Pontypool Changes Everything

by Burgess, Tony

  One of the first signs of viral presence is an addiction to Big Town TV. The station repeats itself, quotes itself, touches itself in a way that is somehow comforting to the early victims who cling outside the building tonight. This spectacle used to be reserved for those evenings when Electric Sex Party was broadcast live; now the crowds only appear when the program is rerun the following evening. Greg is standing somewhat apart from the crowd. He tested positive for the disease earlier this week, and though he’s asymptomatic he’s come to observe the people he will soon be forced to join. The crowd is not a dance crowd. They do not dance. They merely stand, watching the monitors, occasionally slumping, smiling weakly. Some have lain down to sleep on the sidewalk. Greg looks at the purple neon band reflected up in a black puddle between his legs. He follows this clean light as it pulls itself out of the water and embroiders a brilliant shadow between the stones in the asphalt. Greg twists at the front of his Monster Magnet T-shirt and whispers, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change . . .”

  Greg looks up at a vendor and spits towards him. The vendor picks up a sausage from the grill with a blackened fork and wags it at Greg, wiggling his tongue lecherously. Greg waits patiently, and sure enough his Higher Power, dressed entirely in black, emerges from a donut shop. He strolls out into the traffic holding his chin, sharing with Greg the difficulty of saying anything at this point.

  3

  Grant Mazzy

  Behind the white glass panels that make up the edifice of Big Town TV, Grant Mazzy is scratching the top of his head, releasing a white dusting of dandruff that showers onto his pants. He presses his palms against his thighs and, pulling them aside, admires the glittery effect. Out of the corner of his eye he spots a technician strolling breezily through the open concept.

  “Hey Bob.”

  “It’s Carl.”

  “Yeah, sorry Carl. Anyway, when the hell are those production people gonna be done with the closed coupling thing, whatever it is?”

  Closed coupling is an idea developed by Big Town TV to accommodate its AMPS viewer. The closed coupling involves a tight repetition, a delay sample that they believe would conform to the rhythm that AMPS consume information. It is a woefully unscientific instrument, utterly useless to the AMPS victim, whose chaotic process wildly outmanoeuvres this primitive compensation. The technology does attract viewers, however, who are exhilarated by the idea.

  A Max Headroom who cannot be cancelled.

  Grant Mazzy catches his own face in a monitor and moves his chin quickly. When he is satisfied that he is “now,” he stares squarely at his handsome face, frankly assessing his own good looks. His own best critic, Grant judges his appearance harshly. He never solicits a better angle from his image: he expects every angle to be good enough. The technician checks his watch and widens his eyes above the clipboard he holds.

  “Five minutes, Grant, then we’re rolling live again.”

  “You know, this place gives me the creeps. Everything reminds me of that damn virus and those fuckin’ zombies outside. I don’t know. Where do they go? I mean, when they get worse, where do they go? These ones aren’t that far gone you know.”

  “I don’t know, Grant, they say that some really sick ones are making appearances up north. Like gangs of them in North Bay, places like that.”

  “I just hope that somebody’s monitoring this situation. I’m not sensing a lot of organized thinking around this problem. Oh, wait, my prompter’s up. Here I go. Shut up. Get lost. Shoo.”

  Grant takes one last look at himself in a monitor and then makes his professional gotta-take-a-shit face into the camera.

  “The Ontario government has shifted its position on handling the growing cases of AMPS. After losing track of several victims who are in the final violent stages of the disease, and after reports of people disappearing, the government has decided to implement new, tighter methods of regulating the progress of the disease. People with AMPS are registered upon diagnosis and are required by law to report to a designated physician weekly. Emergency facilities are now being prepared for those victims who pass into the dangerous later stages. The government has made failure to comply an imprisonable offence. Meanwhile, some northern communities are showing signs of panic and there are instances of people taking matters into their own hands. Officials would like to send the clear message that this is not only dangerous and illegal, but also, now, unnecessary.”

  When the broadcast goes to another feed, Grant looks down at the monitor and watches his mouth blur backwards.

