STAY BURIED

Errol listened to the rain drum against the window while he sipped his beer. Lightning flashed outside; the power flickered. He prayed the power wouldn’t go out. He didn’t want to be alone in the dark with nothing to do.

He put his beer on the table next to the recliner and picked up a half-smoked joint, lit it, inhaled deeply. His head swam a little.

The air was humid. It brought a musty smell out of the walls. Whenever it rained especially hard, he’d get water in the basement. He’d tried everything to fix the problem, including adding dirt and grading it so it sloped away from the foundation, but the water got in anyway. There was a place in town that specialized in fixing that sort of thing, said they could add a drain system and a sump pump and vapor barrier on the walls and only charge him thirty grand to do it. He didn’t have thirty grand just laying around. Even if he had, he didn’t want strangers running around his house. He didn’t want anyone in the house. Period. This was his sanctuary; having visitors over made him uncomfortable.

But sometimes he waffled on that. If he was in a certain mood, maybe he’d cruise into town and toss back a few cold ones, shoot a little pool. On rare occasions he’d bring somebody home with him. If they hesitated, all he had to do was mention he had weed and their eyes would light up.

The last time had been a little over a month ago. He didn’t like to make a habit of it; didn’t want to get a reputation. The town wasn’t that big. Word got around. He’d never been good at fitting in, going all the way back to grade school. Never what you would call a popular kid. He was tolerated. There were people who said he was off, a little strange, kinda odd, but that’s how all small towns were.

The power winked out for a second, then came back. He fumbled for the remote and turned it to the Cartoon Network. Cartoons were the best when he had a nice buzz going.

But the signal kept getting lost. The dish was mounted on top of the old two-story house, and whenever it rained hard he’d lose the signal and be trapped in the musty-smelling house with nothing to do.

For all its flaws, Errol was sentimental about the house. His mother had had a tough time getting her act together. She’d spent most of her time chasing men after his dad had gone out and never come back, so his grandparents had raised him. It was their house. Errol had grown up in it. All his memories had happened right here. When his grandma passed away, she left it to him. Made sure he never had to try too hard.

He took another drag off the joint and burned his thumb. Lightning flashed outside the window again. Thunder shook the house and almost startled him out of the recliner.

The power went out. The living room went dark. He left the roach smoldering in the glass ashtray on the table. Navigated the dark, through the dining room into the kitchen. He felt around until his fingers brushed the laminate countertop, the dial of the old rotary phone, moved downward until he found the metal drawer and fumbled around for the flashlight.

He switched the flashlight on. Rain tapped at the kitchen window. Outside, the driveway was a mud pit. Any notion of going into town vanished. Maybe he could have made it out in the truck if it’d been working, but it wasn’t. All he had was the Crown Vic with the post-mount spotlight that he could adjust with a handle from inside the car. He’d bought it off the police department with some of the inheritance money his grandmother had left him. He enjoyed the growl of the V8 engine when he revved it, liked to drive it fast. Sometimes he’d prowl around town at night and if he saw someone walking alone, he’d hit them with the spotlight. By the time their eyes adjusted enough for them to identify the vehicle, he was long gone.

No getting out tonight though. The rain came down in a solid sheet. He caught flashes of purple inside thick gray clouds.

Errol moved to the fridge and shined the flashlight inside. He snatched out another beer and popped the tab and took a drink. The floor creaked under his feet. After a century, the house had earned the right to complain.

He went to the door on the other end of the kitchen and descended the stairs, shining the light ahead of him until he reached the bottom.

The basement had never been finished. The floor had started as dirt. Then his grandfather had gotten ambitious and started to fill it with cement. But the old man never finished what he started. Errol’s grandmother knew this. Not that she’d ever said it to the old man’s face, and Errol had never repeated what he heard. It didn’t take much to earn the sting of the leather belt against your bare cheeks. And if you weren’t careful, he might decide to give you the metal buckle instead. It took time to recover from that. But you learned not to show it, especially in public. Went to school and you didn’t wince when you sat down at your desk even if the pain was killing you. You didn’t want anybody asking questions.

