Tammy spun around and held her hands in Kopp's face. She had to stand on her tiptoes.
"Shurma'laka'rala'kama, Lord of Dreams, Master of Souls, I invoke thee."
Sheriff Kopp shuddered and stopped.
"There's nothing going on here," Tammy said, "Everything's fine. Nothing needs explaining. In fact, none of this ever happened. Now get in your car and go away."
Sheriff Kopp's expression became normal, save for a certain vague dullness behind his eyes. He climbed into his cruiser.
"You kids better get yourself home. It's getting late." He started the car and drove off without another word.
"Wow! That was awesome. I didn't know you could do that!"
Tammy socked Chad directly in the solar plexus.
"You asshole."
"What is that?" he asked between coughs. "Some kind of mind control thing. Like in Star Wars, right?"
She sneered. "Let's get out of here."
"You aren't mad about that whole 'she made me do it' act, are you, babe?" he asked as they drove back. "I was just distracting him for you. So you could do your Jedi mind trick on him." He grinned. "Man, that was so fucking cool!"
She stared at her geometry book with burning intensity.
"Can you show me how to do that?"
No reply was given. Ten minutes passed.
"How come you don't just use that hocus-pocus on Loretta so we can get into the diner?"
"It doesn't work on everyone, and only for a short while when it does," she answered through clenched teeth.
Chad nodded to himself for the next couple of minutes.
"Aw c'mon, Mistress Lilith. I was just trying to distract him. Really."
She slammed her book shut with a sharp slap.
Chad admitted defeat. No groping tonight. Especially after she found out about the missing leg.
Oh well, he thought as he drew once more from the bottomless well of throbbing teenage desire, maybe tomorrow.
Earl spilled the mojo bag's contents across the counter. He sorted through the odd collection of items, both mundane and exotic.
Loretta picked up an empty pepper shaker. "This is mine."
"It's gotta be the connection to the diner. So the zombies know to attack this place."
"What about the rest of this stuff?"
"Mostly magical ingredients. A cock's left claw. A black tail feather from the same chicken. Some mushrooms plucked from a corpse."
"And this?" She held up a scrap of paper with some indecipherable writing.
"That's an invocation," Duke replied. "Looks like Glok'rooshah, Prince of Shadows. Or maybe Fuyirbahga, He That Corrupts The Flesh."
Earl and Loretta tossed him suspicious looks.
"Last time we were in El Paso, I looked through Hector's library." He took the paper and read the scribbles. "Rise, Fuyirbahga. From the bowels of the earth, I bid thee, seep into this place of death and bring forth the rotted flesh to purge the unbelievers."
Earl snatched back the paper. "You're making that up."
"That's what it says."
"Bullshit."
"Read it yourself."
The vampire squinted at the writing. "Eyes-ray. Rum-fray ee-thay owls-bay of-ay ee-thay urth-ay." He snarled. "What is it? Greek? Sanskrit?"
"Pig Latin," Loretta replied.
"Yup," Duke confirmed. "Secret language of the old gods."
Earl chuckled. "That's stupid."
"No. It's smart. Think about it. Everybody knows it. Nobody thinks nuthin' 'bout it. But it's out there, everywhere, just waiting for somebody who knows how to use it."
"It's still stupid."
"Maybe. But it works."
"So that's it?" Loretta asked. "Now that this is dug up, there won't be any more zombies?"
"That's what Hec said."
"What about the cows?"
"Hec figured they got infected with some black-magic runoff by accident. Happens sometimes with especially powerful hoodoo."
Loretta breathed a sigh of relief. "That's great. I wanna thank you boys for your—"
"Hold up a minute. This might not be over yet."
"But I thought this got rid of the zombies."
"It did, but whoever planted this in the cemetery is still out there. And for whatever reason, they got it out for your place. Or something in this place. Maybe even you. Now that the zombies are gone, they might — just might, mind you — try something else."
"Hell," Loretta grumbled.
"You got any idea who might be interested in driving you outta business?"
"Nobody that I know of."
"That's gonna make things harder. Until we find whoever is responsible for this, it could keep happening."
