The last member of the council was an unmarried Norwegian farmer named Torkelson who smelled of pig manure and had hands the size of cast-iron skillets, and who represented the interests of unmarried Norwegian farmers who smelled of various kinds of manure. He didn’t talk much, was often drunk, and tended to nod gravely at anything anyone said to him, often as a brief precursor to nodding off. But Eileen was scrupulously nice to him, always shaking his hand (though she washed her own thoroughly afterward), because Lake Woebegotten wasn’t getting food trucked in anymore, and Dolph’s store was pretty well cleaned out, and the town would only survive if the farmers kept farming and shared what they grew and raised with everyone else. It was an annoying situation.
Eileen didn’t like situations that couldn’t be favorably affected by the judicious application of chloroform or shotgun shells. She was good at thinking in a straight line, and could think in a straight line remarkably hard and far and thoroughly, but being mayor required thinking around corners, and that was kind of a stretch.
“So on the agenda today, we need to talk about sanitation, and about what kind of help the townspeople can give the farmers, and that’s about it, right?”
“Defense,” Julie said. “It’s right here on the agenda. The first item, actually.”
“Ah, of course.” Eileen picked up the agenda—the copies were handmade since nobody wanted to waste power on the library’s copy machine for so few pieces of paper—and made a great show of squinting at it. “Just had a little trouble reading the handwriting, here.” Julie went on and on about defense, Eileen heard she’d been in the military though apparently not in the US armed forces, and how did that even work, it sounded sort of disloyal, Eileen didn’t know the details and wasn’t about to ask but she figured it must involve something like the French Foreign Legion, the service for people who’d been disgraced and lived under assumed names and had syphilis. “Well, then. What do you suggest for defense? Should we dig a moat around the town? Fill it with lake water?” She smiled, but no one else seemed to find it amusing, which just went to show none of them were funny.
Julie stood up. Who did she think she was? “I don’t want to talk about practical measures today—I think the InterFaith group is doing a fine job patrolling, and after the events at the Knudsen farm, everyone is being especially diligent.”
“Volunteers have quadrupled,” Father Edsel rumbled. “We’re turning people away because we don’t have enough fuel for the vehicles.”
“Is Mr. Levitt still… behaving?” Eileen asked, giving the Father a meaningful look. Everyone in this room, excepting Julie and the pig farmer, knew exactly what Levitt was, and why they needed to be concerned about him, especially after Dolph’s accusations on election night.
“After moping over the mayoral race for a while, he’s going on regular patrols again,” the priest said. “Stevie Ray thinks it’s best to keep him occupied.” Best to keep him where someone armed could keep an eye on him, more like it, Eileen figured. “I understand he’s spending most of his free time visiting the local graveyards. He says he has more friends dead than alive these days. He’s been keeping things tidy around the graves, things like that.”
“He’s a credit to the community,” Edsel said, not bothering to hide the crushing sarcasm in his voice. Even though he was bossy, Catholic, and crazy, Eileen sometimes found herself liking Edsel. He was as straightforward as a bulldozer.
“We’re keeping an eye on him,” Stevie Ray said.
Eileen nodded. Stevie Ray had told her that he wanted to lock Mr. Levitt up again, permanently this time, that letting him out had been a terrible mistake even if it had seemed like the only choice at the time, but he didn’t want to move against the man too quickly—he thought Levitt was entirely capable of climbing to the top of the grain elevator with a sniper rifle and picking off townspeople, or wiring himself with explosives, or going on a last killing spree, if he felt threatened. Better to lull him into a false sense of security and then strike when he wasn’t expecting it. Eileen thought Stevie Ray was just afraid to go toe-to-toe with the man. A little poison, or a well-placed bullet, would have solved the problem, but Eileen wasn’t ready to suggest summary executions just yet. She needed to get everyone to accept her as judge as well as mayor first, and that was something she planned to ease up to.
“Back to my point,” Julie said. “I want to talk about the zombies—about the nature of the zombies. I’ve been… making some observations, and I’ve discovered something important. Something all of you should know. I think it will change the way we defend ourselves.”
