The Zombies Of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor Page A

concrete. His eyes were glassy and his skin was pale, and though neither was a difference in kind from his usual appearance, there was definitely a difference of degree, and he was pale and glassy enough that Dolph said, “Are you all right, son?”
    Clem looked up at him and said, “Dun fill suh gud,” voice all mushy and sleepy.  
    Dolph put the back of his hand against Clem’s forehead, and it was hot as a woodstove. “Did you clean out that bite on your leg like I told you?”
    “Uhhhh… Uh fuhgoht.”
    “Let me see it.” Dolph came around the counter, and Clem obligingly lifted his pants leg and revealed several ugly red holes in his ankle and calf, most oozing blood mixed with something repulsively yellow-green. “That doesn’t look too good,” Dolph said, and then Clem’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell off the stool and hit his head on the edge of the counter and landed in a big ugly mess with his bony butt sticking up in the air.  
    “Clem!” Dolph rolled him over and slapped his face a couple of times and peeled back his eyelids, though he wasn’t sure why he did that part, it was just something you saw people do on TV when somebody threw a faint, and in any event it didn’t appear to help much. He could call 911 but they were probably swamped with calls, so he went to the phone book and looked up Doctor Holliday’s number. He’d probably get here faster, and besides he knew Clem, so if the boy woke up and started answering questions but didn’t know who the president was or how much four plus four amounted to, Doctor Holliday would know that was just Clem’s normal baseline level of intelligence, not evidence of head trauma.  
    Dolph dialed, and the line rang and rang and rang without answer, and he was about to hang up when Clem rose from behind the counter, and Dolph just dropped the phone instead, because Clem’s head was canted at a funny angle, and now that he was standing up it was obvious his neck was broken, must’ve landed wrong when he fell, and wasn’t that just the luck? Not bad enough to get infected from a zombie dog bite, he had to go and die, and right in the store, too, which would probably play heck with Dolph’s insurance.  
    Clem was still drooling, which he didn’t usually do except when sleeping or staring really hard at a packing list, and his eyes were still rolled up, but his mouth was opening and closing ceaselessly as he tried to come for Dolph.
    Fortunately death hadn’t made him any smarter, and Clem kept trying to walk right through the counter instead of just walking around it, which meant Dolph had a free minute to…
    What? Kill him? Re-kill him? But he was Clem! Dumb as a box of elbow macaroni, sure, but loyal, and sweet-natured, and good tempered, and Dolph had known him since he was just a little kid, and he couldn’t very well pick up a frozen turkey and smack Clem over the head with it, could he? Shooting those zombies at Mr. Levitt’s house had been one thing, they’d been strangers , but even if this wasn’t really Clem anymore, it sure looked like him. Dolph didn’t have his gun now, either, it was still in the truck, and that also made it more difficult, because looking at somebody over the barrel of a rifle had a way of creating some distance between you, the way bludgeoning somebody to death with the contents of a small-town grocery store did not.  
    So it would have to be containment, then. Dolph danced over toward the back of the store, waving his arms to keep zombie-Clem’s eyes on him, not that Clem appeared to be using his only-showing-whites eyes, and for that matter one of the zombies at Mr. Levitt’s house didn’t have any eyes at all, so how did they get around anyway? Maybe they could smell people, or sense them somehow. Clem eventually figured out how to walk out from behind the register and came lurching down the aisle, knocking into a nice endcap display of pie fillings and sending cans of pumpkin puree and