Loretta took a moment to wrestle with her tangled yellow hair. "Somebody in this town is practicing voodoo?"
"Voodoo is a religion," Duke interrupted.
She pinned back the stringy, bleached mass. "Yeah?"
"So voodoo is a real religion. People who practice it don't do stuff like that any more than Baptists or Catholics do."
"Exactly," Earl agreed. "We're not talking about Voodoo or Wicca or even Satanism. All those are pretty much harmless. No, what we got here is a genuine black-magic practitioner, a true disciple of the old gods. And a damn powerful one at that."
"Old gods?" Loretta asked.
"Long story. Let's just say that they make Beelzebub look like a bald, toothless rat with one leg and leave it at that."
"Think there might be more than one?" Duke said.
"Usually are."
"Hold on a second here. So there's a person or persons calling up the powers of Hell just to run me outta business?"
They nodded.
"We're talking about a cult or sumthin'?"
They nodded again.
"In Rockwood? But we don't even got a movie theater."
"That's how it usually works. People who got stuff to do don't usually sign up with the minions of darkness. It's the folks with lots'a time to kill that you gotta watch out for."
"Idle hands," Duke agreed.
"So you've seen this kind of thing before?"
"All the time," Earl replied, "especially in isolated, quiet little places like this." He leaned closer. "If you're ever in New Mexico, don't pick up any hitchhikers. Better than fifty-fifty chance you'll wind up strapped to an altar."
"You're making that up."
"Happened to me twice. Swear to God."
She snorted skeptically and returned to the original subject. "You figure Gil's disappearance is related to all this?"
"I got that feeling."
"But he was such a harmless of guy. Why'd somebody want to hurt him?"
"Why would someone want to hurt you?" posed Earl. "People do nasty things to each other. Don't usually have a good reason for it."
She nodded. "Okay. How are we supposed to find this cult?"
"You know this town better than us. You got any candidates?"
She paced behind the counter, rubbing her flapping chin thoughtfully. "Well, there's old Curtis Mayfair. He's always been an odd fella. Lives by himself in an old shack. Don't come into town much. Always talking to his dog about astrophysics or sum thin'."
"Wouldn't be him," Earl said. "See, these cults are clever. They don't act weird like that. They blend in, act just like regular folks except for the occasional orgy or human sacrifice. Odds are, you probably talked to whoever is doing this and didn't even know it."
"So it could be anybody except for old Curtis."
"We can't just eliminate him either. See, sometimes an especially clever practitioner acts crazy on purpose because they know no one thinks the weirdo is really a cultist. They're tricky that way.
"Practitioners are hard to pick out because they're not like Duke or me. There's signs of our conditions if you know what to look for, but we're talking about normal people here. Completely regular humans who consort with darkness. It's hard to pin them down unless you're lucky enough to catch them in the act.
We just gotta keep our eyes open. Now that we know what we're looking for, it's just a matter of time."
Scowling, Loretta drummed her fingers on the counter.
"On the bright side," Earl comforted, "maybe the zombies are all they got."
"You think?"
"Probably not," he answered honestly.
She slapped a fist into a palm with a meaty smack.
"Damnation. ."
First thing in the morning, Loretta called Gonzalez General Repair. Wanda Gonzalez, a middle-aged Mexican with skin like leather, arrived a little before noon and quietly went to replacing the shattered glass doors.
Sometime soon after, Sheriff Kopp popped in for a visit. He nodded to Wanda. Wanda, a pane of glass under arm, nodded back.
"Sheriff," Duke greeted.
"Morning, Mr. Smith," Kopp returned, removing his dusty hat. "Loretta around?"
"She's in back."
Kopp took a seat at the counter, a few stools down from Duke. The sheriff studied the brim of his Stetson for a few minutes while whistling some lazy tune Duke didn't recognize.
"Heard you had a little trouble yesterday."
"Nuthin' I couldn't handle."
"Old Walt Hastings said you lost a couple of ringers."
"Naw." Duke held up his left hand and wiggled his freshly grown digits. "It looked worse than it was."
