by Tonia Brown
“Will it?” Jonah asked, stalling for time. “Does zombie flesh digest easily? We should wait and find out.”
“Fuck that.” Dale dropped to a squat, patting the ground as he called out to the animal. “Here, you little shit. Come on now. Come to Dale. Come here so I can rip your stomach out through your asshole.”
The dog, wiser than the dead man, took a few wary steps backward.
“Shit,” Dale hissed. “Smart little fuck, ain’t ya?” He stood and nodded at Jonah. “You try.”
Jonah bent double and did his worst to make the dog come to him. He waggled his hand in the air, just over the ground, as he called out, “Come here, little doggy. Here, boy.”
To his surprise—and his dismay—the dog wiggled its stump of a tail and came a-running.
“No!” Jonah cried.
The dog tried to jump back at the warning, but not before the zombie was able to snatch it up by the scruff of its neck.
“Gotcha!” Dale shouted.
After yelping in surprise, the animal turned to nip at the dead man. But Dale, more cautious this time, kept the animal at arm’s length, where it wriggled and writhed, but couldn’t land a single bite. Soon it stopped struggling, and the night air was filled with a soft puppy whimper.
“I’m gonna pull you apart,” Dale snarled at the mutt. “Piece by furry, fucking piece.”
The dog whimpered again, and Jonah had had enough.
“Stop it,” Jonah demanded. “You’re scaring him.”
“I’m gonna do more than that to it.” Dale shook the animal to the tune of a warbled whine from the dog.
“Cut that out.”
“What? It has my finger.”
“Give him to me.” Jonah held out his hands and waited.
“No. You’ll just let it go again, because you’re a pussy. I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“I won’t let him go. I promise. Just let me look at him first. Before you… you know.”
After a few seconds of deliberation, Dale shoved the dog in Jonah’s direction. “Go ahead, but if you let him get away, I swear I’ll tear you apart, too.”
Again, Jonah was fairly sure the zombie would remain true to his words, if given the chance. The dog all but leapt into Jonah’s arms and buried its little head in his shoulder. There, the trembling animal continued to whimper and whine. Jonah couldn’t fault it. He had wanted to both whimper and whine for two days now.
“It’s okay,” Jonah cooed as he stroked the animal’s back. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”
Dale snorted, but said nothing.
“Good boy,” Jonah said. “You don’t bark or anything, do you? You’re just a good little doggy. Aren’t you?” Jonah held the dog to him, petting and stroking until the thing, at last, fell still. Once he’d calmed the poor creature, Jonah shifted the dog’s weight onto one arm, holding the animal out so he could take a better look at it.
One error became immediately apparent.
Jonah chuckled. “Well, it seems we were both wrong.”
“What?” Dale asked.
“She’s not a he.”
“Who gives a fuck? Did it swallow my thumb or not?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
Jonah ran his hands along the animal’s belly, which felt swollen enough to have indeed swallowed a dead man’s thumb. But, he supposed, it could’ve also been a case of her eating something equally dead. Or deader. Or perhaps the dog just had plain old worms, or even puppies on board. Jonah was about to announce this, when he noticed the beast’s paws were covered in muck. He looked down at his now-dirt-covered shirt, then back to the dog, an idea catching his mind. Spreading a paw out in the streetlight, Jonah frowned at the clumps of grass and damp soil caught between the dog’s claws.
“What are you doing?” Dale asked. “Planning a manicure for it?”
“Her feet are covered in dirt.”
“It’s a dog, Jonah. It runs around in the dirt for a fucking living. Of course her feet are covered in the stuff.”
“No, I mean it’s really caked on. Like she’s been, I don’t know, digging up something.” Jonah gave Dale a worried look before he added, “Or burying something.”
Dale’s mouth dropped open as a look of complete surprise took him. “She buried my thumb?”
“Maybe.”
“Where?”
“You’re the one who said it was here.”
“Yeah,” Dale agreed, looking around. “But where is it here?”
Jonah scanned the area, but didn’t see any likely candidates for hiding spots. “I don’t know. Maybe she has a secret place she takes stuff.”
“No. It has to be near here. I feel it!”
Jonah hissed Dale back into silence. “Keep your voice down. We’ll find it. Show me exactly where she was tied up again.”
Dale led Jonah—and their new furry friend—back to the scene of the crime. The shed rested to the left of a well-kept back yard, butted against a tall slatted fence that edged the adjoining neighbors’ yard. The hole in question was just under a corner of the structure.
Dale pointed a little to the left of the hole and said, “I found her standing right there.”
Something about the scene struck Jonah as odd. How he had missed it before, he wasn’t sure. The chain, which once had bound the dog to the shed, wasn’t itself actually connected to said shed. Instead, the chain snaked off into the darkness of the hole underneath. A hole that probably led into the neighbors’ yard. A hole just big enough for the dog to crawl through.
