Infernal Corpse

by D. J. Goodman

  “You mean you don’t already know the layout by heart?” Jasmine asked. Kevin grunted something that might have been agreement. Still, even if all of them knew the layout by heart, it would be easy for someone to break their toe on some jutting display or artifact.

  “I think they kept some flashlights by the cash register in case of emergencies,” Rudy said. In the dim light coming through the glass door, the only window in the entire building, Angie saw him shuffling around behind a counter. On the walls around him were maps of Lake Superior, a few of them actually historical but most of them intended for tourists to buy. The largest and biggest seller was a map of most of the major shipwrecks recorded on the lake complete with little illustrations of each ship. That was the one all the tourists wanted because it included the Edmund Fitzgerald, even though that particular ship hadn’t sunk anywhere near here. For the same reason, there was a small display of Gordon Lightfoot CDs next to the register so the vacationers could get that song stuck in their head on the long drive home.

  “Here,” Rudy said, producing three flashlights. Angie, Beth, and Jasmine all took one.

  “Don’t turn them on yet,” Angie said. “We need to find something to cover up the glass door so none of the flashlights can be seen from outside.

  They considered some of the maps for a moment but decided they were all too thin and wouldn’t provide much cover. After some more scrounging around, they found some dusty black cloth that might have been used in some long ago display and then forgotten in a deep alcove under the counter. Trying to hang the cloth up over the door without any additional light was a struggle and in the end it didn’t cover up the whole thing, leaving a thin sliver underneath where light would still be able to get through. Also, anyone on the outside who took too close of a look at the door would realize it had been covered, but Angie hoped none of the zombies maintained enough of their intelligence to figure that out.

  “Okay, now you can turn them on,” Angie said. “Try not to shine them anywhere near that gap at the bottom of the door.”

  The three flashlights turned on, illuminating the dark and cluttered museum. It was a museum only in the loosest definition of the word. Rather than being behind glass or on special display stands, most of the historical items were haphazardly placed on tables with old typewriter-written descriptions on cardboard cards denoting what they were and why they were supposed to be significant. Someone had at least made an effort to make sure that the tables were nicer, except for a few exhibits displayed on card tables that had been covered with cloth. The effect was less like a museum full of priceless historical artifacts and more like a garage sale hastily assembled in someone’s barn.

  The actual items on display ranged all the way from “Why is this even here?” to “Wow, that’s really pretty cool.” The museum consisted of three or four loosely organized rooms, if rooms could really be said to be made from partial sheets of painted plywood and curtains. Angie had been through it all on several occasions, sometimes because she was just bored and other times because she was genuinely curious about the town’s eccentric history. An alcove near the front counter had floor-to-ceiling straining bookshelves, holding everything from hand-written accounts of ship’s journeys over the Great Lakes to the town’s old plat books for the last hundred and fifty years. One time in late high school she had got it in her head to find out what the name Mukwunaguk even meant but no two people could give her the same answer. The popular myth told to the tourists was that it was Ojibwe for “where the earth meets the waters.” Upon actually inspecting deep into this stack of books, though, she had eventually found the original town hall meeting records where the original settlers came up with the name. They had literally just made up a word that, in the words of the town fathers themselves, “sounded like something from the savage tongue.” It was a revelation so amusing that Angie had kept it to herself so she could smile inwardly whenever someone else spouted BS about the town’s origins. Apparently Mukwunaguk meant “clueless white tourists will believe anything.”

  Farther along the next wall, the museum was dedicated to a series of displays and dioramas depicting the early life of settlers in the town, the clothes and dishes and cradles and knick-knacks dusty from years of the caretakers forgetting about them. The small dioramas on the tables were odd and amateurish, but they themselves were part of history, the creations of the original toothpick factory owner’s wife as she’d convalesced from some never identified illness. The creepy little wooden dolls in the dioramas were a particular favorite of the teens to abscond with, and Angie herself had a particular fondness for the tiny baby figure in one of them that had a missing eye, her own personal prize when she had gone through that rite of passage when she was fourteen.

  The back room consisted of the larger, more impressive, and occasionally just odd antiques and curiosities. The largest piece was an old Model-T, supposedly the first motor car ever in Mukwunaguk. Next to it were various small parts of a different Model-T, the one that was supposed to have been the first in town but had ended up in the lake when the ship it was on hit a previously unnoticed rock in the harbor. On the wall above the complete Model-T there hung the humungous lacquered cross section of a tree that had been cut down in the early days of logging in the area, a testament to the power of nature as well as the power of humans to ignore that power in the face of needing toothpicks. The propellers and several twisted pieces of metal from a plane crash in the Porcupine Mountains in the thirties were displayed on a wall in the corner right next to a rusty shovel. The shovel didn’t look like much, but the yellowing card next to it marked it as the most macabre item in the whole museum, the weapon used in the only deliberate murder in Mukwunaguk’s recorded history.