"I'm sure Walter will be glad to hear that."
A long quiet fell upon the diner, broken only by the clink of Wanda's work.
"Walt said you smashed open a cow's skull with a rock. I gotta say that's impressive. Damn impressive."
"It was a big rock."
"Just the same, I don't know of many men who could manage that. You ever work with livestock, Mr. Smith?"
"Nope."
"My daddy had a couple. When I was a kid, I use'ta milk 'em. I had this special rod: a big, heavy lead one. The kind of rod that'd crack open a man's skull just like that." He snapped his fingers. "We used it to keep the cows in line. I'd whomp on 'em when they got ornery. Hit 'em as hard as I could. Just to keep 'em in line. Never did much to the cows except annoy 'em."
"That right?"
"Yeah. So I figure a man would have to be God-awful strong to smash open a cow's thick head. Even with a big rock."
"Took three blows."
"Just the same, mighty impressive."
Duke took a long sip of his Coke.
The sheriff whistled a second verse.
Duke had encountered the likes of Marshall Kopp before: the quiet, thoughtful sort of man who knew more than he'd ever come right out and say. Duke decided to stop screwing around.
"I'm a werewolf."
Kopp went to the cooler and grabbed a soda. "Figured it was sumthin' like that."
"How'd you know?"
"Oh, I've had plenty of experience with this sort of thing. 'Bout seven years back, had an outbreak of vampire turkeys. And four years before that, Charlie Vaughn's daughter got herself possessed. And the Stillmans's scarecrow took to wandering around at night and scaring the bejeezus outta the kids. Point is, Rockwood has itself an unusual history, and being sheriff means dealing with those problems." Kopp cocked his head to glance at Duke with a carefully calculated half-stare meant to appear casual, but was anything but. "You ain't going to be a problem, are you, Mr. Smith?"
"No, sir."
"Glad to hear it. And you can call me 'Marshall.' Everybody does."
Loretta's wide, jiggling frame emerged from the back. They exchanged polite nods.
"What can I do for you, Marshall?"
"Sorry to have to do this to you, Loretta, but I gotta ask you to close this place up."
"What for?"
"C'mon now," the sheriff sighed. "Y'know it's my job to look after the people of this county. I was willing to overlook the zombies as long as they kept to bothering you, but now with Walt's cows getting infected. ."
"That ain't my fault."
"Yeah. But this whole walking corpse trouble started with this diner, and I have'ta figure it's connected some way."
"That's not fair, Marshall, and you know it."
"Fair or not, I can't have the dead shambling around and pestering my citizens."
"But I took care of the zombies." Loretta reached under the counter and placed the dusty mojo bag before the sheriff. "This here is what was making 'em."
Kopp flipped through the purse. "Ah hell. Not another cult."
" 'Fraid so," Duke confirmed.
"Another cult?" Loretta asked.
"Yeah. Seems like one pops up every couple of years. It's gotta be the heat."
"You need a movie theater," Duke observed.
"I've been trying to get a public swimmin' pool."
"That'd help."
Wanda finished with the doors, and Loretta paid her bill in cash.
"You want me to order up another set?" Wanda asked.
"Thanks, but I won't be needing 'em."
The handywoman puffed on her cigarette stub. "Think I'll order 'em anyway. Just in case."
She packed up her tools. Loretta returned to the original topic of conversation. "Anyway, according to the boys, now that this is dug up, everything will finally quiet down."
"Guess I can give you another chance," Sheriff Kopp said, "but this is it. If anything funny happens, I'm gonna have to shut you down. Nuthin' personal, Loretta."
"I know, Marshall. Just doin' your job." She held up a large rectangle of cardboard with big black letters across it.
NOW 100%
ZOMBIE FREE. ASK ABOUT THE BOTTOMLESS CUP OF COFFEE: ONLY 25¢.
"What do you think?" "Nice," Kopp replied.
"It'll do until I scrape up enough to rent the billboard by the interstate."
