Johnny looked at the glove box and started the engine. “You think it’s dangerous? Should we try to put it down?”
“Him,” I said. “It’s a boy. Wilbur. And yes, he’s dangerous. And they tried to put him down last night.”
Johnny raised his eyebrows. “Someone actually named their pig Wilbur?”
I nodded.
He sighed. “At least people are reading.”
“Amen,” I said by way of agreement.
Johnny backed us up and pointed us toward the highway, moving slowly through the park. I watched as we went, suddenly flooded with memories of last Thanksgiving. The smell of the city. The dry desert heat. The sound of raised voices speaking Arabic. It was an odd contrast to now.
Movement in my peripheral drew my eyes to the nearest trailer. Something on the porch.
I jumped when the woman threw herself at my door with a shriek. Her eyes were dark and sunk-in, her skin yellow and her mouth foaming. Her nightgown was a mess of what looked like dried gravy and blood. She clawed and bit at my window and Johnny punched the gas, the chained tires slipping before they caught and rocketed us forward, sending the woman spinning off into the snow.
“What the fuck,” he said, glancing to the rearview mirror. Johnny looked at the glove box again, then looked at me. “You can shoot, right?”
I nodded.
He reached over and worked the latch, dropping the compartment open. Sitting on top of the registration, next to a stack of Drummond Funeral Home brochures, lay a 9mm Colt. “That might come in handy,” he said.
I watched the woman climb to her feet and lope off toward another trailer. “I reckon it might,” I said. “Since when did funeral directors pack heat?”
Johnny grinned. “It’s for when I’m delivering pizzas. Dangerous work, that.”
I lifted the pistol out carefully, holding it in my hands like something fragile. I’m not a fan of guns. I grew up with up them, of course. My daddy had taught me to shoot and fish before I’d learned to read. I’d not taken to either much—I liked books much better—and my opinion on keeping and bearing arms shifted a little after being shot in the ass with one. I worked the action and left the safety on. “Let’s hope we don’t need it,” I said.
The highway was deserted. Any ploughing and sanding that might’ve been underway earlier hadn’t been maintained and the road was a ribbon of white stretched out beneath the trees. Rush was quietly singing about today’s Tom Sawyer and mean, mean pride and we drove slowly over the snow in silence for the first mile before Johnny cleared his voice.
“You know,” he said, “I’m not really with Jessie Lynn. She actually brought me hoping to fix me and you up.”
He knows about the plot. I felt the heat in my cheeks and I wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m sorry about that. My family’s got it in their heads that I need to marry up.” I looked at him. “I hope you’re not—”
Johnny Alvin laughed. “Oh no. Not at all.” Now he looked at me and I realized those brown eyes had some kind of mischief in them.
“Oh good,” I said.
“You’re not my type, Kay Ann. No offense.”
I felt a rise of defensiveness and a rush of relief all at once. “Not your type? What’s that supposed to mean?” Not that I cared but I knew most men noticed me when I walked into a room.
He measured me. “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
Those eyes measured me again before going back to the road. “Your brother is my type,” he finally said.
When the words registered I didn’t mean to laugh out loud but I couldn’t help myself. When I saw the hurt on his face I reached out and put a hand on his arm. “Oh Johnny,” I said, “I’m not laughing about that. It’s my family.” I continued at his confused glance. “You’re one of three plus-ones in an elaborate Thanksgiving matchmaking scheme.”
The light came on for Johnny. “The preacher?”
I nodded. “Yep. Pastor Frank.”
He released his held breath. “Jesus.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“And the third?”
“Bobby’s bringing a lesbian.”
Now Johnny’s smile was genuine. “He’s not with her?”
“Nope,” I said. “I think he’s single.” Now it was my turn for the light to come on. “You came for Bobby.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Didn’t have anywhere else to be. Figured it couldn’t hurt to spend time with him and his family. Get to know him better.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
He shrugged. “Not so much a secret. Just like telling people my own shit rather than them hearing elsewhere.”
