind of gag, an updated version of Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds”. It wasn’t until another hour had passed that they left the highway and began to see the corpses on every street, outside every house. By then they had passed the halfway point and didn’t even know if there was anything to worry about at Aunt Betty’s house. Neither of their cell phones could make a connection.

They had driven past the house and Cathy immediately recognized her grandparents standing outside the front door. The cars of the early arrivals filled the driveway and all the parking spaces on the street were already taken. They were afraid to park further down the street, which would have required them to walk past the returnees at the neighboring houses even before they could find a way past their own dead relatives. Fortunately they knew the neighborhood intimately and were able to park at the end of the cul-de-sac and cut through three neighbor’s yards before arriving safely at the back door.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Aunt Minnie said. She lived only a mile away and had, of course, arrived long before Grandma and Grandpa showed up at the door. “We tried to call you, but they’ve cut the phone lines.”

“No one cut the phones,” Jeff said. “It’s just what happens when millions of people pick up the phone at the same time and keep trying to dial. The system is maxed out.”

Cathy turned from her place on the couch to look back. “This isn’t the time,” she said to her husband. “Can we go one day without you defending your company?”

“I’m just saying.”

Jeff rose and joined those in the living room. “What are they saying on TV?”

Uncle Artie, Betty’s husband, was keeping the kids occupied with games and coloring books. “We haven’t turned it on,” he said, “it was scaring the kids.”

Jeff looked to the front door, watching the doorknob rattle. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want them to be scared.”

Jeff excused himself and headed down the hallway to use the bathroom. Something caught his eye and he looked up at the door chimes. The cover was off and the wires hung loose. How long had them endured the non-stop chiming before someone tore the wires from their contacts? After using the bathroom, and being stunned by the spectral look on his own face in the mirror, he turned right instead of left. He knew there was a second TV in the house, a smaller one in the master bedroom. He closed the door behind him and switched it on, keeping the volume low. He was still watching when he was tracked down by Uncle Eddie, his father-in-law.

“Couldn’t keep away from it?”

Jeff pointed the remote at the TV and switched it off. “It’s really happening, but what does it mean?”

Eddie looked back through the open door to make sure he hadn’t been followed. The kids were panicky enough “I don’t know,” he said. “End of the world?”

“Well then let’s get it over with,” Jeff said. He tossed the remote aside and watched it bounce on the bedspread. “Is it just going to drag on like this?”

Eddie shrugged. “Ok, maybe it’s not the end of the world, then.”

Jeff jumped to his feet. He risked a peek out the shuttered bedroom windows. “Jesus, make up your mind.” Outside, he could see zombies (what other word came to mind?) roaming up and down the street, never getting too far from their family’s houses. Some were alone, others in small groups. One house they had passed had no less eight of them circling the house. With so many dead outside, how many in the family could be alive inside?

“You should come back to the living room,” Eddie said. “We should all be together.”
“All?” Jeff said, without turning around.

Eddie laughed. “Almost all.”

“You go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”

When he was alone, Jeff took a minute to gather his composure. For two hours on the road all he could think about what they would do if the car broke down. When, almost to their destination, he realized that he needed gas (and was going to need a lot more before the crisis was over) he began to look for a open gas station. Then he remembered they had crossed over into New Jersey and there was no self-service at gas stations. For decades the gasoline distributors had petitioned the state to allow self-service so they could fire their remaining gas monkeys and let people pump their own gas and pay by credit card. Some had even invested thousands of dollars in new pumps and control stations only to have them gather dust as bills to change the law never even made it out of committee. Something to do with old people being unable to pump their own gas, or something. He could only hope that he could find an open station with unlocked pumps. He pulled into two stations that looked open, only to leave with tires squealing, when he saw zombies standing by the pumps. Were they coming out of their graves to pump gas for old time’s sake? Or did they somehow manage to track their relatives to their place of business?

