The Zombies Of Lake Woebegotten (9 page)

Clem was still drooling, which he didn’t usually do except when sleeping or staring really hard at a packing list, and his eyes were still rolled up, but his mouth was opening and closing ceaselessly as he tried to come for Dolph.

Fortunately death hadn’t made him any smarter, and Clem kept trying to walk right through the counter instead of just walking around it, which meant Dolph had a free minute to…

What? Kill him? Re-kill him? But he was Clem! Dumb as a box of elbow macaroni, sure, but loyal, and sweet-natured, and good tempered, and Dolph had known him since he was just a little kid, and he couldn’t very well pick up a frozen turkey and smack Clem over the head with it, could he? Shooting those zombies at Mr. Levitt’s house had been one thing, they’d been
strangers
, but even if this wasn’t really Clem anymore, it sure looked like him. Dolph didn’t have his gun now, either, it was still in the truck, and that also made it more difficult, because looking at somebody over the barrel of a rifle had a way of creating some distance between you, the way bludgeoning somebody to death with the contents of a small-town grocery store did not.
 

So it would have to be containment, then. Dolph danced over toward the back of the store, waving his arms to keep zombie-Clem’s eyes on him, not that Clem appeared to be using his only-showing-whites eyes, and for that matter one of the zombies at Mr. Levitt’s house didn’t have any eyes at all, so how did they get around anyway? Maybe they could smell people, or sense them somehow. Clem eventually figured out how to walk out from behind the register and came lurching down the aisle, knocking into a nice endcap display of pie fillings and sending cans of pumpkin puree and cherries in heavy syrup spilling and rolling every which way. Dolph stayed just out of Clem’s reach, backing up carefully toward the rear of the store, knowing that if he lost his balance and tumbled Clem would fall upon him and snap those teeth—and what horrible teeth, the boy never did get the hang of brushing regularly, let alone flossing—and take a big old bite out of whatever part of Dolph’s anatomy presented itself.
 

Dolph got the freezer door open a moment before Clem lurched into the storeroom, and then Dolph did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life: he just stood there in front of the open freezer until Clem was almost within grasping distance.

He sprang off to the left, nipped quickly around behind Clem, put both hands on the zombie’s back, and shoved him into the freezer as hard as he could. Clem stumbled but didn’t fall, and Dolph slammed the freezer door just as the zombie was trying to emerge. The door had a latch on the inside—about fifteen years ago one employee, smarter than Clem but only by a whisker, had gotten herself locked inside for hours, so Dolph had a handle put inside—and maybe Clem was too dumb to use it now, but to be safe Dolph dragged a bunch of heavy boxes of pop and soup and such over in front of the door, making a nice solid wall.
 

He sagged against the door, panting hard, and then remembered the limbless zombie in the truck, the one he was originally supposed to put in the freezer, and he said a profanity so obscene it might have even made Eileen blush, if she’d heard it.
 

10. Women’s Circle
of Hell

E
ileen backed up her little car, got out, and looked at the motionless corpse of her husband. She hadn’t run him over so much as run
into
him, hitting him with the front bumper and sending him flying back to crash against the front of his still-running Mustang. He was definitely dead, though, no motion at all in his chest, and—

The fumes pouring out of the garage were too much for her, so she ran into the house and locked all the doors. So much for making his death look like a suicide. She paced up and down in the living room, gnawing on her thumbnail, trying to decide what to do. It was getting on past lunchtime, but at least it was cold, so not too many people were out and about, but eventually somebody would see Brent’s body, and then she’d be in the soup. She couldn’t bury him, the ground was frozen solid down for inches, it’d take a backhoe to break the crust, but she could at least get him out of the driveway, maybe put him in the trunk, though it’d have to be the Mustang’s trunk since she could hardly have a body sitting out in the back of Brent’s pickup truck and her car barely had room in back for a couple bags of groceries, and later after night fell she could drive around to the lake, cut a hole in the ice—Brent had ice fishing gear though he hadn’t gone out in recent years, and how hard could it be to use if idiots like her husband managed it?—and slide his body down into the wet darkness where it would go unnoticed until the spring thaw. That would work. It was a plan. She’d have to come up with a believable story about where he’d gone, or maybe she could just claim bewilderment, let people think he’d gotten bored and run out on her—

Her phone rang, startling her near about out of her skin. She considered letting it ring, but what if it was somebody calling about Brent’s body, she’d have to pretend to know nothing about it, to be surprised to hear he was all crumpled up half out of the garage, and oh Lord what if there was blood on the front of her car…

“Munson residence, this is Eileen.”

