Blood Lite

So there I was with three dead bodies, two of them still moving around, and two cars to dispose of, one a police cruiser. I sat down for a while to think things through and decided that the first priority was to get rid of the cruiser. I couldn't carry Officer Tremblay's body down to it in the daylight, so I'd have to dispose of that separately. No prob­lem. Bert was still wandering around, so I found some more clothesline and tied him to one end of the bench. He didn't seem to mind. By then Mrs. Williams was stabbing the dead policeman over and over with the empty hypodermic. I took it out of her hand and she sat down heavily. The serum was obviously starting to wear off.

I was just catching my breath when the doorbell rang. It was Gus from across the street.

"Hi. I saw the cop car out front and wondered if there'd been any news about Mrs. Williams."

I didn't invite him in. The noises from the garage had stopped, but I had a dead policeman and two reanimated corpses to deal with. It wasn't an appropriate time for entertaining.

I opened my mouth, intending to tell him that there'd been no news, that Tremblay was using the bathroom and it wasn't a good time, but before I could say anything, his eyes widened and he looked past me. "Mrs. Williams! We were all worried about you."

Somehow she'd found the strength to come into the house. I was paralyzed with indecision, and of course Gus decided to brush past me.

She didn't like Gus particularly, either, so she stabbed him with the hypodermic. He gave a surprised little cry, dropped to his knees, and fell headlong. There was no more serum, so at least he wasn't likely to get up anytime soon. I decided to consider that my luck had finally changed for the better.

Mrs. Williams had collapsed by the time I had finished dragging Gus into the garage. Officer Tremblay was mov­ing around a little; apparently there'd been enough of the serum left to cause some reaction, but he couldn't stand up. He was pawing at his weapon and I took it away from him just to be safe. I carried Mrs. Williams out next. She barely moved, so that was no problem.

It was later than I had realized. The day had gotten " away from me. As soon as it was fully dark, I was going to carry the bodies next door, then move Bert's car out onto the street. I'd set fire to the house, wait until it was going pretty well, then call in the alarm. Let the police interpret the four bodies however they wanted after that.

By the time I was willing to risk it, Mrs. Williams was completely still, and the other two were obviously wind­ing down. Tremblay was still pawing at his holster but he couldn't stand up, so I ended up carrying all four of them, one at a time. Then I went down to the basement and arranged some rags and other combustibles near the oil tank. It was harder to get the fire going than I expected, but eventually I was satisfied.

I decided to have one last look around upstairs before leaving and that was my last mistake. When I stepped through the doorway into the kitchen, I felt something brush against my leg.

There was a click and I looked down just in time to see Officer Tremblay fasten the free end of a pair of handcuffs to the foot of Mrs. Williams's antique cast-iron stove.

The other cuff was around my ankle.

I stood there, astonished that he'd been able to crawl all the way from the opposite end of the kitchen, and by the time I understood what had just happened, he'd moved beyond my reach, finally slumping inertly against a row of cabinets.

He and the handcuff key are out of my reach. The stove is too heavy for me to lift or move. There are wisps of smoke drifting up from the basement and I can hear the flames licking at the steps.

I think I have a problem.

Old School

Mark Onspaugh

"And arise!"

Everyone stood back from the corpse except Meg, who wanted to see whether the eyes would pop open like they always did in the movies.

The dearly departed, a crossing guard who had been struck down by a school bus, just lay there, like . . . well, like a stiff.

We waited thirty minutes, which seemed more than enough time for any self-respecting necromancer, then Dean hit Mal with his cap.

"Fuckin' retard—I knew that book was a load of shit." The book was old and covered in stained leather that Mal had promised was the skin of some wizard from fourth-century Persia or some such nonsense. He had gotten it off eBay from a dealer in Bakersfield. The fact that it was written in English had made us doubt its authenticity. It wasn't even Old English like Chaucer or something. More like that Robin Hood-speak you hear in bad sword and sorcery flicks. Lots of "thee" and "thou" and "ye."

"Let's get her back to the office," I said wearily. "My boss has a nasty habit of dropping in after nine."

We loaded the battered civil servant into the back of my Subaru. Dean had put pe

I smiled at Meg, but I could see she was disappointed. She was the only reason I had agreed to this in the first place. There was something about her pale skin and bat tattoo that made me feel feverish. The way the chrome stud in her tongue winked in the sun. The hints that her pale flesh held even more wonders hidden from prying eyes. Marvels that I had yet to be privy to.

The starter made a grinding noise and the car finally started with a belch of exhaust. The thing was a piece of shit but none of the others had a ride. We bounced off the dirt track that led to the Carl Milton campground and back onto the main road to Baylor Brothers Funeral Home, where I worked part-time.

The moon was coming up as we passed the cemetery, and Meg's skin looked silver and luminous. I tried to think of something clever to say, something that might eventu­ally lead me into her cool embrace.

She beat me to it.

"There're a lot of fresh graves out there."

I looked, and saw several holes in the earth. But not the fresh excavations of men with equipment and a prac­ticed hand. More the frenzied eruptions of someone mak­ing their way . .. out.

I stopped, which turned out to be a major mistake, and demanded to look at Mal's book. Nervous, he opened it to the resurrection spell and handed it to me. The dome light on my car had burned out long ago, so I used a lighter. The spell read as he had recited it, up until the end.

... and arise---------!*

Dropping down to the bottom of the page, I read: *Recite here ye name of the deceased, lest thee raise every corpse within the sound of thy voice. "You didn't follow the asterisk?" I asked. By this time, Meg was screaming at the shapes looming outside, just as Dean was trying to subdue the surprisingly strong cross­ing guard.

"What's an asterisk?" Mal asked, his brow crinkling in a road map of confusion.

As the car began to rock under the assault of the hun­gry undead, I regretted many things.

I regretted I would never taste Meg's tongue stud as it clicked across my teeth.

I regretted I would never take that surfing trip to Aus­tralia.

I regretted being so close to a large cemetery like For­est Lawn.

But most of all, I regretted we had attended such shitty public schools.