Errol saw water coming in. Down the cinderblock wall on the other side of the room, seeping into the dirt, turning it into a thick brown sludge.

He stepped off the landing, moving to the end of the concrete slab. It was like being on a wide diving board, gazing down at a vast brown ocean. What was under all that sludge? His eyes stayed there, thinking about it.

From above, the TV blared. He tilted his head up, staring at the exposed beams. Cartoons playing. As a kid, he’d memorized the different sound effects. Even muffled, the sound coming through the floor was Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner.

He glanced at the mud pit a final time and went upstairs, grabbing another beer from the fridge before settling into the La-Z-Boy.

It was fun getting high while he watched Coyote give chase. Made it funnier. Made him forget how lonely he got all the way out here in the boonies. He had an older sister who lived in Mission, Texas. Eight years his senior. Growing up they hadn’t known each other very well, not with an age gap like the Grand Canyon. She’d been gone a while now. He barely remembered what she looked like. She sent him cards on Christmas and his birthday. He didn’t remember when her birthday was. April maybe. In her cards, she wrote about coming back to visit but she never did.

He was buzzed and stoned when the picture on the TV changed to a series of colored vertical bars with EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM centered on the screen, cartoon sounds replaced by a droning high-pitched screech.

His phone made an identical sound.

It’s the storm, he thought. Whenever it poured, they issued flash flood warnings.

A stilted robotic voice came over the TV.

“This is an alert from the Emergency Broadcast System . . . there have been numerous reports of civilians being attacked by . . . unknown assailants . . . assailants are violent and considered extremely dangerous . . . do not attempt to approach or engage . . . remain indoors . . . lock doors and windows . . . avoid unnecessary travel . . . assailants being described as reanimated corpses of the recently deceased . . . stay tuned for further updates.”

Errol felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. The screech kept going. He lowered the volume. The message repeated. The same message on his phone, reading “. . . assailants described as reanimated corpses of the recently deceased” at the same time the robot voice said it on the TV.

“No shit,” he said, taking a final hit off the roach before grinding it out in the ashtray.

He pushed the footrest down and headed upstairs. The lights flickered. He doubled back for the flashlight.

Errol switched on the bedroom light and went over to the dresser, rummaged through his underwear drawer until he felt the sandalwood grip of the .38 Special revolver. Gramps’s weapon of choice. The blue steel had taken on a worn look. He’d fired at least a thousand rounds through it over the past twenty years. It was anybody’s guess how many thousands had been fired through it before that. It was a reliable weapon, felt familiar in his hand, the weight just right.

The power flickered again. He closed the dresser drawer, turned out the light, went to the window and peeked around the curtain. He was looking at the driveway from an angle, a bird’s eye view of the bog down below.

It was coming down in torrents. On a clear night, he could see the lights from town two miles to the south. Not tonight.

He could see the orange glow of the hooded light on a wooden pole that stood at the foot of the driveway. He squinted at the illuminated circle of ground beneath it.

Was there something moving down there? A dog maybe, searching for shelter. Could be a deer. They liked to cut through the yard at night.

No. Too big. An amorphous shape, moving slowly.

“Jesus,” he whispered, pulling his head back and closing the curtain. He took a breath, held it, parted the curtain an inch and put his eye close to the window.

It was a man all right. Stumbling around like a drunk; stiff-legged, hands out, feeling around like a blind person.

The town had its fair share of lushes. Fairchild, who ran the local pub, was the high-and-mighty type, always acting annoyed when somebody got drunk in his bar like he didn’t know it was bound to happen, thought he was running a church instead of a dive bar.

There used to be a guy that worked in Fairchild’s kitchen they called Weasel. Errol didn’t know his real name. Just that everybody called him Weasel, and he had a tattoo coming up the side of his neck. Rumor was Weasel got it while doing time in the penitentiary in Rawlins, Wyoming. There were a lot of guesses as to what Weasel had done time for, but no one knew for sure.