“Eileen! This is Pastor Inkfist. How are things with you today?”

“Oh, hello Pastor. I’m afraid this isn’t the best time—”

“It’s a bad time for all of us, Eileen, but I need some of your famous organizational prowess now. Can you get on the phone to all the other members of the Women’s Circle? We’re holding a meeting in the community center this evening, at six o’clock on the dot.”

“At six? People don’t like having their supper interrupted, Pastor.”

“I know, but we need everyone there, so we have to wait until folks get off work, but no later—it’s an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?” She knew from experience that Pastor Inkfist considered things like deciding which child got to play the angel in the Christmas Pageant an emergency, and she had her own actual emergencies to tend to.
 

“I don’t suppose you’ve noticed anything, ah, odd, lately?”

Besides her gassed husband lying dead in her driveway in front of God and the neighbors and everybody? “Like what?”

“Ah, it… it might be better if it waits for the meeting. But it’s vitally important that you get
everyone
, all right? Not just the women, but the men, the children, the families, everyone.”

“I can try, Pastor, but—”

“It’s a matter of life and death.”

“Do you mean the deciding on whether to have a pancake supper or a spaghetti supper kind of life and death, or the actual life-and-death kind of life and death?”

“The latter.” He cleared his throat. “And if you could make sure there are chairs set up, and maybe some kind of refreshments, and, ah… whatever a meeting like this might need…”

Helpless. Like all men. “All right, Pastor. I’ll do what I can.” After another minute of farewells, she hung up and called her right-hand woman in the Women’s Circle, Glenda Dreier, and put her on the job.
 

“You can count on me, Eileen!” Glenda chirped. She was usually perky, and didn’t ask any questions, just did what you asked. Made a good hot dog and Velveeta hotdish, too. Generally dependable. Eileen hated her more than she hated just about anybody except her husband, and since he was dead, Glenda just eased into first place. “I’ll see you there!”

“Oh. Of course.” Eileen would have to go. Presumably with Brent’s body in her trunk. That was awkward. Better go tend to that. She was about to go looking for a pair of gloves when the phone rang again.

“Hello, Munson—”

“Eileen, this is Harry, how are you doing today?” He sounded rushed, pushing out the polite greeting like too much toothpaste squirting out of the tube.
 

The police chief. Calling her. He was the one person she had to make absolutely not at all suspicious. “Oh, I can’t complain, I—”

“That’s good to hear, listen, is the mayor around?”

Her blood was already chilled from being outside in the winter without a proper coat, but it got a little colder. “No, Brent isn’t here, maybe he’s at the dealership?”

“They said they thought he went home for lunch,” Harry said. “Dang it, I need to talk to him, we’ve got a serious situation here. Have him call me on my mobile just as soon as he’s able. We need to organize a meeting for—”

“Oh, the Pastor called to tell me about that already. An emergency meeting at six tonight at the community center, right?”

There was a long silence. “Huh. Maybe I should talk to the Pastor. Could be he knows some things I should find out about. He’s got you calling folks?”

“He does.”

“I think I can do him one better than that. When you see Brent, tell him to get in touch with me as soon as he can. And Eileen? Do me a favor. Keep your doors locked, and don’t go out until it’s time for the meeting, all right?”

“Whatever you say, Harry. Is everything okay?”

“It will be.” He hung up without saying goodbye, which was pretty rude, but she certainly had enough other things to occupy her, so she didn’t mind too much. What was all this meeting talk about? Whatever it was, maybe it would distract everyone from Brent’s disappearance, though on the other hand if there were a genuine emergency, people would wonder why the mayor of Lake Woebegotten wasn’t on hand to deal with it. Mayor. Ha. Time was she’d been proud to be the mayor’s wife, except there wasn’t much to the job except helping plan the 4th of July parade and riding herd on the town council, that bunch of busybodies who could spend hours debating noise ordinances but had an inordinate amount of trouble getting that big pothole on Main Street filled in. Brent liked to boast that he was in “politics” but he was no more a politician than a spider monkey was King Kong.

