The Zombies Of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor Page B

cherries in heavy syrup spilling and rolling every which way. Dolph stayed just out of Clem’s reach, backing up carefully toward the rear of the store, knowing that if he lost his balance and tumbled Clem would fall upon him and snap those teeth—and what horrible teeth, the boy never did get the hang of brushing regularly, let alone flossing—and take a big old bite out of whatever part of Dolph’s anatomy presented itself.  
    Dolph got the freezer door open a moment before Clem lurched into the storeroom, and then Dolph did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life: he just stood there in front of the open freezer until Clem was almost within grasping distance.
    He sprang off to the left, nipped quickly around behind Clem, put both hands on the zombie’s back, and shoved him into the freezer as hard as he could. Clem stumbled but didn’t fall, and Dolph slammed the freezer door just as the zombie was trying to emerge. The door had a latch on the inside—about fifteen years ago one employee, smarter than Clem but only by a whisker, had gotten herself locked inside for hours, so Dolph had a handle put inside—and maybe Clem was too dumb to use it now, but to be safe Dolph dragged a bunch of heavy boxes of pop and soup and such over in front of the door, making a nice solid wall.  
    He sagged against the door, panting hard, and then remembered the limbless zombie in the truck, the one he was originally supposed to put in the freezer, and he said a profanity so obscene it might have even made Eileen blush, if she’d heard it.  

10. Women’s Circle
of Hell

    E ileen backed up her little car, got out, and looked at the motionless corpse of her husband. She hadn’t run him over so much as run into him, hitting him with the front bumper and sending him flying back to crash against the front of his still-running Mustang. He was definitely dead, though, no motion at all in his chest, and—
    The fumes pouring out of the garage were too much for her, so she ran into the house and locked all the doors. So much for making his death look like a suicide. She paced up and down in the living room, gnawing on her thumbnail, trying to decide what to do. It was getting on past lunchtime, but at least it was cold, so not too many people were out and about, but eventually somebody would see Brent’s body, and then she’d be in the soup. She couldn’t bury him, the ground was frozen solid down for inches, it’d take a backhoe to break the crust, but she could at least get him out of the driveway, maybe put him in the trunk, though it’d have to be the Mustang’s trunk since she could hardly have a body sitting out in the back of Brent’s pickup truck and her car barely had room in back for a couple bags of groceries, and later after night fell she could drive around to the lake, cut a hole in the ice—Brent had ice fishing gear though he hadn’t gone out in recent years, and how hard could it be to use if idiots like her husband managed it?—and slide his body down into the wet darkness where it would go unnoticed until the spring thaw. That would work. It was a plan. She’d have to come up with a believable story about where he’d gone, or maybe she could just claim bewilderment, let people think he’d gotten bored and run out on her—
    Her phone rang, startling her near about out of her skin. She considered letting it ring, but what if it was somebody calling about Brent’s body, she’d have to pretend to know nothing about it, to be surprised to hear he was all crumpled up half out of the garage, and oh Lord what if there was blood on the front of her car…
    “Munson residence, this is Eileen.”
    “Eileen! This is Pastor Inkfist. How are things with you today?”
    “Oh, hello Pastor. I’m afraid this isn’t the best time—”
    “It’s a bad time for all of us, Eileen, but I need some of your famous organizational prowess now. Can you get on the phone to all the other members of the Women’s