The Zombies Of Lake Woebegotten (18 page)

“No! You shouldn’t have to go through something like that, Eileen, after what you’ve already done tonight. I guess you’re right. I should put Clem out of his misery. But… what do I tell his mother?”

“Tell her he died bravely fighting a zombie.”

Dolph considered. “I doubt she’d believe
that
. I mean, this is Clem we’re talking about. The closest he ever came to brave was stupid. I’d like to kill that
dog
that bit him. It’s still out there, and it’s only a matter of time until it bites someone else.” He sighed. “I think I’ll call Stevie Ray, tell him about Clem being locked up in the freezer, make it into
his
problem.”

Eileen knew when to push, and when not to, so she just nodded, though she thought,
Weak
. For her purposes, though, Dolph being weak could be okay. “Good idea. Hard to believe Harry’s dead and Stevie Ray’s the law in this town now.”

“Stevie Ray’s all right. He’ll do what needs to be done.”

“Going to ask him to take care of that zombie in the back of your truck too?”

Dolph grimaced. The limbless zombie—the object lesson for that horrible disaster of a town meeting—was still in his pickup, twitching and moaning. “No. That one, I can shoot. It’s not anybody I know.”

“I noticed that. Who is it, anyway?”

Dolph cleared his throat. “Harry said we shouldn’t tell anybody, before he got killed I mean, he was afraid there’d be a lynch mob—like you could muster up a lynch mob in Lake Woebegotten, it’s an uphill battle to whip us into a big enough frenzy to form a bowling league or a pickup softball game, everybody’s so damn Norwegian and self-sufficient and inward—but I guess I can tell you if you’ll keep it a secret… We found a bunch of dead bodies at Mr. Levitt’s place. Dead bodies up and around and attacking people I mean. And Mr. Levitt pretty much admitted he’s just… no two ways about it a serial killer, like you’d see on a TV show. Except old. That zombie in the back of my truck, he’s one of Mr. Levitt’s victims, some drifter I guess.”

Eileen whistled. Mr. Levitt didn’t enter her orbit very much—he was Catholic, so there was no church connection and he drove a Chevy so there was no car dealership connection—and though he’d been superintendent when her children were in school, she’d never had occasion to talk to anyone up
that
high in the chain of command, but she knew him, a harmless-enough-seeming old man. Just went to show you people had hidden depths. Eileen guessed maybe she was a serial killer herself, in a way, having killed twice in the past day, though maybe it didn’t count since she’d killed the same man twice, once with car exhaust, once with a gunshot to the head. Maybe she oughta kill another one just to confirm her status.

“Might as well go out and kill the zombie in your truck now, honey, I don’t imagine he’s going to start smelling any better. What are we supposed to do with… zombie bodies? Come to think of it, what did they do with Brent?”

“Stevie Ray said they were hauling all the bodies to the funeral home basement until they figure out what to do with them. Did you want Brent, ah, buried?”

“We have to be practical now,” Eileen said. “I imagine burning the bodies is the smartest thing.” She hopped down off the fishsticks. “Let’s go out and kill that poor thing in the bed of your truck, I hate thinking of it out there.”

Eileen was wondering how best to go about convincing Dolph to let her be the one to put a bullet in the things’s head—he didn’t want to do it himself, but he had his manly pride, so she’d have to ease her way up to the suggestion gently—except once they got into their coats and gloves and went out back of the store where Dolph was parked, the zombie was gone. Just stumps for arms and legs, sure, but it had managed to flop and twist and bend its way out of the truck bed and slither off into the darkness and the woods that pressed right up against the town. They could see the trail in the snow, like some kind of horrible giant worm had slithered away, and Dolph cursed. “Should we go in after it?”

Eileen had already tracked one zombie through the trackless wilderness, and had no desire to do so again. “No, honey. Let’s make that Stevie Ray’s problem, too. What kind of trouble can it get into anyway, with no arms and legs? What’s it going to do, bite somebody’s ankle?”

“Clem died of a bite to the ankle,” Dolph said, tone all dark and broody, and there was no point listening to him anymore when he got like that, so Eileen kissed his cheek and let him escort her home, but didn’t let him come inside, looking forward to her first night in the blessedly empty bed of a widow.

