“Baaahhh. Liiiinnnng?” he asked. It seemed like a good idea. He’d always enjoyed bowling at Bay City’s, and now he had enough people to start his own league.
The zombies shuffled and moaned. Some exchanged glances, but no one seemed too enthused.
“Eeeeeaaaaaat,” Stanley added. Judging by how busy Stein’s had been, chances were good there were plenty of folks to munch on at the bowling alley too.
As he hoped it would, that suggestion sparked a reaction. The zombies all turned toward him, ready to follow his lead. Still holding Laura’s sticky hand in his own, Stanley pointed himself toward town and slid his foot across the pavement. When everyone else’s feet did the same, a smile split his face from ear to ear.
Chapter 9
Stanley’s alarm clock was a thing of beauty. A reliable wonder of plastic and circuitry with a blue liquid crystal display. “It’s time,” it buzzed. “It’s that time that you indicated was important. I’m so glad I was able to help wake you at this very important time.”
Stanley wished he could come up with a truly wonderful way to thank his alarm clock. He’d never been able to find a thank-you card for an electronic device. Instead, he would pat its snooze bar lovingly and said, “Th-th-thanks!”
This morning was no exception. He pressed the snooze bar and opened his mouth to say thanks… and froze.
Wait a sec, his brain advised. Pulling back the covers, he discovered he was fully dressed. Thought so. Felt a little warmer than usual.
Stanley tried to remember what he’d done the previous night. Had there been drinking? After smacking his lips a few times and considering the absence of a headache, he decided not.
Why the heck am I all dressed? he wondered.
He was wearing jeans, a V-neck undershirt, and his favorite velour top. In addition, he was already bundled up in his parka and his feet were snug inside of his sturdy winter boots.
Getting dressed at night really is a time-saver in the morning, he conceded, but I don’t think I got any place special to be this morning.
With a good-natured chuckle at how mixed-up he could be sometimes, Stanley reviewed the list of things he had planned to start the day. Pee, poop, shower. Brush and floss his teeth. Put on clothes, eat breakfast.
Stanley slid off the parka and tossed it on the bed, and pulled the boots free to reveal a nice pair of tube socks. A trip to the bathroom was next, where he crossed items one and two off his morning to-do list. After flushing, he briefly considered showering. A quick sniff of each pit later, he decided a shower wasn’t really necessary and skipped right to cleaning his teeth. After a final rinse and spit, Stanley stood and considered himself in the mirror.
“Lookin’ good, b-buddy!” he announced with a wink. Ready to start his day, he headed downstairs with a spring in his step.
The blue Barca Lounger gave a satisfying creak as it accepted his weight, almost as if it too were anticipating the upcoming excitement. Stanley extended the footrest, placed his remote controls in their proper order on his lap, and powered up his entertainment center. One of his favorite shows, Judge Judy, was about to start. As the curved glass came to life, Stanley daydreamed about what the case would be. Judge Judy always had the best cases. Once, a couple that had broken up went to court over flour poured into a gas tank. Another time, a photographer said a painter stole his camera. One of his favorites was a dispute over an electricity bill one neighbor incurred because another neighbor had stealthily plugged in an extension cord to their outdoor outlet.
Wait a sec, his brain advised for the second time that morning. I haven’t seen that one yet. That one’s supposed to be on today.
Perplexed, Stanley returned his attention to the T.V. and realized that Judge Judy wasn’t on. He double-checked the channel and the time. Right place, right time, but no Judy. Instead, Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff were running across the beach as a rerun of Baywatch started.
That’s a Saturday show. Why are they showing a Saturday show?
Usually, Stanley was up for Baywatch. The mysteries were never as good as Veronica Mars, but that Pamela Anderson sure was fun to watch run. As his eyes moved up and down while she bounced along the sand, a very peculiar feeling worked its way through Stanley. Something wasn’t right. In fact, something was definitely wrong. The off feeling had started when he woke up and had made it perfectly clear it wasn’t going away anytime soon.
When his stomach grumbled, he decided he was probably just suffering from low blood sugar. Tube socks padded silently across the living room carpet and carried him into his small kitchen. A quick yank swung the fridge door open, and Stanley realized he’d been robbed.
