The Zombies Of Lake Woebegotten (10 page)

He waved a hand impatiently. “I told Sister Klingenberg to make sure everyone’s gathered. She’ll see it’s done.”

Daniel nodded, thinking about the fact that both these men of God depended on the women in their respective churches to actually get things like this done, wondering if maybe there was a sermon in this somewhere, or if it was one of those quiet little truths best left ignored lest people started thinking overmuch about the implications. His musings were derailed when Edsel said, “All right, then, let’s go get some guns.”

“Guns? Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“You can’t pray the head off a zombie, Daniel. Let’s be practical here. We’ve seen the abominations. And as Jesus said: I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword. The only reason he said ‘sword’ was because assault rifles hadn’t been invented yet.”

Daniel coughed. “Ah, but the sword of which Jesus spoke was not a literal weapon, but a reference to the ideological upheaval inherent in his message, the divisions that would inevitably come between those who accepted his message and those who rejected it.”

“Sometimes a sword is just a sword, Daniel. Are you coming, or not?”

Daniel sighed. “Where are you
going
?”

“To the largest stockpile of weapons available in Lake Woebegotten. We’re going to Cy’s Rustic Comfort Cabins and Bait Shop.”

Cyrus Bell was widely considered to be the single most insane person in town, outranking even BigHorn Jim the pagan and that squirrelly fella on the outskirts who talked to himself all the time, called The Narrator by those locals who called him anything at all, and Cyrus shared with Father Edsel a love for and vast and abiding knowledge of conspiracy theories. As such, his motel was not as popular as it might have been, though most of the drop-off in business was down to the internet, really. Before the internet, people might arrive with no idea what to expect from the proprietor and sole employee of the establishment, and find themselves reasonably quite alarmed at the whole experience. Now with all the travel and review websites, though, people who’d experienced Cyrus’s admittedly warm hospitality had a way to share their thoughts and feelings with anyone who happened to be clicking around looking for a place to stay in central Minnesota, preferably near a nice lake for fishing.
 

The locale was good, Daniel thought as Edsel parked in front of the wooden cabin that Cy used for an office. Right on the lake, surrounded by big trees, half a dozen cabins set at peculiar angles to create a sense of privacy, the two largest with their own fishing piers, and Cy even rented rowboats in the summer.
 

It would have been a suitably modest sort of paradise, if not for the fact that Cy was so friendly. Aggressively friendly. He’d knock on a guest’s door before dawn and ask if they wanted to take a boat out, and by the way, did they know the moon was a hollow spaceship full of alien biologists studying Earthlings like ants under a microscope? Or you might come back from a morning looking at the Interesting Historical Landmarks in the area—the site of the first drowning of a white man, the field that would have been a battlefield from the French and Indian War if the French soldiers hadn’t gotten lost and ended up back in Canada, the place where the old one-room schoolhouse had been before it burned down, and the like—only to find Cy sitting in your room on your bed sorting through your luggage, and he’d politely explain that he was looking for the CIA tracking devices, which could look like anything, really, even lacy red underwear with those little ribbons, and boy, he’d sure never seen anything like that before, least of all in a married lady’s bag. Then he’d put his arm around you and confide how he’d stopped wearing underwear entirely because underpants were an Illuminati conspiracy designed to lower the sperm counts of working-class men. If you called him about getting some fresh towels it could take two or three hours to get off the phone, and if you hung up on him, he’d just come to your door and offer to fix the phone because there must be a problem with the connection.
 

Edsel got along with him beautifully, of course.

Daniel followed the priest up the line of lopsided ice-rimed paving stones to the office. Edsel pushed open the door, making the bell above jangle, and Cy stood up smiling from his spot behind the counter. The wall in back of him was plastered with bumper stickers, many with questionable grammar and spelling, extolling the virtues of personal weaponry, acknowledging the existence of extraterrestrials, and supporting fringe political candidates from the past thirty years of local, state, and national elections, some of whom had gone on to be successful or notorious cult leaders. “Father! Pastor! What can I do for you today? Want a bite of my tuna fish sandwich?”

“We’ve come to tell you the end is here,” Father Edsel said. “The dead have risen from their graves to devour the living.”

