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approach a traffic light at the top of the hill in my neighborhood. The steering wheel vibrating violently, the engine quiets down. I push in on the clutch and inch forward in first. The car chokes back to life. The light is red, and the brake lights on the car in front of me shine bright. My heart skips. I lay on the horn before getting out of the car.
    “Hey!” I call out as I approach. “Hey!” I’m waving my arms frantically. I might as well be guiding an aircraft to its landing. “What happened last night?” I ask even though I’m sure the individual in the car cannot hear me.
    I reach the driver’s side, and knock on the window.
    “God!” I stumble back, falling right smack onto my tailbone. A gray face, mouth agape, stares back at me from the car. I sit on hot asphalt staring back at this stranger until the silence is comparable to what it must sound like on the moon. I realize the engine of the car isn’t running. The driver is slumped back in the seat like a sixteen-year-old who just got his license. I look away, his gnarled features haunting my brain, and twenty yards in front of us is a small two-seater airplane with a blue stripe down the middle, impacted into the concrete. No smoke rises from the engine. The windshield is cracked and coated a reddish-brown. The tail jack-knifed into the air, the plane all bent out of shape at rest in an L position. The door to the cockpit hangs loose on its hinges, drifting in the wind. Two deer cross the road here—as if this scene couldn’t get any more apocalyptic—casually approaching the fallen aircraft, grazing the weeds poking up from cracks in concrete.
    Beyond the plane, cars are parked on the sidewalks, with one decidedly resting inside the barbershop where Mr. Dickens used to cut my hair as a child. The glass decorating the ground beneath the vehicle shines like diamonds in the sunlight.
    I look back to the ghoulish figure in the car. It’s as though everyone in this town but me remembered to drop dead at two a.m. last night. I’m momentarily pissed at the prospect of having been left out of such an endeavor. Why no one included me, I cannot say.
    Two miles from my destination, I’m forced to another stop.
    Wayward and nonchalant, three pachyderms are crossing Market Street, and I sit here watching like this is the most casual happening in the history of the world. Just another Wednesday afternoon in small town America.
    Hang on, Valerie. I’ll be right there. But the elephants have the right of way.
     
    Valerie’s car is in the driveway. I park out front, in the street, and leave the car running. A quick getaway. I plan to be no victim of the Zombie Apocalypse.
    I skip the front door and try the side garage door. Valerie’s mother, Ms. Anderson, Vivian—Viv—keeps a key inside a stupid, plastic turtle next to the door. I’m no thief, but Christ, if I was, the first thing I would look for is a stupid, plastic turtle next to the side garage door.
    It’s dark and damp and cluttered. I wouldn’t call Viv a pack rat, but one could say a garage sale or a fire is well overdue. Most of the crap in here belongs to her husband. Ex-husband. I’m not entirely certain if they actually divorced when he left.
    For a thousand extra moments I simply listen—for what, I do not know—wasting time, letting my eyes adjust to the dark so I can make my way around Viv’s car. I don’t know how many of you have ever been involved in a situation as unique as mine, but I can’t quite shake the feeling of being watched, followed, and stalked, even as I grow more confident fewer and fewer people are alive. I kick an uncapped metal trashcan full of golf clubs, baseball bats, Frisbees, and footballs. Valerie’s younger brother, Victor, is quite the athlete. Valerie and I spent countless hours in gymnasiums and grandstands surrounded by cheering fans while we felt each other up, slipping in hand jobs and blowjobs. I linger here on these memories. I find the cold grip