Blinking, dazzled, I struggle off the bed, take one step and damn! That stupid cat again! But no, I’ve tripped over a nurse in green, lying on the floor. Her blue mask has come off. Three other nurses and a woman in white, must be a doctor, are curled up, sleeping on the clean floor. I’m either mad, or dead, or stuck in a nightmare. But nightmares don’t smell; that stink is real. I’ve got to get out of this place. Where the hell are my clothes? A screen in the corner keeps blinking 1:25 p.m. with four straight lines and that maddening beeeep!
     The smell woke me. I was...I don’t know where I was. Some dream of boxing. The bell clangs and I’m slumped in my corner, smelling salts pushed under my nose and now a sharp, evil stench like the dead rat we’d had once under the bathroom. I unglue both eyelids, try to focus.
     Something sticking into my left arm, a tube hanging down, I pull it out, throw off the white blanket. I’m in blue pyjama bottoms but they’re not mine. This thumping hangover headache is building. My eyes shut and I flop back down. But through my eyelids I can see pink, with veins, those overhead lights are blazing white. So I’m in a hospital. I must have been sick, but I’m OK—dry, empty but OK. What the hell happened? Did I get hit on the bike?
     Oh yes. Ginge, the wife’s stupid cat. Shot under my feet on the back steps and now I remember windmilling backwards, cracking my head on the concrete with a lightning flash inside my skull. Then...nothing much, voices mumbling over me, that beeping sound, a long loud beeping, and someone yelled “Clear!” and kicked me in the chest. I was asleep and here I am awake.
     I step over the staff and pad barefoot towards the red EXIT signs, downstairs into a maze of white corridors, around and over a dozen or so more people on the floor. Some slump forward in their wheelchair, their pusher prone behind. Dead, long dead, or maybe just a day or two? Three? Machines in the stinking wards are beeping and pumping. What is this, some sort of terrorist attack? Poison gas? I can’t hold my breath forever, and if I wasn’t so empty my retching would have thrown up more than this thin acidic soup.
     I’m locked in! No, the automatic doors hiss open and I burst outside into the parking lot. I crouch, panting, then look around. Nobody. A clear blue morning, with fat fluffy clouds down towards the lake. On a small symbolic patch of lawn, the hospital’s lone tree, a maple, is in spring leaf. I breathe that lovely pale green-gold flower perfume over just a hint of the sickening corpse smell.
     I think Plague. I think a pandemic of Swine ‘flu. I can hear myself cheerfully singing “Ring a ring a roses, a pocket full of posies...” but no scent, no flowers can hide the smell of a dead body. I’ve read somewhere that Vicks Vapour-Rub smeared under the nose works but I’m not going back inside to find some.
     The maple is full of indignant sparrows; their squabbles punctuate the silence. The world beyond is so alarmingly quiet. No wind, no traffic, no tooting horns, sirens, bellowing construction equipment. My thudding heart, loud in my ears, slows gradually. Actually it’s all becoming rather pleasant, a spring morning, early. And I’m well out of it.
     I’m out of here. My hand automatically reaches for the keys in my pocket. No pocket, no keys. And where the hell did I leave my bike? If it’s been stolen again I—must have been brought here. How will I get home? I walk between the vehicles, big, black SUVs and those oversized Chrysler getaway cars, all new. Nothing under $45,000. Patients must be well-off these days. As the former automotive columnist for The Toronto Star, I know my cars, so even if I somehow smashed a window, hot-wiring a modern car can’t be done. And as the one-time ethics correspondent for the Globe and Mail, it would be wrong—but morality too seems to have died too.
     An ambulance is stopped at an angle, with the door open and the keys in it. I hold my breath and reach in over the driver. I see the ignition is on—but the gas gauge shows empty. All these cars and no keys! Then I remember, just inside the lobby, stepping over a well-dressed man lying on his face.
     The doors hiss open again and I crouch beside him, go through his suit pockets but no keys—then see that he’s still holding them in his hand. If the dead hand grabs me I’ll know I’m in a nightmare, but it doesn’t. It’s soft, so rigor mortis hasn’t set in, or more likely has come and gone.
     They’re on a BMW tag, but which BMW? I press the little tab and a blue car on the far side winks its lights at me.. The Exit bar is down and the attendant too, so I drive out the Entrance and turn right off Coxwell onto the Danforth. The car is playing Country and Western in time with my headache. I have to drink water, get something in my stomach before I pass out.
     Traffic lights work (is everything on automatic these days?) The avenue is surprisingly clear; apparently most of the vehicles continued straight ahead until they veered one way or the other and ran into the parked cars. One or two made it through a space: a police cruiser is buried deep in a Greek restaurant window, the oddly-named Omonia; must have been racing.. A pink Vespa is wedged among the outdoor diners slumped over their patio tables, no sign of its rider..
