The Cemetery Job Page 3

  The one on the left, the one who’d put the gun upside my nose, stuck his hand out to help me up. I took it and as I got to my feet, he introduced himself. “I’m Andy,” he said. “This here is my twin brother, Randy.”

  I nodded to them both.

  “How’d you come to be out here, friend?” Randy asked.

  I told them my story and their faces fell a bit when I got to the part about my family getting killed and when I was finished, they nodded like two of the three wise men that visited Jesus and filled me in on what was happening.

  I don’t need to tell you the particulars, ‘cause you already now. The dead started to walk, getting up from morgue slabs and funeral homes and others who’d just died, like in accidents or heart attacks and the such. They got up and they killed people and ate them. All of this happened in the space of a day or so, and Andy and Randy were part of a posse put together to clean the earth of these heathen creatures. They asked if I wanted to join. I said yes.

  The boys took me to meet the rest of the crew. I couldn’t tell you much about any of them in particular; they were all mountain folk like me and they were all men. There were twelve of us in all and we were led by the good Reverend Sizemore of the Antioch Baptist Church down Hazard way. He was a nice guy, tall and stout, with black hair and eyes to match and he had the firmest handshake I’d ever felt. He wore a thick black mustache that rode his upper lip like a prized stallion and carried a double-barreled shotgun and a .357 Magnum. He was a born leader of men, and just being in his presence I felt a curious kind of peace.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, his big bass voice booming over the pasture where we’d gathered. “God has called us here today because the Devil has unleashed hell upon this earth. Satan bade the whore of Babylon to spread her willing legs and to give birth to the Devil’s children. They gushed out of her harlot womb and now they seek to devour mankind body and soul. And we have been called, dear brothers, to be the Holy Soldiers in God’s Cause.”

  Everyone cheered and I found that I was cheering, too. I know it may sound funny, especially now with the way things turned out, but right at that moment, I was a lost soul, and the words of the Reverend made a certain kind of sense to me. I needed a purpose, a reason to be, and if killing the spawn of the Devil was it, then by God, I’d do it with a smile on my face. Besides, the Devil had taken my family. It was only fair I return the favor.

  Reverend Sizemore had us go to the small creek that ran through the pasture and there he baptized us all into God’s Holy Service. He whispered a prayer over each of us and then dunked us and when it was over, we all gathered by the bed of the creek and smiled and slapped each other on the back. We were eager to get to God’s work.

  So we roamed the countryside, coming upon farms and houses and we must have killed four dozen of them dead things by the time it got to be afternoon. One of the twins, Andy or Randy, I’m not sure which, outfitted me with a rifle and I went along and killed that which was already dead but still walked—the Devil’s Spawn—with my brothers in arms, until night fell.

  We met up with another group and we shared a fire and sang some hymns and some women came along and they brought us fried chicken and bologna sandwiches and we sacked out for the night.

  I had horrible nightmares of my boys coming back from the dead, their teeth clacking together as they came for me, calling out “Daddy,” over and over again. I woke up screaming and found I wasn’t alone. Several of the men had woken up the same way and when our eyes met, I could see they was just as haunted as I was.

  That’s the way it went, for days on end. We lived on black coffee and cigarettes and, after three nights of no rest, a few others joined our group and they brought drugs with them, powder that could keep you up and moving for days at a time. I wasn’t the first to partake, but I wasn’t the last.

  We walked everywhere we went. That was the only way to be sure we were thorough in our hunting. There was no telling where we’d run into a walking corpse and we were damn sure they wouldn’t just walk along the roads as easy pickings. Why, one time, we came upon an old outhouse in the back of someone’s yard and when Andy—or Randy, I couldn’t tell you which—opened the door to look inside, he was greeted by a dead man, tall and skinny with brown hair that stuck up on his head like a rooster’s. The fellow must have sat down to have himself a good crap and died on the toilet. Well, this got all of us to laughing quite a bit, and it was some sight to see the dead guy try and chase Andy—or Randy—around the yard, his pants down around his ankles and his little dead pecker flapping in the wind. Finally, someone got bored and shot the thing in the head, ending its misery.