Errol wondered what brought a guy from Wyoming to Iowa. Nothing good. Guy like that was probably running from something. It didn’t come as a surprise when Weasel quit coming to work.

“Nobody going to walk two miles in this shit,” Errol said, whispering it in case the guy stumbling around down there had superhuman hearing.

He squinted harder. Guy looked dirty, like maybe he’d fallen down a couple times on his journey to wherever.

Errol watched him Mummy-walk toward the dip in the driveway, approaching it like it wasn’t there. A second later, he walked right into it, disappeared under a lake of muddy water.

“Dumb ass.”

The gun was in his right hand, holding it down along his right leg, finger on the trigger. He knew better than to keep his finger there, but he was too busy watching the weirdo trespassing on his property.

The guy’s head came out of the water, bobbed there, arms flailing. The driveway was worse than quicksand. Soupy on top and thicker the deeper you went.

“Big dummy.”

It was humorous to watch. Hard to believe how dumb this guy was. Next time he found himself having a drink in Fairchild’s place, he’d try telling someone. They’d probably say he was full of it.

Errol shook his head at the halfwit’s misfortune. There it was, living proof of what the world was coming to.

Still, it was sort of comical. Almost as entertaining as watching cartoons while he smoked a doobie.

Then he got to thinking what would happen if the guy drowned on his property. Things would dry up quick, and the body would be laying there on top of the mud.

Cops might show up. Errol didn’t need the cops sticking their noses in; didn’t want them snooping around the property. What were they gonna say if they found a dead person on his property? Would they believe him if he told them the guy showed up during the storm?

Sounded made up. He already had a reputation for telling whoppers. Honest or not, he doubted anyone would believe him.

But how believable would it be for him to have killed some random stranger and left the body lying there in the driveway for anyone to find? How smart would that be? Didn’t take a rocket scientist.

Then again, the Sheriff was a guy he’d gone to school with. Varsity football player, not to mention a bully with a big mouth. Got elected Sheriff because his dad was a bigwig insurance man in town. Powerful families stayed in power.

Sheriff or not, Gibson wasn’t that smart. Barely managed to graduate high school; wouldn’t have if it not for his daddy. Lonny Gibson had a guaranteed free ride.

Errol didn’t like that either. Nobody ever promised him a free ride.

He watched the drunk sink below the water again. Errol deciding he would have to do something about it. Maybe Lonny Gibson was a dummy. Errol could outwit him and all his deputies any day. But why go through the hassle?

He tucked the pistol in his waistband, covered it with his shirt, headed downstairs, and stared out the window while he put on his coat and boots.

The rain was deafening when he opened the door. He pulled up his jacket collar and ran down the porch steps.

When he reached the driveway, the man was flailing around in the water, submerged to the chest.

Errol gave it a wide berth, worried about falling in himself.

“Hey mister,” he shouted, “quit splashing around like that. You’ll only make it worse. Hey—you hear what I said?”

Maybe the guy was deaf too.

Errol was drenched. He approached the man, testing the ground before putting any weight on it. He came in from behind, planting his feet and reaching forward until he got hold of the back of the dummy’s shirt. His boots sank into the mud.

“Quit moving around so goddamn much!”

He yanked back on the guy’s shirt. Yanked again, managing to hook his hands under the guy’s armpits, using gravity to his advantage.

The man slowly came out of the water. Errol collapsed into a sitting position, the guy practically in his lap. The man struggled against him.

“Settle down, pal,” Errol said, out of breath. “You’re safe now.”

His boots made slurping sounds as he freed them from the mud.

The guy spun around.

Errol got a good look at his face.

“What the hell?”

It wasn’t a man. Maybe once, but not anymore. Most of its face was gone, bone showing, the right eye was an empty black socket.

The thing made a gurgling noise in what was left of its throat and lunged at him.