He finally found one that was open and apparently zombie-free but the pumps were locked and the terrified teenager manning the place would not come out to unlock them. Jeff had to wave first one, then two and finally three twenty dollar bills before the young man agreed to come out and unlock the pump and fill their tank. The young man was shaking so badly that he could hardly get the nozzle into the Beemer’s. He stood there as the gas pumped, urging the fluid to flow faster while anxiously looking around in case a zombie turned the corner and invaded the mini-mart. He had electricity, a television, a microwave and his own bathroom. There was also enough food, snacks and beverages inside to keep him going for quite a while. He was not looking forward to being locked out of his sanctuary and wandering the streets trying to get to safety. As soon as the pump stopped he locked it down, grabbed the three twenties for the bribe and another three to pay for the gas and ran back inside. Jeff didn’t expect him to come out with his change so he just drove off.

When he returned to the living room they had all gathered at the couch. The kitchen was temporarily on auto-pilot with only occasional stirring and basting necessary for a while. Normally the TV would have been the center of attention with parades and football games, but no one dared turn it on. It seemed unlikely that anything traditional was going on. Worse, what if the corpse of Fiorello LaGuardia was marching in the Macy’s parade while Red Grange was running down field as players (who hadn’t yet been born in his heyday) scattered to avoid tackling him. Was Red Grange even dead? It didn’t seem right to ask anyone.

So here they were, with the big screen TV they had bought for Betty and Artie’s anniversary standing dark and silent because they were all too afraid to find out what was happening. He would gladly have turned it on if his short viewing of the bedroom TV had conveyed any good news. Okay, so there were no stories of the zombies killing anyone and eating their brains, but they were still reported at the very least from coast to coast with scattered reports coming in from Canada and Mexico. If only it was just Mexico, Jeff thought, then everyone would have laughed it off like the Chupacabra scare of the 1990′s. No one believed anything that came out of Mexico. Even the reports from Canada, America’s well-behaved cousin, wouldn’t have terrified anyone. Canadian zombies? Who could be scared about that?

The doorknob continued to rattle periodically. None of them were prepared for this kind of siege. In the old days, ironically when the family gathered at the farm in Pennsylvania, they could entertain themselves. Grandpa would sit at the out of tune upright piano and bang out old songs that only he and Grandma seemed to know while everyone would try, or pretend to try, to sing along. Today the children sat in the circles of light from the table lamps, entertaining themselves according to their age. Six children and four grandchildren, all facing something completely unknown. Only the oldest of the children thought they knew what to expect and even they had trouble believing that their own great-grandparents would kill them and eat their brains. They had expressed that idea at the beginning of the ordeal and had been forbidden ever to say anything like that again. No matter how it ended there was no reason to shock the younger children out of their minds. Until it was unavoidable.

“Daddy?”

Several men answered before they realized which child was speaking. In the past something like that would have caused laughter that the younger children could never have understood. Now they were just afraid to find out what the child wanted to know.

The child was Lily, Lucy’s six year old. She was curled up on the floor surrounded by her siblings and cousins, comfortable in her Sunday best. Her father, Betty and Artie’s son-in-law Larry, knelt down to talk to her. It was tough enough to watch her go off to first grade every day in a world of gang bangers, drunk drivers and perverts, but this was a new low.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Are they really family?”

“No,” her father told her, glancing up at the other men who had been careless enough to discuss the matter within earshot of the children. “They’re not members of our family. Not really.”

“But, Uncle Jerry said …”

He felt a flash of anger at the stupidity of his brother-in-law who, an hour before, insisted on telling everyone how he recognized them immediately. They were the same people, he had told then, he remembered from the holidays at the farm in Pennsylvania when he and his sister Lucy and cousin Cathy would go for hay rides with Grandpa pulling them around at the wheel of his classic tractor.

“I know what Uncle Jerry said,” her father told her. “You’ll just have to trust me. They’re not the same people.”

“But maybe they just want to have dinner with us.”

Across the room, on a chair he had turned away for the dinner table, Jeff snorted and muttered “The question is what do they want to eat for dinner?”

