The Spaceship Next Door (16 page)

All that research meant he was very familiar with the sheriff’s department, even if they didn’t know him at all. He knew they remained in the same spot as always, just a half block from City Hall on the northern end of Main, in a small set of offices with a parking lot roughly the same size as the building beside it. They had only two cells, ten desks and two offices. The total number of deputies was the same. They worked in rotating day/night twelve-hour shifts, and for the most part they handled minor area complaints like vandalism and domestic disputes. A tremendous amount of scholarly legal work had been performed by a number of very smart people to settle the question of who might investigate a murder in Sorrow Falls, but none of that work had been applied because in the three years since the local suspension of Posse Comitatus there hadn’t been a murder in the town.

Yet somehow, Ed was the only one who thought this was weird.

The sheriff’s name was Pete, which was short for Patricia Gallardo. Nobody called her Sheriff Gallardo or even Sheriff Patricia. She was Sheriff Pete.

This began as a joke. Whether it was because the sheriff when the ship landed was a male (he retired only six months later, wealthy from a succession of speaking engagements, a book advance and a movie deal,) or due to some innate sexism which interpreted the title ‘sheriff’ as belonging to the male gender, everyone assumed the sheriff was a man. People coming into town—journalists, typically—kept asking to speak to ‘him’, so the deputies started calling her Pete and telling whoever was asking that “Pete will be right with you”, specifically so they could appreciate the look on their faces when they met her.

Unlike the discovery that there was no Joanne behind Joanne’s Diner, Ed was aware that Pete was a woman. This was undoubtedly one of the reasons he didn’t get the runaround when showing up at the office Monday morning asking for her.

“Mr. Somerville, is it?” She met him at the small waiting area, having only arrived a few minutes earlier with a large coffee from the donut shop up the street. “Come on in.”

Her office was one of the two the building had, the other being for interrogations and private waiting and whatever else they could think to use it for. His research led him to the conclusion that it was barely used for much at all. On this morning it held two boxes of donuts.

He sat down and closed the door, which got a raised eyebrow from Sheriff Pete.

“You’re the journo interviewing folks around town, am I right? Everything okay?”

“Yes, sorry, I just wanted to talk in private. I’m sorry, I should have asked about the door.”

“No, it’s fine, I close it half the day. It’s just a little early. I’m not ready for real problems for another couple of hours.”

“I should have scheduled an afternoon meeting, then.”

She laughed a deep laugh that didn’t sound fully genuine.

Patricia Gallardo was a lot more petite than the person she replaced, and that was mostly a good thing. The old sheriff was a large guy in most every direction. Pete was in excellent shape, and someone Ed would call pretty if he didn’t think it might get him shot. She gave off that kind of vibe.

“But yes, that’s me,” Ed said. “I’ve been in town a couple of weeks now.”

“Annie Collins is working with you, I know. Heard about her mom. Is she doing okay?”

“Yes, she’s fine. She’s staying with friends for now. Do you know Violet Jones? Susan and Todd are her parents.”

“I can’t say I do. But when you see Annie tell her Chuck and I are praying for Carol.”

“I’ll do that.”

“So you aren’t here to ask if I know the Joneses.”

“No, I’m not. I want to say a word, and I’d like to know what you think of that word.”

Her brow wrinkled.

“Sure, try me.”

“Zombie.”

Pete didn’t blink.

“Go on,” she said.

“That’s the kind of word that makes people laugh and look confused to be hearing it in a real-world setting.”

“Maybe I’ve been hearing it a lot in a real-world setting. Are you actually a journalist, Mr. Somerville?”

“Let’s say I’m not.”

“All right, let’s say that.”

She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a small stack of folders inside a larger folder.

“Maybe you know this, but local property issues tend to get reported to this office instead of the one you spend so much time at up the hill. Did you know there are four cemeteries in Sorrow Falls?”

“I did know that, actually.”

“Good for you. People have been living here since Oliver Hollis struck that deal with the five tribes, and they’ve been dying here that long too. There’s a lot of property out there devoted to burying our dead.”

She singled out one set of folders.

These are reports of gravesite vandalism. Six different graves at three of the cemeteries. If you’re not a journalist, maybe you’re someone who can help me figure out what this is about.”

Ed took the files from her and started flipping through.

“Nothing at the fourth cemetery?” he asked.

“Nope. Fourth one’s an old burial ground. Flip through those folders, you can probably figure out why we haven’t had an incident there.”

“Hm. This isn’t really desecration or vandalism,” he said, halfway through the cases. “It’s theft.”

“The bodies are all missing, that’s true.”

