The Cemetery Job Page 2

  Mia screamed again and they were on us, their fingers scratching and clawing, like a tidal wave of rotting flesh. I shoved the first one in the chest and turned to run but instead ran smack into Mia who was standing stone still, paralyzed by fear. I knocked her to the floor and nearly fell myself.

  The dead were back on me, yanking my hair and their fingernails scratching across my leather coat.

  I grabbed Mia by her arms, hauled her to her feet, spun her around, and shoved her in front of me. She ran and I was right behind her, the dead on my heels. One of them had a handful of my hair. I felt it rip free but I didn’t feel any pain. Blood trickled down the back of my neck from the wound but it didn’t matter. The only thing that did was to get outside, get to the car, and get out of there.

  Mia made the front door first, grabbing the handle and throwing it open. The alarm went off, an annoying beeping that echoed through the foyer and around the entire building. When Phil turned the alarm off, he had evidently turned it back on, as well. Why he’d done it I didn’t know and didn’t care. The cops were my least concern.

  That is, until I ran out the door behind Mia and nearly trampled her.

  Eight squad cars were screeching to a halt, blocking the way, their red and blue lights suddenly flashing to life. Sixteen cops poured out, all with their guns drawn and pointed straight at us.

  Phil had double-crossed us. He had the cops ready and waiting nearby and when the alarm went off, they swooped in.

  They screamed at us to halt, to hold our hands up, as six cops left their stations and ran over to us. In the doorway behind us, I heard the ghouls, their teeth clacking, drawing closer. They would be on us again in seconds.

  “Officer! Wait!” I cried. Too late. The cop pistol-whipped me, nearly breaking my jaw, and knocked me to the ground. Blood poured down my cheek where the butt of the gun had sliced the skin open.

  Mia screamed and the cops fell back, confused.

  One of the dead lurched out and buried his teeth into her neck, tearing away a large chunk. Mia’s blood sprayed out, splashing the wall behind us.

  The cops broke out into panic. I rolled into a ball and tumbled forward, taking out the legs of the cop who’d punched me. He went flying forward, losing his balance and smacking head first on the floor of the porch. I heard his front teeth crack on the concrete and I couldn’t have been happier. I kept right on rolling until I was off the small landing and onto the wet grass. I came up in a half-crouch, expecting to find loaded guns in my face.

  But the cops, they were way too busy. They screamed and shouted and fired their guns as the ghouls poured out of the funeral home, crashing down on the cops, their teeth and fingers catching soft flesh.

  The night exploded with gunfire and screams. I looked up and glanced behind me and saw Mia collapse under the weight of three of those things, each of them biting and tearing chunks from her. Mia’s fingers reached up to the sky as if begging God to help her.

  God wasn’t helping anyone that day, or any other day after that.

  I ran, bolting past the cop cars and through the graveyard. I wasn’t even thinking at that moment about how stupid it was to run through a cemetery when the dead were walking. I just sprinted, as fast as I could, to the secondary rendezvous point, where Shel should have been, car running and ready.

  Branches slapped my face, stinging where the cop had cut me and digging in at other, exposed places. They felt like the hands of the ghouls when they were greedily grabbing at me, trying to kill me and eat me. Panic surged through my body, propelling me onwards. I nearly tripped over one gravestone, stumbling forward and just barely catching myself on a different grave marker before I bashed my head in on its cool granite surface. My fingers scraped against the concrete as it bit into me.

  Somewhere behind me, the gunfire continued, as did the screams. None of this made any sense. How could the dead be walking?

  I kept running. It did no good to keep asking questions. I needed to get to the car, or find some sort of shelter, and then go from there. I had no idea whether what was happening was exclusive to this cemetery or if it was larger and more wide-spread. I had to go with what I knew.

  Up ahead, the trees opened into a small clearing. Just past that was the stone fence that outlined the memorial park and beyond that fence was where Shel was supposed to be.