  They weren’t people to us. They were just dead things, all messed up. And we didn’t care about them other than to kill them and then move on and kill some more. It was an endless blur of killing, of exterminating the vermin of the Devil. We went from town to town, led on by the ruthless and God-fearing Reverend Sizemore. By the time we faced our final battle, our group had grown to over twenty. It appeared we were winning the war, because the more towns we went through, the less of those dead things there seemed to be.

  By that time, even the good Reverend had become a slave to the drugs we were all taking, and his black eyes blazed all the more intense as he gave us instructions as to where we were to go next.

  “In the morning, we shall travel to the Stephensville Orphanage,” Reverend Sizemore told us. “My sister, Beulah Sizemore, runs the place. We will go there and make sure that the young charges in her care are safe.”

  The men all raised their fists and yelled. We were on a Holy Crusade, and what could be holier than protecting helpless children?

  Of course, no one slept that night. We were too frayed, to high and too agitated by our fears. When morning came and we started our march, it seemed almost a relief to finally being able to do something rather than sit and stare into the night sky and wait.

  I remember marching with my brothers in arms that next morning, full of righteous feelings and purposes. We were going to protect some children and I couldn’t help but think of my own two boys, Garth and Blake. I wondered how they were, if they were in heaven. I didn’t fear that they’d become like those dead people we’d been dealing with. First off, what was left of Garth and Blake wasn’t enough to fill one pair of pants, let alone two. And second, the only dead I’d ever seen were adults. God in His mercy must have seen fit to spare the youngest of us. And I hoped that God held my two boys in His arms and let them play around his Throne. I’d seen the way they’d suffered, and if Garth and Blake didn’t qualify as martyrs, I couldn’t think of many others who did.

  So we went and after a time, Andy or Randy started whistling and pretty soon, we were just like them prisoners of war in that old movie, the one where they have to build a bridge and they whistled while they work. Looking back now, I suppose it was sort of stupid, drawing attention like that to ourselves. We weren’t aware of what was going on in the cities, and how the dead were starting to outnumber the living. We were just country boys, rednecks and white trash and all of us God fearing, on our way to do righteous work.

  By noon, we’d reached the Orphanage. Reverend Sizemore led us on our way through the iron gates at the entrance, and down a short road that ran into a small parking lot in front of the building its ownself. The Orphanage was tall, four stories, and looked like something straight out of a Dracula movie. It was dark and kind of slouched, like a hunchback with a deranged mind. There were windows along the front, the shades all drawn, that ran in four rows, cut off only by huge double doors that served as the entrance. Sitting off to the right of the building was probably the best playground I’d ever seen. They had swings and see-saws and slides and some kind of obstacle course thing. I thought to myself that if I was a kid, I just might put up with the creepy house so I could get to the playing field. It would almost be worth it.

  Behind the Orphanage, about twenty yards back, was a large pond. I noticed it because of what, or rather wh
o, was sitting at its shore. She was a large woman, weighing at least four hundred pounds, and she wore a big blue dress that flapped like a tent in the breeze, with a white bonnet on her head. I couldn’t make out much more of her except she was shaking all over. She reminded me of a very sad whale, beached on some shore, sure that it was stuck and dying.

  “Beulah!” Reverend Sizemore cried out. He ran to her side and threw his arms around his sister—well, as much as he could get them around her—and tried to comfort her in her grief. She was so big that when she sobbed she shook his body, too. I looked hard at her pudgy face, all red and bloated and glistening with tears and snot, and I couldn’t see any resemblance between her and the Reverend. Maybe they were step-brother and sister. Who knew? What I wanted to know, what all of us wanted to know, was voiced by Andy.

  “Where’s the kids?” Andy asked.