“Who stole my hotdog?”
Staring at the shelf in his fridge that he was certain had held at least one hotdog, Stanley again tried to remember what he’d done the previous day. He knew he’d gone to Ronnie’s for a bite to eat. He bumped into Herb’s old neighbor, Jerry. Later, he’d discovered a fly. When that particular memory surfaced, he closed the fridge and ran to the dining room table. Sure enough, there was the cup with a coaster taped across the top.
“Weird,” he observed. He remembered catching the fly, remembered letting it bite him, but that was it. “Well, can’t b-be solving mysteries on an empty stomach,” he decided.
After retrieving his parka and boots from the bedroom, he trudged outside and found another unpleasant surprise. His car door was wide open and the battery was dead. Muttering a curse he learned from Dallas, Stanley dragged his jump kit from the garage, popped the Cavalier’s hood, and got the engine to turn over. A weird déjà vu tugged again at the corners of his mind, but only for a moment. He would have plenty of time to ponder weird feelings after a cup of Ronnie’s coffee and a plateful of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and white toast.
The drive to Ronnie’s was surprisingly eventful. Usually, there wasn’t much action on the roads around town. The occasional car in the ditch when someone dozed off at the wheel, or a slow procession of backed-up traffic if Old Mrs. Lowry was driving in a no-passing zone tended to be the most interesting things you’d see. This morning, Stanley was passed by two fire trucks and an ambulance. All three had their lights blazing and sirens wailing. Always careful, he moved to the shoulder as they blew by, and wondered what the excitement was. It certainly didn’t do much to dispel the odd feeling he’d been plagued with all morning.
“I’ll b-bet somebody left their Christmas lights on the t-tree,” he said to himself. “D-dangerous. Them trees, they get so dry. D-dry as tinder. Only takes a little spark and – whoosh! – the whole p-place’ll go up like the Fourth of July.”
Shaking his head at how irresponsible some folks could be, he turned onto the highway and pointed his Cavalier toward Ronnie’s. The truckstop, diner, and gift emporium was one of his favorite place to go. When Herb used to work there, they had served up the most amazing French toast. Even after Herb had stopped cooking at Ronnie’s, they still managed to put together a solid breakfast. After pulling into a mostly-empty parking lot, Stanley walked in, fully expecting to be caught up in the familiar. Locals soaking up the morning newspaper while they soaked up egg yolks with toasted white bread. Long-haul truckers swapping stories about the times they’d avoided the highway patrol and made their runs in record time. Third-shifters from the paper mill finishing their day with dinner in the morning while first-shifters packed in a quick bite before heading into work. Instead, he walked into a near-empty diner. One person sat at the counter. The only other patrons shared a booth by the window. As Stanley hung his jacket on a coat tree, the sound of Ronnie in full-on rant mode reached his ears.
“No good. No damn good. Not a single one of ‘em. They’re trying to ruin me. And why? I’m just trying to serve. I got the higher calling. ‘Open a truckstop,’ it said. ‘Best damn truckstop in Wisconsin,’ it said. And what did I do?”
Unsure if the question had been directed at him, Stanley opened his mouth to answer. Before he could hazard a guess at wha
t Ronnie had done, Ronnie answered for him.
“I opened the best damn truckstop in Wisconsin,” the diner’s owner said as he pushed through the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the dining area. Three plates of horribly burnt food were balanced precariously on top of each other. Ronnie wove between the tables and dropped the plates loudly at the booth by the window.
“Not my fault,” Ronnie snapped defensively when one guy poked his blackened and shriveled strip of bacon with a fork. “They’re trying to ruin me. The waitress didn’t show up. The cook didn’t show up. I called the backups, and no one answered their damn phone. I’m just trying to serve. Just trying to live up to my higher calling, but they’re trying to ruin me,” he muttered as he headed back toward the kitchen.
Stanley raised a hand in greeting as the harried owner stormed past.
“Morning, Ronnie. G-geez. You look stressed. You should try meditation. I saw this show on the T.V. where this g-guy was all sorts of stressed…” he started, but Ronnie had already disappeared into the kitchen.