“Makes sense to me.” Despite being caught up in my family’s machinations, and despite his own scheme to use that as an opportunity to get close to my brother, I decided that Johnny Alvin was good people.
It didn’t hurt that he came well equipped for the kind of going to shit that was happening all around us.
We let Rush sing us the rest of the way, slipping past cars and trucks that hadn’t made the curves, until we saw my brother’s red Civic tipped into the ditch.
Johnny didn’t even try to edge off the highway. The road was empty and he stopped right beside the Civic. Bobby squinted at us out of the driver’s window. The girl sitting next to him, Dana I assumed, was blonde and pretty in an angular kind of way. Johnny rolled down his window and Bobby did the same.
“Hey Johnny,” my brother said. He saw me and nodded. “Hey Kay Ann.”
“Hey Bobby,” I said. “Need a ride?”
Bobby grinned. “I could use one.”
“Hop in,” Johnny said.
He and Dana climbed out of the Civic carefully, pulling bags of chips soda out of the backseat. They climbed into the back of the SUV. “Hey, this is my friend Dana. She’s up at the university.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said over my shoulder as she buckled up. “Happy Thanksgiving.”
“Thanks, Kay Ann.” She smiled and there was something wicked in the smile though it didn’t bother me at all. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Thanks for coming to rescue us.”
“Happy to,” I said. I looked at my brother. “So why didn’t you chain up?”
He blushed and opened his mouth to answer but Dana cut him off. “He didn’t know how to put them on. I told him I could do it. And drive, too.” She paused. “I’m from Illinois. This is normal for Thanksgiving.”
Johnny carefully turned us around and pointed us in the right direction.
I looked at the abandoned highway and thought about the woman with her yellow skin, the pig ploughing up the snow as he raced toward us. “We’re not having much normal around here for Thanksgiving. Sorry he put you in the ditch.”
I saw her studying me in the mirror. There was sweetness in her smile that told me she liked what she saw. “I guess I don’t mind being a damsel in distress under the right circumstances.”
Johnny used the mirror now to catch my brother’s eye. “How you been, Bob?”
Bobby snorted. “I was better before the ditch.”
Johnny smiled. “Don’t sweat it. This weather clears up, me and you’ll come fetch your car.”
Dana sat forward now and I could smell the peppermint on her breath. “So how long do you think this will stick? We couldn’t get a straight answer out of the radio. They’re all fired up about some kind of bug that’s going around. Otherwise, the news is quiet.”
I looked over, aware of her face close to mine. “What are they saying about the bug?”
“Some kind of rabies, they think. It’s got folks acting crazy. Hit last night and spreading fast. All the way to Lexington already.”
Now my stomach hurt. “They figure out how to treat it?”
“Not yet,” Bobby chimed in. “They thought it was killing folk but it seems they were mistaken.”
No, I thought, I don’t think they were mistaken. And the ramifications of that unsettled me greatly.
“I’m sure they’ll figure it out,” Johnny said.
I stared at the pistol in my lap and hoped he was right.
“So,” Mama said as we all gathered around a table piled high with food, “shall we let Pastor Franklin bless this food?”
Normally, I’d have said no or made light of it but some part of me hankered for that comfort even though I’d given up faith some time ago, finding it to be something akin to a gall bladder—useful to a point but not really essential. “I think that might be nice,” I said. “Maybe throw something in about all the craziness of the day.”
Pastor Frank looked around at each of us and smiled grimly. “Happy to. Let’s join hands and bow our heads.”
His prayer was simple, heartfelt and long, but I was grateful for it and I found myself grateful suddenly for lots of things, including my family and their plus-ones on a day that was getting scarier and scarier the more I considered it.
At his “amen” everyone let go of the hands they held except for me. I clutched Mama and Dana’s hand and squeezed them harder than proper. I’m sure it gave Dana a different idea than what I intended but I didn’t care. Her hand, cool and strong, felt good in mine. Mama’s hand, sweaty and worn, felt good, too.
We sat and the feast commenced.