  Or forwards. He can’t tell.

  4

  Julie and Jim

  Julie is worried about her younger brother and she puts her arm around him in the darkness. They are sitting at the end of a short dock.

  “Jimmy, I’m here you know. Mom and Dad aren’t really worried, they just love this shit. It’s like a war or something. They like to take it seriously, at least while it’s happening. Just ignore them.”

  Jimmy had stopped speaking three days ago, believing that silence was the only sure way to prevent the disease. If you don’t use words, it can’t get into them, right? But he was worried about his father, who argued with the TV, who yelled at appliances and then screamed at his mom. Jimmy watched with horror, seeing this vivid viral highway shooting through the air and slinging infection into his father’s wild mouth. Jimmy sinks the front of his sneaker into the lake. Cold water is sucked inside the shoe when he separates his toes. Julie cocks her ears towards the cottage. She can hear shouting. It’s her mother. The cottage door slams and she shifts uncomfortably, hoping that no one finds them.

  “Remember last summer when we saw that musky grab the duckling?”

  Jimmy shrugs and lowers his other toe into the water.

  “I’m just glad muskies don’t fly!” A June bug clings like a heavy clasp to Julie’s bangs. “Aah! They do! They do! What’s that?”

  “Ahhh! Jimmy, can you see it? What is it? Is it a musky? Oh God!”

  Jimmy reaches up between his sister’s frantic limbs and plucks the beetle from her hair. He holds it for a second, until its wings clatter against his palm, then releases it. The June bug veers up into the moonlight, flitting through the silver before plunging down into darkness and plopping heavily onto the water’s surface. Jimmy lowers his head, scanning the blackness.

  “Let’s see if a fish grabs it. I bet one does.”

  Jimmy raises his toes as a fish gulps through the water. Julie mouths “wow” and slaps her brother’s back. The sound of her father’s voice makes her pull the back of Jimmy’s shirt.

  “You kids get back up here. Your mother’s worried about you.”

  The father weighs a rock in his hand and calculates the intensity of a toss that could knock his son into the water. He mutters under his breath as he drops the rock and turns up the path.

  “Little fag.”

  At a nearby cottage the Wheelers are in bed reading. They are turned away from each other, hanging books out into the light of their respective lamps. Mr. Wheeler’s head is bobbing into the pillow and for the second it is lowered he manages a single full snore. Mrs. Wheeler notices this, and she closes her book and shimmies her back up the wall, watching him.

  “Honey. Honey, I think we should go to sleep now. Don’t you? I think you’ll sleep tonight, dear. Look at you, you can’t even hold your head up.”

  Three people are standing in the dark at the base of the stairs leading up to the bedroom. They are silent; that is, they don’t speak. But they jab each other. They’re standing, exchanging sharp punches. Cruel little punches, meant to hurt. More than that, they begin to stab their fingers into each other’s face, until a finger reaches an eye and one goes down on his knees. And when he does, his enucleated eye slipping through his fingers onto the floor, the woman begins strangling him while the other man reaches under, grabs his face, and begins to stretch the skin until it gives way and its contents burst onto the floor. The man falls, wagging hi
s face on the floor, sliding the rubble of his lost features, like eggs broken through a grocery bag, back onto his head. The woman kicks the man’s neck and, after grinding it flat beneath her heel, howls out between her clicking teeth. She can’t even feel the quick, hard blows to her ribs.

  Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler are sitting straight up in their bed. They have heard everything, and when the woman stops howling Mrs. Wheeler turns off her light. Mr. Wheeler glares over at her, panicked. Breathless, he says, “What . . . what?”

  “Turn off the light, turn off the light. Get under the bed.”

  The room is suddenly pitch black, and they both scramble under the bed. It will take an hour and fifteen minutes before a hand reaches for them. Mrs. Wheeler will feel her hair being tugged viciously from her scalp. In the meantime they wait in the dark feeling only the sprinkle of fibres falling onto their cheeks.