  Beulah let out with a tremendous cry that sounded like a thunder clap and she squeezed the Reverend so hard that I thought his head would pop off like a pimple. It didn’t, but I could have sworn I heard his ribs crack a little. He coughed and begged her to let him loose and she did. Reverend Sizemore stumbled back a step or two and gasped for breath.

  Randy hit Andy for asking the question.

  “What did I do?” Andy asked.

  “That’s a grieving woman there,” Randy said.

  “It’s a good question, though,” Reverend Sizemore said. The color returned to his face and he’d gotten his wind back. “Where are the kids, Beulah?”

  She screamed with grief again and when her body shook I felt the ground quake a tiny bit. Somebody off to my left let out a cry and we all looked in that direction and we saw out what had happened to the kids.

  They were out there, sixty or some odd of them, floating face down in the big pond. I think we all gasped at once, or maybe it was just me and I was really loud, but I do know that we were all taken aback by the sight. We’d seen a lot in the last few days, but we didn’t ever see sixty something drowned kids all floating in a pond.

  “What did you do?” Revered Sizemore screamed at her. “In the name of God, what did you do?”

  It was like the word “God” triggered something in her because all of the sudden, Beulah got all calm and serene like she was a swan floating on a lake in a dream of heaven itself. She looked up at her brother and smiled.

  “I sent them to be with the Lord,” she said.

  “You did what?” Reverend Sizemore said.

  “I sent them to be with the Lord,” she repeated. “The plague of demons is on this planet, brother. The seals have been ripped and the final days are upon us. The dead walk the earth. I saw no reason for the children to suffer anymore. So I poisoned their morning milk and brought them out here and had them wade into the water until they passed out and then drowned.”

  No one said anything for a minute or two. A stiff breeze whipped over the pond and beat us all about the face and neck. We could smell the frogs that used the pond as their home as well as the scent of decay just underneath it. The kids hadn’t been dead long, but they’d be ripe soon enough.

  Finally, Reverend Sizemore broke the spell.

  “You committed murder,” he said, his voice grave and studied.

  “I spared the children,” she said, still sitting peacefully by the water. “Does not the Bible say to suffer not the children?”

  Reverend Sizemore’s mouth worked open and then shut. I got the feeling he’d never had the holy book used against him before and now that it had been, he wasn’t sure how to react. I can’t blame him much, really, because those were very confusing times. We’d been going through a lot and we were all beyond weary. The only thing keeping us on our feet were our mission, the drugs, and the coffee. And all three were wearing off right quick.

  “Oh, my God,” Randy said, breaking the silence.

  I turned and looked to where he was pointing. It was the most horrible thing I’d seen since watching my own children die.

  Them sixty odd drowned kids, they all stood up in the pond and looked at us, their eyes as dead as their souls. Water dripped down their faces and their skin had purple splotches mixed with a darker green. I don’t know why they looked that way, if the pond water had turned them that color or not, but that’s how it was.

  Every man stared at them kids and not a one of us could believe his eyes. Up until that point, we’d never seen a child come back to life; it had only been adults. But now there we were, looking out at a dead brood, all of them no older than maybe nine or ten, standing in pond water that was waist deep, staring back at us like we were the first meal they’d seen in a hundred years.

  It occurred to me that up until that moment, it had all been some sort of game for me. It was like I was living in a dream world, a nightmare, and nothing really mattered. Go out and kill these dead walking creatures from hell. I didn’t have to think of anything, I didn’t have to deal with the deaths of my wife and children, I didn’t have to face my emotions and my loss.

  And then them kids came up out of the water, and all I could think of was my dead kids. Did they end up like this? Were they walking around, all dead and messed up? What about my wife? Was she out there, too?

  The kids moved slow, wading through the water like ghosts. They were thin and frail looking and for a minute I thought they might still be alive. But just looking at their skin and their eyes told me I was wrong.

  None of us moved. I could see everyone else was watching, just like I was, not believing what we were seeing, not accepting that God would allow such a terrible thing to happen. It was one thing to give Satan dominion over men and women, but children?

