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behind a fluttering trail of faux bandages. He didn’t know what time it was, but it seemed very late, three or four in the morning. He came upon another gravel lane—he crossed over several of them—and this time decided to follow it to his left. He walked on gravel now, between two barbed-wire fences.
    Kwang had saved his life. Even though it meant he might be arrested, or crucified by his mom and dad. But if he hadn’t distracted the cop, Stony would be in jail right now. They’d know who he was, what he was: a ghoul whose bite could kill. Who could make you into a monster just like him. They’d put him down like a rabid dog.
    His mother was right. He never should have left the farm. And now he could never leave. Kwang would go on without him, into the world of football games and college classes and cities and oceans, and he would burrow into the basement. His own personal Deadtown.
    In the distance, a pair of headlights crossed the horizon, moving right to left. The lights brightened, as if the car had swerved in his direction for a moment, and then he heard a faint thump. The car squealed to a stop.
    Stony stood still, watching. Half a minute later, the car moved forward again, slower now. The red taillights receded into the dark.
    Stony resumed walking, and eventually came to a paved, two-lane road. He turned left, following the path of the car. A few minutes later he saw something thrashing in the high grass beside the road.
    A deer. A small whitetail, only fifty or sixty pounds. It lay on its side, one eye staring wildly at him, glossy black. Its front legs churned the grass, but its back legs did not move. He looked for blood but didn’t see any.
    He knelt next to the animal and stroked its neck. It lurched in a fresh frenzy, and he tried to soothe it.
    The deer was going to die. If not in the next hour, then when a cop or farmer came to put it down. He sat with it, and gradually the animal settled, though its side rose and fell in quick breaths.
    Stony leaned down, put his face to its neck, and inhaled. The scent was dense, peppery. He wondered if all deer smelled like this, or only dying ones. He pressed his nose and lips into its fur for nearly a minute. And then he opened his mouth, and pressed his teeth against its flesh.
    He didn’t think that the walking dead could pass the disease to animals. Nothing he’d read suggested it. But nothing said it was impossible, either. Did the animal need to be dead first, and then bitten, before it could rise again? Or did he need to kill it himself, the wound and death occurring simultaneously, for the curse to be transmitted? The Easterly Public Library had been silent on the questions that most concerned him. Did he carry the disease? Should he fear himself as much as others feared him?
    He lifted his head. He closed his mouth, wiped a hand across his lips.
    It wasn’t disgust that stopped him. He thought he could bite into that furred neck. He just didn’t think he could bite it a second time, and a third, then
keep
biting until it died or turned. Maybe somewhere inside him there was a monstrous beast waiting to devour living flesh, but if it was there, it wasn’t coming out tonight. As a creature of evil, he was a washout. As a human being he wasn’t so hot, either. He should at least try to strangle the animal to put it out of its misery—that was the
humane
thing to do—but he didn’t think he could follow through on that, either.
    “Shit,” he said to the deer.
    He sat there until the sky began to lighten. A tall shape resolved out of the dark: the Easterly water tower. He knew where he was, then, and how far he had to go by morning. There was a slim chance that his mother still didn’t know that he’d slipped out.
    He touched the animal a final time. It had stopped moving some time ago, and its big eye stared at him. He’d never been able to produce tears, but he wondered if doing so would have made him feel better. “I’m sorry,” he