Errol scrambled backward. The mud was slippery, sending him toward the damn thing.

It grabbed his leg with a bony hand. There was some gray flesh left around the grime-covered bones. Cold digits clutched his bare ankle.

Errol screamed. Kicked outward and caught the thing in the face. For all the good it did. It had a hold of him and wasn’t about to let go. He dragged himself backward, dragging the thing along with him.

The high-pitched droning sound echoed in his head.

. . . described as reanimated corpses of the recently deceased . . .

The creature’s lower jaw yawned open, revealing darkness within. It made the same gurgling noise again. Almost sounded like a word this time. Errol was pretty sure the word was, “Braiiiins!”

His ass was numb from the frigid mud.

The jaws chomped closed. Over the rain, he could hear its teeth grinding together.

He pulled his ankle free, crawled away. The thing lurched forward. “Christ on a crutch,” Errol said and pulled the pistol from his waistband and fired.

The top of its head disintegrated. The jaws open and closed a final time, then it struck the mud and sank below the surface.

Errol got to his feet and hurried into the house. He stripped down to his underwear, headed upstairs with a death grip on the revolver.

He turned on the shower and when the water was scalding, he got in and rinsed away the mud, still holding the gun with an unsteady hand.

The living dead. Freakin’ zombies. He didn’t dare say it out loud, blubbering while he got dressed, finding it hard to button the flannel shirt with the gun in his hand.

The light in the bedroom flickered several times, blinked out, came back on. He ran his hand down his face. Went over to the window and stared down at the driveway. The rain rippled the surface of the water. Gusts of wind swayed the power lines.

He glanced toward the garage, wondering if it would be worth trying to get the car out. Nixed the idea. His bag of tools was in the Crown Vic’s trunk. He hadn’t brought them inside the last time he was out.

He turned out the light and went into the spare bedroom. It was on the southwest side of the house and had a slightly better view of the road leading up to the farm. A flash of lightning. Something out there. Shapes in the darkness.

Were they really there?

It was easy for his eyes to play tricks on him. The darkness and the rain, already in a state of heightened awareness after his encounter with the creature outside. Damn zombies. Who would’ve thought? But he’d blown the thing’s head clean off. Errol Flanders, zombie killer—had a nice ring to it.

Lightning flashed again.

No trick. They were there all right. A bunch of them, the last few stragglers in a living dead parade.

What are they doing way out here?

Downstairs, the TV was going. No more cartoons now, only the annoying squeal of the E.B.S. He picked up the remote, lowered the volume some more. He peeked out the dining room window.

The dead things were closer now, nearly to the flooded driveway. He counted. Five, six . . . at least seven of them.

What were they doing? Showing up at the farmhouse like it was a beacon for the dead.

When they reached the driveway, he thought they’d be too dumb to avoid the dip where all the water had collected. The first one had been stupid enough to fall in, no reason to think these wouldn’t be the same. This time he’d leave them be. If they were still around when the storm passed, he’d handle them then.

But they managed to skirt the flooded area, making a beeline toward the house.

How did they know he was here?

It took him a minute to realize it must be the light from the television set. Drawing them like moths to a flame.

He snatched up the remote and switched it off.

Too late. They were banging on the front door, demanding entry.

If the creature he’d dealt with earlier was any indication, these things were weak. He could overpower them. That was a stolid steel door they were banging away at; not much chance of them getting through.

The window in the door was a different story. Glass shattered.

Errol used the flashlight to find the TV tray. He it picked up, tore the foldable legs off, leaving him with a nice smooth rectangle of wood. He grabbed a hammer and a box of nails from the cubby in the mud room and carried them to the entryway.

A zombie was bent over the window, wriggling its stomach against the remaining shards of glass. It was stuck there. Another one was trying to climb over top of it.

Errol blew the second one’s head off, spraying black goo into the darkness. Carefully, he freed the undead thing from the glass, yanked it into an upright position and shoved it away. He aimed the pistol at it. Did the math in his head before he pulled the trigger. Four rounds left. Better save them. All the extra ammo was in the bag in the trunk of his car.

