Night of the Living Dead (2 page)

Such as today.

Barbra was doing everything she could to keep things civil. She knew that Johnny hated these long trips out to their father’s grave, but Johnny owned a car and she didn’t, so she had been trying to keep the peace. When the car radio had stopped working about an hour ago, leading to a litany of curse words from Johnny, Barbra had bitten her tongue to avoid voicing her disapproval, which would have only created more tension. He was also chain-smoking cigarette after cigarette, something he
knew
 she hated ... but she said nothing.

At long last, they turned onto the winding dirt and gravel road that slithered its lazy way up to the cemetery. Their ritual for the sad anniversary of their father’s death was halfway over.

Johnny had ceased his quiet grumbling, and when he pulled the car into their usual spot near the top of the hill, Barbra offered a light comment. "They ought to make the day the time changes the first day of summer."

Johnny was in the middle of crushing out his cigarette. "What?"

"Well," she explained, "it’s eight o’clock and it’s still light."

"A lot of good the extra daylight does us," Johnny groused as he futzed with his silly leather driving gloves. "Now we’ve still got a three-hour drive back. We’re not going to be home until after midnight."

"Well if it
really
bugged you, Johnny," she observed, "you wouldn’t do it."

She realized as soon as the words left her mouth that it was a mistake, but fortunately, Johnny did not rise to the bait with his usual vehemence. He just snorted and said, "You think I
wanna
blow Sunday on a scene like
this
? You know, I figure we’re either gonna have to move Mother out here or move the grave into Pittsburgh."

Barbra rankled and reminded him, "She can’t make a trip like this."

"Ohhh," Johnny scoffed as he twisted around to reach into the backseat. "It’s not that she can’t ... Is there any of that candy left?"

Barbra leaned forward to look. "No."

Johnny pulled the small wreath onto his lap. "Look at this thing," he grumbled. " ‘We still remember.’
I
don’t. You know, I don’t even remember what the man
looks
like."

The sad thing was, she couldn’t tell if he really meant it or was just trying to provoke a reaction from her. "Johnny," she sighed, "it takes you five minutes ..."

"Yeah, ‘five minutes’ to put the wreath on the grave, and
six hours
to drive back and forth. Mother wants to remember, so
we
trot two hundred miles into the country and
she
stays at home."

Weary and wanting to close the subject, Barbra rolled up her window and returned to her placating voice. "Well, we’re here, John, all right?"

Johnny mumbled some retort, but he, too, began rolling up his window. Barbra got out of the car and crossed around behind it, her heels crunching on the gravel and making her feel a bit unbalanced. Very faintly, she heard the radio start to whistle through Johnny’s rising window.

Now
it decides to work!
she thought.

As she waited for Johnny to catch up, she was only vaguely aware of the voice on the radio saying something about technical problems. She was too busy looking around the graveyard in the dimming light, and struggling to keep her jittery nerves from getting the best of her.

They’re coming to get you, Barbra ...

Barbra shuddered. She had never liked graveyards. Pulling her coat tighter around her throat, she stepped off the road and onto the cemetery lawn just as Johnny joined her.

"There was nothing wrong with the radio," he said as he came alongside her. "Must have been the station."

All of them?
she started to remark, but decided against it — implying that his car wasn’t as cherry as it once was would be unwise. Instead, she ignored his comment and asked, "Which row is it in ...?"

Together, the siblings meandered into the somewhat disorganized graveyard. They cast about for their father’s grave while Johnny carried the wreath and Barbra made sure not to lose her footing — her heels had not been designed for soft earth any more than the gravel road.

The glooming sky and lengthening shadows chased a tickle up Barbra’s spine. The place was just so empty, so ... well, dead.

"Boy, there’s no one around," Johnny observed in a low voice, as though echoing her thoughts.

"Well it’s late," Barbra retorted, the surroundings getting the best of her nerves. "If you’d gotten up earlier..."

"Aw, look, I already lost an hour’s sleep with the time change—"

"I think you complain just to hear yourself talk." She shoved her hands into her coat pockets just as she spotted their father’s headstone. "
There
it is."

Marching over at first, Barbra’s steps slowed as they approached the unkempt grave. Her heartbeat was fluttering again, and she feigned a sudden interest in a low-hanging branch as Johnny knelt to set the cross-shaped wreath in place.

