The Cemetery Job

  The Cemetery Job:

  Tales of the Living Dead

  By

  Kelly M. Hudson

  Text Copyright © 2014 Kelly M. Hudson

  Art Copyright © 2014 Daniel Johnson

  Dedicated to those who believed and to those who didn’t

  So here they are. This is a collection of several of my earliest zombie short stories, presented in the order they were initially published. Most of these stories are raw and I had to really hold back on going through and editing them again. I wanted to present them as they were originally offered with no additions or subtractions. Any fault in editing belongs to me.

  Special thanks to all the editors and publishers who believed in me enough to give me a chance.

  And thank you for taking the time to read these stories. I hope you enjoy them.

  The Cemetery Job

  (Originally Published in Dead Worlds: Undead Stories, 2009)

  The job was simple: break into Speigel’s Mortuary, rob the dead, and then take off to our cabin hideout upstate. What we didn’t count on was that the night we chose to steal from the dead was the same night that the dead decided to walk.

  There were five of us and we were professional thieves who’d worked together many times before: Shel Thompson, our driver, who had nerves of steel; Bobby Jewels, our muscle, the guy with the guns and the know-how; Phil MacAtee, the old guy who knew everyone; Mia, the tiny, beautiful safe-cracker; and me, Richard Parks, the planner.

  Mia brought us the job, and at first, we all laughed.

  “We rob dead people,” she said, flipping back that bright blonde hair so that it fell over her slender shoulder. Mia was a looker, one of those women that make men’s jaws drop open when they walk by.

  We were all gathered in my small apartment, each of us short on money and looking for an easy score. Shel sat over by the window, looking out, his burly frame filling my easy chair. Phil sat on my couch and stared down at the floor, his floppy fedora pulled down tight to his ears. Bobby popped the top of a beer from my fridge and drank half of it down in one gulp. He belched and smiled, his big belly rumbling.

  “That’s right. I had chicken for lunch,” he said, smacking his lips together. He looked at Mia. “Where’d you get your idea?”

  “I read about it in a magazine,” she said. “People have been breaking into cemeteries, stealing the metal fixtures from memorials and tombstones. Hell, somebody even stole 1000 pound bronze gates from a mausoleum.”

  “Nice, but not worth it. Too much work for too little,” I said, waving my hand to dismiss her.

  “People die all the time, even rich people,” Mia kept going. “They get taken in to the mortuary, right? And then the guy prepares their bodies, right? And before they get put on display, the family brings them clothes to wear. Clothes and jewelry.”

  I snapped my fingers. “The Turners,” I said. Walter Turner was a local rich guy with an extended family. They’d been out on a boating trip in the bay when the uncle, who was apparently a drunk, passed out at the wheel while showing off. The boat careened into a yacht that was full of partiers, killing most of the Turners and a dozen of the people on the other boat. It was a big disaster, made all the papers.

  “Exactly,” Mia smiled. “Now you’re getting it. The Turner guy offered to pay for the funerals and they decided they’d have everybody out there for one big service. So all the bodies are in the same mortuary.”

  “Spiegels,” Phil muttered.

  “That’s right,” Mia said.

  Phil looked up at me, his spectacles catching the sunlight coming in from the window where Shel sat.

  “I know a guy,” Phil said. “Who’s got the floor plans to Speigel’s Mortuary.”

  That’s how it came together.

  I made a simple plan to break and enter, get in, get the loot, and get out. Phil told us that his contact told him that the family that ran Speigel’s actually kept all their money on site, in a safe. And in the basement, they kept the bodies and effects. The only problem was, there was only one entrance to the basement.

  Shel drove and stuck with the car, parked on the other side of the cemetery. Bobby, Phil, Mia, and myself all broke into Spiegel’s.

  At midnight we moved in, Phil’s contact provided us with all the alarm codes so we had no problems.

  We slunk into the foyer, deep into darkness, clicking on our flashlights as Phil led us down a long hallway. Furniture sat in black shadows, looking like people sitting there, watching us. A shiver ran down my spine.