And now Brent wasn’t anything at all, which was a blessing, but also a problem, and one she’d better deal with, just like she had to deal with all the problems that cropped up in her little corner of the world.
 

Eileen went outside with her rubber gloves and a bunch of heavy-duty black trash bags and her winter coat with the furry hood up. She’d get Brent back into the garage, and into the Mustang’s trunk where he could go unnoticed until after the meeting tonight, whatever that was about, and, hmm, should she drive the Mustang to the meeting even though she never ever drove it and even Brent hardly ever drove it anywhere, or should she go to the meeting in her car and then come back and get the Mustang and oh, Lord, she’d told Harry that Brent hadn’t come home for lunch but there was his big black Ford Behemoth sitting in the driveway big as life and what if someone saw it and told Harry and—

Brent’s body was gone. There was a little bit of blood, though not much really, on the concrete, with a few strands of Brent’s dyed-black hair stuck to it, but of her dead husband himself there was no sign. She walked cautiously around the house, following the peculiar footprints, looked like he was dragging his leg a bit, maybe she could track him, but the trail led through the backyard and into the woods, and the thought of going in there unarmed after him was too terrifying.

That meant she’d better go ahead and get armed. She couldn’t let him run loose. If he told someone she’d tried to murder him, she’d never live it down. Good for her he’d gone off into the trees instead of knocking on the neighbor’s doors. The carbon monoxide must have addled his brain a bit. So she had that going for her. And she’d always been smarter than him anyway, even at his best.

She stopped briefly in the garage to turn off the Mustang, holding her coat sleeve over her nose even though the fumes had pretty well dissipated by then. Then inside to the bedroom, to the locked gun box in the closet on a high shelf, and inside was an old Army-issue Colt pistol that had belonged to Brent’s father, God rest his soul. She loaded it, tucked it into the pocket of her winter coat with the safety firmly on, and then paused, thought a moment, and picked up the knobbly-headed walking stick their son Gerald had brought home during his hippie hiker walkabout phase. It would help her navigate the woods, and in a pinch, it was a good blunt object.
 

Eileen was nearly out the door when the phone rang, and she considered just walking out, but a cold sort of rage came over her, settling down over her shoulders like a comfortable shawl, so she picked up the phone and said, in a pleasant and even tone, “You motherhumpers need to stop calling me to solve all your problems and learn how to deal with this kind of trivial bullshit yourselves, because I’m tired of being everybody’s mother and—”

But before she could really work up a good head of steam Harry’s obviously pre-recorded voice harrumphed and said, “This is your chief of police Harry Cusack, calling with an important emergency announcement. All citizens of Lake Woebegotten should assemble at the community center by the town square at 6 p.m. sharp tonight for a vital emergency meeting. Attendance is mandatory. Uh, and refreshments will be served.” Click.

It was that emergency call system that got set up with the money from Homeland Security a few years back, Eileen remembered Brent talking about it—a way to call every single number in town all at once with a single message, helpful in the event of a terrorist attack (unlikely) or industrial catastrophe (somewhat more plausible). Sounded like a truly epic prank call waiting to happen, she’d told him, and he’d shrugged and said only him and the policemen knew how to use it anyway. She checked her watch. Going on 2 p.m. Which meant she had only a few hours to track down Brent, kill him, get him out of sight, and make it to the meeting on time. Her absence would definitely be noted if she didn’t arrive, ideally early to help set up. “Refreshments.” She shuddered to think what a lifelong bachelor like Harry might consider suitable for such an event. Half-chewed cigars and candy bars?
 

Patting the pistol in her pocket, she went off into the snow.

11. Gun Running

“A
ll right, the wheels are in motion.” Pastor Inkfist turned from the phone to Father Edsel, who paced impatiently around the tiny front room of the parsonage. “How about you?”