“That too,” Julie said. “Well. He may not have been the most observant Jew, but I’d like to cover his body now, and light candles. You’ll stay with him while I change clothes? And help me wash his body, and bury him afterward?”
“We’re supposed to burn…” he said, but stopped at Julie’s ferocious glare. “Whatever you want.”
“My grandmother is buried in the family plot behind the house. She was laid to rest in just a shroud, as she wished. My grandfather wished the same. I hope the earth is soft enough to dig, now.” She knelt, closed her grandfather’s eyes—no magical passing-the-palm-over-the-eyes to close them trick here like they did in the movies, she had to actually touch the lid and pull it down and press it firmly with her thumb to make sure it stayed closed—and then took a woven afghan from the couch and draped it over his body, covering up almost everything but a few bone and brain fragments that had scattered farther away. “While we’re digging, you can tell me what you were doing in my living room, hmm?”
6. Minnesota Pastoral
It occurred to Pastor Inkfist that, if Julie really thought there was an intruder or a zombie or something upstairs, it probably wasn’t the most considerate thing for her to leave him tied up like this in the basement. “Julie?” he called, but she didn’t answer, which didn’t do his heart good. Daniel wasn’t entirely naked. Julie had an array of interesting undergarments designed for the discerning male, and he was wearing one of the most uncomfortable of the bunch now, but while the discomfort was rather… enjoyable… under her attentions, at the moment it just chafed. His wrists here tied in front of him with soft red ropes, his ankles similarly restricted, and he figured he was gong to make a nice meal for a zombie.
After the council meeting broke up and the others left, Daniel lingered, and hemmed and hawed and finally asked if Julie had a little time this afternoon to fit him into her schedule, as it was.
“What do you propose to barter?” she’d asked, cool as you please.
“Ah, my wife, she had a lot of beauty products, you know, bath salts and shampoos and make-up and… um… luxury items, you know, like you can’t get anymore…” His voice just trailed off as she slowly shook her head. “I guess maybe that’s not your sort of thing,” he said weakly.
“You might say that,” she agreed. “Anything else?”
Daniel hadn’t come here with much of anything in mind for trade besides the contents of his wife’s medicine cabinet—he’d already given Julie some of his hand tools, a bunch of books, and all his spare pillows and blankets—but he thought hard and said, “Antibiotics! I’ve got, oh, half a bottle of amoxicillin. Doc Holliday prescribed them over the phone last year when my wife called thinking she had an ear infection, but it turned out she just had swimmer’s ear, and she didn’t end up using most of them. Are those any good to you?”
“Less than a year old? All right. You’ll bring it next time. Are you ready now?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
He’d closed his eyes and answered the way she liked to be answered, and she’d led him to the basement, and put on the outfit he liked, and put him in the outfit he liked, and started in with the implements, and then she’d heard a noise upstairs and now here he was in a not very tenuous position.
When he heard the gunshot up above, he closed his eyes and started to pray. Oh Lord, he thought, if it is your will that I die here this day for my weakness, I will understand, but if you let me live another day, I will repent for my—
Then he remembered Julie’s original safety lecture. “What if I have a heart attack?” she’d said, as if there were anyone in town in better physical condition than she was. “While you’re… compromised? That’s why I’ll always leave these where you can reach them.”
He looked around, and there were the red-handled paramedic shears, strong enough to cut through leather, vinyl, canvas, and even light metals. Reaching them was easy—they were on the table with some other things that needed to be within reach—but maneuvering them with his wrists bound together was harder. He managed to cut through the ropes tying his ankles, but couldn’t twist his hands sufficiently to cut the ropes around his wrists. Daniel ended up propping the shears on the table, holding them in place with some heavier items, slipping the ropes between the blades, and pushing the handle down with his chin. Awkward—especially the way these particular undergarments rode up—but it got the job done, and the ropes parted enough for him to get unwrapped and untangled.
He hopped around a bit getting out of the underwear, then put on his own clothes quickly, looking around for a weapon. If he wanted to lash a zombie, that was pretty well-covered, but he didn’t think a cat-o’-nine-tails would make much of an impression. Likewise the cattle prod—which Julie said wasn’t a real cattle prod, but one with a weaker current meant for use on people, no, that he’d wanted to dabble in that, especially. He didn’t think zombies would respond much to electricity. At best, he’d make their skin burn, which wouldn’t smell too nice.