He pressed the table up against the door and started hammering one edge in. The table was soft enough, but getting the nail to go through the steel door took more work. But he managed it, ignoring the ache in his hand as he pounded nails in each of the four edges.

Errol dashed into the kitchen and leaned over the sink to look through the small window.

Glancing toward the road, there were more on the way, shuffling beneath the glow of the yard light. He stopped counting when he got to twelve. Why were they flocking to his house? Weren’t there plenty of folks to terrorize back in town?

Maybe you’re the only one with brains, he thought, and it made him chuckle. Grams used to say he had a good head on his shoulders. Then Gramps would say, “Too smart for his own good.” Which was another way of telling Errol he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.

Gramps was the kind of man who never let anyone around him get big. If he thought there was a chance of that happening, he’d make it his business to knock them down a peg. The punishment for Errol and his grams had been physical. Errol’s mother was different. He’d punished her in other ways. His grandparents had come up with a fancy story about why his mother left, but deep-down Errol knew it was because of his gramps. His mother had used to make Errol sleep in the same bed with her when he was little, and she talked a lot in her sleep.

He was eight when his mother escaped. Met a drifter passing through town. She never looked back. He remembered what it was like when she used to snuggle up against him. Sometimes her breath was hot and sour; other times, if she came to bed right after brushing her teeth, it had a cool, minty smell.

He took a towel and wiped up the water on the floor of the entry. They were pounding on the outside of the door, but the table was enough to keep them out.

He went back to the recliner, lit a fresh joint and took a hit. The .38 rested in his lap. The flashlight stood upright on the end table.

He turned on the TV. More vertical bars and the irritating hum. Beeeeeep, beeeeep, beeeeep.

At least he was safe inside the house. Let those things bang around all they wanted. If they wised up and started trying the other windows, he would board those up too. Bunch of dummies. Picked the wrong farmhouse.

Pretty soon he was feeling good, like he had the problem licked. That was one thing he prided himself on: his ability to adapt. Maybe later, after things dried up, he would drive into town and see how the townsfolk were faring, swing by the Sheriff’s station and offer to lend Sheriff Gibson a helping hand.

The weed and the beer made him drowsy. His altercation earlier had taken it out of him.

His eyelids drooped.

He had dozed off for no more ten minutes when a sudden pain jolted him awake. He’d fallen asleep with the joint between his fingers. The smoldering remains fell into his lap, and he batted them away before they started his crotch on fire, sending the pistol thudding to the floor.

Errol sucked on his burnt fingers before sliding out of the chair and getting down on all four to examine the carpet. A thin tendril of smoke drifted up two feet in front of his face. He located the glowing cherry, wetting his fingertips with saliva before carefully pinching it up and depositing it in the ashtray.

It’d barely singed the carpet. He snorted, wondering what kind of damn fool would fall asleep with a lit joint between his fingers.

Then he listened. To nothing. And that’s what bothered him. The unnatural silence. No more of the incessant racket as those things tried to pound their way through the front door.

He put on his slippers, went to the kitchen, peeked through the window. They hadn’t gone anywhere. Over a dozen of them now, no longer interested in the door, just sort of milling around in the driveway, getting rained on.

Errol noticed something odd. The dead things weren’t emptyhanded. Some of them were holding objects. He had to squint. It was hard to make out the different shapes and sizes. But once he figured the first one out, the rest came easily.

A decapitated head. The dead thing had a hold of it by the hair, the head and part of the neck dangling below. Another had a human leg, dragging the foot through the mud; and another carried a severed arm, holding it above its head so the gnarled fingers grasped uselessly for the moon.

The moon, he thought. I can see it.

The rain had lightened, the worst of the storm had passed, and a half-moon was visible in the sky.

Not much longer now and the rain would stop. Once it stopped, he would run out to the garage to the Crown Vic and snatch his bag from the trunk. Then he’d take care of his undead trespassers. Send them back to the afterlife. He chuckled, thinking he’d have fun doing it.