“Oh, I see it.” He closed the folders and handed them back. “Nobody’s been dead for longer than a year.”

“Ten months. Whereas Holly Hill Burial Ground last hosted a funeral eighty-two years ago. As you can imagine, the logical approach to this—assuming these six are related, which we are assuming—was to find out who the six deceased men and women had in common. Who, and not what, because that who was probably the sick bastard digging these people up, punching through their coffins, and taking their bodies somewhere. And after a little analysis, we added
making it look like the dead climbed out on their own
to the list of sick things this hypothetical who did. But we never found that person.”

She slid the second set of folders along the desk.

“These are nine different reports filed with my office of people seeing the dead walk in Sorrow Falls. Four are assault cases.”

“What kind of assault?”

“Bruising, scratching. Nobody trying to eat brains, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“Did they say anything? The… the undead. Did they speak?”

“All four of the attack victims said it seemed like the, um, zombie attacking them wanted something but they didn’t say exactly what. One young woman insisted the man who assaulted her asked if she was a whore. But supposedly the one asking used to be one of her teachers, so I took that with some salt.”

Ed flipped through until he found that report.
Are you a whore?
was the question. He wondered if that was the rest of the sentence Hank Vogel was trying to get out, and if so what sense that made in the context in which he was asking.

“So now, Mr. Somerville, I appear to be the second sheriff in this town to have to deal with something no other sheriff in any other town has had to deal with. Either someone has concocted an extremely impressive hoax, or we’re looking at a zombie problem. To be honest, I’m considering all possible explanations, so if you’ve got one I would love to hear it.”

“Not yet,” he admitted. “But I know two things. One, the ship is probably causing this, although I don’t know why or how yet. Two, we have to hope this is confined to the dead.”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Being zombies and all.”

“Let me share what I can. It begins with a soldier named Hank Vogel.”

E
verything slowed down for Annie
.

Even in her own house, she was unaccustomed to sitting still and staying put for even a day. Sure, she spent most of her evenings in the living room, rewatching one of the films her mother clung to (somewhat inexplicably, as the movies were not from
her
childhood at all) until bedtime. But her days were usually new adventures with each sunrise.

Or so she liked to tell herself. The truth was, in the summer she migrated between the same three or four places, and in the other nine months most of her day was spent at school. Still, that was high excitement compared to anything happening in Violet’s day-to-day.

First, there was the Sunday morning awkwardness.

Annie waited until she was reasonably certain her friend was awake before knocking on Vi’s bedroom door to ask about Todd

“Oh, no, he’s not… he’s on vacation,” Violet said, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I’m sorry, it didn’t even occur to me to… I mean, you’re used to not having your dad around, so you probably assumed Todd wasn’t.”

I assumed he wasn’t because he never has been before
, Annie thought. This was maybe the second or third time she’d seen him, in six years.

“Maybe, yeah. I don’t mean to pry, Violet, I really don’t, but what was he doing wandering around in the woods at midnight?”

Violet adopted an expression familiar to anyone who’d been embarrassed by their parents at one time or another.

“Oh, that. He does that, I don’t even understand. He has this whole ‘back to nature’ thing he does when he’s on break. He says it’s to compensate for being behind a desk all day. I should have warned you but I don’t even think about it any more. Not that I imagined you being up so late. Didn’t you sleep?”

“A little, yeah. I’m a mess, Vi, don’t mind me.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Violet gave her a quick hug. “Now let’s go get some food.”

“Okay. But you’d tell me if your dad was a werewolf, right?”

“No, probably not. It’s not a full moon, though, so I think we’re okay.”

B
reakfast was just
the two of them. Annie wasn’t sure what part of the house Susan and Todd slept in—there were only a couple of options, really—but wherever it was, they hadn’t emerged yet. That was provided Todd wasn’t out wandering somewhere.

Annie wasn’t sure Susan’s diet even involved food. It certainly didn’t involve condiments.

After breakfast, they returned to the Super to pick up more things, and then back to the house. It was late afternoon when Violet asked Annie if she wanted to help in the garden that Annie realized her best friend in the world was impossibly boring in her natural habitat.

“Sure, I’d love to garden,” Annie lied.

She did a lot of the gardening at her own house because her mother wasn’t strong enough to do everything, but they only grew one crop. She was admittedly curious about what a garden that grew something
other
than marijuana might look like, but not curious enough to get her hands dirty.

Nonetheless, that was what she ended up doing. It was that or try and find a book to read in the library, but that would have meant getting past Susan, who’d taken the time while they were out shopping to decamp in there once more.

