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of their money was gone from their
billfolds and purses. They took to calling it the
Larcenado.
    Tom took it up from there, and brought the
discussion home. He described his recent history, the dreams that
revealed some relevant information on the situation, and the
oddities that he had experienced such as the stretched roads, the
extinct grazing animals, the universality of the monsters behind
recent events, and what he knew of the mission that seemed to be
assigning itself to the group.
    Tom also addressed his doubts about if he
wanted that responsibility or not. In a moment of rare un-monetized
honesty, he confessed that he was not sure which side of the coming
conflict he belonged on. Figuring that this was a good time to fake
a little intimacy, he confessed that he was not sure if he was
always a good man. Tom could tell that the girl was eating that
shit up. He figured that trick might come in useful later. The men
were not impressed with his honesty, but he figured fuck’ em, who
cares?
    In a final part of the conversation that
wasn’t bullshit, Tom related his belief that the connection with
other worlds, where he thought that the monsters and events that
they were all witnessing came from, felt like it was growing
stronger. Almost every time Tom fell asleep now, he would have a
dream, or a vision, or just a knowing during the night.
    Finally, the night wore down to the hours of
sleep. Everyone stumbled to their newly assigned beds, after
agreeing that all would be loaded up on and traveling together in
the RV, with the start-time tentatively scheduled to be slightly
after the crack of noon tomorrow.
     
     
    ******
     
     

7 The tortured Undead

    The RV pulled into the previously unknown town
of Mildew, which had apparently now become a central Texas
replacement for one of the Dallas Suburbs that no longer existed.
Mildew proudly advertised a population of 8,738, and from what they
had seen so far, a fast calculation suggested that it must have
nearly one church for every ten residents.
    After Tom drove the RV down the road into the
town, and it appeared that they were about to emerge on the
opposite side of the town, Charla suggested that they might want to
stop at a park that the vehicle was passing, and get out to stretch
their legs. Tom agreed, and a moment later, the party was offloaded
from the RV, and felt grass under their feet for the first time in
a while.
    Bailey ran out into the field, and found a
stick to throw up into the air with a flip of his neck. Tom was
quite sure that he was missing his once cherished finger, which he
used to flip into the air in exactly the same way. As women so
often do, the advent of Charla on the field of doggy romance had
put an end to Bailey’s wonderfully fun game of ‘throw the finger
and catch it’. Both items would have exuded an exciting musky odor,
although to be fair, the Charla parts were not ripe due to
putrefaction like the finger was. Maybe Bailey chose the right
scent after all.
    It was about 4PM when they started
lollygagging about the park, and by the time the dog was beginning
to get tired of frisking about in the grass, and the human
contingent was over the first buzz, and started into that
secondary, less fun, buzz that comes with drinking iced beer at the
proper pace, it was somewhere between 5:30 and 6 PM.
    It was Charla who asked the question. “Hey
guys, check out that odd looking graveyard over there. Want to go
look at it?” She pointed over to the east side of the park, which
was bordered entirely by a huge graveyard, with those giant statues
and mausoleums that are usually a legacy of the South. Being by
that time suitably juiced, the group readily agreed to an
expedition to that sophomoric destination. Only Bailey probably had
a suitable reason for going, needing to secretly replenish his
finger supply.
    The group good-naturedly got to their feet,
and trudged across the open field of the park, and to the ironwork
fence surrounding the