A sudden understanding crept over Jonah, and from the look on Dale’s face, he knew the zombie had just drawn the same conclusion. Without a word between the pair, they stepped to the adjoining fence, leaned up on tiptoes and peered over. There they stared across a modest, moonlit back yard, riddled with numerous small mounds of dirt.
And under each little mound surely lay a little doggy hidey-hole.
“Geesh,” Jonah said.
“Aw, man,” Dale moaned. “You think she buried it in there?”
“It makes sense.” Jonah looked down at the dog in his arms and asked, “I bet you also dug the hole between the two, didn’t you?”
As if answering, the dog leapt free from Jonah’s arms, darted through the hole under the shed and appeared on the opposite side—her tail wagging and her eyes alight with something like pride in the silvery glow of the moon.
Dale wasted no time going after the dog. In one great heave, he clambered over the fence, landing with a rough thump on the other side. Jonah, however, was fairly sure he couldn’t haul himself over the high fence, nor did he want to. Instead he scanned the length of the thing for a gate.
“Come on,” Dale whispered, from beyond the wooden slats. “She’s starting to dig everything up. We need to find my thumb before that little shit does.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” Jonah said, spying the gate just a few steps away.
“Hurry up.”
Jonah tugged on the rusty handle, and as the gate swung toward him, it vocalized its objection to doing so. That was when he learned a lesson that he supposed would last him a lifetime: while fences made good neighbors, gates made noise. He tried to hold the thing still, to cease its groaning protests, but it was too late. A high-pitched squeak ripped the quiet of the night apart.
The dog was the first to react. Where it was all silence and soft whimpers moments before, the thing now barked and howled up a storm. No sooner did the dog yelp its first note than several windows behind Jonah lit up. Taking this as a precursor to further awakenings, he dove for the side of the shed just before the porch light flickered into life. There followed a chain of events that seemed so well practiced, so well planned, that Jonah had no doubt it wasn’t the first time such a thing had occurred.
The back door nearest Jonah opened wide with a loud slam. A scruffy, middle-aged man, red-rimmed about the eyes and still in his pajamas, loomed in the doorway.
He didn’t look happy.
“Margery!” the man croaked. “Shut that mutt up! Or, so help that damned dog, I’ll shut her up for you!”
Through the thin gaps between the wooden slats, Jonah saw the house beyond the fence also come to life. He also saw that Dale, thankfully, had the sense to press himself into the shadows of the yard’s only tree to avoid being seen. The back door of the fenced-in house eased open as an older woman tottered onto the now-illuminated porch.
There, she called out, “Trixie? That you?”
The dog yipped in response.
“I thought you ran away,” the old woman said. The relief in her voice was palpable, which brought a smile to Jonah. “Come here, girl. Stop that yapping and come on inside.”
Obediently, the dog fell quiet and did what was asked of her. Jonah was a bit sad to see the animal disappear into the house. He was getting to like that little doggy. In the few minutes he had known Trixie, she’d proven much better company than a dead best friend.
The issue resolved, both parties returned to their restful states and darkened houses, leaving Jonah and his dead best friend alone in the moonlight once more.
Jonah waited a full minute before he whispered, “Dale? You still there?”
“Where the hell else would I be?” Dale furiously whispered in return. “Now get your ass over here and help me.”
“I don’t think I can climb over the fence. You’ll have to search on your own.”
“It’s too much work.”
“You’re just lazy.”
“Get. Your. Ass. Here. Now.”
Jonah couldn’t argue with that tone.
After much struggle and effort, it turned out that, yes, Jonah could haul himself over the fence. Getting to his feet and looking out across the moonlit yard, he groaned as he perceived the magnitude of the problem. There weren’t just a few mounds. There were at least a good hundred. Maybe more.
“You take that side and I’ll take this,” Dale whispered as he motioned to the work spread out before them.
Jonah eyed the yard for a moment, then suggested, “I don’t think we have to search them all. The dirt on her paws was a little damp.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning she must have been digging in moist soil. Since it should be a freshly dug hole, I’ll bet the dirt will be damp on the most recent holes as well.”
Dale took a step back to admire Jonah. “Wow. That actually makes sense.”
“Thanks.” Jonah almost blushed at the compliment.
“I mean it,” Dale managed to say before he started to snicker. “This is better than an episode of CSI.”
Jonah’s urge to blush fled at the zombie’s laughter. “I’m just saying we should stick to the moist holes.”
Dale’s snickering grew into a chuckle.
“Oh, grow up,” Jonah snapped.
“I’m being serious,” Dale lied between sniggers. “I swear. It’s really a good idea. Yeah. I like it. Stick to the moist holes. Something I’m a natural at, by the way.”
“Do you have to make everything sound so dirty?”
“Yup. So, which dirty little wet hole should we DP first?”