Cy tipped his feed cap back on his head, revealing a vast expanse of forehead and making his wide-open face seem even more surprised and alarmed. He wore a camouflage vest with the pockets stuffed with shotgun shells, and he massaged his ammunition in an absent-minded way. “You’re saying we’ve got zombies?”

“Exactly.”

“Explains a few things,” Cy allowed. “My satellite just up and quit working, so I can’t get the internet either, and there’s been nothing on the radio or the network TV stations for a few hours. This related to that big light in the sky last night?”

“It could have been a celestial sign,” Edsel said solemnly. “Not unlike the star of Bethlehem, which appeared to alert mankind to the coming of the Lord. Only that shattered star last night foretold the coming of the Antichrist.”

“And here I just thought it was an orbital weapons platform test by the UN. You never can tell. Well, all right then, zombies. Eating brains, that whole thing?”

“They seem inclined to eat any kind of living flesh they can get their jaws around, Cy.”

“Fair enough. What are the rules of engagement?”

“The pastor and I are starting an Interfaith Anti-Zombie Task Force—”

“We’re starting a what?” Daniel said.

“—and we’ll need weaponry. Zombies are vulnerable chiefly to having their heads blown off. Can you help us out?”
 

Cy frowned. “Are you sure Pastor Inkfist can be trusted? No offense, Pastor, it’s just, you’ve always struck me as someone more concerned with the laws of man than the laws of God, unlike Father Edsel here. I’d hate for you to turn me in to the state police just because I maybe have a couple of unregistered handguns, not saying I do, mind you.”

“In this situation, I think I have to err on the side of expediency, Cyrus. I’m sure if you have any unregistered weapons you simply forgot to fill out the paperwork.”

“That must be it,” Cy said. “All right, come on to cabin seven.”

“I thought you only had six cabins?” Daniel said.

“Cabin seven is what he calls his bunker,” Edsel explained, and Cy grinned and led them into the back.

“My daddy built this bomb shelter back in the ’50s, before he figured out the Communists were just the dupes of the Trilateral Commission, and that nuclear bombs don’t actually work. The Trinity tests were faked, you know, and the bombings in Japan were just conventional TNT bombs and a lot of special effects to make it seem like we had an unstoppable superweapon.” Cy spoke the words without heat or inflection, as if he’d said it all many times before and repeated himself now out of habit, but Daniel didn’t pay him much attention anyway, as he was gazing around the long, low concrete underground room at the truly awesome quantities of weaponry present there.

There were guns, and not just handguns: also shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and bristling, black, oily-looking weapons that looked as if they belonged in a science fiction movie about space marines. The guns were mounted on wall racks, interspersed with assorted knives, a machete, and even several ninja throwing stars. Long, low crates lined the walls, and Daniel suspected they were filled with ammunition. He hoped they weren’t full of anything else, though he wouldn’t have ruled out rocket launchers and stacks of C-4. “Where did you get all this?”

Cy shrugged. “Gun shows. Estate sales. Ads in the backs of magazines. Out of a truck behind a flea market in Minneapolis. Here and there. Been collecting for a long time. Glad they’ll finally get some use. I was figuring they’d come in handy when the government decided to declare martial law and socialized medicine and the people had no choice but to openly revolt, but they’ll kill zombies too.”

“This is wonderful, Cy.” Edsel clapped him on the back, then took an Uzi down from the wall and opened a crate to take out a few full clips of ammunition. Didn’t even have to hunt around, which told Daniel that Edsel had been down here more than once or twice before. “We’ll assemble our warriors for God and bring them back here for arming. How would you like to be ordnance officer for the Interfaith Anti-Zombie league?”

“I’d be honored to serve,” Cy said. “Here, Pastor, let me set you up with a Heckler & Koch G36.” Daniel accepted the rifle, which didn’t weigh much more than a couple of gallons of milk, though it obviously had far less nutritional value. “For myself, I think I’ll take this Saiga 12-guage semi-automatic shotgun with a ten-round magazine. I could drop a whole herd of zombies in about three seconds with this baby, but it’s got a kick that might trouble you, Pastor.”

“Uh,” Daniel said, but Cy had joined Edsel before he could come up with anything else to say.

“I don’t suppose a knife would be much good against a zombie.” Edsel had the Uzi slung over his shoulder on a strap, and he perused the knives arrayed on the wall. “Even a big hunting knife isn’t much good for decapitation.”