When Ronnie didn’t emerge after five long minutes, Stanley hesitantly called out and asked if he was alright.
“No,” came a terse reply from somewhere behind the serve-through window. “They’ve ruined me. You want something to eat, cook it yourself.”
Stanley chewed his lip in indecision for a moment and then shrugged. Pushing his way through the swinging door, he poured himself a cup of coffee and rummaged around for the ingredients needed to whip up a good breakfast. Carrying his meal in one hand and coffee in the other, Stanley settled onto a stool at the counter and shoved a forkful of hash browns into his mouth. They were good. Really good. So good that he wondered if he should ask Ronnie for a job. Before he’d even finished chewing the first bite, he took a second, and a third. Mouth still full of hash browns, he grabbed up a strip of bacon and took a bite. The bacon was good too. Really, really good, so he pushed the rest into his mouth. Belatedly, he realized he was in desperate need of air. He convulsively sucked in a sharp breath, and a lump of half-chewed breakfast lodged in his windpipe. He tried to cough, but the lump made that impossible. As the seconds ticked away, panic set in. He began to slap the counter and moan. He rocked back and forth faster and faster, desperate for air but unable to get any into his lungs. The edges of his vision blurred and shadows started to encroach from all around. Bits of shadow broke into floating spots that danced haphazardly before his eyes. He realized it was actually quite beautiful, and the panic subsided. In its place, a strange calm settled over him like a warm blanket. His chest still bucked and his back bent and twisted, but those were distant things. The only things that mattered were the floating, spinning, expanding dots erasing all of the light.
The last thing he saw before the dark spots filled his world was Ronnie running from the kitchen. The last thing he felt was two arms wrap around him from behind and pull hard against his gut again and again. The last thing he heard before all faded to black was a nasally voice screaming, “No dying in my diner, damn you! No one will ever eat where someone died! It’ll ruin me!”
Chapter 10
Bay City Bowlers was hopping. Usually, the alley would close down by around midnight or one, but this was no ordinary night. The fun had lasted past midnight, well through the wee hours, and all the way into Saturday morning. Every lane was taken, the spaces behind the lanes were full, the loudly-patterned carpet stretching from the registration desk to the bathrooms and beyond was packed, and even the karaoke bar was fit to burst. Loud moans echoed from paneled wall to paneled wall as the swollen mob of zombies prattled on about eating flesh, chewing on flesh, and other things, like swallowing chunks of flesh.
Like Steinknockers after he and Deputy Farman had paid a visit, Stanley was amazed at the transformation. When he and his fellow zombies had smashed through the bowling alley’s glass double-doors, people had been so mean. Yelling, screaming, running around all panicked-like. As the zombies collided with the bowlers, people had started punching and kicking. One guy grabbed up a chair like a club. He would’ve bashed Stanley’s forehead if Laura hadn’t chomped down on the guy’s neck mid-swing. Even Slow Johnson, the owner and manager of the bowling alley and someone Stanley considered a good acquaintance, had tried to kill him. He had produced a shotgun from beneath the front desk and started shooting – actually shooting – at the zombies. The buckshot rocked them back on their heels or knocked them over and left them kicking like tipped cows. One of the strippers even lost her hand and lower arm to a blast, but shrugged off the flesh wound with resigned acceptance and kept biting. Like her, most of the zombies just took the bullets in stride. The unlucky ones that caught a blast full in the face went down and didn’t get back up, but Johnson only managed a few head shots before he too was bitten. He was pulled down behind the bowling shoe counter by Jimmy Tibeaudeax, a sunken-chested, pimpled man who’d become a sunken-chested, pimpled zombie. When Johnson came back up, he moaned a greeting and officially joined Stanley’s ever-expanding circle of friends.
