The King of Clayfield - 01 Read Free Page A

her, and quickly reviewed the past few days in my head.
    “Well,” I said, “let’s see…Today is Thursday. No visitors yesterday. We had   snow and ice   on Tuesday, and the museum is closed when the schools are closed.   I’m also closed   Sundays and Mondays. No one came in on Saturday….other than me, you are the only person to step foot in here since last Friday.”
    “Hell,” she said, “Working here’s a friggin’ cake walk.”
    I stared at her. She probably thought I was offended, but really I was thinking about how I could have been so   unaware of what had been happening.   I thought back. When   I wasn’t here, I was at home….
    “When did this all start?”
    “The craziness started in the U.S. on Monday down in Florida,” she said. “They stopped all air traffic after that, except for military. But it’s been spreading north anyway.”
    I looked down and noticed her bare feet. One of them was bleeding a little.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “Not really,” she said looking at her feet. “I knew better than to come into town today dressed like this, but we didn’t expect this shit to go down until Saturday at the earliest. It spread quicker than they said it would.”
    “You need the first aid kit?”
    “Yeah,” she said, “And shoes if you got them.”
    “Can’t help you there,” I said trying to muster a smile.
    “Please use the rag,” she said.
    I put the rag over my face and went to the supply closet.
    When I returned, she   had removed her coat and hat, pulled my chair out of the office and was   sitting in it examining her bleeding foot.
    “It’s not   scraped much,” she said. “It’ll be fine, but it’ll be sore for a couple of days.”
    I   stood away from her   and held out the kit and a wet towel. She took them.
    “Thank you,” she said, “I’m not as bitchy as I seem.”
    I didn’t respond. I just stepped past her and leaned against my desk.
    “That shit   on CNN is all old news,” she said. “What you need to be thinking about now is where to go from here.”
    “For me this all just happened. I don’t know…”
    She had been cleaning her foot with the towel, and stopped.
    ”This is serious,” she said. “Ain’t nothing going to ever be the same. All those people out there killing each other–they   ain’t getting better.”
    “There’s no cure?”
    She shook her head   and went back to cleaning her foot.
    “That shit on the news ain’t helping anybody now,” she said. “You remember the   ice storm don’t you?”
    She was referring to   the 2009 ice   storm. Around here if anyone ever says “the ice storm” that’s what they are talking about.
    “Do you remember how everybody acted over that?” she said.
    I nodded.
    “That was nothing,” she said. “This right here--this that’s   happening today--this could be the end   of everything we know.   Its going to be   like the wild west out there pretty damn quick. Maybe worse. The wild west wasn’t full of zombies.”

 
    CHAPTER 3
     
    Zombies?” I laughed.
    “What else would you call them? They ain’t the undead, but they ain’t right neither.”
    “How long do they have?” I asked.   “How long before the disease kills them?”
    “It doesn’t kill them,” she said. I noticed her looking into the other room. She stood and walked into our permanent collection. There was an old Red Cross nurse’s uniform on display in the corner.  
    “There’s some shoes,” she said, “and about my size.”
    I followed her, and she raised her tobacco stake to make sure I didn’t get too close.
    “You can’t wear those,” I said. “They are part of the display.”
    She picked them up, stood on one leg, and compared them to a foot.
    “They might be a little big,” she said.
    “They’re part of the display!” I said.
    “Who cares now?”
    “I care,” I said.
    “Don’t you get it? This doesn’t matter anymore. All of this,” she waved her stick around,