Dead Horizon Part 9

Lucky moved in for the kill.

"Lucky," Jake called.

The dog stopped and looked his way, then turned his attention back to Dirk, who was looking back and forth between Jake and the dog.

With some effort, Jake pushed himself to his knees.

"Wasn't that the name of youra""

"Yep, that's my dog, you dips.h.i.+t," Jake cut in.

"It can't be. I threw his stupid ball out in the highway and watched him get smashed by a car."

Jake limped over to Dirk and stood over him, shaking, barely able to contain his anger. "You threw his ball into the highway?"

"Stupid mutt chased it right into the traffic," Dirk said, chuckling.

He seemed to have forgotten he was on the ground with three of his friends dead around him, a s...o...b..ring zombie dog ready to rip his throat out, and the kid he picked on in control of his destiny.

"You're no good, Dirk," Jake said. "You like to hurt people. A guy like you only goes on to do bad things his whole life. You hurt me, you hurt Lucky, and you'll hurt people as long as you can get away with it."

"You're losing your marbles," Dirk said.

"I can stop it all right now," Jake continued.

Lucky began to snarl.

"This was the last time you'll ever hurt anyone," Jake said.

Jake turned his back on Dirk, who suddenly realized the predicament he was in. He started pleading with Jake, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

"Get him, Lucky," Jake said, then walked away without looking back.

Dirk screamed as Lucky's growls tore through the cemetery.

Jake left Lucky to clean up the remains of the four boys he'd feared every day of his life for the past year, knowing he wouldn't fear them anymore.

As for Lucky, Jake never saw him again. He visited the cemetery the next day and saw the empty hole where his dog had been buried. As he suspected, there were no traces of the boys, who were eventually reported missing by their parents.

Jake went back to the cemetery often during the year that followed the incident. He waited patiently for Lucky to come around, just so he could see his faithful companion one more time.

When Jake finally stopped going to the cemetery, he felt as if a part of his life had ended. He felt like he was giving up on Lucky. That made him feel awful. Lucky had never given up on him.

Lucky was out there somewhere, alive. Not alive in the sense that he was the way he used to be. He was something else now. Jake resigned himself to the fact that he was never going to see Lucky again.

Lucky was a zombie.

The thought gave Jake the creeps, but in the end, Lucky was still his dog.

A St.i.tch in Time.

It was five a.m. and Mabel was just about to partake in the only cup of coffee she allowed herself these days. Her old bones protested when she lifted the tiny coffee pot to pour. Her hand shook. This simple act was cause for a deep breath and a heavy sigh.

She carried her coffee to the front porch of the old white farmhouse she'd lived in for right near sixty years of her life. It was the spot she liked to take her morning coffee when weather permitted.

The birds were singing this fine spring morning. The country air was fresh, spring flowers added vibrant colors to the landscape, and her garden had begun to flourish. She would need to tend to it today, maybe tomorrow if she didn't get around to it until then.

Right now she simply wanted to sit.

Floyd was out there in the barn. She couldn't see him, but she knew he was doing what he did first thing every morning, seeing to the cows and the pigs and the chickens. When he finished there, he would work the cornfield. He didn't put in the hours these days like he had before his heart gave out, but he still managed a good day's work all the same.

Mabel sat in her rocker, hand-made by Floyd while he was alive. How she loved that rocker, crafted from the finest oak.

She raised her coffee cup, holding it in both hands, steadying it as best she could, and took her first sip. It was smooth and rich, the way she liked it. A touch of sa.s.safras made it just so.

Mabel rocked in her chair. She could do it only for so long before the joints in her knees gave out, then she would stop for a while.

A commotion in the barn caught Mabel's attention. It was obvious Floyd had gone and got himself into another mess. Something tumbled and crashed. Now the pigs were squealing and the chickens were squawking.

Mabel was about to go check on Floyd when he came lurching from the barn. He was a touch disorientated at first, but he finally righted his course and began to make his way toward her.

Mabel watched him come and thought how he was in desperate need of a little patchwork. She sure hoped those hoodlums from town came through for her. She needed materials. Without materials, Floyd would keep right on rotting. She'd already sewn his nose back on this morning, and last night, just before she finally got him to turn in, she'd had to wire his jaw. His s.h.i.+n bones were exposed and tatters of wasted flesh were all that remained on his fingers. There was barely enough meat to keep him together these days.