When several people, including his wife, told him to shut up the little girl thought that she was the cause of the trouble and retreated into her older sister’s arms. The men closed in on Jeff.

He looked up at them. “Sorry, but this can’t go on forever. I mean we have to do something.”

“What can we do?” Eddie said. Eddie, at fifty five, thought of himself as “old school”. He wore a jacket and tie to the family dinner, unlike the younger men who were in some kind of “business casual”. He was an army veteran and, despite never having seen combat, thought that he was still prepared to go toe to toe with the enemy. But without a gun (thank you, Democrats!) and with New Jersey’s National Guard in Iraq (thank you, Republicans!) and facing an enemy that was already dead, what could you do? “We’ve got a houseful of women and kids and they’re our first responsibility. We’ve got to hold out until the police or army or someone does something.”

Larry shook his head and looked back to make sure the children weren’t close enough to hear. “These … things … are everywhere. Every house, businesses, coast to coast. What are the police or even the army supposed to do? Drive around picking them up on every street in America, or just drive by and shoot them down? Any solution could take months. Meanwhile do we all live here until our food runs out?”

“We don’t even know if they’re dangerous,” Peggy said. She knew immediately that her comment hadn’t gone over well. In the eyes of the adults she was still considered one of the children, only in the last few years old enough to sit at the adult table. All her tattoos and piercings only made her less credible in their eyes. She suspected that she had already been voted most likely to get knocked up and drop out of school.

“Well,” Jeff said, “when I checked the TV there wasn’t one report of, well, you know.”

“Now he’s discreet,” Jerry said.

“I’m just saying,” Jeff said, “that if things were happening it would have been on the TV.”

“You don’t know that,” Jerry said. “How can we know what’s happening in millions of homes?”

“I’m going to check the TV again,” Jeff said.

Every channel was still covering the zombie situation. Crawls ran under the talking heads but added nothing useful. Lists of cities. Estimated numbers of zombies. Possible foreign sightings. There were no reports of deaths by brain-eating but also no reassurances that they were harmless. The big news continued to be that the zombies were everywhere and no one knew why. He switched off the TV and looked out the window. Zombies were still patrolling the neighbor’s houses. No one living had come out and no one seemed to have let their deceased family members in.

When Jeff returned to the rest of the family he had nothing to convey to them but a shake of the head and a non-committal gesture with his hands. Outside the front door they could hear the scrape of feet on the concrete steps.

When it was time to sit down to their holiday feast, they set up the table with extra leaves and put the smaller children’s table at the end, so no one would be sitting alone. Tablecloths were overlapped and they could hear the silverware rattling in the women’s shaking hands as they put down each place setting. It was only when they were summoned to the table to take their usual places did they realize that there were two extra places.

“Who did this?” Aunt Betty demanded.

She and Minnie had been in the kitchen scooping out the stuffing and transferring it to serving bowls along with the mashed potatoes and other side dishes. They had left the setting of the table to Lucy, Cathy and Andrea.

“We must have miscounted,” Lucy told her mother. “It’s no big deal. We’ll fix it.”

They quickly removed one setting from each side of the table and spread out the other settings to cover the gap. Each person took their place but the two people who found themselves at the former extra positions seemed reluctant to sit down. Uncle Artie sat at the head of the table because his seniority gave him and his wife the right to host the dinner. As was his custom he asked everyone to bow their heads. The children bowed and, as they had been taught, put their small hands together in an attitude of prayer. They all waited for the expected stock prayer that Artie used at every family dinner, but he seemed at a loss for words this time.

“Dear Lord, we thank you … we thank you for the bounty you have put before us.” He paused as several people looked up see him tremble and lick his lips before continuing. “Lord, today is not like any other day when we have gathered together in … in love and fellowship under your … your grace. We thank you for all the blessings you have bestowed on us and we all only wish to honor you and do your bidding. Thank you for your many blessings and please … guide us so we may act according to your will. Amen.”