Jessie Lynn and Pastor Frank seemed to hit it off and I noticed my sister’s face was a little flushed as she sipped her sweet tea and asked him questions about Oklahoma and the End Times. Johnny and Bobby were chatting, Johnny’s eyes more alive than I’d seen them as they talked about work, life and video games. Somewhere in there, Johnny even offered to show Bobby how bodies were embalmed and my brother’s grin told me that maybe his plan had backfired a bit.
Dana tried to engage me and I did my best but I was preoccupied now. I made myself eat even though my stomach protested. I answered her small talk where I could but found myself watching the others.
Mama was watching, too, and I saw from the line of her mouth that she was perplexed. She was beginning to see that Johnny Alvin wasn’t working out at all well, for me at least, and Pastor Frank was all about my little sister. Mama didn’t even know what to do with Dana and didn’t pretend to for a change. I leaned over to Mama and squeezed her hand. “Sorry it didn’t work out the way you planned,” I whispered. “But look at it this way: It still might’ve worked.”
She gave me her phony look of incredulity. “Why whatever do you mean, Kay Ann?”
I’d wanted to play with her in all of this, maybe teach her a little something about how her eldest girl, Kay Ann Cooper, didn’t need no man—or no woman—to find her way in this world. I could pay for my own trailers. But now, in the light of everything else, that lesson didn’t seem as important and the day had no room in it for playfulness. Instead, I was just glad to be here having what might be our last Thanksgiving before the world changed. So instead, I looked at Pastor Frank and my sister, at Johnny and my brother, and then back to my mother. “Nothing, Mama,” I told her.
We’d just served the pie when we heard a commotion outside. A noise somewhere between a howl and a shriek rose up among the trailers and Mama’s eyes went wide. “What was that?”
I made eye contact with Johnny Alvin. He’d tucked the pistol into his coat pocket and now he stood and went to the coat rack, pulling his jacket on and checking outside as he went. Bobby was oblivious but Pastor Frank looked nervous. Mama and my sister looked scared. Dana watched me.
Johnny checked the lock and came back to the table. “I reckon we finish the pie and after that we should all head into town. Your neighbors might be getting rowdy again.”
“Bless their hearts,” Mama said.
“Amen,” Pastor Frank agreed.
We ate the pie and as we ate it, more voices joined the other outside. Hungry voices. Hollow, aching voices. “What’s wrong with those people?” Mama asked.
I wished I could answer her but I couldn’t. Instead, I wondered just how far the world might change and what that might mean for next Thanksgiving and every Thanksgiving after. Hell, Christmas wasn’t even a month out and I wasn’t sure what the world might look like then. Of course, I wasn’t even sure what tomorrow looked like; a world done in by Great Granny’s Grateful Pie.
When my phone rang in my pocket it startled me. Uncle Auggie’s voice, muffled by the sound of the road, surprised me. “Hey Kay Ann,” he said. “The family all still there?”
“Yessir,” I said. “Just finishing pie.”
“You have situational awareness, PFC Cooper?”
“I have some, Sergeant Cooper.”
“Good. Sit tight then. We’re coming for you. Feds are establishing a bivouac at the high school. Me and the boys have been deputized.” He paused. “You too, of course.”
I had everyone into their coats and waiting by the door when we heard the loud horns indicative of a convoy. Mama and Jessie Lynn had protested, insisting that the dishes be clean, complaining the whole while about being rushed and leaving messes behind and not understanding the why of it.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them and neither did Johnny Alvin but the hand in his coat pocket told me he knew everything that needed knowing.
When Uncle Auggie and his convoy of trucks and RVs, all chained up and brightly lit, passed into the mobile park, we saw the men and women in their parkas, hunting rifles and shotguns held at the ready from their vantage points in the truck beds. I saw Auggie had modified my underpinning into a type of wind-breaker on several of the trucks.
“Why August Cooper,” my Mama declared, “what kind of hillbilly parade have you cooked up?”
He winked. “The kind that might just save your life, Betty June. If you haven’t noticed, things are going to shit at the moment. Get your things and climb in.”
My uncle held a familiar rifle—an M16A1, aged well from the days he’d shipped it home from Vietnam one piece at a time. I sidled over to him. “You should go, Mama.”