  5

  In the Middle …

  In the second stage of the disease victims display symptoms similar to those of aphasiacs. Their ability to use language erodes. This disease, however, is not an organic one. Nor is it a disorder of the personality. Once infected, the victim produces the virus in the language he or she struggles with. The mature virus is a sort of hard copy of this production. The latter part of the second stage resembles Tourette Syndrome. The victim becomes frantic, rebelling against the onset of the disease by wilfully destroying, ahead of the virus, his or her own normative behaviour. It is a desperate attempt to escape. The victim batters at what is perceived as the horizon of his or her being. And the horizon, now heavy and meaningless, drops like a stone when approached. The victim becomes dangerously aggravated and insensible at this point. The horizon is, then, somehow transferred into the mouths of those not yet afflicted. Stranger’s mouths are the escape route through which the victim attempts to disappear, in a violent and bloody fashion. They often drown on the blood of those they attack or choke to death on the flesh.

  Greg turns the page and studies the four panels that illustrate, without text, a cannibal on a throne surrounded by decapitated people. The cannibal holds a head in his upturned hand, his chin covered with blood. The head is upside down, and a little pink fray appears along the rim of the neck, the lipstick on the glass. Greg closes the comic book and checks the number on the top right of the cover before replacing it on the shelf. He leaves quickly, feeling the hostile glare of the man in an undershirt behind the counter.

  6

  Calling

  Grant Mazzy lives, much like everyone else on Earth, in an apartment. In spite of his occupation, he is less vain than you’d expect. When he’s at home he spends no time in front of his reflection; in fact, he keeps only a small shaving mirror, and he has only seen his face at home bent by steam and encircled with moisture.

  The face reminds him of work. His reflection makes him think of an alarm going off at 6:30 in the morning.

  No, at home Grant kicks back by being facelessly, anonymously good. Grant’s true passion, the reason he keeps living, is to work tirelessly for charity. He sits on the boards of three major charities, lending his name and profile for their benefit. What he loves most, however, is the anonymous time he devotes to lesser known charities. Particularly the anti-crime program that is run in one of the city’s meaner parts of town, Parkdale. Grant volunteers his time as a counsellor on a distress line. This number is publicized in laundromats and bus shelters. Strictly small time, no budget, non-professional, a do-it-yourself, hands-on, community repair kit.

  Grant pops open his small humidor and drops the point of his finger along the shaft of a dark cigar, a Monte Christo “A.” He rolls it into the corner and separates a Robusto that lies heavily on a bed of Punch Double Coronas. Grant hangs his hand over the box, rocking the Robusto between his fingers before pulling up the “A.” He rolls a silver bullet into its tip, softly popping out a plug of tobacco. He lights the cigar in big wet sucks. When the phone rings, Grant expertly rolls the cigar to the corner of his mouth with his tongue and slaps the speaker-phone button.

  “Hello, my name is Bill, you’ve reached the Parkdale Crisis Hotline, how can I help you?”

  Grant rolls his head, twirling the smoke in the air until it hangs evenly across his face; then he sits forward through it, closing one eye and hanging the cigar down loose from his mouth.

  “Hello? Anybody there? Hello?”

  Grant spreads his fingers above the phone and when the sound flattens he pats his thumb down to disconnect.

  When Grant was in university, studying political science, he lived in Parkdale. Back when the Queen Street Mental Health Centre opened its doors to free its residents of their institutional bondage. Once freed, these high-functioning mercenaries swung into action and with strange ability they frightened the proto-Yuppie colony that had just recently moved into the area. A certain segment of Toronto had clearly developed a crush on Parkdale’s depression.

  Grant Mazzy was renting a room on Wilson Park from an exiled Polish religious leader whose insane son almost always stood beside a grandfather clock in the hallway. Grant had a serious masturbation habit at the time, and his room was a sort of Jugs and Beaver emporium, smelling of curdled seed. Being unable to afford furniture, Grant was forced to make love on the coveted hardwood floor. The battering of his elbow against this floor drew complaints from the security guard who lived below. A soft, giant man who was orange from head to toe, this security guard worked sixteen hours a day and spoke aloud only once or twice a month. When Grant moved in and commenced his school term with one-handed procrastination, the security guard leapt into action and complained to the landlord daily.