  I stopped believing in God right then and there.

  Two kids, one who wore a torn tee-shirt that had orange and blue horizontal stripes, and the other who had on a pair of overalls and looked like he could be Andy and Randy’s cousin, shambled out of the water first. They came out right next to Beulah, who had her back to them. She was on her knees, praying to a God that didn’t exist, while her brother, the good Reverend, stood still, staring at the undead kids just like the rest of us.

  The kid in the striped shirt fell on Beulah and buried his teeth into her right arm. He bit deep and yanked his head back and a chunk of fat tore free, peeling back like an apple getting skinned. That hunk of fat shined in the sunlight, all greasy and gleaming with blood, as Beulah screamed holy hell. The kid gobbled it down like a starved dog. The other kid bit into Beulah’s hand, right between her thumb and her finger, and pulled back, tearing a lump of fat out for himself. Blood sprayed from her hand and she pitched forward and fell on her face. She clawed at the ground, trying to get away from the encroaching kids, but she’d only made it easier for them to get her.

  They poured from the pond, a dozen of them swarming Beulah like ants on a picnic. I couldn’t see much of what they were doing, I just saw them come out of the pile, one at a time, each of them carrying something that belonged to Beulah. One kid who had a harelip and a shaved head had a piece of her arm, which he was munching on as the dead are wont to do; another kid, a boy with big, bugged out eyes like one of them Mexican dogs, had a long strip of flesh that looked like flypaper flapping in the breeze; a girl with long black hair pasted to the sides of her face had an eyeball and what looked to be Beulah’s nose in one hand and an ear and part of her scalp in the other; and so it went.

  I heard Beulah in there screaming, fit to be tied, but I didn’t see her until she rose up and shook those kids off her like a dog getting out of water. There wasn’t much left in the way of skin on her, and all those body parts she was missing made her look like some kind of monster. She cried out to the sky, raising the one arm she had left intact and shaking her fist at the sun. Blood poured from her, splattering on the ground and mixing with the pond water at her heels.

  It was a moment I’ll never forget, big old Beulah, killer of children, cursing God and rising like a terrible instrument of wrath, only to fold over and fall down one last time
. A boy with a long fat nose grabbed hold of a breast and tore it off in his grubby little hands right while another boy who had hair like one of the Beatles and a big old round pot belly, ripped a hole in her stomach and stuck his head in. He climbed on in there like he was trying to get back in the womb, chomping and sliding around like a hog in a trough.

  Reverend Sizemore screamed and pulled his gun but he never got a chance to fire it. There were too many kids, and the ones that weren’t interested in Beulah were going after him and us.

  A little girl with pigtails and skirt and a face bloated from floating dead in the pond water crawled up Reverend Sizemore’s legs and tore a chunk out of his thigh. He screamed and backhanded her like he was whacking a tennis ball but it didn’t do much good. She fell off and got right back up again, hands reaching out, fingers tearing into the wound she’d already bitten open. The Reverend screamed as she dug her thumbs in and squeezed, blood spraying out of the wound like a water hose.

  Another kid, this one I couldn’t see so well, bit a hunk out of the Reverend’s calf. The Reverend stumbled back and fell down and that was it for him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you never get down on the ground, not with the dead around. Four kids crawled over him and he got the treatment just like his sister did, the only difference being that his screams were higher-pitched than hers.

  And the kids kept coming. They weren’t satisfied with the holy brother and sister, they wanted all of us. The dead were like machines, eating and moving and eating as if that’s all they were meant to do.

  None of the men moved because we were all still in shock, I think. A boy that looked to be about eight years old with stringy long blonde hair bit this man to my right. The man shrieked and raised his arm and it was the damndest thing: the kid’s teeth were locked on and when the man lifted his arm, the kid went with it, his feet kicking in the air. The man shook his arm violently and the kid spun off and landed in the pond, his teeth working on the piece of meat he’d torn out.