“What’s that?” Eileen said.
“Easier if I show you,” Julie said, rising. “Would you all come with me to my grandfather’s house, after we finish the rest of the meeting?” That was met by a generally uncomfortable silence until she said, “I thought I’d make us all a little lunch.” Cafe Lo had never been known for its food, since the owner had been—still was, Eileen corrected herself, he wasn’t dead yet, and was technically a town councilman, even—a generally terrible cook. His granddaughter Julie, on the other hand, could do wondrous things with a few potatoes and cans of tuna fish, and Eileen—who’d always been a more dutiful than inspired cook—found her irritation at Julie’s presumption subsiding at the thought of eating a hot meal prepared by someone who knew a saucepan from a casserole dish. “That sounds just fine,” she said. “Shall we talk about how the town can help the farmers, Mr. Torkelson?
“Yah, we was thinking, we could use the zombies to pull plows, how about that? Hang a piece of meat on a string in front of their face and they’d pull all day, I betcha.” He beamed, delighted at the idea, and it took quite some time for the others to convince him there might be some downsides to the idea.
2. Biotropic,
Whatever that Means
Pastor Inkfist froze when, after feeding them all a little lunch of lemon bars, chocolate chip cookies—homemade tasting, not from one of those tubes Dolph’s store was handing out—sandwiches with cold slices of lunch meat and cheese (from Wisconsin, though you couldn’t hold that against her) and a dab of this and that and the other thing from her refrigerator, plus pickles and some leftover hotdish warmed up on the stove (which was good since hotdish tasted better the second day, everyone knew that, it gave the flavor of the soup time to soak into the noodles), Julie said, “Shall we go down to the basement then?”
They were all seated around Julie’s old wooden kitchen table, and the door to the basement was right there just a few feet away, a fact that had made Pastor Inkfist’s extremities tingle and cheeks just slightly blush. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten that they’d come over here for any reason other than enjoying Julie’s hospitality, as they all blinked around at each other with bits of cream of mushroom soup dabbing their chins. “Your basement?” Eileen said. “Oh, of course, you wanted to show us something.”
“You want to go… down there?” Daniel said, trying to sound casual. “In your basement?”
“I do,” she said. “It’s important.”
“But, ah, that is…” Daniel couldn’t think of a way out. Julie had obviously decided to confess her sinful lifestyle, which was probably good for the soul though no one really needed to hear a thing like that, it was better left between her and God, but the more pressing problem for Daniel was that confessing her sin might mean mentioning him, and that wouldn’t do good things for his standing in the community. And he felt, sinfulness aside, he could still do the people of Lake Woebegotten good. If nothing else he was a small moderating influence on Father Edsel’s apocalyptic furor. “I’m not so sure…”
“Spit it out, Pastor,” Edsel said, mopping up the last of his hotdish juice with one of those heat-and-serve dinner rolls that in Daniel’s opinion tasted better than fresh homemade bread.
“Ah, I seem to recall your grandfather telling me the basement was… flooded. And that there was a rat problem.”
“I wouldn’t worry about… rats, Pa
stor,” Julie said, giving him one of those maddening half-smiles that could have meant anything at all. “It’s quite nice down there. Except for… well. You’ll see. Come along.” She stood up from the table, lit a lantern, opened the wooden door to the basement, and descended the stairs. Daniel could imagine the glint and gleam of bits of metal and shiny leather in that lantern-light. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then stood and followed the others downstairs. Might as well face his fate like a man then.
The nice thing about having an affair—no, not an affair, he’d never slept with her, it was an arrangement—with Julie was that it both satisfied his desire for sexual release (even if it was all technically self-gratification, doing it in front of her made it so much better) and assuaged his guilt over such improper behavior, since beforehand she hit him with switches and called him a dirty little bitch and made him lick her boots and otherwise compelled pre-emptive penance.