  I ran, my feet more sure now that the ground had leveled out and there were no more gravestones or markers to trip me up and no trees to lash at me with their bare branches. Up above, the moon shone full, its bright light cascading down on the earth, lighting my way. A slight breeze blew, its cool wind offering some slight relief to my burning face and the back of my head. In the trees, I heard several night birds, singing their songs, oblivious to the hell that was going on all around them.

  I reached the fence, planted my hand, and threw my body over it. There, across the street, parked where he was supposed to be, was Shel’s car.

  Unfortunately, Shel was splayed out on the hood, four dead people tearing him to shreds as he screamed for mercy. Shel’s eyes flickered around wildly and then caught on me. I could feel him, inside his own mind, crying for my help. He raised one hand, reaching out to me for help. One of the dead buried his teeth in Shel’s palm, biting down and tearing out a chunk.

  This was madness. I stopped in my tracks and watched as they took Shel apart, each of them coming away with some major organ, a portion of his guts, and a heaping of Shel’s skin. They staggered back, munching on their meal, their lips smacking together greedily.

  Down the road, back towards the funeral home, the gunfire had stopped. In the other direction, screams drifted on the wind, carrying from the small town just a mile away.

  The whole world had turned over and gone berserk.

  One of the dead, his hands full of Shel’s heart and his mouth flowing with some of Shel’s intestines, saw me. He dropped the heart and it plopped wetly on the ground. The dead guy stumbled towards me, his arms outstretched in some bad Boris Karloff impression. His teeth clacked together, moist with Shel’s warm and wet intestines. Bits of the guts fell from his mouth as it shambled towards me.

  The other three heard their comrade and turned also, dropping their pieces of Shel and joined their comrade.

  I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure what to do. If this was going on everywhere, then what was the use of running? At some point, I’d get tired and then they would get me. And if they were all around, there really was no escape, was there?

  The clattering teeth woke me from my stupor. Maybe I would die that night, but not at their hands. And I certainly wouldn’t be eaten by them.

  The dead moved closer towards me. I backed up and eyed the car behind them. If I could make it to the car, then I could drive off to somewhere else. Where, I did not know. First things first.

  I looked down and spied a rock, about the size of my hand. I snatched it from the grass and looked at the dead as they got closer. The easiest way to stop them was to hurt their heads. When I got Bobby, it was the head wound that did him in.

  I charged the first dead guy, whipping my hand back and swinging as hard as I could. The rock caught him at his temple and smashed the side of his head in. The dead guy fell to the ground with a whoosh. I let the momentum of the blow spin me and I came back around, walloping the next closest one to me. This blow, however, caught his shoulder and knocked him off-balance. I shoved the dead guy as hard as I could and he fell into the other two. The three of them went down like bowling pins, their arms and legs tangling.

  I ran for the car. I threw the door open and tossed myself inside. I reached down to turn the keys. My fingers closed on the steering shaft.

  No keys.

  I looked up as the three dead rose and shuffled towards me. In the rearview mirror, seven more walking corpses stumbled down the road towards me. I was pinned in. I had maybe thirty seconds to get out of the car and run for my life, but my legs were throbbing and I still hadn’t caught my breath. If I went out t
here, they would get me, either right away or in a few minutes.

  The three closest dead had reached the car. They beat on the windows, the bones in their hands cracking from the assault. Their faces were blank and registered no pain, but their teeth clicked together, the sight of a meal just inches from their reach.

  I snapped all the locks and checked the rearview. The seven coming up the road had reached the back bumper. I had no choice now. They had me pinned and helpless, with no way of escape in a car with no keys.

  The rear ghouls slammed into the back windows, their bones breaking as the glass webbed and fractured. Little tinkles of glass splintered as they kept up their attack with no relenting.

  And I would have died right there if not for one thing: I was a trained thief, and no trained thief is worth a damn if he doesn’t know how to hotwire a car.