He stared out the window a little longer.

“Morons,” he thought, shaking his head.

But it made him wonder: Why were they carrying those body parts around?

Errol spent several fitful hours asleep in the chair, waking up at 2 a.m. to a noise coming from far away. There was a kink in his neck. He rubbed it as he went to the kitchen and peered out the window.

The moon was high in a clear sky. They might have been worshipers in a cult, cannibals offering the leftovers of their meal as a sacrifice to the gods.

He cocked his head and listened. That noise again. Somewhere in the house. Faint.

Errol tried to pinpoint it, standing next to the sink, holding his breath, trying to hear over the noise his heart made in his chest.

It was below him. Under the floor, an incessant scraping sound emanated from the basement. A lump formed in his throat.

He threw open the door and ran to the basement, flashlight in hand. When he reached the bottom, he switched it on and aimed it at the far wall.

Nothing.

He lowered the beam and caught a face hovering above the mud where the concrete slab ended.

The eyes glowed bright yellow when the light hit them. There were a few wisps of hair matted against the creature’s skull. Bony hands appeared, the flesh sloughed away. It clawed at the slab, dragging itself from its muddy prison.

Errol stared in shocked disbelief. Why hadn’t it occurred to him? The house wasn’t safe. Anything but. He directed the beam over the mud. More heads surfaced from the pit.

His mind raced. He tried to think. How many? How many had he stuck down here? How many had he buried in the dirt?

He was too exhausted to do the math. Six, at least. This had been when he was just starting out, bringing his work home with him, burying them whole. Later, he would wise up and make it routine to dismember the bodies, scattering the various parts far and wide.

Like an amateur, he’d put his first ones down here. His dirty little secret.

As his mind flashed back to those first kills, his grandmother’s face was caught in the radius of light, leering at him as she waded toward the concrete slab.

Next came Gramps. Missing an eye, lips peeled away to leave behind a perpetual grin of large yellow teeth. The old man had prided himself on the fact he still had all his own teeth.

There was Delilah from school. Errol recognized her by her clothing. Recalled the black dress with the white dots she’d been wearing the day he’d convinced her to come over to the house.

Next, was Beatrice, his first girlfriend, who’d laughed at him the first time they tried to screw. Telling him he had a baby pecker.

He hadn’t liked that. Didn’t take criticism well. She had a big mouth and hadn’t listened when he told her to shut it. He’d whacked her. Harder than he’d meant to. She screamed, so he hit her a couple more times, until she finally shut up. After that, he knew he couldn’t let her go. She’d tell somebody. People would talk, start looking at him a little too closely.

Over there . . .

“Daniel? Is that you? Man, you aren’t lookin’ too good, buddy.”

Daniel McCreery, his one and only friend through high school. Birds of a feather. The kind of friend you could tell anything to, your deepest secrets, your darkest desires.

Or so he’d thought.

That had coincided with a strange time in Errol’s life, when he was having all these funny feelings about who and what he was, what he liked and what he wanted to be.

He had mentioned to Daniel how some nights he had these dreams. Dreams about him and Daniel doing stuff. Erotic dreams. “In the dreams, I think we both kind of liked it,” he said.

Saying that had made Daniel go crazy. He’d called Errol the “F” word—not the four-letter one, the six-letter one that some people thought was worse—and had shoved Errol in the chest, vowing to tell everybody at school what Errol was.

Errol had a pocketknife on his dresser. He unfolded it, caught up to Daniel before Daniel made it out the door, grabbed him from behind, yanked his head back and drew the blade across Daniel’s throat. The cut wasn’t deep enough. He’d let Daniel go and Daniel had walked around, bumping into things, holding his hands to his throat, saying, “What did you do, Errol?”

Errol stood there as Daniel ran around like a chicken with its head cut off, ricocheting off the furniture like he was the ball in a giant pinball machine. Daniel had bled all over the house. It had been a pain cleaning up afterward.