Despite his poor shape, Floyd was a hard-working man. A tad clumsy now, but a hard worker just the same, leastways as best as he could manage.

Mabel stood as Floyd reached the porch. She took him by the hand and lifted his limp arm, doing her best to steady him as he tried to raise a foot to the first step. He was too heavy for Mabel, that much was certain. Too dang heavy for her to lift, so the best she could do was help him balance.

"Come on, old man," Mabel said.

He set his foot down too early, right on the edge of the step, which caused him to slip and tumble forward. Try as she might, Mabel couldn't keep him from falling face down and cracking his head on the third step. It made a sickening wet thud, sort of like a watermelon being dropped, and Mabel knew she was going to have a tough time fixing that mess.

"Blame it, now, Floyd, how many times have we been over this?" she said, frustrated with him. "You've got to be real careful in your condition."

She stuck her hands under his armpits and hauled him to his feet, gasping and panting as she did. He was so dang heavy. Nothing but dead weight. She examined his head and saw that there was a deep dent running along the parchment-like skin of his forehead. It wasn't nearly as bad as she'd suspected, though, and once she filled it in, he'd look as good as a dead man could look.

She slung one of his arms around her neck and hauled him up, grunting and breathing hard the whole way. When she got him into the house, she plopped him in a chair in the living room.

"I'll fix you a bite to eat, then you need to finish those ch.o.r.es," she said. "What's it gonna be, pig brains or beef heart?"

Floyd stared straight ahead, a thick blackish-green strand of saliva dribbling down his chin. Mabel dabbed at it with her ap.r.o.n. "Pig brains it is," she said, tottering off to the kitchen to fetch his breakfast.

The sun had set half an hour ago. Floyd was sitting in his favorite chair. Mabel had propped his legs on a footstool. She went to the window and peeked out. No sign of any headlights.

She paced some, stopping now and again to see that Floyd was okay. He was like a special person now. He didn't grasp much of what was going on around him. He still liked his routine, though. That was one thing about him dead that was the same as before he kicked the bucket. He treasured his routine. Always had, and would until the day he . . . well, that didn't really apply no more, now did it?

She checked her watch. Those boys were usually on time. This was their regular day. She was worried they'd forgotten her. She couldn't have that. Floyd wouldn't last much longer without parts. The more he rotted, the harder it would be to fix him.

"It's so hard to find reliable help these days," she said, fluffing the pillow she'd placed behind her dead husband's head. "They all get eager in the beginning, tell you anything you want to hear just so you'll hire 'em, and then they slack off."

Floyd's lower jaw dropped half an inch. He turned his head to look up at Mabel like a child who's just made a boo boo. A thick string of brown stuff rolled from the corner of his mouth. Mabel shook her head and chuckled.

"Just look at you," she said, dabbing the nasty saliva away with a hanky. "Surely you're one of the messiest people I know." She pushed his lower jaw up and wiggled it in place as best as she could, then she gave him a kiss on his thin, cracked lips. "I love you just the same, though,"

Headlights swept by the window and Mabel could hear the sound of car tires crunching on the gravel driveway. She hobbled over to the window, one hand held against her lower back, which was hurting from the strain of helping Floyd into the house earlier in the day.

She looked out the window and saw a car backing out of the drive. Her heart sank. She'd thought for sure it would be those two hoodlums, but it was some blame fool who'd managed to get lost. This wasn't the first time a strange car had used her driveway to turn around. People drove way out here all the time, only to realize they were off the beaten path, and Mable and Floyd's driveway had acted as a welcome turnaround for many.

"Don't look like they're going to make it tonight," Mabel said.

She kissed the rotten flesh of Floyd's forehead, turned off the TV and lights, then went to bed, locking the bedroom door behind her. Floyd would never intentionally hurt her, but the state he was in these days, he was as likely to take a bite out of her while she was asleep as not. No sense taking chances was the way Mabel had it figured.

She lay awake for a long time, thinking about Floyd and how he'd come back to her after his heart gave out. She wasn't real sure about the mechanics of his reanimation, except that she believed it was G.o.d's way of letting her know she and Floyd belonged together, that not even death could lay waste to a love so pure and true.

Sleep finally claimed her.

Sometime later Floyd b.u.mped into the bedroom door, but Mabel slept right through the ruckus.

"Take it easy, will ya?" Bubba said, keeping his can of beer held away from him so it didn't spill.