  I hit the floorboard and cracked the steering column open. I pulled out the wires, did the work, and started the car up.

  She purred like a woman who’d just had an orgasm and was ready for another. I smiled for the first time in what seemed like forever. I popped the car into gear and roared off just as the back windshield shattered and glass poured inside. But I was gone from their clutched and down the road before they even had a chance to react. I kept my speed tempered because I didn’t want to panic and wreck, but I still went at a good pace. I needed to be careful. One or two of those things in the road was no big problem, but a mob of them…I couldn’t just plow into them and be done with it. I had to drive smart and safe and get out of town to somewhere that wasn’t so populated.

  Shel, his dead body still splayed on the hood, raised his head and turned to look at me, his undead eyes blank and empty. He clacked his teeth together and lolled over onto his side to come after me. As he did so, what was left of his stomach and his left lung spilled out and rolled off the hood.

  I looked up at Shel and cut the car hard to the left and then hard to the right. Shel fell of the hood and I left him behind and pressed forward, bound to escape this horrible night.

  I drove for two hours, leaving the chaos of Newark behind. I listened to the radio and learned it wasn’t just Jersey that was hit with the living dead, but it was the entire U.S. and, according to some stations, it was happening around the world as well.

  That was their problem. Mine was surviving the night. The only place I knew to go to was an abandoned hunter’s cabin that we used after most jobs. It was about an hour off the highway and in the middle of a thick forest. We’d kept it stocked with water and canned goods as a just in case measure. I would go there and hole up and wait to see what happened next.

  A week passed.

  The reports on the radio grew more and more sporadic. Civilization was falling apart. I was okay, though. I had enough food to last through the winter, and after that, I would try and figure out what to do next.

  As the week passed, the radio reports changed from official news broadcasts to pirate stations and ham operators. Regular people, holed up like I was, telling their stories. I listened because I needed to learn about the situation, but also because it was my only human contact. One woman, a school teacher, said that the living dead were all going back to places that were special to them when they were alive. That meant homes or shopping spots or jobs or whatever.

  A chill ran through my spine when she said that.

  After another week, all the radio transmissions ceased.

  Two weeks after that, I ventured from the cabin for the first time. The walls had closed in around me and I needed to get out and get fresh air and just see something different.

  I walked on the small path that ran from the back of the cabin down to a small creek. Birds chirped and small mice squeaked. I heard other nature noises, animals in the distance, and I laughed to realize that the world went on about its business, regardless of the annihilation of the human race.

  The earth was probably happy we were gone.

  I reached the creek and got down on my stomach and stuck my head in the water, letting its coolness wash over me. The water was cold and winter was on the way and I was alone. I was maybe the last person left on earth, for all I knew.

  I sat by the creek all afternoon and as the sun began to set, I wearily made my way back to the cabin. Crickets sang as I trod along the path. It had done me good to get out for a while and I resolved to make it a daily ritual.

  I got back to the cabin and went inside. Out of habit I turned on the radio. I got nothing but static but I left it on for a while. The batteries were close to being dead, I figured, but there was no harm in letting them run out. I grabbed some wood I had stacked and started a fire in the fireplace. It was my only light to see by.

  Outside, the crickets stopped their tweeting.

  I listened as something else replaced their chirping, as noise that grew louder by the moment. It was the sound of dozens of teeth, clacking together, drawing closer.

  Fear bolted through my heart and I jumped to my feet and raced to the window. I peered outside and in the fading light I saw at least a hundred of the living dead, all in various stages of decay and rot and mutilation, stumbling towards my cabin.

  And at the lead of these hundred lost, homeless souls, was Mia and Shel, shambling to the only home they’d ever cared for, coming to join me and get the gang back together one last time.