There—Mary Jane.

And Beth . . . what was her last name? Jones? James? Jensen, maybe?

Jack, who was only sixteen, but had looked twenty-one.

Don’t forget Weasel. The mystery man, real name unknown.

All of them surfacing from the mud and coming toward him.

Errol trained the beam on these decaying ghosts come back to haunt him.

He reached for the pistol. His hand brushed the empty waistband of his jogging pants.

Then he remembered dozing off and burning himself with the joint, the .38 tumbling onto the floor.

He took the stairs two at a time, already breathing hard by the time he reached the kitchen. He dashed into the living room, dropped to his knees to look for the gun.

His hand ran along the plush carpet until his fingers struck metal. Errol picked up the gun, stood up, looked around.

What now?

Kill them.

Kill them all.

Kill them again.

Wait . . . think about it.

Errol opened the revolver’s cylinder and aimed the flashlight at it. Four unspent rounds. Basic arithmetic. What it added up to—more a matter of subtraction really—was not enough bullets in the gun.

His bag. Extra ammo in it. Out in the garage, locked in the Crown Vic’s trunk.

It seemed unreachable. Told him something, too. He was getting complacent, lazy, forgetting the little things. If anyone got suspicious and started snooping around—Lonny Gibson, for instance—it was a no-brainer they would search his car.

Shortcuts were what got you caught. Maybe it was serendipitous that the undead had come calling. The wake-up call he needed. Gave him a chance to undo the sloppiness.

But that could wait. First things first. He needed to get to the car.

He turned the corner and was confronted by a dark shape with glowing yellow eyes.

Errol pointed the flashlight, illuminating the rotting face, exposed jaws showing him a diabolical smile.

“Braiiiiiiins.” The word gurgled in its throat. It projectile vomited black, foul-smelling fluid into Errol’s face.

Errol screamed, involuntarily pulling the pistol’s trigger. A loud bang started his ears ringing. The bullet buried itself into the hardwood floor.

Gramps would have had something to say about that.

Three bullets left.

Errol gave Gramps a hard shove, sent him stumbling back into the basement.

Lighting flashed, briefly illuminating the stairs. Errol caught a glimpse of more bodies marching upward. A new storm was moving in; the first drops of rain tapped the window.

He moved like a bat out of hell, toward the back door, slipped on the galoshes he kept on the plastic mat. He used his shirtsleeve to wipe dark mucus from his face. Sucked in a breath and opened the door. Stepped out. Looked in both directions. Light rain pattered against the leaves on the trees. Carefully, he pulled the door closed behind him, moved with his back against the house, gun ready.

He reached the corner and peeked around the side of the house. He could see the garage, fifty feet away. The coast looked clear.

He made a run for it, trying to remember how many bullets were left. Three. Right? Was it three? If he made it to the garage it wouldn’t matter. A whole box of ammo waiting in the trunk.

Halfway there, he slipped on the wet grass and landed on his side. He picked himself up and continued toward the garage.

He reached the door.

A dozen or more of the undead wandered around in front of the house, carrying dismembered body parts like medieval weapons.

Errol realized where they’d gotten the body parts. Kind of funny when you thought about it.

 If you wanted to survive, you evolved. It had been a stroke of genius, the way he’d figured out how to dispose of the bodies.  Coming up with the idea to read the obituaries and time his kills the day before a funeral. He trolled his victims weeks in advance, familiarized himself with their schedules. People were predictable by nature.

A day or two before the funeral, he’d make his move. Either a blitz attack or use a ruse, depending on the situation. Incapacitate. Bring them back to the farm. Make them grovel and beg. They made him promises. Had that in common, swearing that if Errol let them go they wouldn’t tell a soul. They’d take the secret to their grave.

They were right about that.