  A security guard, tall and thick, came around the corner at the end of the hall. My light hit his face and when it did, the guard suddenly fell forward and hit the floor with a thump. I shined my light up and saw Bobby standing over the guy, grinning from ear to ear. His fist was clenched around a pipe he’d been carrying. He’d popped the guard on the back of the head.

  Bobby belched and smiled. “Roast beef.”

  “There wasn’t supposed to be a security guard,” I whispered.

  Phil shrugged and walked ahead. He stopped when we reached a doorway at the end of the hall and pointed off to his left at a painting hanging on the wall. Mia nodded and took the painting down. Behind it was a safe.

  Bobby stood next to Mia as I turned and followed Phil down the stairs.

  It was dark down there and our flashlights barely sliced through the blackness. The gloom was almost like a living thing, pushing against our lights and trying to force us back up the stairs.

  “This would be considerably easier if we turned the lights on,” Phil said.

  “No way,” I answered, shining my light around. “I’m not taking any chances.”

  “There are no windows and no doors. The room is sealed off from the outside world,” Phil said. “No one will see the light.”

  “No,” I said and that was it.

  Our beams caught the dead bodies lying on tables. There were fifteen in all, each in varying states of being worked on. Four of the bodies were naked—all men, much to my disappointment—and the other eleven were in their burial clothes, with four of the men in suits and the remaining seven women in dresses. They looked perfectly calm, like they were sleeping and didn’t have a care in the world.

  My light caught a couple of the women and I cringed to see one whose arm was snapped nearly in half and lying obscenely across her chest. Further examination revealed that some of the faces hadn’t been worked on yet; there were a couple of guys with large gashes across their cheeks, a woman who’d had left arm completely flattened, and another guy whose chin was split wide open so that it combined with the slash of his mouth to form a “T.” Obviously, the embalmer hadn’t been to work yet.

  I turned away. I couldn’t and didn’t want to see anymore.

  Phil coughed and looked at me, impatient yet again. The little guy was made of ice. He pointed at a cabinet at the far end of the room. It was as tall as me and had two doors held together by a combination lock. I smiled. This was too easy.

  We walked over to the cabinet and I pulled the hammer from inside my jacket and smashed the lock. It broke and fell to the floor. The doors creaked open on their own, like I was in a haunted house.

  Inside the cabinet were layers of gold chains, diamond rings, a few watches, and earrings. They glittered in the beam of my flashlight.

  Upstairs, Mia screamed.

  Phil and I looked up, shining our beam at the ceiling. We heard Bobby yelp and then something heavy hit the ceiling and rolled around.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said, my voice echoing in the cold room.

  I stared into the murkiness just beyond Phil. I heard what sounded like whispers, and then a few groans. I shined my flashlight past Phil and into the room.

  On all the ta
bles, the dead sat up, moaning, their clothes rustling, making the whispering sound I’d heard. They all turned and looked at me and Phil.

  Above us, something else slammed against the ceiling and we heard Mia scream again. I looked up. Phil tugged at my jacket.

  “Boss,” he said, shining his light across the room.

  The dead were all off their tables, standing and looking at us, their eyes empty and their mouths clacking open and shut, over and over again. They shuffled towards us.

  I heard Mia scream upstairs again and something else heavy fall over. Then Phil screamed and I spun in time to see him jerk his arm from the mouth of one of the cadavers, the flesh ripping in long strings and blood bubbling out. Phil fell against the wall as the dead person, a guy in a tuxedo, chewed on the skin and clawed at Phil’s face.

  I grabbed Phil by his collar and drug him out of the reach of the tuxedo guy and plunged forward. I lowered my shoulder and slammed into the dead guy wearing a blue suit in front of me. He stumbled back and then kept coming.