     Dead. All dead. I slam to a stop, lean out and vomit, loudly, nothing. My mouth tastes of acid and the battlefield stink of death. Jesus wept! It’s everywhere! I recall that after some English battles—or was it the plague?—whole townships had to rebuild on higher ground to escape the smell. Lower Gidding and Upper Gidding. I have to get home, but I know that she, too, will be dead. They’re all dead, everyone.
     Behind, a growl makes me jump. A pit bull stands on a slumped diner’s back, gulping down what looks like it was once moussaka. Ahead, a pack of assorted-sized dogs trailing leashes crosses the road, the smaller ones leading, a happy, yapping band. But other dogs are whining. I wipe my mouth and see what has to be done. Outside Starbucks, in the smoking section, dogs turn to me and tug at their leashes. A miniature collie, a midget whatever and a huge Bernese Mountain Dog gaze at me puzzled, so weak they can barely struggle up. Some have pooped. I unknot their leashes, lead them across to another Greek restaurant, drain a carafe of water, then fill up big wooden salad bowls and leave them to their slopping tongues. There’s plenty of food lying around, even without eating your owners or each other, and soon enough there’ll be rats, flies, those beetles and grubs that feast on corpses. Something for everyone.
     Behind the door of a Yoga studio I hear a dog howling. A big dog. I kick the door but it’s locked, and now a second dog is yapping. So many other dogs, trapped inside. I kick doors. Nothing. And Ginge our stupid loveable tabby at home with an empty dish and overflowing kitty tray! I don’t have my door key. I’ll need a crowbar and hammers. No hardware stores around here. At a fruit stall I manage to peel and eat an orange with shaky hands, then a spotty banana. For a guy who’s finally had the heart-attack his wife has been promising him for years, I feel pretty good. My heart’s racing but I’m OK.
     I am being watched. A leggy dog that looks improbably like a Dingo is giving me the evil eye from across the Danforth. My skin crawls; he’s going to have a go at me. He pads behind as I walk back to the BMW, keeping his distance, timing his move. And comes! I jump into the car and reach to slam the door but he’s too quick. He’s across my chest—and onto the passenger seat.
     “Good boy!,” I manage, and lower the window so he can stick his head out as we drive off.
     Canadian Tire is up Leaside way, so I slalom the Bimmer between vehicles at all angles, along Broadview and half-way down the twisty Pottery Road hill, but there we stop. Cars are piled on cars, so I walk on down. I should steal some shoes but can’t bring myself to do it.
     The railway crossing before Bayview is blocked by an endless freight train. I crawl painfully between two rail cars, stubbing a big toe. That does it! I tug the sneakers off a middle-aged runner lying on his back with ants in his eyes. He wears an interesting watch, which I take too. No use to him, or anything to anybody, really. Pyjama pants will do me: it’s midday, warm, I could go nude if I felt like it.
     I check in the cars waiting for the train to pass: all on Empty. But at the front of the line sits a Ford Explorer with a THINK GREEN bumper sticker, and its tank is full. The young mother slumped over the wheel must have wisely switched it off to wait. I lift out the three kids and put them on the grass, then shove her out the door onto the road. But I’m wedged in by the cars behind. Here goes nothing. I rev the big V8 in reverse, take my foot off the brake and shunt the whole line back, triggering a chorus of car alarms. The scruffy blue dog is sniffing the three kids. I pull a tricky U-turn and drive on up the hill, leaving the chasing pooch behind. He’ll be OK.
     Canadian Tire smells horrible but I know where the respirators are kept, run in and grab one, rip it out of the packet—and now I can breathe without gagging. The lights are on but for how long? I load up on big flashlights, break-and-enter tools, and for some reason camping equipment, which I then toss out of the cart. With a million vacant houses to live in, why would I camp? Gas cans will be useful, and a siphon pump and tubing. Crowbar, shovel, mattock, wrecking bar—I can return for more. My headache has gone, replaced by a cycle of jaunty songs... I pick up a cashier’s mike and peel off my respirator long enough to belt out that Steely Dan number:

Attention all shoppers
It’s Cancellation Day
Yes the Big Adios
Is just a few hours away.
You'll need the tools for survival
And the medicine for the blues
Sweet treats and surprises
For the little buckaroos

     The words echo through the dead store. If I keep singing, the smell isn’t so bad. Then home, still singing The Last Mall over and over, Karaoke to the big, quiet Explorer.

Roll your cart back up the aisle
Kiss the checkout girls goodbye
Ride the ramp to the freeway
Beneath the blood orange sky

In fact the sky is a brilliant blue, the colour of hope.