  As she looked around at all this, though, Angie couldn’t help but feel an unexpected tug at her heartstrings as her flashlight came around to the final section, the one that by design all the tourists came to last. Because, while everything else in the museum might have been nothing more than charming or peculiar curiosities, the real draw of Mukwunaguk was Lake Superior itself. Simply coming into the museum cost just a couple dollars, but the majority of the historical society’s money was made with souvenirs and the lighthouse tour. And the lighthouse tour technically started right here.

  This final section of the museum was dedicated to Superior and all its myths, legends, history, and folklore. This was where Old Bert, when he wasn’t drowning himself at the Sand Bar or muttering to himself about all the outsiders, had plied his trade during the summer months. He would take up his typical spot next to the display of original mirrors from the lighthouse, the ones that had been replaced with less effective cosmetic ones for the tourists going into the tower once the lighthouse had no longer been in a proper position to accurately warn away ships. Irascible old curmudgeon that he’d been, Bert’s eyes would light up and he’d become a different person when he started the tour. He’d talk about the history of shipping on the lake. He’d talk about Native American legends regarding its great waters (although she’d often suspected that actual Native Americans would take one listen to his stories and call bullshit on him for completely making most of them up). He’d gesture to the maps on the walls and point out the various artifacts around them that had been pulled out of the chilly deeps. And he’d always end with the story of the Maltan, a ship that had set sail from Minnesota in November of 1910, intending to make one last trip over the lake to Mukwunaguk itself before the harsh winter weather made Superior impassable. The ship had never arrived. He would show the tourists the only thing that had arrived, a silver cylinder with a single roll of paper inside. The cylinder was supposed to have had the ship’s logs inside, but whoever had been in charge of maintaining such things hadn’t done their job and all they’d managed to put inside was a single hastily written letter. Old Bert would open the cylinder, remove the letter, and read it out loud in a haunting voice that no one would have otherwise thought could come from him. It said goodbye to the crews
’ friends and family, and asked that God would have mercy on their souls.

  By the time Bert had finished, all the tourists had been more than willing to fork over the cash to go on the next part of the tour.

  Angie toyed with the cylinder in its typical place under the maps. As far as she was aware, most of that story was true, and the cylinder itself was the real deal, the last thing handled by dead men from over a century ago. The letter Old Bert had always pulled out from inside was fake, though, even if he did claim it was the exact words of the cylinder’s actual final message. That particular piece of paper was long gone, handled by so many fingers that it had disintegrated to mulch long ago, but Old Bert had never admitted that to the tourists. To them, it had been real.

  Occasional asshole or not, Angie almost felt there was something mystical about a person who could make others feel like that. And now Old Bert was gone, unceremoniously turned to ashes right along with so much else Angie had held dear throughout her life.

  The complete and unreal horror of the night so far was only now dawning on her. A large part of Angie wanted to go curl up in the musty book alcove and go to sleep, hopefully to wake up soon and find that none of it had been real. But as she moved her flashlight over the faces of the others, all of them looking expectantly around at each other for someone to tell them what to do next, she realized she couldn’t do that. The same thing that had made her keep going after her father had died came back to her now, an iron will and a healthy dose of stubbornness. She was the only leader these people had right now, and while they might have deserved better she still thought they could do much worse.

  “Okay,” she said to them all. “Let’s figure out what to do next.”

  Nine

  After a short deliberation among them all, it turned out that “what to do next” happened to not be much of anything all. It had been less than an hour and a half since the first one of the customers had walked into the café, but in that short time they’d been confronted by more than any of them could possibly deal with. They needed a moment to rest. Angie was fine with that. While they were resting they could talk, discuss, try to figure out what was happening. Johnny looked like he was in terrible shape and they needed to use this moment of quiet to try helping him. Megan, on the other hand, seemed to be slowly waking up. And once she was fully conscious and coherent, Angie hoped she could shed some light onto why their little town had apparently become the center of the zombie apocalypse.

  With Old Bert gone, Rudy was the one who knew his way around the museum the best, and he and Jasmine led Johnny off to find the first aid kit. Kevin and Beth also promptly disappeared into a dark corner. To do what, Angie didn’t think she really wanted to know, but if they were about to relieve some tension with each other, she didn’t think she could blame them. It only seemed natural to her to think about love and sex in the face of death. She just said more power to them and hoped they would be discreet enough that no one else accidently walked in on them, wherever they might be going.

  This left Angie, Boris, Kim, and Megan in the front near the register. Angie felt distinctly uncomfortable being so close to Boris with so few other people around. Thankfully, though, he didn’t seem to be in the mood for any typical douchbaggery. Angie caught him looking at her more than once, but it wasn’t with the naked lust he usually reserved for her. The expression was more complex and not entirely menacing. She almost thought it might partially be respect, but she wasn’t going to assume. For all she knew, he could just be thinking of his next hackneyed attempt at a pickup line.

  They’d sat Megan down on the floor with her back propped up against a table leg. When Angie shone the flashlight in her face, the girl blinked several times before closing her eyes and muttering something to herself. Angie took that to be a good sign. When she put the back of her hand against Megan’s forehead, she found that the fever had gone down as well, although it was still noticeably there. It just wasn’t at the point anymore where it didn’t make any sense for her to be alive. Of course, for all Angie knew she really might be dead just like the four tourists still wandering the streets, although if she was then she was faking breathing very well.

