Deadneck Hootenanny
By Mark Justice

When Earl Lee told me about the zombies, I thought he was nuttier than a port-a-potty at a peanut farm.

We were all drinking down at Ruby’s, like most days. There wasn’t any Ruby at Ruby’s anymore. Not since the incident with the ferret and the garbage disposal. And nobody really missed her, since she was a vicious bitch. But she did make bodacious hot wings. Ted, the new owner, couldn’t cook for shit. But he hired a girl who could. And, most nights, Ted would dip into the on-tap product a bit too much and get real behind on how many you had on your tab, which was always a nice bonus for those of us who were out of work. Which was almost everybody who drank at Ruby’s.

I’d lost my job over at the steel mill in Ashland last fall and all the union did was shrug. My benefits were about gone and what little I did have came from some carpentry work I did here and there. Things had been pretty dry lately, though.

Earl Lee had been unemployed for most of his life, which is about how long we’d known him. Back in school he’d work summers at the old Enchanted Drive-Inn, frying burgers and splicing the film when it broke (which was always accompanied by a chorus of honking horns and a raucous chant of “Earl Lee, Earl Lee”). After the drive-in closed, Earl Lee had made his meager living selling weed. Everybody knew it. Earl Lee stayed pretty low key, kept his prices down–since he grew it himself out in the woods at the state park–and he never shot anybody. The law didn’t bother him too much. At least not the Possum Hollow cops. The sheriff was another matter. He or his deputies had arrested Earl Lee three different times. Earl Lee’s cousin Tommy from Ashland was a lawyer who got the first two charges dropped. It looked like lucky number three was going to trial next month. We all felt bad for Earl Lee. He wasn’t real smart, but he was one of us. Still, if the sheriff has a hard-on for you, what were you going to do?

So you can understand my skepticism when Earl Lee told me the zombie story.

It was raining that day like somebody pouring piss out of a boot. I was at a table with Rick Tabor and Tiny Heineman. Rick lost his job at the mill the same day I had. Tiny was still working at the Kroger store in Russell, so we were letting him buy a round. Ruby’s had Blatz on tap, and it was half the cost of the next cheapest beer. Tasted like it, too. Rick and Tiny were talking about fishing, and trying to get up a trip to Lake Erie. It wasn’t that I didn’t like fishing. It’s just that they’d had this same conversation at least three times a week since Thanksgiving and I wasn’t expecting any new facts to reveal themselves.

Instead, I was thinking about Jenny Peterson, who worked downtown at the library. I ran into her at the drug store earlier that morning and she had told me they just got in a new Joe Lansdale book, a Hap and Leonard novel. She knew I liked them, and she said she’d hold it for me. Jenny had been very nice to me since Edie had moved out a few months ago. I used to think she was a little mousy, but this morning she was looking sharp. Maybe she’d had some kind of make over. Or maybe I was just horny.

Anyway, that’s when Earl Lee came in, dripping like a drowned rat. We knew right away something was up, since he ran right over to the table without stopping by the bar to give Ted his order. I’m not proud if it, but my first thought was that he’d been arrested again.

“Earl Lee,” I said. “You gotta cool it on the dealing. At least ‘til Tommy gets you out of this one.”

“That hurts, Frank,” Earl Lee said, water dripping from the brim of his Cincinnati Reds ball cap. “I’ve been layin’ low. Just ask Tiny.” He nodded to Tiny.

“I tried to buy a dime bag off a him last Saturday night,” Tiny said. “He told me the store was closed ‘til further notice. I had to go across the river to Ironton and buy off my Mom’s boyfriend. That rat bastard charged me double what Earl Lee does.”

Earl Lee shrugged. “I told you. Besides, I don’t deal drugs. I sell pot.”

“Whatever,” I said, already bored with the conversation. I was thinking it would be nice to sit on my screened-in porch, listen to it rain and read that new Lansdale.

“Hey, Tiny, you got any left?” Rick said.

“Maybe I do,” Tiny said. “And maybe I don’t.”

“I’ll give you two bucks for a joint.”

“Five,” Tiny countered.

“Five? For Christ’s sake, Tiny, Earl Lee will sell me a bag for twenty-five. Wouldn’t you Earl Lee?”