“Well, maybe you’d like this.” Cy presented what looked like an ordinary hunting knife, and Edsel’s look of disappointment was obvious. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but there’s a CO
₂
cartridge hidden in the hilt, and if you press this button, it releases a big burst of compressed air, about the volume of a basketball, at 850 psi.” Daniel looked at him blankly, and Edsel didn’t seem much more comprehending, so Cy grinned and said, “Stick this in a zombie’s eye and push the button and I’m pretty sure the poor sucker’s head will explode. I’ve only tried it on a pumpkin, but
that
blew up real good.”

“Perfect.” Edsel plucked the knife from his hand, found a sheath, and slipped it onto his belt.

“Just be sure you don’t hit the button by mistake,” Cy said, “or you could do yourself a good bit of damage.”

And I have to sit next to him in the truck?
Daniel thought. Maybe he should assert himself. Why let the priest be the one making all the decisions?

“We’re having a full town meeting tonight, Cy,” Edsel was saying. “Six o’clock at the community center. You might want to come, sort of hang around in back, gauge peoples’ reactions, help us choose the warriors of the faith who most deserve the glorious weapons God has chosen to give us through you, his vessel.”

“Sure thing.” Cy was always affable, even when he was spilling his crazy all over you. “Should I come armed?”

“Most certainly,” Edsel said.
 

“You know, in a way I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. Learning survival techniques. Guerilla warfare tactics. Living off the land. I didn’t expect zombies, exactly, but I knew something was coming.” He shook his head, then grinned his big crazy grin. “Goes to show you just never can tell.”

12. Philosophical Zombies

“T
hat’s the emergency robo-call done.” Harry sat back, feeling like something was finally working halfway right. Maybe it would be the start of a trend. “The meeting’s on. Now give me something to tell them, Stevie Ray.”

“I wish I could. I can’t raise the state police.” Stevie Ray leaned back from the desk full of radio equipment and shook his head. “Not the sheriff either, and I’m not getting an answer from the National Guard unit.”

“What, you didn’t call Homeland Security?” Harry’s tone was halfway between mocking and genuinely outraged. No reason to let the civilians, or Stevie Ray either, know how worried that news made him. If they were really cut off…

“No luck there either. I get busy signals, faults on the line, or just plain empty hissing.”

“What are we going to do?” Otto said, those big pop-eyes of his bulging, made him look like a walleye. Otto had no more spine than an earthworm, but he could do what he was told, and he wasn’t as dumb as some, but Harry would have still sent him home if he hadn’t been a witness to the unmasking of a mass murderer.
 

“We’ll keep trying, Otto. That’s what we’ll do.”

“You guys bothered to check the internet?” Rufus pulled out one of those fancy new phones, all shiny and round-edged like some kind of technological chiclet. “That’s where the real news is going to break first… Huh. No signal. That’s weird. My coverage is usually good in the middle of town.”

“Internet’s down in here too,” Stevie Ray said. “I called over to WoBoCo, but didn’t get an answer.” WoBoCo was the town’s local internet service provider, and pretty much the only game in town unless you wanted to sign up with AOL, which not many people did anymore. At least those initials “AOL” stood for something—“WoBoCo” sounded like an abbreviation, but it wasn’t, that was just what the kid who ran the place decided to name it, thought it sounded cool. Harry didn’t care what he called it, so long as he kept the service up and running. Harry wasn’t a young man, but he liked young men’s games, and though he had a big TV and some of the next-gen gaming consoles, he couldn’t play his Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games without the internet, and if the lag got too bad he’d been known to make stern phone calls to WoBoCo personally.

“Of course you didn’t get an answer, you idiots.” Mr. Levitt was leaning against the bars of the single jail cell with his arms sticking through, like he was hoping to snag a passerby. God, Harry could have done without the reminder of his existence. A serial killer right here under his nose. That was a black eye and no mistake. Never mind that Harry was stretched pretty thin, being 75% of the police department (Stevie Ray was solid but he was only a part-timer), barely able to keep up with making sure drunks stayed off the road, kids stayed out of the quarries, and nobody beat on their spouses too much. But a murderer, that sort of thing he should’ve noticed. At least Levitt seemed to prey on outsiders. That didn’t make Harry feel much better, but it made it a little bit less personal.