There’s only one folded sheet, but the top of it’s the front page of the LeabrookRegister . Callahan has never heard of Leabrook. No reason he should have, he’s no New Jersey scholar, hasn’t even been over there since arriving in Manhattan the previous year, but he always thought the town on the other side of the GWB was Fort Lee.

Then his mind is taken over by the headlines. The one across the top seems right enough; RACIAL TENSIONS IN MIAMI EASE, it reads. The New York papers have been full of these troubles over the last few days. But what to make of WAR OF KITES CONTINUES IN TEANECK, HACKENSACK, complete with a picture of a burning building? There’s a photo of firemen arriving on a pumper, but they are all laughing! What to make of PRESIDENT AGNEW SUPPORTS NASA TERRAFORM DREAM? What to make of the item at the bottom, written in Cyrillic?

What has happened to me? Callahan asks himself. All through the business of the vampires and the walking dead — even through the appearance of lost-pet posters which clearly refer to him— he has never questioned his sanity. Now, standing on the New Jersey end of this humble (and most remarkable!) footbridge across the Hudson— this footbridge which is being utilized by no one except himself— he finally does. The idea of Spiro Agnew as President is enough all by itself, he thinks, to make anyone with a speck of political sense doubt his sanity. The man resigned in disgrace years ago, even before his boss did.

What has happened to me? he wonders, but if he’s a raving lunatic imagining all of this, he really doesn’t want to know.

“Bombs away,” he says, and tosses the four-page remnant of the LeabrookRegister over the railing of the bridge. The breeze catches it and carries it away toward the George Washington. That’s reality, he thinks, right over there. Those cars, those trucks, those Peter Pan charter buses. But then, among them, he sees a red vehicle that appears to be speeding along on a number of circular treads. Above the vehicle’s body — it’s about as long as a medium-sized schoolbus— a crimson cylinder is turning. BANDY, it says on one side. BROOKS, it says on the other. BANDY BROOKS. Or BANDYBROOKS. What the hell’s Bandy Brooks? He has no idea. Nor has he ever seen such a vehicle in his life, and would not have believed such a thing— look at thetreads, for heaven’s sake — would have been allowed on a public highway.

So the George Washington Bridge isn’t the safe world, either. Or not anymore.