Earl Lee looked at me and then back at Rick, licking his lips like an alcoholic eyeing a bottle of Jim Beam.

“I can’t do it, Rick,” Earl Lee said. You could see the hurt in his eyes.

Tiny smiled at Rick. “Five.”

“Three-fifty. My final offer.”

“Okay,” Tiny said. “Let’s go out to my truck.”

They stood up, and Rick said, “Don’t drink my beer, Earl Lee.” Tiny and Rick walked out into the rain.

Earl Lee sat down at the table and drained Rick’s glass. He wiped his mouth and said, “Damn, I needed that.”

I shook my head. “What has you so riled up, son?”

“If you heard what I just heard, Frank, you’d be upset, too.”

I moved my hand in the famous get-on-with-it gesture.

“Anyway, on my way over here, I drove by the Methodist church, right? And I saw them doors fly open and people come runnin’ out of that place, right? I’m talkin’ little kids and old people and everybody. So I slow down and Les Golden just about runs smack into my truck, and I say, what’s goin’ on, bud, and he looks at me like he’s ready for the insane asylum, right? And I go, Les, what the hell is goin’ on, and his eyes get focused and he goes, Earl Lee? And I go, yeah. And he tells me.”

“Tells you what?” I said.

Earl Lee glanced at the pitcher of Blatz and back at me. I sighed, then filled up Rick’s glass again. Earl Lee had it drained before the pitcher was back on the table. I just looked at him until he remembered to resume his story.

“Oh. Anyway, you remember what happened to the Glimcher family?”

“Those are the people who drowned last week?”

“Yeah. With their two grandsons. They got caught out on the river in that hellacious storm. And their funeral was this morning. All four of ‘em at the same time.”

It had been big news the past few days, a tragic story of retirees with a lot of money and not much sense. I wondered what that had been like, to be alive one moment and dying beneath the Ohio the next.

“So, Les tells me that in the middle of the service, all four of the dead Glimchers get up out of their coffins and start walkin’ around. Well, the crowd goes crazy, like you’d expect, tryin’ to get out of there. But Les says that wasn’t the worst part. He said the two little boys stumble over to Reverend Wileman and start gnawin’ on his legs like they were pieces of fried chicken. Then the old man and woman join in, and they all start eatin’ the preacher. Les said it was like some kind of freaky family picnic from Hell, or somethin’.”

I tried to absorb what he had just told me. Earl Lee had a wacky smile on his face, the kind you usually see on people when they tell you they were abducted by aliens or the voices in their head told them to climb up on that highway overpass with a high-powered rifle. I guess I reacted the only way I could.

“Earl Lee,” I said, “you’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.”

“I swear to God, Frank, it’s true.”

“You saw zombies eating people?”

“Well, no. But I saw all them people runnin’ out of church. You know Les. He ain’t got the imagination to make up somethin’ like that.”

“I don’t care. That’s the craziest–”

Even with the steady pounding of the rain, and the country music coming out of Ted’s boom box, we heard the screams from right outside.

“Oh, Jesus. That sounded like Rick,” Earl Lee said.

We both headed for the door. I made it out first, but not because I was faster than Earl Lee. I got the impression he was holding back. He had a pretty good idea what we were about to see.

The rain was still coming down hard when we stepped outside. Tiny’s old Ford truck was parked to the right of the entrance. Both doors were open, and it took me a second to see my friends. About ten feet away, Rick and Tiny were both on the asphalt. A small boy, dressed in a cute little suit and tie, was chewing on Rick’s arms, while an old lady wearing a nice dress and pearls had her face buried in his belly, shaking her head back and forth like a dog chewing on a rabbit. Over next to him, I saw an old man in a suit dig out one of Tiny’s eyes. He popped it into his mouth and started chewing. While he did this, he looked right at me and flashed a gore-stained smile. Another child was trying to bite off one of Tiny’s lips. Tiny and Rick were still screaming. They weren’t moving around much, though.

I was pretty sure I had just met the Glimchers.

* * *

Deadneck Hootenanny at Novello Publishers: http://www.novellopublishers.com/newrelease.html
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