He hunted around until he found a telescoping, locking metal rod, that happened to have a couple of leather cuffs dangling from the ends—some kind of bar for holding hands or feet apart, apparently. It had a nice heft to it, though, and would work as a club until he could find something better. Daniel crept up the stairs slowly, listening… and heard voices talking. Zombies didn’t talk. Ergo, there weren’t zombies up there. At least, not anymore. But Julie didn’t talk to herself—at least, he doubted it, she was pretty self-contained—which meant someone else was up there.
Daniel put down the spreader bar, peeked into the kitchen—all clear—and hurried to the back door, out, and around the side. There were no unfamiliar vehicles in the driveway to give away the identity of the visitor. Probably not Edsel—he didn’t talk quietly, and his voice carried—but it could have been anyone else. What if it was Eileen? The mayor? If she found out what he and Julie got up to, what he paid Julie to do, if she told…
He considered just running to his car and driving away, but that wasn’t very Christian. What if Julie had a problem? Daniel straightened, tried to smooth down his hair by touch alone, went up the steps to the front door, and knocked, not too hard.
Julie answered the door, wearing a t-shirt and jeans now, and gave him just the barest hint of a smile. “Pastor. What can I do for you?”
“Just, ah, going around, checking on… everyone. How are you?”
“Come in,” she said, standing aside. Daniel looked past her and saw Dolph standing by the couch, looking sort of shamefaced, and he thought, another customer?
“My grandfather passed away,” Julie said. “I sent him to his second death. We were going to bury him.”
“But we’re supposed to burn—of course. Yes. He wanted to be buried? Next to his wife? Certainly. Perhaps you’d like me to say a few words?”
Another ghost of a smile. “Do you know the Kaddish, Pastor?”
Daniel had to admit that he did not, but he was willing to learn, because all paths to God were deserving of respect, even if he privately thought some of them were pretty darned odd.
After about forty minutes of chipping away at the earth—which was pretty pliable for the first five inches and then basically turned to stone—even Julie had to sigh and shake her head and admit they couldn’t do the job with shovels. “Grandfather had an electrical post-hole digger,” she said, and Daniel had a vision of trying to dig a six-foot-deep, six-foot-long, three-foot-wide hole one post-hole worth of dirt at a time. It was not a pleasant vision. Not as harrowing as the vision that assailed St. John the Divine, certainly, not an apocalyptic vision, but a vision of unbearable tedium.
“I, ah, know where we can get a backhoe,” Dolph said, standing over by the shrouded corpse of Julie’s grandfather.
“Today?” Julie said. “Right now? Jewish rites call for interment as soon as possible.”
“Don’t see why not,” Dolph said. “It’s at the construction site, where they tore down t
he old elementary school because after they pulled out the asbestos and lead and assorted toxins and carcinogens there was barely enough material left to even really consider it a building. They were supposed to be putting a rest home there, apparently that was the booming business, geriatric care, but, well, things have understandably stalled. The crew’s from over in St. Elmer, and they didn’t come back once the zombies started rising and such. But their backhoe is still there. Probably still gassed up. If the Reverend can drive me over, I can get it.”
“Do either of you know how to drive a backhoe loader?” Julie asked.
“I drove a forklift a few times,” Dolph said.
“A backhoe is not a forklift,” Julie said, shaking her head. “Pastor?”
Daniel could barely drive a stick shift. “I don’t think so…”
“Then you stay with grandfather,” Julie said. “Dolph and I will take your car, and I will drive the backhoe here, and dig the grave.”
“Ah, I could go with you,” Daniel said, coughing into his fist. He’d spent his fair share of time with the dead, of course, any minister had, but he’d had his fill of corpses. Besides, he wanted to spend time with Julie, to talk to her, to talk business with her, regarding their particular form of business, which was of course a sin, but God couldn’t be too upset about it, after all he’d let Daniel out of the basement alive and hadn’t sent him into some sort of devoured-by-zombies situation, and he was a forgiving God, anyway, so why not give him a few things to forgive? It was expected.