He kept his eyes forward as he descended the stairs, not looking down, not wanting to see the reaction of his fellow council members when they saw Julie’s dungeon, but he did think they were awfully quiet—Edsel at least should have been shouting about something or other—so he risked a peek. Julie was lighting other lanterns around the room… and none of her, ah, equipment was in sight. There were lots of things pushed to the edges of the walls and covered with heavy painter’s dropcloths—including the tall round-topped thing in the far corner that must be some kind of cage or even, shudder to think, an iron maiden—and she’d moved a ratty old orange couch and a coffee table scattered with magazines down here. Daniel’s heart started beating normally again, and he felt like he’d just had a narrow escape, sort of like when you successfully pretend you’ve already tried the lutefisk at Christmas time and manage to avoid being given a second helping, which would really have been the first helping, which would really be one helping too many.
“What’s all this?” Eileen said, gesturing at the draped shapes by the walls. “Antique furniture?” Daniel resisted the urge to shout “It’s nothing!” because, well, that would probably get him funny looks at best and provoke further inquiries at worst.
“Just grandpa’s old junk,” Julie said. “This is what I want to show you.” She went to the far corner, to that tall drape-covered thing, and Daniel thought, I’ll finally see it, though he was worried it was going to be something really hinky, or kinky, or however you said it.
Julie pulled the dropcloth down, revealing the object beneath.
Everyone was silent, except for Mr. Torkelson, who whistled.
Father Edsel finally spoke, and he said, “Where’d you get the cage?”
It was awfully dim in there, but Daniel though Julie was maybe blushing herself a bit. “You’d have to ask grandpa. It was down here when I moved in.”
“Okay, then,” Stevie Ray said. “Then where’d you get the zombie?”
That interested Daniel a little more, too. The object in the corner was a human-sized cage with a circular base and iron bars curving upward into a domed top like a birdcage, and the cage door was closed with a big padlock. Inside a zombie stood swaying, dressed in rags, bound at the wrists and ankles, gagged, and with a blindfold tied around its eyes.
“Found it wandering in the yard a while back. I figure it’s one of the bus crash zombies, must have gotten separated from the pack of them somehow. I’ve been studying it.”
A while back? Daniel thought. He and Julie had been down here, in this basement, doing… all sorts of things… and all the time there’d been a zombie in the corner? He shuddered.
“Probably a law against keeping dead bodies in your basement,” Stevie Ray said. “But I guess I can let it slide.” He shook his head. “Damn dangerous, though.”
“I thought it was important,” Julie said.
“Studying it. Interesting.” Edsel paced before the cage, arms clasped behind his back. “And when I say ‘interesting’ I don’t mean it in the conventional Minnesotan sense of bad, disturbing, or in poor taste. I mean… interesting. You’ve brought us here to share your results?”
Julie nodded. “I have. This zombie has been in my care for some months now, and it’s just as lively as it was when I first caught it, even though it hasn’t had anything to eat. It is decomposing, though not as fast as a corpse should, nowhere close, even considering how cold it’s been. I’d sort of hoped all the zombies would just rot away if they didn’t feed, but whatever they’re subsisting on… it’s not food. And maybe they will rot away, but not quick enough to do us any good. And by ‘us’ I mean humanity in general, I guess. The dead outnumber the living—”
“No they don’t,” Eileen said promptly. “The number of people alive on Earth today are more than all the people who ever lived before. Because of the baby boom. Population growth. Like that. I read it on the internet.”
Eileen looked terribly pleased with herself, but Julie just shook her head minutely and said, “No, that’s just one of those bits of nonsense that gets spread around because it sounds good, even though there’s not a bit of truth in it. The best estimate of the number of people born on Earth, from the time we first became recognizably human to now, is around one hundred and six billion. Since the total population is a bit over six billion—well, a lot less than that now, I’d say, all things considered—the living only equal about six percent of the dead. In other words, the dead outnumber the living about seventeen to one.” She shook her head. “Those are pretty bad odds in any war. On the bright side, we’re not contending against all the dead who’ve ever lived. To become a zombie, it looks like you’ve got to have a brain in your head, and since corpses rot pretty fast, the vast majority of the planet’s dead are nothing but dust now. We only have to worry about the freshly dead. What I wonder about… is the dead in their graves.”