The sheriff tucked the bag under his arm. "I'll take this for evidence if that's alright with you." He tipped his hat. "I gotta be going. Somebody stole some bodies from McAllister Fields. Probably related to all this. Least, I hope it's related. Hate to think we got both grave robbers and a cult running around."
He dropped seventy-five cents for the soda.
"I haven't met your friend yet, Mr. Smith."
"He sleeps during the day."
The sheriff smiled crookedly. "Then I'll just have to drop by tonight. See you around, Loretta, Mr. Smith."
Kopp moseyed out of the diner with a generous swagger.
The nearest restaurant-supply store was a good four-hour drive there and back. Loretta persuaded Duke to come along and keep her company. He agreed reluctantly, worried about the awkward quiet that might fill the cab. His concerns were quickly put aside. Whether she bought his werewolf excuse or not, Loretta seemed to be handling the rejection well.
The truck skimmed down the interstate. Brief moments of conversation were broken by long moments of silence. Not the cumbersome, unpleasant sort of silence, but the absolute calm of two people who didn't feel the need to fill every second with noise. Occasionally, Loretta would throw out some polite comment about the weather, and Duke would nod or shake his head as the situation required.
After exhausting every possible variation of "Hot 'nuff for ya?" Loretta couldn't resist indulging her curiosity.
"Mind if I ask you a personal question? It's about your condition."
"Nope."
"How'd you get it?"
He tugged the brim of his baseball cap lower over his eyes. "I killed a werewolf. That's how you become one. 'He who slays the beast inherits its heart.' Least, that's the prettiest way I've heard it put."
"You killed a werewolf?"
"I ran him over with an eighteen-wheeler. It was dark, and I wasn't paying enough attention to the road, and he just darted out in front of me and those rigs don't stop on a dime. Ended up mashing the poor bastard's head flat as a wafer. Ain't exactly decapitation, but I guess it was close enough. Anyway, I climbed outta the truck. By then, he'd gone back to being a naked human."
"What did you do?"
"I got back in my truck and got the hell out of t
here."
"You didn't wait for help?"
"Aren't any doctors that I know of able to fix a mashed skull, and I'd just gotten my CDL. Didn't want to screw up my life 'cuz I flattened a naked guy running through the woods in the middle of the night."
Loretta frowned. "Doesn't seem right."
"It wasn't right, but it was what I did. Still don't know his name or even what he looked like, but he was a werewolf alright."
"So you just knew that you'd become one?"
"Not 'til the next full moon. Now that stuff about the moon affecting werewolves is only half true. I get stronger with the full moon, but I don't have to change if I don't want. But I was just a kid, and I didn't even know I'd become what I was. I get in this bar fight over a turn at the pool table. This biker breaks a cue over my head, and I lose control. I change right there in front of everyone. Scared the living shit outta everybody, including me." He chuckled. "Good thing, too. I was so freaked out that I ran off instead of killing everyone in the place.
"Spent a couple of months on the move after that, changin' every full moon, thinking I couldn't get close to anyone 'cuz I might end up ripping out their hearts. Werewolves can't hold that stuff in. It just kept building and building until I finally found this guy alone in the woods and tore into him."
Quietly disapproving, she shook her head.
"So I've ripped him to shreds, and I'm hunched over his gutted corpse, gnawing on his intestines. Which tasted like shit. So I snap off a hunk of innards and choke it down 'cuz I figure that's what I'm s'posed to do. And I get this picture of how my life is gonna be. Eating rotten intestines, stalking through the woods, barfing up rotten intestines, throwing myself under an eighteen-wheeler on a lonely stretch of interstate."
"You seem alright now," Loretta observed.
"I was just gettin' to that. I stop chewing on the guy long enough to gag, and when I turn back, he's busy shoving his guts back in. He gives me the hairy eyeball, and asks me to help him find his pancreas."
Duke smiled widely or as wide as he ever did, which was wide enough for someone to notice without making a big deal of it.
"It was Earl."
"That when you first met?"
"Yeah. He helped me unlearn every wrong thing horror movies had ever taught me. Probably saved my life."
Gil's All Fright Diner Page 6