The zombie stared at me, perfectly arrogant. He must have been a real pain in the ass when he was alive, but even assholes are piteous once in a while.
"I don't know what you are babbling about," the zombie said. "You obviously are suffering from some delusion."
"Can you explain why you are here in a cemetery?" I asked.
"I don't have to explain anything to you."
"Do you remember how you got to the cemetery?"
"We... we drove, of course." The first hint of unease wavered through his voice.
"You're guessing, Mr. Doughal. You don't really remember driving to the cemetery, do you?"
"I... I..." He looked at his wife, his grown children, but they were walking to their cars. No one even looked back. He was dead, no getting around that, but most families didn't just walk away. They might be horrified, or saddened, or even sickened, but they were never neutral. The Doughals had gotten the will signed, and they were leaving. They had their inheritance. Let good ol' dad crawl back into his grave.
He called, "Emily?"
She hesitated, stiffening, but one of her sons grabbed her arm and hurried her toward the cars. Was he embarrassed, or scared?
"I want to go home," he yelled after them. The arrogance had leaked away, and all that was left was that sickening fear, the desperate need not to believe. He felt so alive. How could he possibly be dead?
His wife half-turned. "Andrew, I'm sorry." Her grown children hustled her into the nearest car. You would have thought they were the getaway drivers for a bank robbery, they peeled out so fast.
The lawyers and secretaries left as fast as was decent. Everybody had what they'd come for. They were done with the corpse. The trouble was that the "corpse" was staring after them like a child who was left in the dark.
Why couldn't he have stayed an arrogant SOB?
"Why are they leaving me?" he asked.
"You died, Mr. Doughal, nearly a week ago."
"No, it's not true."
Larry moved up beside me. "You really are dead, Mr. Doughal. I raised you from the dead myself."
He stared from one to the other of us. He was beginning to run out of excuses. "I don't feel dead."
"Trust us, Mr. Doughal, you are dead," I said.
"Will it hurt?"
A lot of zombies asked that; will it hurt to go back into the grave? "No, Mr. Doughal, it doesn't hurt. I promise."
He took a deep, shaking breath and nodded. "I'm dead, really dead?"
"Yes."
"Then put me back, please." He had rallied and found his dignity. It was nightmarish when the zombie refused to believe. You could still lay them to rest, but the clients had to hold them down on the grave while they screamed. I'd only had that happen twice, but I remembered each time as if it had happened last night. Some things don't dim with time.
I threw salt against his chest. It sounded like sleet hitting a roof. "With salt I bind you to your grave."
I had the still-bloody knife in my hand. I wiped the gelling blood across his lips. He didn't jerk away. He believed. "With blood and steel I bind you to your grave, Andrew Doughal. Be at peace, and walk no more."
The zombie laid full length on the mound of flowers. The flowers seemed to flow over him like quicksand, and just like that he was swallowed back into the grave.
We stood there a minute in the empty graveyard. The only sounds were the wind sighing high up in the trees and the melancholy song of the year's last crickets. In Charlotte's Web, the crickets sang, "Summer is over and gone. Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying." The first hard frost, and the crickets would be dying. They were like Chicken Little, who told everyone the sky was falling; except in this case, the crickets were right.
The crickets stopped suddenly like someone had turned a switch. I held my breath, straining to hear. There was nothing but the wind, and yet... My shoulders were so tight they hurt. "Larry?"