  The Turning Point

  (Originally Published in Dead Worlds: Undead Stories Vol. 2, 2009)

  Sometimes, me being an elder now and all, survivors come to me and they ask me, how come we lost the War with the Dead? How come, given we had more people and firepower in them early days of the conflict, we got beat? How come we were reduced to sitting here, huddled together like scared rabbits in a warren, hoping the Dead didn’t find us? I usually smile sadly and shrug my shoulders as if to say “What can you do?” Most times, that does the trick. But sometimes, people press me; they want answers and they want them right quick. That’s when I drop my shoulders and stare at the ground and I tell them the story of the Stephensville Orphanage. I tell them of the turning point of the war.

  It was hard to believe that the Dead had only risen the day before. When I joined the posse as it marched all through Eastern Kentucky, armed to the teeth and killing every Dead thing we came across, I had just seen my own family killed by four of those things.

  We’d been driving back from a trip to the lake, out sunning ourselves like we were regular Hollywood movie stars, me and my wife Anna and our two kids Blake and Garth. We came up on a car that was turned over, and there were four people, all standing around, covered in blood and cuts with their clothing torn, looking at the car like they were trying to solve a particularly hard puzzle picture. I pulled up to a stop behind them and put the car in park before I noticed there was something peculiar about them.

  In particular, the man of the group had a head that was purple and bloated and twisted on his neck so that it faced around backwards.

  I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes and barely had time to blink when those folks, two men and two women, turned and stumbled over to the car. They smelled bad and their clothes were in tatters and one woman was nearly naked. I saw her big, swinging breasts and I got to admit, they were nice ones, and they sort of hypnotized me for a minute.

  Then my youngest, Garth, said, “Daddy, why is that woman naked?” I felt the eyes of Anna burning hot on my cheek, and I knew I was gonna be in trouble with her later.

  One of the women, her lips and nose split open like someone had run a knife lengthwise up her face, reached the side of the car and fell in through the window and bit my oldest, Blake, on his cheek. Blake screamed and the woman pulled back and when she did, half of Blake’s face came off in her teeth.

  Anna jumped into the back seat to help Blake and when she did, she kicked her legs in the air like she was riding a bicycle and one of her feet cracked the side of my head and slammed it against the window next to me. I blacked out for a minute and when I came to, a trickle of b
lood ran down between my eyes and dripped off my nose and I was really confused. Most of what I remember after that was a lot of screaming and those things inside the car, tearing and chomping, and blood, so much blood that I felt it sloshing in my shoes when my door opened and I spilled outside the car. The next thing I remember I was out in a field, running for my life.

  I’d like to tell you that I was a hero that day, but I wasn’t. Ain’t no such thing as heroes in times like these. There’s just those that are Dead, and those that ain’t.

  I did go back, though. When I realized that I had run from my family, something took hold of me and I sprinted right back, hoping I could still save them. I was too late, though. Them things, they were feasting on the remains of my family.

  You can go straight to hell, too, if you think I’m going to give you details. What I remember is bad enough, something I’ll take to my grave. It is my own personal hell, and we all got one of them.

  I don’t remember much between that moment and when I met the Reverend. I just wandered around in a daze. Them dead folks at the car that ate my family followed me for a while, but I was too fast for them and I guess I lost them at some point. I walked through fields and over hills and it wasn’t until it got to be night that I finally tuckered out. I was in a thick thatch of woods and I sat down and leaned my back against a tree, determined to take a little break and then get up and get to moving again.

  I must have slept straight through the night ‘cause when I woke up, I had the business end of a shotgun pushed up against my nose and a big old redneck fellow looking down it and smiling at me.

  “See,” the redneck said. “I told you he was alive. Those dead things don’t snore. Least not like this fella here.”

  The redneck pulled the gun away and another redneck, a guy that looked to be the other’s twin, stepped up and peered down at me. I thought maybe I was dreaming or had been hit on the head, because they looked like mirror images of each other. They both had bright red hair, fair skin covered in freckles, sported overalls with no shirts underneath, and were pretty short.