"Ain't my fault the road sucks," Pete shot back, maneuvering the beat-up red pickup truck down a narrow stretch in Vineland Cemetery. "Besides, since when have you ever cared about smellin' like a brewery? You always stink."

"I ain't in the mood to traipse around no graveyard lookin' like I peed my pants," Bubba said. "And you're givin' me whiplash to boot."

They were heading into the deepest part of the cemetery. A half moon hung in the sky, providing a comforting pale light.

"Place creeps me out," Bubba said.

"Quit complainin,'" Pete shot back. "We come out here to do a job. You should be used to it by now."

"Yeah, well, I ain't," Bubba said. "I don't like dead things."

Pete turned onto a smaller road, this one made of dirt and gravel. He stopped the truck and cut the engine, leaving the headlights on. "Let's get to it," he said.

The two men got out of the truck. Pete paused at the back of the truck to light a cigarette, then dropped the tailgate and hauled out two shovels and a pickaxe.

"I scoped this one out the other day," he said, settling down beside a headstone. "Roy Flemming," he read from the headstone. "Geezer was seventy-two when he kicked the bucket. Ain't been dead more than two weeks. The old lady should appreciate it."

He leaned off to one side of the grave and spit, then he stood up and pulled his jeans from between his a.s.s cheeks. "Let's dig the ol' boy up."

They started digging. It took nearly three hours of sweaty labor before they finally uncovered the coffin. Pete used the pickaxe to pry it open. The corpse inside was relatively fresh. The old dead guy looked peaceful. His hands were folded neatly across his chest and his eyes closed. He was dressed in his Sunday best.

"Give me a hand," Pete said, raising the corpse from the coffin.

Bubba grabbed one side of the old man, Pete took the other, and together they managed to hoist the corpse out of the grave. They loaded it in the back of the pickup truck, covered it with a tarp, and filled the grave in again, making it look undisturbed.

"Let's deliver this stinkin' thing and get us some pancakes," Pete said.

Bubba couldn't have agreed more. This whole ugly business had him just about as freaked out as he could get. The sooner the corpse was gone and they had their money, the happier he'd be. If he had his way, this was the last trip he'd ever make to a graveyard.

Frantic pounding on the front door snapped Mabel out of her night's rest. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. Her knees almost gave out. She grabbed hold of the bedpost to steady herself. The pounding continued, growing louder by the second, and now she could hear male voices she recognized as belonging to the hoodlums.

She grabbed the baseball bat she kept beside the bed, opened the bedroom door, and moved into the darkened hallway. She made her way down the stairs as fast as she could, which wasn't half fast by a long shot, and certainly not fast enough for the thugs banging on her door.

"Come on, old woman," one of them called.

She turned the latch and threw the bolt, groaning with the effort.

"'Bout time, old lady," Pete said.

"I expected the two of you a while ago," Mabel said, resting the bat against the wall next to the door. "I gave up and went to bed."

"We said we'd be here, didn't we?" Pete replied. "You got the money?"

"I always do," Mabel told him, shooting him a look of disapproval. "Question is, do you have what I asked for?"

"Yeah, we got it," Pete said. He sniffed the air. "It stinks in here."

Mabel admonished him with a look that reminded him of how his grandma used to look when she caught him stealing her fresh-baked cookies.

Bubba s.h.i.+fted his weight from one foot to the other, nervous and in a hurry to leave. "Where is he?" he asked, his eyes darting around the room.

"Don't be frettin' none," Mabel said. "You just mind the business you came to do. My Floyd's harmless most of the time."

"Yeah, it's the rest of the time I'm worried about," Bubba said.

"Let's get on with it," Pete said. "The stiff's in the truck. Where do you want us to put it?"

"In the storm cellar will do," Mabel answered. "Take it the back way. There's a metal table. Put the body there, then come collect your money."

She waited until the hoodlums had gone outside before she took the money from a wall safe hidden behind an old family photograph. Banks were simply out of the question. Legal thievery, that's all banking inst.i.tutions amounted to. Mabel would watch her own money, thank you.

She counted one thousand dollarsa"the agreed upon amounta"and stuffed the money into one of her nightgown pockets, then she went off to find Floyd before he found the two hoodlums.

"I'm stickin' with breakin' and entering after tonight," Bubba said. "This ain't no way to earn a livin.'"