“Does it? Yes, I see just looking at you that it does. Perhaps you’ll tell me your own story someday. I have an idea it would put mine to shame. In any case, I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore as I approached the far end of the footbridge. And it seemed that I wasn’t entering New Jersey, either. At least not the one I’d always expected to find on the other side of the Hudson. There was a newspaper crumpled against the”

Two

footrail of the bridge— which seems completely deserted except for him, although vehicle traffic on the big suspension bridge to his left is heavy and constant— and Callahan bends to pick it up. The cool wind blowing along the river ruffles his shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair.

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.