When he was finished with them, he would cut them up into manageable pieces, neatly Saran wrapped for transport. The night after a funeral, he’d drive over to the cemetery—which was conveniently isolated—and dig up the freshly dug grave of the recently departed, deposit the packages into the earth, then cover it up again, leaving it the way he’d found it.

Ingenuity was the hallmark of a true artist.

Errol slipped into the garage and tiptoed to the Crown Vic, tugged on the door handle. It creaked when he opened it. He took the keys from the ignition and went around to the trunk. The trunk moaned when he released it. Errol glanced over his shoulder through one of the garage door’s tiny Plexiglass windows.

Still good. He hadn’t attracted their attention.

He reached into the trunk and unzipped the black duffle bag. There was an assortment of items inside: Rope, wire cord, leather gloves, latex gloves, black ski mask, duct tape, handcuffs, hunting knife in a nylon sheath, folded rain poncho, expandable baton, spray bleach, several washcloths, roll of Bounty paper towels, box of Trojan ultra-ribbed condoms, tube of K-Y lubricated jelly, snack-sized package of Ruffles Cheddar & Sour Cream potato chips, Listerine Cool Mint breath strips, and all the way at the bottom a 50-cartridge box of Federal Ammunition .38 Special ammo.

Errol put the bag on the floor. He squatted next to it, removed the box of ammo. He emptied the .38’s cylinder and reloaded it. He dumped a handful of extra cartridges into his palm and stuffed them into his pocket. He slung the bag over his shoulder and creeped back to the side door.

His hand was on the knob, turning it, when the door burst open. He staggered back as a zombie shambled in. It vomited black puke at him. He raised the gun and fired. Its lower jaw vanished. But it kept coming. He fired again. The money shot. It collapsed in front of him.

A second zombie ambled through the door. Errol saw a line of stragglers behind it, headed his way.

He fired several more rounds, then dived into the car, tossing the bag on the passenger seat. He slammed the door closed as a zombie dragged its fingers against the window.

The undead things filed into the garage, surrounded the car, pounded on glass and metal.

At first, he thought they were too weak to do any real damage. But then a blow struck the driver’s window and the glass spiderwebbed. The next blow caved it inward.

Errol shrieked as a bony hand punched through the shattered glass. He fumbled with the keys, turned them in the ignition. The engine roared to life.

He batted away the hand, shifted into reverse, slammed down the accelerator.

For a moment nothing happened, then the tires squealed and the car crashed through the garage door, sailing backward, a bony hand and forearm still reaching for him through the driver’s window.

Errol twisted the wheel, remembering too late the dip in the driveway, and before he knew it the car jerked to a halt. His head snapped forward, striking the wheel. He blacked out.

Came to thirty seconds later. Aware of a gurgling sound. The car rested at a forty-five-degree angle; the rear end partially submerged below murky water.

His head screamed at him. The back windshield had shattered.

He pressed his foot against the accelerator. The wheels spun. Water jetted behind the car.

Zombies climbed into the vehicle through the shattered rear windshield.

Errol went for the gun.

But it had pulled a disappearing act. He reached toward the floorboard, hand searching frantically, finding nothing.

The driver’s window disappeared. Undead hands flung it aside.

Then the hands were on him, pawing at his face, twisting in his hair as he was dragged out, scraping his back against the remaining glass, screaming when he hit the ice-cold mud.

He flailed, squealing like a pig.

There it was—the gun resting in the mud. He leaped toward it but was yanked back before his fingers closed around it. A skeletal hand dragged him away.

Errol’s belly created a wide valley in the soft earth.

More hands seized him, flipping him onto his back. He wiped the mud from his eyes.

They surrounded him. His mouth opened and closed without producing sound.

He gazed at them defiantly. “I killed you,” he said. “I killed you all. You’re already dead. You’re already dead!”

They leered at him. They beat him with the dismembered limbs. Some of the limbs still wore remnants of the plastic wrap he’d buried them in.

Errol screamed until he felt his teeth in his throat.

When he was dead, they dragged his body to the basement and watched it sink under the mud.

After a while, Errol came back.