“I said cremation was the way to go,” Edsel said darkly.
“What do you mean?” Daniel asked.
“The embalmed dead, you mean,” Eileen said, getting a nod of approval from Julie. “Huh. Were any of the bodies that got up in the Mathison Brothers Funeral Home embalmed?”
“They were,” Stevie Ray said. “Huh. Wish one of the brothers was still around to tell me how long the brains stay intact in an embalmed body.” He frowned. “And how long people have been embalming bodies. And, oh Lord, and how many embalmed bodies with embalmed brains are buried in the ground in the three, no, four cemeteries in and around town.”
“You think the dead will rise from their graves?” Edsel said, with that wild-eyed prophet look on his face. “And seek to kill the living?”
“It occurred to me this morning,” Julie said. “When I stepped out my front door and my boot squelched down in muddy dirt instead of thumping down on frozen dirt. The ground is thawing. It might be a good idea for us to dig up a couple of graves—from five years ago, ten, fifteen, twenty—and see what we find. Figure out how many graves might be holding things that are hungry. The ground’s going soft, and the zombies are strong, and tenacious. I don’t necessarily expect the lawns to start sprouting zombies like wildflowers, but… it’s a concern, wouldn’t you think?”
“You did right to bring this to our attention,” Stevie Ray said, “but why did you need to bring us down here?”
“To show you something else I figured out. About how the zombies hunt. See how he’s trying to get at us?” The zombie in the cage was pressed against the bars, thumping its head against them, trying to reach out with manacled hands.
“Sure,” Daniel said, wanting to contribute something.
“But it can’t see—it’s blindfolded. So if it’s not hunting by sight…”
“Maybe by sound?” Edsel said, thoughtfully.
“Let’s see,” Julie said, and unlocked the cage. Everyone else stepped back, Stevie Ray going for his gun, but Julie said, “No, it’s okay, he’s restrained.” The zombie lurched out at her, tripped, and fell—but the chain around its neck caught it short, so it sort of leaned out, legs tangled, in a position
that would have strangled something that had to breathe. Julie picked up a pair of bulky earmuff-looking things from one of the covered tables. “Noise-canceling headphones,” she said, and slipped them over the zombie’s head. “Now it can’t hear anything. But watch.” She stepped back to the others, and the zombie found its feet—and lurched for them, the chain jerking it up short again.
“Smell?” Edsel said, and something in his tone was utterly abhorrent to Daniel—like he was enjoying this.
“Smelling salts,” Julie said, taking a caplet from her pocket. “When this hits your nose, you can’t smell anything else.” She cracked one under the zombie’s nostrils, releasing a pungent odor that made Daniel’s eyes water even a few feet away… and the zombie didn’t react at all, but just kept trying to get at Julie, its toothless mouth doing its best to open and close ceaselessly over the rubber gag, but its best wasn’t much good, so it was more like a lip quiver, really.
Julie turned to face the others, spreading out her hands. “It’s not smell, or sight, or hearing, or even tasting the air like a snake, not with that gag in. So how is it sensing us?”
“Touch? Minute changes in air currents and pressure from our presence?” Edsel said.
“Possible, and hard to test.” Julie went to the table and picked up a yardstick with a hunting knife lashed to the end with duct tape. “But it doesn’t seem to respond to touch much otherwise—” She suddenly jabbed the zombie in the ribs with the improvised spear, and it didn’t react particularly at all. “And they can track us even outside, when changes in the air wouldn’t be noticeable. Look, let’s move across the basement.” Julie herded them to the far side of the big basement, then led them on a slow walk around the perimeter… and the zombie followed their progress, straining at the end of its chain, pointed toward them as unerringly as a magnet drawn to metal.
The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten Page 21