5

“I
just can’t see the point in keeping you here.” Stevie Ray pushed the bowl of mixed nuts—all the cashews had been picked out already, of course, that was always the way, it was pretty much nothing but peanuts and miscellaneous nut-dust now—across the desk toward Dolph.

Dolph, who was usually a big bluff man, and one of the loudest voices at any town meeting on any subject that came anywhere close to involving his store in particular or commerce in general (his jeremiad against the installation of a parking meter fifteen years back was still the stuff of local legend), was hunched and quiet tonight, shoulders up halfway to his ears, head down, voice all a-mumble. “Just throw away the key. Lock me up and throw away the key.”

“You and me both know I’ve let a lot worse than you out of this jail because they can do some good in this town.” Stevie Ray took a sip from his bottle of snow-cooled beer—he shouldn’t be drinking on the job, but given that he was pretty much on the job every waking hour and on call all the sleeping ones, that would entail not drinking at all, and he hadn’t gotten a part-time job at a bar where he was paid primarily in free drinks because he didn’t like a cold one now and then. He had to keep it under control, yes, and so far he was, and he had a little twinge over what Harry would have said at the sight of him with a bottle of Bud at his desk (probably something like, “I’m ashamed of you—you can’t at least drink Krepusky’s Red Ribbon Beer, support our local brewmaster?”), but if there was ever a time he needed a drink, it was now, when a criminal he wanted to release was refusing to leave. Stevie Ray made another run at the situation. “It was a terrible thing, but it was an accident—”

“Wasn’t any accident. I aimed. I pulled the trigger. I hit what I aimed at. I’m a murderer.” Dolph stared at the bowl of mixed nuts—be honest, call it a bowl of peanuts now, and barely that—but didn’t eat. He hadn’t eaten since what Stevie Ray continued to think of as a terrible tragedy, but not a murder. Not exactly. “You should hold me here until a judge sets bail.”

“You and me both know there’s no telling when we’ll get a judge through here. Nobody’s heard from the group we sent to the cities for help. For all we know we’re the last town standing.”

Dolph shook his head, a stubborn look on his face, which was an improvement at least over looking as blank as a fresh-dead walleye. “With the weather so bad, they could just be holed up somewhere, waiting for a break in the storm to come back. There’s going to be a judge. There is. There have to be consequences for what I’ve done.”

“Well, fine, then, in time you’ll stand trial and get all the consequences you can eat, you betcha, but you aren’t exactly a flight risk, Dolph. I can let you out of here. I know where you live. I know where your store is. I can let you go on your own recognizance. We could use you in this town.”

“I can’t. I can’t face them, anyone, I can’t… Just leave me in jail, won’t you? I won’t cost anything, you can feed me out of my own store, all right?”

Stevie Ray sighed. “What am I supposed to tell Eileen? She’s been calling for your release, making like I’m the Gestapo and the KGB and the Spetsnaz all rolled up into one, trampling over your constitutional rights. You want to tell her you refuse to leave the jail?”

“No!” Dolph was truly animated now. “Don’t tell her I want to stay, she’ll think I’m a coward, tell her it’s your idea, that you think it’s the best thing, will you do that for me, Stevie Ray? I’ll throw in all
your
meals, too, and a case of Michelob, just don’t tell her—”

Stevie Ray held up his hands. “Whoa, there, Dolph. It’s all right. We’ve known each other a long time. You gave my mama credit at the store when she lost her job at the battery factory. I owe you for that still, and I like to think we’re friends. I’ll tell Eileen whatever you want, but
why
?”

Dolph put his head in his hands, and Stevie Ray figured this was one of those things a man had to say while not looking directly at the man he was saying it too. Sometimes it seemed life was full of those kinds of conversations. “I can’t be what she wants me to be, Stevie Ray. Eileen. She’s…
ambitious
. I bet Brent never wanted to be mayor, I think it was Eileen who steered him toward it, because she wants me to be mayor now, a big man in the town, king of the hill sitting on a hoard of food, using my supplies to make people do what I want—except I don’t want people to do
anything
, and I don’t
know
what she wants people to do. I’m sort of scared to find out. I was going to go along with her, too, I’m ashamed to say, it’s not very Christian of me, I know, but she has a way of talking about power that makes it sound like a pretty good deal. Then the—accident, no, murder, the thing I did—that happened, and I guess it gave me a new sense of perspective and I don’t like her plans anymore. Just leave me here, would you, until the world starts making sense again?”