  One day the religious leader, a truly fanatical man, decided that with an insane son impersonating a suit of armour in the hallway, and a hot pervert in the attic, he needed an exorcism. When Grant climbed the stairs that day and opened his door he met with a flying Bible, candles, and wild Latin keening. The girlie mags were stuck together with red votive-candle wax in the middle of the floor. The landlord, now moaning loudly through a perfect O in the centre of his beard, was clad — they were visible between black robes that fell open — in white jockey shorts.

  Grant wasn’t angry. He was frightened. He turned to go down the stairs, only to see the bearded son lurching up, his face apple red in the candlelight. The son bared his teeth, raised his limbs against their medicated stiffness, and closed his eyes tightly. Safe distances were closing. Grant sat down on the stairs, and he too closed his eyes, waiting for either the madman to pounce on him or the papal dervish to strangle him with a soiled holy thong.

  A loud siren from outside distracted the men on the staircase, giving Grant enough time to break for the door. The house across from Grant’s place was spewing black smoke into the sky. Several police cars were pulled up on the lawn and people, mostly in hand-cuffs, were being led out of the building. Grant learned later that the fire had two sources. A man on the first floor who resembled an overweight General Custer had fallen asleep. A neglected pot of beans on the stove caught fire. Meanwhile, on the second floor, a struggling art student had ignited his upper body while experimenting with free-basing. The two fires failed to disturb a man who was pressing a pillow down on another’s face on the third floor. And when the killer’s victim was dead, the perpetrator ran down the stairs to help orchestrate the rescue. In the middle of this pandemonium, an older woman mentioned to a fireman that General Custer on the first floor had raped her on several occasions over the past two years. When they dragged him from his bed it took a team of paramedics two hours, not to save his life, but to wake him up.

  It was at this moment, the inauguration of Parkdale’s new reputation, that Grant discovered two things. First, that his sanity was a goldmine. And second, that he would do whatever it took to save anyone he could from the dangerous squalor of this part of town.

  “Hello, you’ve reached the Parkdale Crisis Hotline.”

  Grant held his Robusto out and watched a long grey toe of ash tumble end
over end into the ashtray.

  “Hi.” A tiny voice. Casual. Scratchy. Male? Female?

  “Hello. What’s your name?”

  “My name’s Mark, what’s yours?”

  “My name’s Bill, Mark. Hey Mark, waddaya want to talk about?”

  Grant opened his refrigerator and shrouded the milk in cigar smoke.

  “Well, I have a crisis, Bill.”

  Grant peeled the plastic wrap off a glass plate and nudged the pickles and cheese that were arranged there. He re-sealed the plate and flipped open a plastic lid.

  “It’s good you called, then, Mark.”

  Grant grimaced at a smell that shot out of the container, and he hit back with a spray of smoke, then closed the fridge.

  “It’s not gonna sound like a crisis.”

  “Doesn’t matter how it sounds, Mark. You tell me it’s a crisis, that makes it one. So shoot, buddy. What’s up?”

  7

  Zombies

  A long cord stretches out across the lake. Its frayed surface prickles the water. A needle width of blood and bone courses along the interior of this rope with such force and speed that if directed it could easily shave the poles clean off the planet. This is a dreaming AMPS victim. This is what its dream is. The AMP doesn’t fall asleep. Instead, it collapses from exhaustion and, before going under, batters itself to prevent sleep. Most unconscious AMPS put themselves there with a blow to the head which is, in fact, meant to keep them awake. The AMP who is having this dream now is lying on the floor of the Wheelers’ cottage. His throat is crushed and his eyes are draped across open fingers at his side. His spinal column is broken at the neck and a glistening area of spinal fluid laps at his shoulder like a lake teeming with fish. But he lives on, this thing. He sails on for the rest of his natural life striving towards his goals, different now, surely very different, and he’s cut down before he can reach them.