After everyone echoed his amen they began passing around the plates. The parents served the children and the adults, without any apparent enthusiasm, took pieces of turkey and spoonfuls of vegetables. Wine, soda and milk were poured into glasses and they began to eat. Other than a few murmurs of appreciation for the variety and quality of the food, no one spoke.

After a few moments Tina, Jerry and Andrea’s eight year old said “What about them?”

“Tina!” her mother said.

“But maybe all they want is to be asked in.”

“We can’t let them in,” her father said.

“Oh no,” Aunt Betty said, “We can’t, dear. We just can’t.”

“But grandma …”

Her mother shushed her down, but it had been said. It could not be put back in the bottle. Looks were passed around the table and finally Eddie took to his feet and called the other men to join him. Without telling the women and children what he meant to do they went into the hallway and retrieved a folding card table and two chairs.

Betty left the table and followed them. “You can’t do this,” she told them.

“Trust me,” Eddie told her. “Everything will okay.”

The men split the duties. Some prepared two platters with portions of everything available and two glasses of wine.. They exited the house by the back door, leaving Peggy to wait for their return. They set up the table on the rear deck with an extra tablecloth and the place settings that had been removed from the tables. Betty and Minnie were frantic. Their husbands were the oldest and the slowest and they could not stand the thought of them being killed in front of their eyes. Larry and Jeff carried the table around the house to the front lawn and set up the table in the shade about twenty feet from the front door. Cathy peeked out the front window as Artie, Eddie and Jerry set down the plates and glasses and left the folding chairs set up across from each other.

“They see them,” Cathy said.

“Oh God,” Betty said. “Warn them!”

“They know,” Cathy said. “They’re gesturing to them.”

Outside, Grandpa and Grandma turned from the door and walked slowly but steadily to the table. The men retreated to the side of the house, ready to bolt for safety if necessary. The deceased couple moved to the table and, to the watchers’ surprise, took their place at the impromptu table. Grandpa even held out the chair for Grandma, bringing tears to Cathy’s eyes. After a pause they began to eat. Neither spoke, but Cathy swore they had uttered a silent prayer.

The men returned and locked the door behind them. They looked at the family assembly and knew what many were thinking. Was it the right thing to do? The wrong thing? They even worried that other zombies might take the opportunity to come across to their lawn, but Eddie looked out and there was nothing happening.

The family returned to their places at the table and found themselves smiling. Artie, at the head of the table, raised his glass of wine and was soon joined by everyone raising their glasses of wine, soda, diet soda, milk or water. He said nothing but after each person took a drink they tucked into the steaming feast with a suddenly renewed appetite.

“So,” his “mother” said when she came in to tuck him into bed, “you’re now the last human on Earth since we’ve killed off everyone else and replaced them with duplicates.  We spared you, until now, so we could devour your living flesh at our victory feast, but now we can’t since your terminal cancer would make your meat less tasty.”

Charlie Peterson was our office “money man” (every office has one). All he thought about, or at least talked about, was how he was going to be rich someday. The rest of us hoped for, at best, a comfortable retirement, either through pensions, 401(k)s, IRAs or possibly the lottery, which was the cornerstone of my retirement plan. Charlie had other ideas like making millions in real estate foreclosures, bulk internet sales and other get rich quick schemes. He’d tell us all about his newest pipe dream over lunch or during endless office bull sessions. We didn’t know where he got half of his ideas. Some were from late night infomercials, others from magazines aimed at people like him. Others, like making millions scooping diamonds from rivers in the Congo where they supposedly littered the ground like gravel, I had no idea.

One day, which didn’t seem any different from any other Monday, he walked in and went straight to his desk. He wasn’t talkative that morning and several of us noticed how subdued he was. It wasn’t like him at all. While the rest of us skulked in on Monday, regretting the end of the weekend and the long work week ahead of us, Charlie always came in on a high from a weekend of anticipating his coming riches. The work week was, to him, just a way of keeping his family off the street until he had his millions, disappeared and changed his name. He would always say that and then insist that, of course, he would take them with him to his fabulous mansion on his private island. Then he’d wink.