“No, the body can’t be left alone,” Julie said. “Someone must attend it at all times. You are a man of God, after all—it should be you.”
Before Daniel could protest further, Julie was holding out her hands for his keys. Daniel wanted to ask why they had to take his car, why they couldn’t just take Julie’s truck, but he knew it was because Julie loved her truck, and if she was going to be driving the backhoe, that meant Dolph would have to drive her truck, and she didn’t let anyone else drive her truck. If he pressed, Julie would just explain that, completely unselfconsciously and unapologetically, and she might take it out on him later by, well, not taking it out on him, and he didn’t want that. So Daniel handed over the keys and started explaining how sometimes the windshield wipers stick on the intermittent position and how the brakes are a little touchy, and Dolph started telling him about his own truck and how it pulls to the right, always has, you have to put a subtle leftward pressure on the wheel just to keep it straight, which reminded Daniel about his first car, a Pinto, and how the windows got frozen in the rolled-down position one winter and Daniel had to put trash bags over them when he parked to keep the snow out and had to wear earmuffs and a scarf all the time when driving, and then Julie went from tapping her foot and clearing her throat to actually pulling Dolph away in the direction of Daniel’s car.
Then the pastor was alone, with the shrouded body of Julie’s grandfather, out in the warmer-than-usual but still, objectively, rather cold day, wishing he’d asked if it would be all right to take the body back inside, or if that would be disrespectful. He didn’t know a lot about Judaism, but he didn’t look down on the faith, especially—if it was good enough for Jesus, it certainly wasn’t his place to criticize it. Though the emphasis on burying bodies so quickly did make for a hectic day. Hardly time to organize a get-together after the funeral and get some hotdish and lemon bars for the survivors this way. Seemed kind of uncivilized.
Daniel stood watching the snow melt and thinking about the words he’d say once the body was finally in the ground, maybe something tying into springtime and renewal and things like that, working up some pretty good phrases that he could maybe use in his next service too, nothing wrong with a little recycling, assuming he was allowed to hold services what with the whole biotropic issue of zombies being attracted to large crowds of people, but that was a worry for another time.
Then a zombie bear with what appeared to be a hatchet stuck in its head came ambling around the side of the barn, lurching and stumbling, all crusty with blood and dirt and various oozing things, and Daniel suddenly had a worry that was very much of the moment.
7. Backhoed
Mr. Levitt had originally planned to do the morning patrol with Cyrus, and then either convince the lunatic to drive him over to the construction site or just dispose of him, but with Rufus running around and sounding the alarm, Levitt had to move up his timetable. He got to the ruins of the old elementary school much earlier than anticipated, which ran the risk of throwing off his timing—he’d planned to lead the zombies into town right around evening mealtime, ringing a dinner bell as he went—but so what if the zombies arrived in town in time for a little lunch instead of their supper? A meal was a meal.
Rufus’s continued habit of drawing breath was a trial and a vexation to Mr. Levitt. He didn’t usually leave his victims alive—sort of negated the whole point of them being victims—but Rufus had been a bit tougher than Mr. Levitt had expected. Truth was, Levitt’s heart was still beating hard and uncertainly, like he’d eaten too many cheese balls and bratwurst and ridden too many spinny rides at the state fair. The kid had managed to hurt him, and Levitt didn’t like to think about how close Rufus had come to killing him before Levitt made his escape—an escape fueled by bluff, bluster, bullshit, and good luck. A small part of Levitt’s brain thought, You know, mostly you’ve killed people who trusted you, sneaking up on them from behind, or else you’ve killed zombies, which is no harder than chopping the head off a chicken once you get the hang of it, so maybe you’re not as tough as you think you are, but a lifetime of utterly assumed superiority quickly overwhelmed any self-doubt. The little punk Rufus had just gotten lucky. Lousy shot, too. Using a handgun wasn’t even interesting, it was too easy, and the kid had even flubbed that, from a distance of just a few feet. You had to make an effort to be that terrible at something. Besides, leaving Rufus alive for now meant Levitt could feed him to the zombies later. A little treat. He’d have planned it that way in the first place if he’d given the subject any thought.
