Page 53 of The End of the World As We Know It

The preacher jackknifed in a coughing fit and produced a lime-green glob that resembled Jell-O left to sit too long at a church potluck. Baker watched impassively. His front yard was a good half-acre, and not only was Wiggins downhill but downwind as well.Nevertheless, if this shit was as contagious as advertised, the next state over was still too close.

He motioned with the barrel. “Get on back to your flock, Reverend.”

Wiggins dragged a wrist over his mouth. “I need your help, Baker.”

“There’s nothing I can do for you.”

“Not me,” Wiggins answered. “It’s for her.” The preacher moved aside and Baker beheld what was in the little red wagon.

“Why’re you hauling a baby deer?” he asked.

“She’s a dik-dik.”

Baker scowled at him. “What the fuck’s a dik-dik?”

“Mini-antelope from Sookie’s farm,” Wiggins explained. “I’ve been going property to property, checking on folks.”

“Spreading the plague, you mean. Jesus Christ, Wiggins, don’t you have any sense?”

“You don’t—” Wiggins barked out another croupy cough, and when he wiped his mouth, there were scarlet streaks in the saliva. The preacher inspected this gruel a moment before smearing it on his trousers. “Everyone’s dying, Baker. Everyone. The fact that you’re alive means you might be immune.”

Baker said nothing.

Wiggins gestured feebly. “You wouldn’t believe what I saw at the pet farm. Some of the creatures had perished from the flu. Others had been”—his face pinched—“strung up. There were zebras, a tiger. They were flayed open like deer some hunter had bagged. Sookie’s dead, too.”

“Flu doesn’t spare you because you’ve got a hundred acres and a Porsche.”

“It wasn’t the sickness. Someone had…” Wiggins licked his lips. “Someone hadimpaledSookie. Same with his wife and young son.”

Baker’s grip on the twelve-gauge tightened. “Any sign of Dead Ed?”

“Just his handiwork.”

Fucking ghoul, Baker thought. “Dead Ed” Dedaker’s rap sheetwas so long the justice system had ceased trying to rehabilitate him. Whenever someone went missing, folks suspected Dedaker, and Baker suspected they were right. Some claimed he only worked at the pet farm so he could abuse the animals. Baker suspected they were right about that, too.

“These wereatrocities,” Wiggins said. He indicated the dik-dik. “This poor animal… she was the only one left. I found her hiding under a squirrel cage. She’s dehydrated… on the verge of starvation. If you could—”

“Get your ass off my property,” Baker said.

Wiggins blinked at him. “But—”

Baker racked the shotgun.

“Please,” Wiggins moaned, and to Baker’s horror the preacher actually sank to his knees and raised his arms in supplication. “I can’t care for the animal. I’m dying.”

“No shit.”

“You’ve endured tragedy, Brother Baker. I know how you’ve suffered.”

“Shut your piehole,” Baker replied. “And if you call me ‘Brother’ again, I’ll expedite the dying thing for you.”

“That would be a mercy,” Wiggins said. “I can’t tell you how much it—” But he was off on another coughing jag, this one so severe it ended with him thrashing in the grass and clawing at his throat. Baker glanced at the dik-dik, who was so captivated by a white moth flittering through the wildflowers that she didn’t notice Wiggins choking to death on his own snot.

The preacher gasped, wheezed, and flumped onto his back. His face had gone a bruisy mauve color. His eyes rolled sightlessly up to the midday sun. Dead.

“Gross,” Baker muttered. He lowered the twelve-gauge.

The dik-dik studied him from the wagon.