Something else was different that day. Usually Charlie was a healthy looking guy. Something about false dreams seemed to keep him bright and perky. That day he looked tired and pale; even older. He stayed at his desk, ignoring the usual roving discussions on the weirdest of the weekend news and only started to talk as we gathered in the company cafeteria for lunch.

“You’re all staring at me,” he said.

We were. We had taken one of our usual tables, a round one that could hold up to ten people. After the dishes were taken off the trays to make more room we would usually dig in to our lunches and then start talking when the mood struck us. That day we all picked and could not take our eyes off of Charlie’s pallid face.

“It’s just,” I said, “that you look a bit worn. Did you have a rough weekend?”

“Maybe he forgot his wife’s birthday,” Larry (the funny one said). “He must have spent all weekend apologizing and shopping for make-up gifts.”

Lucy (the organized one) jumped in at that point. “His wife’s birthday isn’t for three months and their anniversary is two months after that.”

That stopped the conversation for a minute. None of could figure out how Lucy knew everyone’s birthday, anniversary, kids’ names and ages. It made us wonder what the else she knew about us. The pause didn’t last long.

“Well,” Charlie said, “I suppose I’ll have to tell you. It’s just that you’ll think I’m kidding or using a metaphor or something. It’s just that this weekend I finally did it.”

“Well,” Larry said, “it’s about time. Did what?”

“Made my millions. Hit the jackpot.”

“You don’t look happy about it,” Lucy said. “Especially if you’re too rich to work anymore and just came in to gloat about it.”

“So what was it?” Stan (the office skeptic) asked. “Growing your own Viagra? Trading in foreign treasury bonds? Rare coins? Gold mines in Vermont?”

Stan enjoyed nothing more than deconstructing Charlie’s various schemes. While Charlie was one of those people who never seemed to notice the small print at the bottom of the screen warning that only one person had ever made any money from the program being sold, Stan noticed nothing else. He was so sure of the worthlessness of those ideas that he never wondered if he should follow up on one of them himself. Fortunately for Stan’s ego none of Charlie’s schemes had ever paid off. Until now, apparently.

“Well,” Charlie said, “I … uh … sold my soul to the Devil.”

We all laughed, with the exception of Billie (the office born again Christian) who gasped and covered her wide open mouth with both hands. Billie believed in a real Satan who collected real souls and was the only one of us who didn’t initially think that Charlie meant he was going to traffic in heroin or work for Donald Trump.

“Great,” Larry said. “Now you’ll have money to buy that bridge I’d like to sell to you.”

“Charlie,” Billie said, “please tell me you’re joking.” Billie was a delicate woman and her narrow face had gone white. “You wouldn’t do something like that.”

“It’s the truth,” Charlie said. “I got an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“That’s the Godfather, Charlie,” Stan said. “You got confused by his mumbling and sold your soul to a Mafia boss.”

Charlie laughed and, after dipping a carrot stick in salad dressing, dropped it back on his plate. “No,” he said, with a crooked smile, “I actually sold my real soul to the real Devil.”

“Was this an all-cash deal,” I asked, “or was there stock involved?”

Stan had to laugh at that. “Do you think Hell is a good investment?”

“Based on the morning newspaper I’d have to say yes.”

“This isn’t funny,” Billie said. She looked at me. “You wouldn’t sell your soul to the Devil, would you?”

I gave her a look, not too scornful but she had to know I meant it. “According to you it would be waste of time. Being Jewish I’m going to Hell anyway, right?”

Billie blushed and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. When she spoke it was slightly muffled, but that couldn’t change the fact that we heard her lie just a little bit. “I never said that, not really, but would you?”

“I don’t believe in the Devil, per se,” I answered. “Sure there are evil impulses and nasty people, but a real Satan in a real Hell was never part of my theology. Besides no one has ever offered to buy my soul.”

“But would you sell you’re soul,” she asked me.

