Undead Freaks by Jesse Bastide Page B

and looking down at the
floor. She concentrated on slowing her breaths. She saw her
toenails. They were red.
    She got her act and her breathing together and
went downstairs. She opened her front door and the cops were still
there. The body was in front of her, the bloody mess spreading as
blood oozed from the mess of pulp and bone and brain matter that
used to be a head. The blood looked...darker maybe? She thought
something wasn't right about it.
    The officers looked at her. Officer Soul
looked a little embarrassed. "I'm sorry Kelly, we've got a little
problem running around town today. Sorry it had to end up at your
front door. And don't touch the body, please."
    A little problem? she
thought. This wasn't a little problem. This was a catastrophe.
People did not get shot by the cops in Calvert Falls. And by the
looks of the now very dead Marvin the hardware store guy on her
front step, things were getting out of line and out of
hand.
    "You can't possibly explain this," said Kelly.
"You just shot a man in cold blood at my front door. Sure – he was
banging on my door. It was weird, and I was about to call you guys,
but I don't see how it went from that to you guys putting bullets
into him. What the hell happened?"
    There was a moaning sound and they all three
turned their heads toward it. It was like the groans that old pines
make in the forest when the wind makes them twist in unnatural
ways. Even a dead tree can move and make that sound.
    "What the hell is that noise?" said Kelly. She
crossed her arms in front of her robe and glared at the officers.
Officer Soul had holstered his weapon but his hand was close to it,
and his partner, Officer Todd Wells (it was on his nametag), was
looking at her like he knew something. Something bad.
    Kelly said, "You two had best start explaining
right the hell now what the fuck is going on or I'm going to be
having Terry place a personal call to Chief Marshall about this
incident. People do NOT GET SHOT ON MY LAWN, DAMMIT!"
    She surprised herself with the outburst, but
the anger had a way of helping her cope with the dead body on her
front step. It focused her. She always felt the same anger when
Terry started slapping her around, and it always passed when he was
done. Still, sometimes when Terry was beating on her she'd get to
thinking about how much she wanted to hurt him back. Throw a punch
at his nose and rearrange his cartilage for a change.
    Anger was good. Anger was a ditch that
channeled all the badness and let you ignore everything else around
you. Anger was the ditch and the fast running muddy water inside
it, all piss and vinegar and shit.
    Now there was another moan from down the
street, and it was louder. Kelly's and Terry's place was in a
suburban development called Brookside, and the houses were placed
on big lots with lots of trees around them for privacy. It was
supposed to give a mix of country with the convenience and
refinement of country club. It was a place for douchebags who
didn't fancy douchebag gold carts racing around their back lawn.
Like that was supposed to make the place feel more 'organic.' The
act kind of worked, especially because the houses weren't cookie
cutter, but right now all the trees made it hard to see what was
making that weird moaning noise.
    Officer Soul stepped over Marvin's dead body
and walked right up to Kelly. He was on the front step, standing in
the one place that wasn't covered in dark blood. He and Kelly were
face to face.
    She looked down at his boots. There was mud
caked over shoe shine and black leather. She held her ground and
looked up at him. He smelled rank like sweat in polyester and he
had stubble that he should have taken care of in the morning but
hadn't had time to.
    "I have not given you permission to enter my
home," said Kelly.
    Officer Soul felt something in him snap. He
saw a rich woman who he'd thought looked pretty in her designer
clothes when he'd pulled her over and even more fuckable now,
wearing only a bathrobe.