Even by the silver light of the half moon, Jonah could see the zombie waggle his eyebrows. But before Jonah could think of a witty response, there came a faint click from all around them, as if from the yard itself. This was followed by a chug, a wheeze and then finally a sputter. The whole thing sounded like an old-timer trying to shift an annoying bit of phlegm from his rotten lungs. Jonah, however, recognized the noise for what it was.
“No,” he whispered.
The soft chuff chuff chuff of an automated sprinkler system ignored his plea, soaking everything within its watery reach. Every pant leg. Every blade of grass. Every mound of dirt. Jonah furrowed his brow at the damp dirt, which was quickly turning into very wet mud.
“So much for easy,” Dale whispered. “Back to plan A?”
“Can’t you just sniff it out?” Jonah asked.
“Very funny.”
“You’re the one who said he could smell his own thumb.”
“Yes, but now everything smells like wet dog.”
“Great.”
“Just shut up and start digging.”
Much like a certain little doggy, Jonah obediently did as asked.
Chapter Eighteen
Green River, Utah
129 hours: 32 minutes: 22 seconds remaining
Jonah supposed that, in the grand scheme of things, there were a slew of great questions resting in the collective consciousness of the human race. Cosmic questions, Jonah imagined, ranging from everyday worries to extraordinary mysteries. Questions that, for example, one might ask a supreme being, if ever presented the opportunity to do so.
What is the meaning of life?
Is professional wrestling real?
What happens after we die?
How long does it take to dig up a dead man’s finger?
Jonah now knew the answer to that last one. Almost two hours was how long it took to dig up a dead man’s digit. And the only reason he knew was because he had spent two hours doing just such a deed. It would have been a much simpler task if he had been left alone to do it. Nothing but digging up a muddy mound, checking the soiled contents, then moving onto the next filthy one. But no, Jonah knew nothing could be that simple. After the sprinklers turned what should have been a brief task into a nightmare, there followed a cavalcade of distractions.
Take Trixie, for example.
It turned out that she didn’t need her owner to let her in at all, because the little doggy had a little doggy door, which she darted in and out of. All. Night. Long. For the most part, she just ran around the two as they dug in the mud. From time to time, she would dig with them, as if helping to search for Dale’s missing thumb. But on occasion, she would yip. Or yelp. Or even bark.
And on these occasions, the chain reaction of neighbor-to-neighbor communiqué would play out again in almost perfect repetition. The angry backyard opponent would shuffle out to his porch, scream a few practiced threats at the old woman, after which she would gather her dog and retreat into her darkened home.
Which would have been fine a single time.
Or twice.
But five times?
Yes. Over the course of two hours, the dog woke the feuding houses five times. And five times, the neighbors followed their routine. Jonah was sure, on the third occurrence, that at least one of them would grow suspicious as to why the dog was barking to begin with. But his fears were assuaged when he heard the man mumble, “Night after night after night, for ten damned years. Gonna shoot that damned dog one of these days,” before disappearing into his house again.
The dog was one thing, but the sprinkler system was another.
Jonah realized too late that the real reason the soil on the dog’s feet was damp wasn’t that it had overturned fresh dirt. No. It was because the owner, whether by mistake or out of pure foolishness, had set the automatic sprinkler system to go off every twenty minutes. Every twenty minutes, the guys were subjected to a healthy dose of water, making the already wet dirt even sloppier and murkier.
The contents of the holes didn’t help matters much, either.
Broken lawn ornaments. Gnawed soup bones. Various ruined doggie chew toys. Shredded magazines. In general, they found pile after pile of long-forgotten junk. Jonah just wanted the zombie’s thumb so he could go to bed; he didn’t care what else they uncovered.
But Dale did.
Once they emptied their first hole, he became infatuated with what the others held. A small mountain of trashy treasures gathered beside him as he moved from hole to hole.
“It’s like a treasure hunt,” Dale whispered. “I wonder what we’ll find next. Isn’t this exciting?”
“Stop enjoying it so much and dig,” Jonah whispered between yawns.
“Come on, buddy. This is fun.”
“Fun? I think death has warped your idea of what fun is.”
&nbs
p; “Naw. Digging in the dirt has always been fun. Remember that time when we were eleven? When we buried Clare’s silver set? The one imported from Italy?”
Surprised, Jonah paused mid-dig and looked up at the zombie. “You remember that?”
The zombie frowned down at Jonah. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“I just thought… well… you can’t remember your dad. I don’t know what you can remember anymore.”
Dale’s frown slid into a wide grin as he whispered, “I remember burying all of Clare’s forks and spoons and knifes.”
“Knives,” Jonah corrected the dead man, and returned to digging. “I remember you seeming to think they would somehow be better off buried in the back yard. I never understood why.”
“I don’t really know now,” Dale said, as he rejoined the excavation. “Must have made sense at the time, or we wouldn’t have done it.”
“Nothing you came up with made any sense.”
“Got me there.” Dale chuckled. “But I remember how much fun we had.”
“I remember how pissed off Clare got. And I remember what she said.”