“I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t sell my soul,” I told her, “if an offer was made.”

“Do you think you’re immune to temptation?” Charlie asked.

“Hardly, but when it involves the Devil and my soul, that’s something different. I have it worked out as follows. If someone says they’re the Devil and offers me riches for my soul there could only be three explanations. One, it’s a scam and I don’t choose to be scammed. Two, they’re crazy and I don’t make deals with crazy people. Or three, they’re telling the truth and I’m too cowardly to mess with cosmic forces beyond my comprehension. But you did, right?”

Charlie managed to eat some of the vegetables from his plate. “I considered the same three possibilities. I had to be convinced.”

“If you were convinced,” Billie asked, “why didn’t you run to the nearest church and ask for God’s protection?”

“And get what out of it?” he asked. His smile seemed genuine but it was too uneven to be convincing. “I mean I was open to a counter-offer, but there didn’t seem to be one.”

“Oh, Charlie,” Billie whispered. She reached out with her right hand as if to rest it comfortingly on his arm and then drew back, obviously thinking better of it. “The Lord offers us a prize greater than any amount of gold or silver,” she continued. “He offers us eternal glory. How could you trade that away?”

Charlie shrugged as if to indicate that it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Charlie,” Larry said, repeating the name twice more before he got a response. “I’m a Christian, you know that. Maybe not as much as Billie but more than Jon here.” He nodded his head towards me as if other people had forgotten who I was. “I believe in God and I believe in the Devil, but nobody today really thinks he’s walking around with a pocketful of contracts ready to be signed in blood.”

Charlie pushed away his plate. “And yet here we are.”

“Well,” I said, “here you are, anyway. I’m a little confused about this. If it was a joke, you’d be laughing. But you’re not, are you? So, if any of this is true, then why are you here and why are you telling us about it?”

“Really,” Stan said, “why not just buy a yacht and send us postcards while cruising the Mediterranean?”

“Because,” Charlie said, “there is a downside.”

“A downside?” Billie said. “That’s what you call eternal damnation, a downside?”

“Look,” Charlie said, turning on her, “you’re the one with all the rules, right?” He sat back in his chair and apologized. “What I mean to say is that you’re the one who thinks everybody is going to Hell anyway. You can’t go to Heaven if you’re a Jew or a Hindu. You can’t go if you’re a Christian but the wrong denomination. You go to Hell for having sex and taking drugs and thinking bad thoughts. Why not make some money out of it while you can?”

“Because you were given the greatest gift a non-believer can get. You were given a warning; definite proof that Hell exists and that there is a way out. Why didn’t you call me? I swear I would be there for you.”

“To do what?”

“I would have taken you to my church,” she said. “I’ve told you, all of you, about Pastor Michael. He’s the most holy and spiritual man I’ve every known. Our entire congregation would have assembled and we would have built a wall of love and prayer around you that Satan himself could not have breached. You’d have been safe in this life and the next.”

Charlie thought it over. “And then I’d have nothing, instead of an unlimited supply of money to use for my own pleasure.”

“And then?”

“You asked me why I came in today,” Charlie said. “It’s because it’s not quite as simple as it sounds. It wasn’t simply money for my soul.”

“What else have you got?” Larry asked. “Did Satan want your mini-van as well?” Even Larry seemed to realize that humor was no longer the way to go.

“What I’m trying to say is that you think it’s unlimited money for unlimited punishment. There’s a way to take less money and limit the punishment. I can shave my punishment by, shall me say, spreading it around.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

Charlie reached a trembling hand into his jacket’s inside pocket and drew out what appeared to be a rag or handkerchief wrapped around some heavy object. He unwrapped it on the table, revealing a stack of gold coins. They were bigger and shinier than any I had every seen and they held our gaze with their preternatural gleam. Charlie slowly unstacked them. There were five of them, and it didn’t take us long to realize that was the same number of people, other than Charlie, sitting at the table.