Levitt nosed the truck through the gate, busting the chain there, and drove through the fence, which was topped with barbed wire to keep out trespassers and would-be thieves, as if you got many of those in Lake Woebegotten. In the old days, nobody had bothered to lock up. Made it so much easier to get into people’s houses back then…
Levitt parked behind the remains of the old school—in his years as school superintendent he’d suppressed the reports about the asbestos and such, not because he gave a damn about the cost to the county to fix it, but because he thought it was funny that the new generation of marching morons under his ultimate care were soaking up poison—and closed the gate again, looping the busted chain around to make it look, at first glance, like it had never been open. Then he did a walk-through around the construction site to see if he had everything he needed to do the job.
The spot was pretty isolated, surrounded by fields that wouldn’t get planted this year if Levitt’s plan worked, which it would, of course, so he took his time, figuring it was unlikely he’d be spotted. And if he was bothered, well, he’d gotten some goodies from Cyrus, most of which he’d had to leave behind at the house when he fled Rufus’s assault, but he had a few things secreted in the pockets of his hunting jacket, including a few ancient but probably still potent fragmentation grenades, a pistol—currently unloaded with the clip in another pocket, which was why he hadn’t pulled it out to use on Rufus—and a knife or three, naturally, for any close-in work. He didn’t want to think about why he hadn’t pulled one of those on Rufus. Mr. Levitt couldn’t countenance the idea of cowardice in himself; he preferred to think of it as discretion, if he thought of it at all.
Mr. Levitt hummed as he collected materials. Some pieces of sheet metal, a roll of chicken wire, baling wire, tin snips. The big dirty yellow backhoe loader was all well and good, and he knew how to run one—he doubted the controls had been changed noticeably in the decades since he’d worked
construction as a young man, burying his first victims in the foundations of buildings in St. Paul—but it wasn’t exactly zombie-proof. An hour of snipping, heaving, bending, banging, and binding improved that situation a lot, though: once he was done, the open cab was enclosed on three sides with sheet metal, with slit windows messily cut and covered in chicken wire so he could see where he was going, and for the front opening he just made do with the chicken wire alone, with lengths of rebar woven through the links to provide some reinforcement. He festooned the hood and every other projecting surface with barbed wire to tangle up any would-be zombie boarders. The result was a kind of backhoe/tank that didn’t even look half-assed—maybe one-quarter-assed at best—but it didn’t need to be pretty, just moderately zombie-proof. In his various encounters with the creatures, Levitt hadn’t been able to determine exactly how they sensed their prey, but they certainly seemed able to sniff out the living somehow, and if he was the only breather-in-residence, he figured they’d come at him. In fact, he was counting on it. He just needed to make sure they didn’t get to him before he had the chance to lead them to a nicer sort of buffet.
Levitt climbed into the cab, pulling the sheet-metal door shut after him and twisting it closed with stiff metal wire. He put his hands on the controls. The keys were still in it, at least. So people hadn’t totally lost all their trust. Be funny if he’d gone to all this trouble and the thing didn’t have any gas, but when he cranked it up, the fuel gauge needle moved to three-quarters full. That would be fine. He wasn’t going to be covering ground quickly in this thing, but the nearest graveyard was only a half mile away, and from there he’d work his way in toward the town, hitting the other graveyards, and, he hoped, building quite the little following along the way. Now, unfortunately, he had to sit in the thing for a while to let it warm up, since it hadn’t been run all winter, and until some oil got circulating, he’d risk the thing seizing up and dying on him if he tried to make it do too much. He couldn’t remember if it was safe to drive the thing while it warmed up, if he only had to worry about using the boom arm and dipper stick and bucket, because it had been so long since he’d done this kind of work, but he figured he’d better err on the side of caution. Waiting twenty minutes wouldn’t kill him, but it was an unnecessary delay—he should have gotten the machine started while he was doing all his upgrades, but he hadn’t thought about it for some reason, and now he had to pay the price by… sitting here, being bored, something he’d never been much good at doing.
The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten Page 24