  I did not try to think; I just kept moving. A dead woman on my left with a face that looked like a hatchet had been taken to it came at me. I kicked her right knee and broke it and she fell to the ground but still kept coming. I kicked her face and her head bobbed back and then she looked at me with her dead, milky eyes. Her teeth clacked together, hungry for my flesh.

  And then the others were on me, their bodies pressing against me. They didn’t seem to have much strength, but there were so many of them. I felt one of them bite my jacket but his teeth didn’t cut through. The leather was too thick.

  Phil screamed again as they pulled him from me and I heard more of his flesh rip. Dead lips slurped his blood and slapped their lips together. I wish I could say that he went down nobly, but he didn’t. He cried out and grabbed at me, begging for my help. But the only chance I had was to push him into those things, to let them have him, and try and shove my way out.

  So that’s what I did. I let go of Phil and they were on him, tearing and clawing. The smell of Phil’s blood rode the air, as they fell on him, leaving me alone.

  I swept the flashlight out in front of me. Only five of those things were in my way, the others diving in for their feast. I didn’t have time to wonder why they wanted to eat us; I was solely thinking of escaping.

  Three of the dead people barring my way were men, each in a tuxedo; two were women, both in nice dresses. One of the guys had already been worked on, as his lips were sewn shut. He opened his mouth, the sutures tearing his dead flesh, and he kept working his jaws until his lips were in shreds. But there was no blood. His freed jaw clacked his teeth together as he lunged at me. I caught him with an upper cut that fortunately knocked him backwards and off-balance. He fell down and I kicked his jaw, shattering it, just as the two females locked onto my arms and started biting. I could feel their teeth, scraping on the leather of my jacket, and it turned my stomach. I shook them both off, dropping my flashlight in the process. I lunged forward into the darkness, running toward the steps. I missed, and ran into a wall.

  Behind me, Phil’s screams died off into a coughing gag and I heard those things keep tearing at him. The sound of his rupturing flesh mixing with the wet smacking of half a dozen undead lips filled my ears, nearly driving me insane.

  I felt around. In the room, it was pitch-blackness and the only senses I could rely on were my hearing and smell. The dead shuffled behind me, silent except for the sound of their feet scraping the ground and their teeth gnawing Phil’s flesh. I ran my hands along the wall and found the light switch. Fear of getting caught was my last concern now, so I flicked it and light poured into the room. I turned and looked, and the ghastly sight I saw will stay with me for the rest of my life.

  Phil had been torn apart. One ghoul, a naked guy, had both of Phil’s eyeballs at the end of two of his fingers, poked through like a double shish kebab. The ghoul licked at the eyes before gobbling them down. A dead woman had strings of Phil’s intestines pulled out and wrapped around her arms like some people twirl spaghetti on a fork. She chewed on them, wet, slathering noises coming from her mouth. A dead man had Phil’s right foot and another had his left. They gnawed on the toes, stripping the flesh away like they were sucking chicken meat off a drumstick. Three of the dead things had torn Phil’s arms off and chomped them, tearing large chunks out, the blood dribbling down their chins as they dug in. Others had pieces of Phil’s ears and cheeks and others clawed at his chest, ripping out lumps of hairy skin, one of them biting off a nipple and chewing vigorously. The last sight I saw, before I turned to run, was that of a female corpse on all fours, her face buried in Phil’s crotch as his legs sat splayed eagle. She jerked her head back hard and fell, lying on her back in a pool of Phil’s blood, Phil’s penis obscenely resting on her lips. She sucked it into her mouth like rich people eat oysters, her lips smacking with blood as Phil’s testicles, still attached to his penis by a thin film of flesh, bobbed up and down on her chin.

  I bolted for the stairs, and as I did, I looked up and saw that some of the dead, not satisfied with their feast of Phil, shuffled towards me, their teeth clacking together as their mouths opened and shut.

  Those corpses, the walking dead, made it to the bottom of the steps by the time I made it to the top. Their feet thudded on each step as they kept coming, climbing the stairs after me, their teeth snapping together, hungry for a meal.