Well, well. Dolph and Eileen. Stevie Ray had figured they were just good friends, which just goes to show he didn’t know everything, and that was a bad quality in a police chief—Harry had sure known everything, and known when to keep it secret, too. Stevie Ray wondered if Eileen and Dolph had been… so close… before Brent got zombified. Better not to think about it. You could stay friends with people better if you
didn’t
know all their secrets, probably.
 

“All right, you can stay here, but I’m only locking you in that cell when Eileen or one of the special deputies is around, you hear? And you’re going to help me keep this place clean, too, no freeloading.”

“You’re a true friend, Stevie Ray.” Dolph yawned hugely. “I’d like to sleep now, if I can. Tell the truth I wish I could hibernate, like a bear. When was the last time we had a bear down here? Used to see them from time to time when I was a kid.”

“Been a couple years,” Stevie Ray said. “Still a lot of black bears farther north and east though. Might be some in the woods around here nobody sees, I guess. I hope not. Just our luck the bear would die and rise back up and come shambling through town, and if there’s a sight I don’t want to see, it’s a zombie bear.”

“A zombear. I guess that might make my top ten list of things I don’t want to see, too,” Dolph agreed.

6

B
igHorn Jim tromped through the snow with his Viking battleaxe (which he’d had made special for a pretty penny) over his shoulder, in case he should encounter a
draugr
—the ancient Norse word for the angry spirits of the dead, and the nearest thing in his worldview to match the shambling zombies he’d heard about and so briefly glimpsed at the town meeting. Mainly he was out to hunt firewood, though. His lodge up past the lake got cold when the winter wind came whipping down the prairie, and though he’d laid in a lot of wood, you could never have too much.

He paused by a cleft of rock, leaning toward the snow-heaped opening and sniffing. He couldn’t smell anything besides the burning cold insides of his own nostrils, but he liked to imagine he could smell bear. He’d seen a small black bear, a solitary male, in the fall, gorging itself for the winter, and he figured it was denned up here for the winter, sleeping, wouldn’t wake up until late March or early April, probably, coming out hungry and pissed-off in springtime. When it did come out, BigHorn Jim would be waiting with his axe to bring the bear down, and would fashion a cape from its skin. (Maybe also some slippers, if there was enough fur left over.) There weren’t many chances for valiant battle out here in Central Minnesota, even during the early days of Ragnarok when
draugr
wandered the earth, but he thought killing a bear in single combat might be enough to get him an eternal free ticket to the mead-and-roast-boar hall of Valhalla in his appointed afterlife. The greatest Viking warriors, known as berserkers, had worn bear skins or wolf skins to battle—even the name, berserker, came from
bjorn serkr
, bear shirt. Some said berserkers even transformed into bears on the field of battle. BigHorn Jim needed a bear shirt of his own. He would slay the bear and wear its skin, and be filled with the beast’s power then. A grizzly would have been better—Vikings had not fought Minnesota black bears, he was fairly certain—but he knew Odin would appreciate his effort, and Jim would take his place alongside the
einherjar
in this, the doomed battle of the last days.

“See you in the springtime,
bjorn
,” he said, and went on his way.

7

J
ulie sat up in bed—well it wasn’t a bed really, but Otto wasn’t too comfortable with all the accoutrements and such so he didn’t want to dwell on that, it was horizontal and padded and that was close enough—and lit a cigarette. She took a drag, then offered it to Otto, who said, “Erm, no, thanks.” He was fairly certain Barbara wouldn’t discover he’d been unfaithful to her—she never had before, not that he’d ever had like a regular mistress or anything, but he’d spent a lot of years in motels as a salesman, and sometimes you met a nice lady in a bar, and sometimes she wasn’t even a professional—since Otto knew how to talk nice and smile and hide the truth behind a shell of jokes and misdirection, but if his wife smelled cigarette smoke on his breath he’d catch seven kinds of heck, and no amount of smooth talking or sweet nothings would save him then.
 

“You, uh, always sleep down here?” Otto said, looking around Julie’s finished basement, which did not resemble his own finished basement—which contained a ping-pong table and an illuminated beer sign that wasn’t illuminated since they were conserving generator power and a refurbished jukebox that unfortunately hadn’t worked in about twelve years—in any respect at all