Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess Read Free Book Online

feet of him. He thinks that if clouds could shit they’d shit seagulls. He notices an empty boat floating close to shore across the harbour.
    Les Reardon opens his eyes and watches a seagull at his feet tearing through the back of a perch. He slams the side of the boat with his foot, but the seagull doesn’t move. He flaps both his legs apart, hitting the sides, and this time the bird jumps into the air. It rises a foot ortwo and then returns inverted, standing this time with the tip of its beak through the forehead of the fish. Les leaps up and, missing the bird, squishes the desiccated fish in his hands, sending it in a slurp up into the air and overboard. The seagull hangs above his head, screaming, and finally lifts backward.
    On shore Les discovers he has difficulty walking. He steps around sloppily on guitar-shaped legs until a succession of steps brings him out of the sand and onto a brown lawn. An elderly woman, in a purple silk bathrobe, is standing on the clean bare floor of a bare room that looks out at the lake through a tall window. She watches the man who has just appeared in her backyard. He appears drunk. Filthy. She slides the door open a few inches, sniffing at the outside before speaking.
    “Hello there. Can I help you?”
    Les waves at her as he steps forward. He approaches the woman deceitfully. She only has time to say “Oh my!” before he knocks her to the floor. A little bald man in pyjamas appears squinting at the bar in the corner of the room, and he takes three quick steps toward his fallen wife. He is also knocked over by Les.
    This couple distinguish themselves from the Killings by being the Knockouts.

13
Cholera
    Les pulls over in the little grey car he stole from the Knockouts. He steps out to fill it with gas. As the numbers are flying through their eleventh dollar an attendant lurches from his booth. Les recognizes him.
Zombie.
Les massages the trigger of the nozzle with his finger, recognizing the weapon.
Gun.
The zombie attendant stops within two metres of Les and is confused. Its circular mouth rotates a few degrees and clicks into a new position, tightening an aperture of skin along its rim. The zombie may or may not be preparing to attack. Les flips the nozzle from the side of the car and in two sprinted steps he drives the hooked tube down the attendant’s throat. He pulls the trigger, jetting gasoline into the zombie’s stomach — its lizard — instantly killing the organ. The pump clicks off automatically as the fluid washes back into the zombie’s mouth. Les steps up onto the low concrete island, tossing the hose against its recoil wire, toward the creature that has collapsed. Unable to close its mouth, it cacks from the back of its throat and lays its upturned hands in the crude water that it has released onto the ground. It looks down into the dark pool growing around its hips and sees the red lights of the car reflected there. As Les pulls away from the island the zombie turns its hand over on the surface of its fecal blood, caging the car too late. The silver bumper drifts to the edge, disappearing into the gravel.
    Les leaves Manchester with nearly half a tank of gas and he makes his way south through wicked Canada. He has isolated a part of himself that he commits to sanity, and from here he has decided that the difference between his relapsed psyche and the outside world is so negligible that to worry about losing touch is not the most urgent game. In fact, Les is sure that the behaviour of the world is somehow blueprinted by his paranoia. This is not a new delusion, he realizes; and it’s a delusion with more benefits than liabilities. Les knows that the balance does expire, and he prays that the world will one day be worthy of a new prescription, another antipsychotic medication. But for now the difference is both negligible and essential. Les lets his contaminated body drive while he watches the shadows of barns for any signs of Helen.
    In the years prior to his