Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (11 page)

“It was
your
dog?” Kirk said, his voice an awed whisper. He exchanged a stunned glance with Randy.

Dad said, “I rode my bike over to her house and knocked on her door and asked her right up front, ‘Are you a witch?’”

Kirk nodded. “That’s pretty much what I did.”

“Well, it was a mistake, Kirk,” Dad said with quiet intensity. “It was a big mistake. It still keeps me up some nights, and that was a dog. This is a person, this is…
Natalie
.”

“What keeps you up some nights?” Kirk asked.

“I should’ve been more specific,” Dad said. “I should’ve told you the truth early on, maybe you would’ve stayed away from her then.”

“
What
keeps you up?” Kirk asked again.

“Nightmares. The memory of what I had to do. There’s a price to pay for what you’ve done, Kirk.”

Mrs. Kobylka had asked him if he was ready to pay the price, but it had sounded like bullshit coming from her. Coming from Dad, it sounded ominous.

“What’s happened since you brought her back?” Dad asked. “Has anyone been hurt?”

Kirk looked at Randy and Liz for a moment. He saw no point in lying to Dad––he’d hear about it sooner or later, and he would know. Kirk told him about Mom’s ferret, and then about Wyatt Parks.

“What the hell were you doing at Wyatt Parks’ house?” Dad asked.

Kirk gulped. He thought a moment about the baggie of pot––he was relieved when he remembered it was still in the glovebox in Liz’s car where Dad couldn’t see it. “We stopped by to see Dicky. But he wasn’t home.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dad said, shaking his head. He took his cell phone from the right pocket of his suitcoat and punched in a number. He waited a moment, then said, “This is Donald Mundy, could I speak to Bob Brentwood, please?”

Bob Brentwood was an old friend of Dad’s, one of his oldest. They’d grown up together. Bob was a Sheriff’s deputy. A few months ago, he’d broken his arm in a fall while hiking and he was stuck at a desk at the Sheriff’s station in Anderson until his arm was out of its cast.

“Hi, Bobby,” Dad said. “Can you get away for a little bit? Something’s come up. Something… urgent. I can’t explain on the phone. Meet me in ten minutes in front of Mrs. Kobylka’s house.” He paused a moment. “Yes, Mrs. Kobylka’s, you heard me right. See you there.” He closed the phone and dropped it back in his pocket. He nodded toward the bathroom and said, “Wrap her up in something. We’re going to see Mrs. Kobylka.”

“We already saw her,” Kirk said. “She wouldn’t help us.”

“That’s because you didn’t know what to ask for, and we don’t have time for you to figure it out for yourself. Let’s go.”

3.

They put Natalie, wrapped in the sheet and afghan and wearing Kirk’s old sneakers, into the back of Dad’s Dodge Durango. Liz was horrified by the maggots crawling out of Natalie’s crushed face and started crying again as she said, “That is so fucking wrong.” Kirk sat in the front seat with Dad, Randy and Liz in the seat behind them. They rolled down all the windows because of the smell.

“Why are you home so early, Dad?” Kirk asked.

“I took half the day off. I was going to have some lunch and then spend the afternoon Christmas tree shopping.” Dad was a perfectionist when it came to finding the right Christmas tree and could shop for one all day long until he was satisfied.

“She’s craving what used to flow through her body––blood, energy, life. Eating the living gives her a taste of that. But it’s never enough.”

“How do you know?

“It’s not something I know, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and that’s what I believe. You’ll think about this a lot, too, Kirk. There will be nights when
you
won’t be able to sleep.”

“What happened with your dog?” Randy asked.

“We lived over by the river when I was a kid, near the park,” Dad said. “My dad had built a fort in the back yard for me. It was a thing of beauty, like a miniature log cabin. I kept Duke in there. But it was summer, and a hot one, and he started to stink pretty fast. And all he did was howl miserably. There was a patch of woods between our back yard and the Sacramento River and I took Duke down there and tied him to a tree close enough to the river to get a drink. He was howling when I left, he howled all night, and he was howling the next morning when I went to him. He smelled bad, and he didn’t look good, but I thought if I took him for a walk, he might stop howling. He did, while we walked. I took him over to the edge of the park. There were a few women there with several small children, a couple babies, and a few dogs. We were walking along the edge of the park, and Duke just took off. He caught me off guard and the leash slipped right out of my hand. He didn’t make a sound. He snatched up a little terrier and ran off to the bushes and ate it. We were out of there before anyone missed the dog. Duke had blood all over his muzzle and he licked his chops all the way back to his tree. I washed his muzzle off at the river, and then he curled up as if to take a nap. He’d stopped howling. He didn’t make a sound until the next morning.”

In the backseat, Randy and Liz leaned forward and listened closely. Behind them, Natalie said, “Hungry.”

Dad said, “I took Duke walking along the edge of the park again the next morning. The women and all their children and babies and dogs were back. They had their blankets spread out and a large picnic basket open. They were looking for the dog. They were walking all around that area of the park calling his name. Rufus, they called him. I figured Duke would go after another of the little dogs. Keeping him fed was the only way to keep him from howling until I figured out what I was going to do with him. I unhooked the leash from his collar and he took off without a sound. But he snatched up one of the babies and took it into the bushes. And ate it. The baby never made a sound. Everyone was looking for the dog, and again, we were out of there before anyone knew what had happened.” He said nothing for several seconds, then muttered, “A baby.”

