Read Online The Zombies Of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor - Free Book Online Page B

uniforms, but the similarities ended there. Harry was in his early fifties, and his big beer gut preceded him wherever he went, and he had enormous muttonchop sideburns as if hoping to disguise the fact that he was going bald on top. Stevie Ray was one of Lake Woebegotten’s few black residents, in his late twenties, and he’d done a stint in the Marines and still kept up a good exercise regime, so he didn’t have a gut so much, and he had a shaved head, which always made Otto feel cold in sympathy, especially in winter like this. He was a part-time police officer, and also worked as a bartender (and, when the need arose, drunk-remover) at the Backtrack Bar.
    When Stevie Ray saw Dolph’s gun, he unholstered his pistol and pointed it at him.  
    “Don’t point that at me!” Dolph yelled, setting the rifle down by the couch, barrel pointed up and away. “Point it at old man Levitt! I told you on the phone, he’s a serial killer! He’s dangerous!”
    “He doesn’t look like much of a threat right now.” Stevie Ray’s eyes did a quick scan of the room, taking in the various dead bodies, the signs of struggle, the bloody chainsaw, and all the rest without any obvious reaction. “We got a mess in here,” he said at last. “Otto, get up, let me put handcuffs on Mr. Levitt, that’s a little better than you sitting on him.”
    Otto rose, and Stevie Ray slid right in, pressing a knee on Mr. Levitt’s back. “If this is a mistake, you have my apologies in advance,” Stevie Ray said. “But for the time being it seems like everybody’d feel better if you didn’t have your hands free.” He snapped the bracelets onto Mr. Levitt’s bony wrists.
    The elderly killer lifted his head from the carpet and said, “I never did a black one. None ever came wandering by, and there are so few of you in town I knew any of you’d be missed. Oh well. Hope springs eternal.”
    “I’ve got you on threatening a peace officer if nothing else,” Stevie Ray said, rising. “Why don’t you just stay there on the carpet?”
    “How can you be so calm?” Dolph said, outraged. “There are chainsaw murder victims in here! Undead monsters! Lake Woebegotten’s answer to a geriatric John Wayne Gacy—”
    “Gacy!” Levitt was outraged. “A clown, and worse, a buffoon! The only thing we have in common is where we bury the bodies, and—”
    “Everybody calm down.” Harry’s voice was slow and deliberate, and his oxlike expression and measured tones made people assume he was the stupid one and Stevie Ray was the smart one, but in fact they were both pretty smart. “Stevie Ray, you want to make sure the area’s secure? I’ll see what I can ascertain about the, ah…”
    “Zombies?” Rufus offered.
    Harry sighed like an inflatable couch sagging under the weight of one too many fat relatives at Christmas. “Yep. I guess that’s it. Who here knows the most about them?”  
    “Me,” Rufus said. “I’ve seen lots of them today. They were all over the cities this morning. I drove here to warn people, you know.”
    Harry nodded. He strolled over to the limbless zombie and said, “You ever play that zombie game Left 4 Dead?”
    Rufus, sounding surprised, said, “Sure, man, all the time, but mostly the sequel lately, it’s harder, but so much scarier.”
    Harry nodded. “Thing I never understood about that game is, it’s the zombie apocalypse, and everything’s gone to heck, and there’s those piles of guns and ammunition and painkillers and gas cans and stuff just sitting there all over the place for people to pick up.”
    “The game wouldn’t be much fun without guns and explosions though.”  
    “You got me there. Not much fun at all.”  
    “How can you be talking about games?” Otto said. He’d played Pong a few times when Rufus was a kid but couldn’t see the point. You might as well go out and just hit a real ball around, why not? And now there was some kind of zombie killing game? Well, so what? How was