As the zombies ripped their way through the busy crowd at Bay City Bowlers like lazy locusts through a ripening field, Stanley wondered at the change enveloping his town. Before he’d been bitten by that fly, everyone had been separate from everyone else. Sure, people would say hi and trade wisdom about the best brand of snow tires or where to get furnace filters on sale. Parents whose kids were in the same class would make small talk when they crossed paths at the grocery store. People would go to their jobs and their favorite bars and the local library and small stores on Main Street and Sunday service at First Lutheran and talk about the Packers or the best places to fish or how that family trip to the Wisconsin Dells had been. Everyone knew everyone else. They intersected with each other in a hundred different ways every day of the week. Even so, Stanley knew from experience that they just skimmed through each other’s lives without any real connection. He’d changed all of that. Him. Stanley Henklemann. Sure, the strange little fly got some credit, but it was Stanley that had chomped on Deputy Farman’s cheek and set the real wheels in motion. After someone was bitten, assuming they didn’t get completely eaten before they turned, they joined a community that was truly connected. There were no petty squabbles. No brawls in the karaoke bar when someone picked a song someone else wanted to sing. No kids pulling each other’s hair or sticking boogers in their friends’ bowling ball finger holes. No parents screaming at them to stop. The second someone was turned, all that stuff just melted away. Everyone went everywhere together, did everything together, and they all had so much in common.
Like me and Laura, he realized with a smile. She’s a zombie, and I’m a zombie. She loves biting people. I love biting people.
Stanley never thought he’d find a soul mate, but life after death was full of surprises.
It was his turn to roll. Clumsy, blood-slicked fingers grasped at one of the balls on the return and finally found their grip. He wobbled up to the lane, stumbled across the foul line, and dropped the ball heavily on the wooden planks. Gravity helped it roll slowly forward until it connected with the pins with just enough force to knock one over.
“Yaaaaaaaahhhhhh,” Stanley moaned happily. He was having one of the best games he could remember.
While Laura tried to carry her ball down the lane, a task complicated by the fact that one foot was bare and the other still had a stiletto heel strapped to it, Stanley looked again at all of his new friends. Some were dropping bowling balls on the lanes. Others just wandered down the pines and past the mid-lanes until they could kick over a few pins. Those that weren’t bowling were engaged in other fun activities. Clumps of zombies were eating leftover people, or making interesting patterns on the glass fronts of the vending machines with their bloody palms, or standing in place and staring at nothing in particular. No matter what they were doing, when another zombie stumbled and bumped into them, they’d moan a hello and wander off with the new zombie to do whatever they were doing. It was beautiful.
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A zombie lady bumped his shoulder. Bowling game forgotten, he set off in the same direction. They stumbled up the short stairs that led up from the lanes to the main concourse and headed roughly in the direction of the main counter where Slow Johnson waved his arms and hit various switches on the lane control board. Across the alley, lights flipped on an off, sweeps randomly cleared pins, and scoreboards reset, adding a level of excitement to the games that Stanley had never experienced when he was alive. When the zombie he was following bumped into the counter and came to a stop, Stanley bumped into her, rocked back on his heels, and found himself looking up through his blood-spattered spectacles at the leader board. Every summer, the men’s bowling league had a big tournament. The winners were local celebrities for the next year until they had a chance to defend their title or fall to the next team of champions. Right up there at the top, a small placard proudly displayed the names Herbert Knudsen, Dallas Vinter, and Stanley Henkelmann.
I sure wish Herby and Lois and Dallas could be here, he thought. Despite having all of these new friends and having a girlfriend for the first time ever, Stanley just couldn’t shake that lingering twinge of loneliness.
He didn’t like the loneliness. It felt like sadness and hunger, and he didn’t like being sad and hungry. In an effort to raise his spirits, he turned to wave and moan at his zombie friends. Those closest to him moaned and waved back, and then those closest to them moaned and waved, and so on, the cordial gesture working its way through the alley like the wave at a Brewers’ game.
So many nice people, Stanley thought. So many friends.
But none of them were Herb, or Dallas, or Lois.
Guess I just need more, he decided.
Stanley turned and shuffled toward the alley’s exit. He bumped one zombie, then another. Soon, all of the zombies bunched up at the double doors and spilled into the parking lot, each zombie following the ones that were following the ones that were following Stanley into the cold Wisconsin morning.
Undead Cheesehead (Monsters in the Midwest Book 3) Page 7