respect was a notion that didn’t carry over, but rather for the mourners who tended their graves. However callous I may be about the concept of death, you had to admire the dedication of a person who takes time out of their hectic life to remember and care for a loved one who’s passed on. While there was nothing I could do for them that would make their loss any easier, the least I could do was not add to their grief.
I parked the car near the maintenance area and looked out over the green fields to see where my buddies were working. After spotting the guys several gardens over through the misty haze of the sprinklers, I turned to McConnell.
“Sorry about the rough ride.” I patted the Impala’s dashboard. “I know it’s probably not quite as much fun as riding bareback like you’re used to, but you took it like a champ.”
Yeah, I went there.
McConnell shook his head. “Look, Trigg. I’m not interested in being here anymore than you are, but it’s just business, hear? The boss says we gotta do this, so that’s what needs to be done. T’ain’t no two ways about it.”
“That may be so, Yes Man, but that doesn’t absolve you from trying to kick my head in, or for blowing my damn house up. You can say you were just following orders all you want, but it was you who pulled the trigger; personal responsibility and all that crap. So, at some point, I’m gonna take it out of your hide.”
He shrugged. “Be careful what you wish for, mutt. I don’t see any magic-dampening manacles lying around.” He gestured to the car, a cocksure smile springing up behind his snow-white beard. “Lady Luck ain’t always gonna play your side.”
I grinned back at him, but to be honest, I wasn’t feeling as confident as I came off. He was right, as much as it sucked to admit it. I’d gotten lucky stumbling across the manacles that shut his magic down. If I hadn’t, things would have played out very differently. Round two would probably be a slaughter, my ass on a hook. It was a sobering thought.
“Just don’t add me to the naughty list, Santa.” Not in the mood to talk my way into an ass-beating, I veered off. “Let’s get this over with.”
Nodding his agreement and smiling from ear to ear, McConnell hopped out of the car. As I climbed out, I fought the urge to shoot him in the back and shoved my hands deep into my pockets just to be safe. Once the feeling passed, I took off down the road to where my buddies were digging a hole. The wizard stayed a few steps behind. Not interested in letting him see how much our talk rattled me, I let it ride, striding boldly in front. By the time I reached my friends, my jaw hurt from all the teeth clenching.
The rumbling sound of the backhoe echoed through the quiet cemetery, the screeching grackles doing their best to compete. The birds were winning, much to the regret of my ears.
I made my way across the grass, dodging the headstones and raised memorials, making sure to avoid the clusters of plastic flowers and religious figurines piled en masse around the graves. Near the center of the garden, I sidled up alongside a dusty little guy who stood leaning against a parked red tractor. To its right was an orange dirt-mover, its bucket noisily biting into the ground with a rumble.
“How’s it going, Javier?”
He glanced at me, giving a crooked smile before turning back to shout up at the backhoe, “Hey, Carlos. Look who’s here. I told you we’d be seeing this vato soon, esse.” Javier stuck his hand out.
Wondering what he meant by that, I shook it, trying not to think about how many dead people he’d touched with it today.
Javier was not a bather.
As I wiped my hand off on my pants, as subtly as I could, Carlos shut down the backhoe and climbed out slow and deliberate, as though it were a trial to do so.
“Hey, Frank. Who’s this chango?” He gestured to McConnell as he strolled over to us.
“He’s with me. It’s cool.”
Both men looked The Gray over like they were sizing him up for a casket. I couldn’t blame them, but I wasn’t gonna get any answers if they were suspicious of him.
“He’s one of Baalth’s boys. A couple of his guys got jumped here the other night and he wants me to straighten it all out.”
They looked McConnell over for another few seconds, then Carlos turned to me and nodded. “Yeah, we heard something about that.” He motioned to Javier.
“We could probably tell you something, if we weren’t so busy, you know?” He kinda shrugged, little brown poofs of dust rising up off his shoulders.
Like almost every other person I dealt with on a daily basis, they all wanted something. The dictionary people should retire the word “free” as nothing truly ever is. “So, what can we do to help alleviate your workload?” It was wheelin’ and dealin’ time.
Carlos smiled wide, his wiry mustache sticking out like cat whiskers. “Seems some of our customers are getting up and walking away. That’s cool and all, shit, we could use the extra spaces, but it’s turning out to be a lot of work filling in all the new holes.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. Not that I was surprised the zombies Marcus and Poe tracked here were actually from this cemetery, but it came across as a comforting sense of serendipity. Not to mention, it got me off the hook without having to do another favor for someone. The dirt boys and I wanted the same thing, even if they didn’t know it. It let me look magnanimous without putting out any effort.
“It’s not funny, homie,” Javier complained, getting animated.
“Nah, I know. I feel ya.” I raised my hands to pacify him. His funk was starting to creep as he jumped around and I didn’t want to catch too big a whiff. “I’ll help you guys. Tell me what’s going on.”
McConnell shook his head. He looked like he was enjoying the show. Graveyard TV: Two Vatos and a Hole.
Carlos stepped in. “Marvin, our night watering guy, noticed the dug up graves about a week ago. He was setting the sprinklers when he fell into one of the damn things. After he got out, took him four hours he said-”
“That’s because he’s fat,” Javier explained, apparently feeling left out of the conversation.
“Yeah, he is,” Carlos agreed without missing a beat. “Anyway, he found a bunch more empty graves and even saw a couple of the corpses walking off into the desert out back. He knew then something was up.”
You think?
“How many bodies have taken off?”
“Man, it’s hard to keep track, but I’d say maybe two hundred, maybe more.”
I looked to McConnell, his face no doubt mirroring my own surprise. That was a lot of zombies. Either George Romero was shooting a movie in town, or something big and sinister was going down.
“Have you reported them missing?” The Gray asked, clearly not used to being on the interrogator side of the equation.
Carlos looked at him like the wizard had spilled his last beer. “Yeah, to you, cabron. What am I going to do, tell everyone that their dead mamas y abuelitas went to stretch their legs?” He rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Of course we didn’t tell nobody, fool. I need my job. If I go blabbing that people’s familias aren’t being taken care of here, they’ll shut this place down.” He glanced over at me. “Besides, not all them vatos that got up and walked away are on the books, you know what I’m saying?”
I did. I headed Carlos off before he could say anymore. I’d already agreed to help him so the less of my extracurricular activities he let McConnell know about, the better. The wizard might one day be among my collection. I didn’t want Carlos to spoil the surprise.
“Did any of the corpses come back, that you noticed?”
Carlos turned to Javier, who shook his head. “Not that we’ve seen. None of the holes we filled have been messed with, or anything.”
“Has there been anything else weird, besides the bodies?”
Javier answered. “There were some flashing lights upstairs in the crypts.” He pointed off to the mausoleum.
Painted in an earthy pink, with a red-tiled roof, the mausoleum stood at the center of the cemetery, framed by a wall of towering Firs. A little over two stories tall, the building housed concrete crypts, set into the walls. Hundreds of embalmed bodies were stored inside, separated from the living by only an inch-thick marble slab and a thin piece of plastic held in place with window caulking.
