The Zombies Of Lake Woebegotten Read Free Page A

just checking to see what the weather was doing.
    His nephew Rufus stood in the doorway, winter coat unzipped and spilling feathers from a long tear in the sleeve, shirt torn half off, hair and eyes wild. Nobody said anything, until finally Julie said, “Get you something?”
    “I can’t believe you’re just sitting here,” Rufus said in that tone he had, the one that broke his poor mother’s heart, like everybody around him was dumb as a bunch of chickens and he couldn’t bear their company. “Haven’t you—haven’t you watched the news?”
    “Heard there was a commotion in the cities,” Otto said. “Some kinda riot.” He paused. “You get caught up in that?”
    Rufus laughed, shook his head, and took a stool on the other side of Ingvar, who was still contemplating his coffee. “You mean you don’t know? I guess the media’s trying to cover it up, or else they don’t believe it…” He shook his head. “I drove here as fast as I could once I got away, to make sure you and mom and everybody was okay, but I should have known, in this town, who would even notice if the dead started walking? You saw a zombie you’d probably just ask him what kind of gas mileage he got in his hearse.”
    Ingvar turned his head slowly to Rufus. “Zombies, huh? Your uncle was telling us about them. People dress up funny and act dead.”
    “I’m talking about people who are dead acting like they’re alive ,” Rufus said. “My girl—” He shot a glance at Otto. “A friend of mine, she’s a junior, studying social work, she’s been volunteering at the hospital in the hospice unit, and she told me it started down in the morgues, the—you know, the cadavers—they started getting up off the tables and…” He shook his head. “Attacking people. Killing people. And then the people they killed got up and started killing other people. My friend went into the hospital first thing this morning and said it was all screaming and craziness, and she saw a man she knew, who’d died of cancer just the day before, come running down the hallway as fast as a dog chasing a car. Tried to take a bite out of her, but he didn’t have any teeth.” Rufus covered his eyes and started laughing. “A zombie with no teeth, can you believe that? Like he might gum you to death? So she ran away and there were police running around and shooting and yelling and…”  
    He uncovered his eyes. “So she came to see me. Campus was normal, no dead people, I guess the skeletons in biology lab don’t count, maybe you have to have some muscles left to get up again, I don’t know. I told her I’d bring her here, where it was safe, but we had to stop for gas right off the interstate, and she went to pee, and she didn’t come back, and when I went looking for her there was blood coming out from under the bathroom door and something inside that sounded like chewing. I thought maybe I could save her, so I pulled the door open, and there was a mechanic in greasy overalls with a big dent in his head and blood all over him and Winnie, she—my friend—she was trying to stand up on a leg that looked like a shark took a bite out of it and her eyes were all glassy and they were both reaching for me.” He plucked at his coat. “Almost got me. But I made it to my car, and drove here as fast as I could, and…” Another laugh. “You’re just sitting here drinking coffee. The dead have risen from their graves to kill the living, just like in the movies, and you’re just sitting here drinking coffee.”
    “Well,” Ingvar said after a moment’s contemplation. “That sure is different. A guy could get pretty worked up about something like that.”

3. Rapture Ready

    P astor Daniel Inkfist sat at his desk with his feet up on a pulled-out drawer saying “Hmm” and “You don’t say” and “Don’t that beat all” and other sorts of things to fill the gasps when his friend Pastor Cantor had to take a breath in the midst of yelling. Eddie Cantor had