“I can keep all the money for myself,” he said, “and take all the punishment or I can give up some of the money and cut down the punishment accordingly. The more I spread it around, the shorter a time everyone has to pay for the riches.”

Billie reacted first, jumping from the table so fast and so urgently that her chair fell back to the floor with a smash. “Monster!” she screamed, for once not caring who stared at her. “You want to buy your way out of Hell with our souls? You came here today to ensnare us as you were ensnared? Do you think that God will ever take you back after you’re done delivering souls to Satan. You are truly lost.”

She seemed to have more to say, but the words would not come and she turned and fled the cafeteria, while the rest of us sat silently until people stopped staring at us. Stan, who had been sitting next to Billie, carefully reached down and turned her chair back to its upright
position. None of us seemed to know what to say.

“I’d urge you to consider it,” Charlie said. “I can prove that by accepting a coin you will have access to a life of richness and joy.”

“Are you reading from a script?” Lucy asked.

“I’m just telling you what I learned. I’m not saying there isn’t payment to be made, but it gets less and less as more people are brought in. You can keep all your riches or give up a little to reduce your payment time by bringing in other people. That’s the deal I made. When I took my coin from the man recruited me, I received enough riches for a lifetime and reduced both his punishment time and mine.”

Larry started to speak but, before he could, Lucy left the table. She didn’t bolt like Billie but just mumbled “excuse me” and walked quietly away. Larry waited a respectful moment before continuing.

“Are we to understand,” Larry continued, “that the Devil is running some kind of pyramid scheme?”

“As I’ve explained it to you all more than once,” Charlie said, “that is a derogatory term made up by people who simply don’t want other people to become rich. Multi-Level Marketing is a perfectly valid way to spread risk and maximize gain.”

“I didn’t want in before when it was household products,” I said, “and I gotta be honest that this doesn’t sound all that more appealing.”

He picked up one of the coins, rolling it over and over in his fingers. It seemed to shine even more and you could almost feel the cool, frictionless surface from across the table. There was also a sound that only I seemed to hear. The coin was singing like a crystal goblet.

“I’m talking about riches,” he said. “I’m talking about cars and homes and women. All the things you’ve always wanted and knew you could never have.”

I found it difficult to speak or even to raise my eyes from the coin.

“Besides,” he said, looking directly at me, “you don’t really believe in any of that stuff, do you?”

I couldn’t deny that I didn’t believe, but there were my three rules to consider. What if this was some kind of scam, if Charlie was crazy and, most importantly, what if he wasn’t? I mean I had such great plans for the future, didn’t I? Decades of boring labor for ungrateful bosses in exchange for a slowly increasing pay rate that I could stow away in savings accounts instead of enjoying it as I earned it, only to watch it wiped out in future financial meltdown. What could compare to that? Charlie’s idea was monstrous, Billie was right about that much, but if it paid off I’d have everything I’d ever wanted. But what about the “downside”? I didn’t believe in Hell but if I wrong about that, then what chance did I have of Heaven anyway? Would a Jew wind up in Christian Hell for making a bad business deal but escape it by being a lukewarm Jew who hadn’t been to a synagogue in fourteen years? I really wanted the money and the women but I wasn’t crazy about the payment options. Yet, I couldn’t take my eyes off that gold coin singing sweetly in Charlie’s fingers. I never even noticed when the others left the table, leaving me alone with Charlie.

“That coin, just like this one here, opened up a whole new world for me. You don’t get suits or watches like the ones I have with hard work. You could break your back your entire life and never even get to rent a car like the one I own, and I own four of them. Oh, I won’t deny the downside, but with each sale you make we all benefit. I’ve been swimming in riches with beautiful women for twenty years now. Sure, I’ve got a few lines on my face and a couple of spots on my hands, but the party goes on and on. And all you have to do is reach out and take the coin. You’re a young man. Imagine, seventy or eighty or maybe even a hundred years of the finest wines and the softest caresses. Yeah, sounds good doesn’t it? That’s right, listen to the coin sing.”