"I wonder what happened to the one from last year," Johnny said. "Each year we spend good money on these things, we come out here, and the one from last year’s gone."

Barbra shrugged. "Well, the flowers die and ... the caretaker or somebody takes them away."

A low thunder rumbled through the evening sky from dark clouds rolling in over the horizon. Johnny leaned back to inspect his handiwork over the rims of his glasses. "Yeah, a little spit-and-polish, you can clean this up, sell it next year." He climbed to his feet. "I wonder how many times we’ve bought the same one."

Ignoring him again, Barbra stepped forward as Johnny stepped back. She knelt before the grave of their father, clasped her hands, closed her eyes, and began to pray.

She heard Johnny shuffling around behind her — probably uncomfortable with her supplication, if she knew her brother. The thunder rolled again, and Barbra focused to keep her breathing steady.

Sure enough, Johnny only managed to wait a few more seconds before needling, "Hey, come on, Barb, church was this morning, huh?"

Another clap of thunder — the loudest yet — made her jump a little, but it also brought her a reprieve. Her eyes remained closed, but Johnny must have taken a moment to look around, perhaps evaluating the sky for rain; a creaky rustling also told her that he was slipping back into those driving gloves of his.

But eventually, as always, he started again. "Hey, I mean, prayin’s for
church
, huh? Come on ..."

Barbra sighed, but kept her eyes shut. "I haven’t seen
you
in church lately."

Johnny chuckled. "Yeah, well ... there’s not much sense in my goin’ to church." He paused, then asked, "Do you remember one time when we were small, we were out here?"

Oh, no ...

Johnny continued, sounding nostalgic of all things! "It was from right over there. I jumped out at you from behind a tree, and Grandpa got all excited and he shook his fist at me and he said, ‘Boy, you’ll be damned to hell!’ "

Barbra stood then, averting her eyes. Why couldn’t things ever be easy with Johnny?

Johnny chuckled again, still thankfully oblivious as to how nervous he was making her. "Remember that? Right over there ..."

Barbra walked away, heading in the general direction of the car.

"Boy," Johnny said, still musing over the tree in question, "you used to really be scared here."

"Johnny," she said, turning his name into a chastisement. Big mistake.

Johnny locked onto the tremor in her voice like a cat onto a mouse. "Hey, you’re still afraid!" He sounded all too pleased with himself.

"Stop it now!" she scolded, trying in her own way to sound like their grandfather. "I mean it!"

That was the worst thing she could have done with Johnny — all it did was egg him on. He smiled and started with that annoying, creepy voice of his. "They’re coming to get you, Barbra ..."

"Stop it! You’re ignorant!"

Barbra turned her back on him, but her idiot brother kept at it. He ducked around one of the larger tombstones, then pulled himself over the top like some kind of ghoul. "They’re coming for you, Barbra ..." he moaned in his Karloff-wannabe voice.

Barbra stomped her way back toward the car, and Johnny followed. She hesitated just long enough to tell him, "
Stop
it! You’re acting like a
child
!"

"They’re coming for you ..." Johnny insisted.

Barbra scoffed with as much false courage as she could muster and continued on her way.

It was sad, really. Here they were, two supposed adults — one teasing the other like a child, and the other
afraid
like a child. Johnny could barely maintain his faux-frightened mask as the impulse to grin at her rose and fell. He looked over to his right, and Barbra followed his gaze.

An older man was shambling through the cemetery. He swayed from side to side
and looked a little bedraggled
, and Barbra had to wonder if he was drunk, perhaps even driven to drink by visiting a fallen loved one here in this lonely place.

"Look!" Johnny proclaimed. "There comes one of them now."

Barbra was aghast. "He’ll hear you!" she admonished with a ferocious whisper.

Johnny ran up to her, taking her by the shoulders in mock fear. "Here he comes now! I’m getting out of here!"

"Johnny!" Barbra gasped as Johnny took off. He ran past the man, and Barbra’s cheeks burned in humiliation. She often thought that their grandfather had been too harsh with them, but at times like this, she wondered if maybe he should’ve tanned Johnny’s hide a little
more
often.

Her hands tucked into her pockets and her eyes low in embarrassment, Barbra continued on her way. She would cross paths with the poor man in a matter of seconds, and she prepared to apologize for her brother’s boorish antics.

The man attacked her.