  “She’s going to be okay, right?” Kim asked.

  “Sure,” Angie said, although she didn’t think she sounded very convincing. The mark on Megan’s neck and shoulder was still there, neither getting worse nor getting better. When Angie shone the light on the blackened flesh, flesh that for all intents and purposes should have required major medical attention, she couldn’t help but be reminded of what she and Kevin had seen. Would he tell Beth about that while they were alone, she wondered? Probably not. It would spoil the mood. He probably didn’t even want to think about it right now. Angie, on the other hand, didn’t think she had the luxury of ignoring it. It was another piece of a puzzle she needed to solve if she wanted to keep anyone else from dying tonight.

  “Kim, do you have any idea what Megan was doing this afternoon? Maybe where she might have gone?”

  Kim sniffed. “She doesn’t tell me much about what she does anymore. She’s punishing me.”

  “Punishing you? For what?”

  “For trying to raise her right.”

  While Angie highly doubted that, she wasn’t sure whether she should push this or not. It was possible that there might be something along this line of questioning that would lead to an answer.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” Angie asked. She shot Boris a look that clearly said he needed to hold his tongue right now, even though it was obvious he wanted to say something rude to the woman.

  “I made sure she was a good strong young woman,” Kim said. “Me, and no one else. She resents that.”

  Angie nodded as though that made any sense at all.

  “I’ve taught her that the world is always out to get her. And she knew it for a time. But then she started believing all the world’s lies. Do you believe she actually told me once she believes that foolishness about people actually going to the moon? How gullible do you have to be?”

  It took every ounce of Angie’s strength to keep a straight face, but if Kim so much as uttered the word “sheeple” she thought she might lose it.

  Kim, in a rare moment of clarity, seemed to realize she might be losing her audience and some of the outrage that had been growing in her voice diminished. “I know that other people think there’s something wrong with me. But I know better. All I’ve ever tried to do is what was best for my child. You can understand that, right?”

  For a moment, Angie almost felt sympathy for Kim. Then she remembered back to middle school and the way Megan had been, so shy, so fragile-looking, almost like she was afraid her own shadow would drunkenly accuse the next person that walked by of being the true culprit behind the Kennedy assassination. That was what Kim had done to her daughter despite her best intentions.

  Angie realized she was gently stroking Megan’s hand in her own and let go. The girl still wasn’t fully conscious. That most definitely wasn’t appropriate and Angie felt ashamed of herself. Yet even as she looked at Megan’s face, she remembered back to that girl that she had always wanted to protect from the bullies. Maybe, now that she was publicly admitting to the world the true nature of who she was attracted to, she could admit to herself that the protectiveness of those early years had been the result of a little crush. She doubted Megan would feel the same way, though.

  “Let’s get back to focusing on the issue at hand, Kim,” Angie said. “Any clue at all about what she might have been doing earlier? Even the slightest thing might be helpful.”

  Kim looked down and her thin hands in her lap. There was a sound coming from the back of her throat, barely audible, that sounded like a suppressed cry of anguish. Or maybe anger.

  “Kim, you do know something, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And I don’t want to say it. It makes me ashamed.”

  “Ashamed of what? Of something you d
id?”

  Kim’s head jerked up so she could look Angie in the eyes. Something about the defiantness of her stare made Angie uneasy.

  “No. I haven’t done anything wrong. I never did anything wrong. It was always other people blaming me.”

  Angie didn’t respond, hoping Kim would continue without getting too much more agitated.

  “Ashamed of her,” Kim finally said, nodding toward her daughter.

  Angie leaned forward. “Why? What did she do?”

  Kim took a deep breath, as though she were about to reveal one of the darkest secrets of the universe. “She went into the pharmacy.”

  Angie had to fight not to show her disappointment. So much for Kim being able to give important information.

  “Why is that so bad?” Boris asked. Angie would have asked him not to if there had been some way to do it without Kim seeing. Boris had spent a lot of time here growing up, but that was mostly in the summers when his family had come around to run one of the souvenir shops. He hadn’t become a more permanent resident until later. He probably wasn’t already intimately acquainted with what was about to spew out of Kim’s mouth.

  “Because that means she’s putting chemicals into her body!” The words came out of Kim’s mouth as just short of a scream. Angie made a shushing gesture and the next thing Kim said was quieter, but not by much. “I’ve been saying her whole life how dangerous that crap is, how it wrecks the brain and keeps us from our true potential.”

  This, at least, prompted Boris to give Angie a raised eyebrow. Even if he didn’t know about her well-known phobia of pharmaceuticals, he at least knew her reputation around a bottle. If Old Bert had been known to tip back a few once in a while, he had at least been known to stay semi-functional. Kim, on the other hand, couldn’t always say that.

  Kim smoothed Megan’s hair gently with her hand, although now the gesture seemed less motherly and more creepy. “But I can get her back. I know I can.”