First, Annie tried getting on the Internet. She brought a laptop from home, and knew Violet had one as well, yet when Annie tried connecting to the Wi-Fi, the computer kept failing. So did her phone. Yet with the same password, Vi’s worked fine.

When she asked Violet to help her figure out what was wrong, she said she’d talk to Todd the next time she saw him. When Annie followed that up by asking if she could use Vi’s computer instead, she said, “I’d rather you didn’t,” without elaboration.

Annie wasn’t sure what the big deal was.

Like most Sorrow Falls kids, Annie had only a limited social media presence as herself. (Many of them, she was sure, had pseudonymous identities, although she didn’t.) From the day the ship landed onward, pretty much anyone online who could be identified as a denizen of space invasion ground zero was a target.

Annie kept her public profile low and her interactions few, and gossiped face-to-face instead. But that didn’t mean the Internet wasn’t an excellent way to keep track of the rest of the world, especially from her tiny corner of it. She knew Violet treated the Internet much the same way, albeit with an even lower profile. She couldn’t imagine doing anything on her friend’s computer that Violet would disapprove of.

By late Sunday, then, Annie had literally nothing better to do than work in the garden.

Violet’s garden was a lot larger. It took up enough of the plot in the back of the house to nearly qualify as a proper farm, Annie decided. It was a gross exaggeration, but she was sticking with it, especially after an hour into the weeding. She and Vi did this mostly in silence, broken by periodic “is this a weed or are you growing this intentionally?” conversations brought about by Annie’s general unfamiliarity with vegetable plants.

Todd walked by about eighty minutes in. He came from the woods and headed right through the center of the garden, not apparently noticing either of them.

“Hi, Todd,” Violet said.

“Hello,” he answered, without turning. He went inside.

Annie decided yes, he was exactly as creepy-weird as he seemed the night before.

“Hey, do you remember a lot about your birth dad?” Annie asked.

Vi seemed taken aback by the question. Maybe it was the timing of it—Todd having just walked past—or that it hadn’t been a subject of discussion for a long time. Mostly, Annie was just looking for something to talk about.

She and Vi had been friends for six years. They were perhaps two years into that friendship when Annie became aware of something that would have been obvious sooner to someone with an adult-level grasp of genetics: Violet didn’t look anything like Susan or Todd. It was another two months before she brought it up.

The short version of the explanation was that Violet was adopted. The longer version was that her birth father was a scary man. It wasn’t something twelve-year old Annie ever thought to ask, but there were times when she wondered if the Joneses weren’t living in isolation entirely by choice.

“Objection,” Violet said.

“Grounds?”

“Irrelevance.”

“The court recognizes your objection but asks that the witness respond to the line of inquiry.”

“Annie, you can’t be the attorney and the judge at the same time.”

“Overruled.”

Violet sighed, but was unwilling to face a contempt of court charge.

“I remember a lot about him. Why do you ask?”

“I dunno. Part of me always imagined you were secretly in witness protection up here. And your dad was some mobster and you testified against him.”

“That’s a good story.”

“Thanks, I’ve been working on it for a while.”

“It’s not true, but it’s still a good story.”

Annie threw a chunk of dirt at Vi.

“C’mon, it makes so much sense!”

“You think that’s the answer to why we live up here? The home-schooling, the macro diets, all that?”

“Yes!”

“Sorry. Todd and Susan wanted a certain kind of life and built that life, and I happened to agree with their choices. I like it out here.”

“All right, fine, if he’s not in the mafia, what’s his deal? Is he the president? Is your dad the president?”

“Like Grover Cleveland’s love child? Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“I’m gonna throw more dirt.”

“You make everything so complicated. He isn’t anybody. He just wanted me to have a different kind of life than this. That’s all.”

“And you aren’t hiding from him.”

“I’m not hiding from him. That doesn’t mean I ever want to see him again, either. He had a temper… Annie, I really don’t want to talk about him. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. I was just looking for something more interesting than gardening to talk about.”

“There is nothing more important than gardening.”

“I object.”

“Overruled.”

S
unday night was spent somewhat normally
, in terms of their friendship: movie night, featuring
The Wizard of Oz
. There were a hundred plus films from which to choose sitting in Annie’s living room at home, but they all required a VCR, which Violet didn’t have. They agreed that going over to Annie’s to watch something else would end up with them being tempted to just stay overnight there and return in the morning.

Perhaps Ed’s somewhat paranoid concern was rubbing off on Annie, but she decided even if Susan gave them a pass it still wasn’t okay.
In case something happened
. Nothing was going to happen, but once it was in her head she couldn’t get rid of the idea.

