Page 59 of The End of the World As We Know It

Soup

He rose. “I’m gonna fix you up, but in the meantime I’ll put down some pee pads. Petey used them a lot when he…”

Baker clamped down on the memory. Best not to think of that.

“I should be back by midnight. It’ll be dark, but you’ll be locked in here, and safe. The Dedakers are dead, so that helps.”

Lenora didn’t look up from the movie.

Baker started toward the door, but hesitated. He recrossed the room and scratched Lenora under the chin. This time she did peer up at him. She had a cookie crumb on her snout. Baker reached out to brush it off, then reconsidered.

“Save it for later,” he told her, and went out.

Though it’d only been a few days since he’d driven to town, things here had deteriorated. The sense of deadness remained, but now it was a baleful deadness, steeped in an aura of misery and decay.

His visit to the grocery was creepy as hell. The power had crappedout, so instead of entering via the automatic doors, he had to use the loading dock. Though some of the vegetables looked iffy, he procured everything on his list, then stocked up on items he judged Lenora might be partial to. Twinkies, graham crackers. He pegged her for a Pop-Tart gal, so he tossed a box of those into the wagon as well. By the time he’d loaded it all into his Ranger, it was ten thirty and full dark. He drove to Creekside Veterinary Clinic, disliking the way his pickup buzzed and grumbled down the wooded lane. All that noise in the charnel silence was unnerving, like he was picking a banjo during a funeral.

Deer all over the place. They observed him as he swept past, not spooking.You assholes again?their expressions seemed to ask. He rolled into Creekside and killed the engine. Overhead, the clouds had snuffed the moon. The clinic was locked, so Baker heaved a rock the size of a cantaloupe through the front window and winced at the crash. Worrying he’d drawn the attention of every creature within a five-mile radius, he wriggled over the splintered frame and managed to avoid disembowelment.

The clinic reeked like an open dumpster two days after a good rain. Baker pressed his T-shirt to his nose. The waiting area was barren, so whatever was broadcasting the unwholesome stench was in the back. In the treatment rooms.

“Ah fuck,” he muttered.

He edged past the receptionist’s desk, sure he’d find a flu victim, its neck bloated and its face pulpy with rot. He told himself not to look because if he did discover a corpse staring back at him, he might start shrieking and not be able to stop.

Baker looked.

The desk was vacant.

Exhaling, he opened the door to the treatment rooms and actually staggered back at the smell. Holy Christ. He didn’t know if he could take it. A sewery, rancid meat-juice odor.

He was about to scrap the whole mission when he caught sight ofa poster of a black Labrador retriever. Its size and color were nothing like Lenora, but the eyes were similar: large, trusting.I’ll never leave you, those eyes declared.You might not always be nice to me, but I’ll never stop loving you.

Baker drew in a shuddering breath and went in.

He shined the flashlight at a stainless steel exam table. Empty. He advanced, the odor intensifying. He reckoned he’d locate the culprit on the other side of the table, but there was nothing there. Baker proceeded through the next door, but faltered. For several seconds, he couldn’t breathe.

The room was acrawl with cats.

A few scattered at his approach, but most went about their business. Calicos, Maine coons, others of no particular breed. They populated the floor, the exam table, a hydraulic-lift surgery table. Some observed him with mild interest, while others merely went on grooming themselves.

Baker wasn’t troubled by the cats. What troubled him was Dr. Weizak, who dangled from a ceiling joist, having hanged himself with an orange extension cord. Baker’s flashlight revealed a bloated gullet and a mouth so agape it put him in mind of a choir teacher demonstrating proper vocal technique. He shifted the beam and cringed. Weizak’s bald pate had gone a disconcerting indigo color, the eyes rolled up to whites.

Weizak began to undulate.

Baker floundered back. A cat brushed his ankle and he danced away. He swung the flashlight toward Weizak and saw the crotch of the dead man’s trousers twitching and bulging, as though Baker’s presence had occasioned a woody. A whiff of the corpse made him gag, but he kept the beam steady long enough to see a cat poke its head out of the dead man’s collar, its whiskers glistening with blood.

“Jesus!” Baker cried, and plunged into the next room.

Where the smell was even ranker. He battled his gorge for several instants, then shined his beam on the back wall, which was crammed with racks of ivory boxes.

Medicine. Thank God.

He rushed forward and promptly rued his forgetfulness. The print on the boxes was so microscopic he’d have difficulty deciphering it even with his readers. Baker was squinting at a label when he froze, a breeze whispering over his skin. He shifted the flashlight beam to the far side of the room.

Fuck me with a wood chipper, he thought.

The picture window was shattered. Draped over the jagged sill was a woman with frizzy brown hair and an airbrushed T-shirt, though Baker could only see the back, where shoddy pink-and-purple artwork depicted a shooting star against a night sky. The cursive script beneath this masterwork readJEFF LOVES DEBRA. He wagered the shirtfront featured caricatures of the smiling lovebirds.