“Is that what keeps you awake some nights?” Kirk asked.

“That’s part of it,” Dad said. “In my nightmares, I always see Duke eating the baby. And in some of them, I’m eating the baby. Because it was my fault. Just as if I’d done it myself. But I stayed in those bushes, out of sight, while my dog did that. My blood-thirsty dog that, because of me, had been risen from the dead.” He looked at Kirk a moment, then at Randy and Liz in the rearview, back at Kirk, then at the road again. “That’s how you’ve got to think of this. I don’t know whose idea it was, or how deeply you’re involved, Randy and Liz, but––”

“It was my idea, and I did it,” Kirk said. “They were there, but they didn’t participate. I’m the one who brought Natalie back.”

“Then all this is your responsibility. The ferret, and Wyatt Parks… anyone she hurts. And you’re responsible for what’s going to happen to her.”

“What’s going to happen to her?” Kirk asked.

“Mrs. Kobylka will tell you.”

“Why does something have to
happen
to her?” Kirk said. “Besides, it’s not Natalie. It’s just her body. Like Duke––he was different, right? Not the same dog after you brought him back? It wasn’t Duke, right?”

“He didn’t know how to play anymore,” Dad said. “He gave it a try, but he was very uncoordinated afterward. But it was still Duke. It was like he was sick, or something.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “That’s Natalie back there. Imagine if she were in an accident and sustained severe brain damage and was never the same again. She’d still be Natalie, wouldn’t she? Well… that’s Natalie. It’s all that’s left of her, anyway. The difference is that she’s dead. So naturally, she’s not going to behave the same way. She’s… not all there anymore, Kirk. But she’s still Natalie.”

Kirk felt a wave of nausea. That
was
Natalie––and she felt pain, and she was walking around with a crushed face and maggots crawling around in her head because of him. Kirk’s vision was fractured by hot tears as he thought about what he had done to her in his blind and frantic eagerness to have her back.

“When we get to Mrs. Kobylka’s,” Dad said, “let me do the talking. Speak only if you’re spoken to. I don’t think you realize exactly how dangerous that old woman is. If you did, you never would have gone to her.”

Kirk looked over his shoulder at Randy and Liz. Randy mouthed the words,
Holy shit
.

“We’re never going to get that smell out of this car,” Dad said. “I don’t know what we’re going to tell your mother. By the way, about the ferret… we’re going to say nothing, okay? Say nothing, and we’ll assume it slipped out the door when someone was coming in or going out, okay?”

“Tell
mom
the truth?”

“I know. We may have to resuscitate her, but we may have to tell her the truth anyway. Don’t worry, she grew up with the same stories about Mrs. Kobylka that I did. She probably won’t take much convincing.”

Dad nodded. “Every family has its secrets, Kirk. They’re usually kept for the good of someone else. It would be for your mother’s own good if we could come up with a way of keeping this from her. Because if we have to tell her the truth, she’s really going to freak.”

Kirk found himself laughing. He was still feeling the residual effects of the pot and was unusually relaxed considering the circumstances.

“He’s the only one who knows about what happened with Duke. He came here with me to talk to Mrs. Kobylka the night I brought Duke back. He’ll understand all this. He’s also a cop, so he’ll know what we should do next. Natalie killed someone, Kirk, and there’s a good chance you could get blamed for that. I don’t know if we should take her to Mrs. Kobylka, or if we should go to the cops with this whole story. So I’m going to ask Bobby.”

Dad got out of the SUV, closed the door, and got into the cruiser with Bobby.

4.

“Just a little longer, honey.” His voice broke on the last word and he turned away from her. Staring at the dashboard, he whispered, “I can’t believe I’ve done this to her.”

“You didn’t know it was going to be like this,” Liz said. “If you’d known, you wouldn’t have done it.”

A noise in the back made them all turn toward Natalie. She was starting to climb toward them over the seats. She tried to smile, but it only made her broken face look more horrific.

“No, Nat, stay there, okay?” Kirk said. “Just for a little while longer, okay? Please?”

She slowly moved back to the rear compartment of the SUV without taking her eyes from Kirk. He could not look at her collapsed face long. It made him feel like dying.

- EIGHT -

1.

A few minutes later, Dad and Bobby got out of the cruiser.

Bobby was tall and beefy with short-cropped black hair speckled with gray and wire-framed glasses that looked small on his large face. His right arm was in a blue fiberglass cast. He and Dad came to the driver’s side of the Durango and Dad opened the door. They moved in close. Bobby wrinkled his nose and recoiled at the smell at first.

“In the
trunk
?” Dad said. “How could you do that, Kirk?”

Kirk closed his eyes a moment. “I didn’t think it was Natalie. I thought it was just her body, not
her
. If she’d complained or made any noise, I would’ve taken her out, but she didn’t. Not until Wyatt walked us out to our car. Then she pounded on the trunk and started talking. Wyatt got upset and wanted to know who was in our trunk. So we showed him. And she attacked him.”