  I clambered to the top and pushed the door. It wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t locked because the top half bent open. There was something at the bottom blocking it.

  Behind me, the dead climbed closer and closer.

  I pushed on the door as hard as I could, but it still wouldn’t open.

  The dead could, though, and they were only five steps below me now, getting ever closer. I hollered, my cries tearing from my lungs, as I threw myself as hard as I could against the door.

  It opened at the bottom. Barely.

  Lying at the foot of the door was another dead body. It was Bobby. What the hell had happened up there?

  I shoved myself into the space between the door and the jamb. I could just get my chest in-between. Behind me, close to me, the clacking of the teeth of the dead got closer and closer. I pushed against the door, using the leverage my body gave me, and it opened a bit more, just enough for me to pop through and tumble into the hallway. I yanked my right foot through just as the fingers of one of the corpses grabbed at my ankle. I kicked the door shut and lay on the floor, gasping and panting.

  On my left, in a dark corner, something moved.

  I stared hard into the darkness. There was something there, a shape, but I couldn’t tell if it was a sack of potatoes or a person. The shape didn’t move and I held my breath.

  Behind me, hands pounded the shut door. I could hear the wood creaking as those dead bodies pressed up against it. They weren’t very strong but their sheer number was going to break the door and then they’d spill into the upstairs.

  A shuffling sound came from the corner and I looked up in time to see the dark shape stand, still shrouded in blackness, and loom over me.

  “Who’s there?” I croaked.

  “Rick?” came Mia’s voice, ragged and frightened.

  “Jesus Christ, Mia,” I said back, relieved. “Are you okay? I heard you scream.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, her voice stuttering a bit as she tripped over the words. The pounding got louder at the door.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  Mia nodded. I felt along the wall and found the light switch and turned it on. Just like before, I wished I hadn’t.

  Lying on the floor at Mia’s feet was the dead body of the security guard. His head was hammered in, the back half of it smashed down and broken like a watermelon. In the side of his head was a screwdriver, buried up to the handle.

  “He wouldn’t die,” Mia said. “I beat him and beat him and he wouldn’t die.”

  “Jesus,” I said. I turned and looked at Bobby’s
dead body at my feet. Half his face was gnawed off and his stomach was ripped open. His intestines bulged out like someone had spilled a bag of giant worms. Cooling blood pooled the floor around him.

  “The guard attacked us,” Mia said. “And Bobby, he beat him down pretty good. And I worked on the safe. I was sure we were okay because of Bobby because he’s Bobby, you know?”

  “Calm down,” I told her.

  “And then, I didn’t hear anything. I almost had the safe popped and it got really quiet and then I heard this smacking sound and I turned around and--,” she pointed at Bobby’s gnawed face. “He was eating Bobby.”

  “Okay,” I said. I got up and grabbed her arm. The beating at the door was louder and the wood was splintering. We had to get out of there and quick. “Let’s just go.”

  “And when he saw me, the security guard attacked me, and, and—,” Mia broke off, her words frozen in her mouth.

  Something moaned behind me. I turned around.

  Bobby stood there, flaps of skin hanging off where his cheeks had been, his intestines sliding out and dragging on the floor behind him. His teeth snapped together and he stared at me, his eyes as dead as he was.

  Mia screamed. I staggered a step back as Bobby leaned forward, his teeth cracking the air inches from my face. I shoved him in his chest and Bobby staggered back a step and then lunged forward. I caught him by his shoulders as his hands scrabbled against my chest, trying to tear through my jacket. I stepped forward, stuck my good leg out, and then heaved Bobby over my leg, tripping him. He fell to the ground hard, his head smacking the floor and splitting. When he hit, his intestines—just looking for the opportunity I guess—exploded from his stomach, spilling out and splashing across my feet in unison with the brains that burst from his fractured skull

  Right when I tossed Bobby down, killing him again, the door split open and the dead from downstairs poured out, falling over each other, their jaws slamming open and shut as if they were eating the air.