“But I don’t—”
“I’ll tell you on the way, Betty June.” She looked at me and then let someone pull her up into the open door of an RV.
There was a howl and a flash a movement followed by the crack of a rifle. Something heavy fell into the now and everyone jumped.
“So what do you know, Uncle Auggie?”
“It’s spread past Lexington now, Louisville, too. Feds are in town looking for Patient Zero. Think they have him and if they do, they might be able to sort out whatever the fuck is happening.”
I frowned. “Hank Summers ain’t patient zero.”
Auggie scratched his head. The others were all in now but Johnny Alvin who hung back, his eye on Bobby where he sat in the passenger side of Auggie’s truck. “Then who is patient zero?”
“Pig named Wilbur,” I said. “He’s been hiding under my trailer when he isn’t raising hell.”
Auggie looked at the convoy then back to my trailer. “That pig could come in handy. Maybe I’ll send y’all on and see if I can track him down.”
“Or tell the feds where he is,” Johnny suggested.
I shook my head. “They’ve got their hands full.” I looked at my uncle. “You do, too. I need you to get my people to a safe place. I can fetch us that pig just fine on my own.” I looked at Johnny. “Can I borrow your ride?”
“You want help?”
I looked at Bobby sitting there, the fear starting to pale his face. “You’re already helping, Johnny.”
Johnny Alvin handed over his keys. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the pistol. “Here.”
I took both, slipping the keys into my pocket and weighing the pistol in my hand.
“You qualified on one of those, soldier?” my uncle asked.
“No sir,” I said. “But I’ll make due.”
He grinned, thumbed the safety on his rifle and then handed it over. “I know you can handle one of these.”
“Damn straight I can.” I passed the pistol back to Johnny and took the M16. It felt at home in my hands. Un
cle Auggie dropped an ammo belt over my neck.
“Don’t be long,” he said. “And I want my rifle back.”
I smiled but I knew it was grim. “I’ll bring you the rifle and a pig.”
He put a finger in the center of his forehead. “Right in the head, Kay Ann,” he said. “Only thing that works.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
He nodded back. Then we hugged. I thought for a moment about pulling everyone back out of their respective vehicles so I could hug them, too. Even Pastor Frank. But I didn’t. I’d see them soon enough.
I looked Johnny Alvin square in the eye and shook his hand. “I’ll bring your ride back, too.”
“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “It’s the mortuary’s.”
There was another shriek and this time, two gunshots cracked open the air but I didn’t flinch. It was all coming back to me, a more familiar home than my nearby trailer. I saw Mama fussing at the window, a panicked look on her face, as they started up the convoy at Auggie’s wave. Then, he climbed back into the driver’s seat to start the caravan rolling.
I waved and watched as they made their way around the loop, back to the highway. The sun was high, a white wafer behind the softer gray of cloud. The snow was deep and a low wind rustled the nearby pines. Somewhere, something that used to be a neighbor of mine howled at the quiet of the day and underneath my porch, a pig squealed, dark and ominous.
“Hey Wilbur,” I said. “Good pig.”
And then with my belly full of turkey and my heart full of family, I clicked off the safety and took myself gratefully hunting alone.
Light, life, and joy tend to define the holidays, but it has its share of ghosts and shadows, too.
Bestselling author Heather Graham examines souls lost in darkness in this very spectral story, and the one power—love—that can illuminate their way.
—KO
Santa’s Mortuary
Heather Graham
Nina Danbury leaned back in the massive whirlpool tub in her room at the bed and breakfast and closed her eyes, luxuriating in the hot bubbling water around her. It was the perfect end to the perfect day. She’d never been to St. Augustine before and she and Matt had spent the day on the tourist trail, walking for miles and miles. They’d spent hours at the old fort learning about the Spanish settlers of long ago, the English takeover, the return to Spain, and the arrival of the Americans. They’d seen the Spanish Military Hospital, buildings created by Henry Flagler, the lighthouse … the beach, shops and an old school house and more. She was in love with the city.
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