The drooler’s face came closer. Time seemed to stretch out as it came on, each moment pulled out like taffy. The face slowed as it approached, inching toward him, then proceeding by fractions.

It wasn’t just in his head. Tim realized suddenly that the drooler’s arms were flailing madly like flabby tentacles, that the drooler was moving toward him as fast as it could. It was bending from the waist, trying to get down to his level. Clearly it couldn’t bend that far. The drooler looked like he couldn’t have touched his toes before he got infected—what about the sickness would have made him more limber?

It wasn’t going to be enough to save Tim’s life. Eventually the drooler would totter over and fall on him. It wouldn’t care if it had to lie down to bite him. To eat him.

It did give Tim a fraction of a second to breathe, to gather up the last shreds of his strength. He pulled off his pack, his hands tearing feebly at the straps. He got the zip open. The drooler started to fall forward, its jaws wide.

Tim pulled out the revolver just in time. He pointed it up at the face above him just as the jaws clicked shut on the end of the barrel. The drooler’s teeth worked at the gun, worried at it like a dog with a chew toy.

Tim had enough strength to squeeze the trigger.

Bits of blood and black drool and shredded brains rained all around him. A lot of it got on him, on his clothes, his hands, his face. Tim marshaled enough disgust to roll out from under the still-falling corpse, enough energy to roll clear and lie wheezing in the street.

He lay there getting weaker, sucking more and more poison into his lungs, for far too long. He lay there because he couldn’t do anything else. His throat felt raw and diseased. His eyes felt blind, though still a little sunlight got into them, making them hurt worse.

He lay there until he heard the can scratching on the pavement again.

The other drooler—the one that had been chasing him—was close again. Too close. He still had the revolver in his hand but he felt ridiculously vulnerable lying there in the street. He felt terrified.

Crick-critch. Creech. The drooler didn’t bother to shake the can off his foot.

Tim reached down inside of himself and looked for anything he had left. Any kind of strength or belief or just pure desperate survival instinct. He found very little. The smoke had slipped in and pushed all that out of him.

Crup. Crup-crup.

He put one hand down on the pavement and felt it cold and rough. He pushed against it and his body shifted a little to one side. He closed his eyes, thought of Karen, and with both hands he pushed until he was sitting up. His head swam and the spots that danced before his eyes exploded like fireworks. He didn’t need droolers to kill him, he realized. He was perfectly capable of doing himself in.

Clunk. The noise of the can was very close now.

Tim was suddenly standing up. He didn’t have the energy to stand up and remain conscious at the same time, so his body just took over and let his brain rest for a second. His eyes cleared slowly and he felt himself wavering back and forth like a reed in the wind.

Clup. The drooler was standing right next to him. The fear paralyzed Tim as it never had before, sent his mind shrieking down dark corridors of nothingness and horror. He could no more have raised the gun and fired than he could have jumped into the air and flown away.

The drooler wore overalls and a weight belt. The can had wrapped around a pair of yellow leather boots. The drooler’s face was hunched over and tilted to one side. Tim waited for it to bite him. He would try to flinch away at the last second, he told himself. He would try that much for Karen and Jake.

The drooler’s face smashed right into Tim’s shoulder, nearly knocking him over. Tim closed his eyes and told himself he’d made a good run at it. If he died trying to avenge Karen and Jake, that was all he could ask of himself, wasn’t it?

The drooler head-butted him again. Still it didn’t bite. Even over the stench of smoke Tim could smell its yeasty breath. He could feel its bare whisper of body heat. It slapped at him with one bony hand.

Then it turned slowly on its heel, the can on its foot squeaking noisily. It turned and started off, away, into the smoke. It took one step. Another. A third.

Tim’s arm cramped up painfully. He could feel it coming up, stretching out. Without a single thought or impulse on his part it pointed the revolver at the back of the drooler’s head and yanked the trigger. The bullet tore through the side of the drooler’s neck and sent blood spurting out in a long arc. Tim fired again but the revolver was empty—he’d fired all six chambers.

The drooler turned to look at him. There was no surprise in its eyes but there was some definite confusion. Then it fell down on its knees and smashed its face into the street.

Tim couldn’t understand. What had happened? Why hadn’t it bit him? Why hadn’t it attacked? He looked down at himself and got it, even with his weary brain. He was still wet and dripping with the blood and spit of the drooler in corduroy, the one who’d tried to eat his gun. The drooler with the can on his foot had smelled those fluids and just assumed that Tim was just like himself, a host to the infection.

“Good to know,” Tim said out loud in a croaking voice.

He bent down and picked up his baseball bat. Then he turned around a hundred and eighty degrees, directly away from the corpse, and started walking. There was no other choice and his feet knew it. As far as he might get before he collapsed, that was as far as he intended to go.