The Reincarnation

Cheap rental cars, Victor Grey thought. Damn thing wouldn’t even get over ninety. His passenger was asleep beside him. Earlier, Grey had gotten so desperately bored that he had tried to talk to his captive. It was like talking to a zombie – the man couldn’t even put a sentence together. He confirmed his impression that Johnny looked like an alien. The copper from the mine sunk into his flesh and colored it. Even made his eyes green and cloudy – when they were open.

Grey turned his attention back to the road, and thought about the asphalt scar on the Earth that the road really was. It was a new thought for him, something he had never even considered before. It wasn’t really a scar though, he thought further. Scars indicate a healing process has begun. The road was more like an open wound, bleeding death instead of life. Grey felt uneasy with his thoughts. His exposure to the fields and lakes in Canada was affecting his outlook, and he didn’t like it, having decided long ago that he knew his place in the world, and all the thoughts that went along with it. New thoughts weren’t welcome. He had invested too much of himself in his view of the world – if his view was wrong, so was he. This made him shift uncomfortably in his seat.

He continued speeding toward the Lab, turning his thoughts to the traffic. By now he figured it would have thinned out, but it hadn’t. The closer he got to the Lab, the more cars he saw. Funny, he didn’t think there were this many cars left in this part of the country. These people looked like they were out on joy rides, too, and most of them didn’t even look old enough to drive.

Plus, they had that crazy Sunday-drive look in their eyes.

“So you see,” Dr. Persey said as he scraped the last morsel of flesh from the skin of the acorn squash he had eaten, “the procedure’s been perfected. It’s just a matter of applying it. And we’ve got plenty of people to try it out on.” The squash’s skin lay on his plate like a flayed carcass.

“People, yes,” Dr. Torrence responded. “But didn’t we see a lion in one of those rooms?”

“Not a lion. A leopard. There’s a big difference.”

“Oh come now, doctor. It’s just a big dumb cat. Lion. Leopard. What’s the difference?”

Dr. Persey didn’t have time to answer. As his acrid response was forming in his mouth, Patty’s tinny voice came over the cafeteria speaker.

“Phone call for you, sir. It’s Ralph Bishop.”

Is that a priest? Tracy Jones thought as she drove along the interstate, looking at the tall silhouette ahead of her. She instinctively slowed down, confirming her suspicion. She pulled up behind the broken-down car.

“Do you need some help, Father?”

“Oh, thank heaven. Yes, I do. Seems this car just wasn’t made for these times. Could you give me a ride?”

“Why sure, Father. Where are you go –”

Their eyes met. As the symptoms of their common disease became clear to one another – the ravaged, hollow look, the pastiness of their skin – they both realized the question didn’t need to be answered. Father Dante opened the passenger door and got in.

“Father Dante,” he said, extending his hand.

“Tracy Jones, Father,” she said, reciprocating his action.