Violet had a copy of her favorite film in a format even older than VCR: she had an honest-to-God 8mm movie theater copy of it, and a movie projector to watch it on. It meant projecting it on the wall of Vi’s bedroom, and changing the reel halfway through, and dealing with the crappy speakers on the projector—so actually, every aspect of the experience was inferior to every other way they’d watched it—but it was fun. It was a new experience, and even though she’d seen the movie a hundred times by now, the technology gave her a chance to pretend it was a new adventure.

Monday was the worst day. There was no more shopping to do, and no more gardening to get done, and Violet couldn’t get the Wi-Fi to let Annie’s devices in. After two hour-long conversations with Carol, Annie gave up and wandered into the library—ignoring Susan—for long enough to grab whatever book she thought might be worth an hour or two of her time. It ended up being a collection of Lovecraft stories.

She knew four or five profoundly nerdy kids who spoke of Lovecraft with the quiet reverence less-nerdy kids reserved for Kurt Cobain, Catcher in the Rye, or the Bible. (Depending on the kid, obviously.) Annie knew exactly nothing of Lovecraft, but his was the only name she recognized on any of the books in the library, so she grabbed it, and spent the afternoon trying to figure out what the big deal was.

She came out of the book a few hours later with a greater appreciation for Poe and a diminished opinion of her nerdy friends. Then she called Carol one more time, went to bed early, and had at least one nightmare involving ancient gods with unpronounceable names.

When she got downstairs the next morning Ed was already there, in the kitchen, chatting with Susan.

She could have kissed him.

“Morning, Annie, how are you?” he greeted.

“Great! Let’s go!”

“I was just… okay,” he said, as she was already past him by then and on the porch. She sat in the passenger’s seat of the car—she was possibly even happier to see the car again—while he finished up having whatever boring conversation he was having in the boring house with boring Susan.

“Everything okay?” he asked, starting the car.

“Super. I’m losing my mind here; let’s go do exciting things. Did you have a fun few days? Tell me every last detail.”

“Um, okay. I saw your library yesterday.”

“Did you? Did you see the mural? What did you think?”

“I’ve seen it before, in pictures, but—”

“Actually, forget that. What happened at the army base? I’ve heard stories.”

“
S
o zombies
, that’s what you’re telling me.”

“I’m telling you what the information we’ve been collecting has led me to think,” Ed said. “I appreciate how crazy it is.”

“No kidding.”

“But you live in a town with an interstellar vehicle parked in it. Why not zombies too?”

“Sure. And I mean, I’ve been hearing the same stuff, but not from anyone I took seriously.”

Annie told him about Rick Horton and his late-night undead encounter in a cow pasture. Meanwhile, on the other side of the diner, Beth kept shooting glances her way.

They were in a booth in the back of Joanne’s. It was the same one Ed was in the first time they met. They drove to the diner directly from Violet’s, after Ed figured out Annie hadn’t eaten yet (all Vi knew how to do in the kitchen was burn bacon) and before they realized they didn’t have as busy a day as anticipated. The meeting they were supposed to have with Desmond Hollis was pushed to the end of the day, and the plan to head to city hall to speak to a couple of councilmen got blown up when the council canceled the day’s session. No official reason was given for this, and if there was an unofficial reason, Annie had been away from town for too long to hear what it was.

Beth, hopefully, had something on it.

“How long ago was that?” Ed asked.

“I heard the story the day you and I met.”

“I mean, when did your friend see this?”

“Not sure. And he isn’t my friend. I could ask him if I run into him, or we can call Rodney and see if he knows. Might come off as kind of weird though, dialing him up to ask that.”

“You can’t look up Rick?”

“Like I said, he isn’t my friend. And he’s not easy to track down.”

Ed smiled. “Annie Collins, I thought you were friends with everyone in this town.”

“I said I
know
everyone in this town. I don’t happen to like all of them. He is one such person. But, I can find him if you really want to talk.”

“It’s okay. Probably not important enough to go through the trouble. It’s only that he might have the earliest reported sighting. I thought we might want to establish a timeline.”

“Yeah, well I’m about 50% not sold on the zombie theory right now. And I’m not even supposed to be the adult in this partnership. I’m gonna go say hey to Beth. Maybe come up with a vampire angle instead, while I’m gone.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Beth stepped around the counter when she approached, put down a coffee urn, and gave Annie a big hug.

“You snuck in here without even a hello first!” Beth said, releasing Annie only to smack her on the arm. “I was so worried! When I heard about Carol…”