Chickasaw was just twenty miles to the east of the truck crash. It made sense. They had been making their way east for about a week.
Binkle found the first place to stay in Chickasaw, the only place, and parked the Camaro outside the Thurston Motel. He got out and got his duffel bag out of the back seat. He paused to look around. It was a quiet town. Already, the place smelled like death.
He rented a room and dumped his duffel bag on the bed and crossed the street to the Friends & Neighbors Party Store. He bought a local paper, the Chickasaw Herald, a six pack of beer, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bag of potato chips. Back in the motel room, he dumped all of it on the bed, turned on the television and sat down with a beer.
The tv had only two channels. Both showed porno movies, and the picture was fuzzy on either one. He stuffed a handful of chips into his mouth and tilted the beer to his lips.
The Chickasaw Herald was filled with touchy feely local interest stories. Binkle flipped through each section until he found something useful: The Police Blotter. He scanned the list.
Nothing terribly interesting. A story about a break-in at the video store. A pistol stolen from the back of somebody's truck. It was the story at the bottom of the column that caught his attention.
Two teenaged kids were killed when their car drove off the Cashun Bridge into the Altamoora River. Bodies yet to be recovered. Alcohol suspected.
Binkle folded the paper and threw it by his duffel bag. That was that. Those two kids had to be the company Harmony said this town was expecting. All he had to do was find them before they killed someone.
Chickasaw did not have a hospital. In the morning, Binkle drove to the Froggerton Funeral Home, the only one in town. The only person on the menu was an old woman named Hattie Place, looking puffy in her blue dress and blue casket.
Binkle slipped into the back room of the funeral home. Against the wall were three stainless steel examination tables, but there were no bodies on the tables.
"Hey, kid, what are you doing here?" someone said.
Binkle turned to a chubby man in a black suit.
"Uh, I think I made a wrong turn."
The chubby man frowned. "Be careful where you go around here, young man. This area is off limits to patrons."
"Yes, sir," Binkle said, and stepped out through the door.
The town's only graveyard was all the way back on the other side of town. He combed up and down the rows of graves. To the west, the sun was setting behind the trees. He took off his sunglasses and squinted to watch.
In the far corner of the cemetery, by an overgrown lilac bush, were two fresh graves. One was still open, with the name Hattie Place on the headstone, and a birth date from sometime around the turn of the century. The other was for a nine year old girl, and had a picture of her sealed behind glass on the headstone.
Binkle looked around. It was getting dark fast. What else was there? The kids weren't at the morgue, they weren't in the ground already. What did that leave?
At the top of the hill in the middle of the cemetery, he looked down the road to the west. In the shallow valley between two hills was a bridge that spanned across the river. He nodded. The river.
The Cashun Bridge led out of town to the next county. Binkle parked the Camaro at the near end of the bridge, where the police had set up yellow barrier tape. He looked around to make sure no one was watching, and scurried down the gravel slope.
Along the near bank of the river, a pair of deep grooves had been cut into the dirt, leading into the water. All around that area in the mud were footprints and tire tracks, where the police must have pulled the car out.
Binkle found an old log. The crickets had begun to chirp. The sun was gone behind the trees and the sky had turned purple. He sat down on the log and took out the sword.
* * * *
Delton pedaled hard. He was supposed to be home before dark, and he was late. His Momma was going to paddle his behind so bad he wouldn't be able to ride his bike for a week.
Just ahead in the street, a light was shining through the holes of a sewer grate. Delton stopped pedaling, letting the bike coast. The light got brighter.
The sewer grate popped off and landed in the street. Delton skidded his bike sideways and fell off, staring at the shafts of orange light coming from the hole. He heard a growling noise.
Something jumped out of the sewer and landed between it and Delton's bike. He gave a shout and scrambled away, then stopped.
It was a dog; old man Herger's poodle, in fact. Delton stood up. The dog yapped. How did it get in the sewer?
The dog sniffed the air, turning one way, then the next. It gave a snarl and trotted off down Rayford Road on its short legs.
Delton picked up his bike. The light in the sewer was gone. He shook his head and got back on the bike. Old man Herger shouldn't let his dog run around like that.
* * * *
Nothing happened. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound, except for the constant chirp of the crickets and the occasional splash of fish. But no zombies.
Binkle checked his watch. Almost two in the morning. Usually, if they didn't show by midnight, they weren't going to show. He gave them five more minutes, then decided to go back to the motel.
He climbed the gravel slope to the road and the Camaro and drove slowly back toward town. The moon followed him the whole way.
He had his left elbow resting on the open window and the cool night air blowing through his hair. They might show up the next night. Maybe they wouldn't show at all. Then again, he might have picked the wrong people. That old woman, what was her name? Hattie Place. She might have been the one. He decided to go back to the graveyard and see if she'd dug herself out of the ground.
He was passing a white fence and a driveway and heard a scream over the rumble of the engine. He stabbed the brakes and the Camaro skidded to a stop at the side of the road. He grabbed the sword and ran to the fence.
Well back from the road was a farmhouse. The porch light was on, but the scream came from the barn, to the right of the house. Binkle ran up the drive past an old pickup truck. A young woman had her back to the barn doors. Her shirt and jeans were torn, revealing her bra and panties. Laying in the dirt near her feet was a man. Something bumped against the doors from the inside and she screamed.
"Help me, please, help me," she said when she saw him.
She had long, dark hair and wide, frightened blue eyes, and a pair of big, beautiful boobs in her bra that moved in and out of view under the torn shirt.
"What's wrong?" Binkle said.
"S-Someone tried to bite my arm."
She held out her arm. The sleeve was torn. The doors bumped and she screamed again.
"My boyfriend and me, we heard this noise in the barn, like ... like someone moaning. We came out to check and someone attacked us," she said.
Binkle switched the sword from his left hand to his right hand. He pointed at the guy face down in the dirt.
"Who's the guy?" he said.
He nudged the guy's shoulder with his foot, but he didn't move. Behind the barn door came a low moan, and something bumped against it and the girl screamed.
"He's my boyfriend. That thing in the barn, it hit him over the head," she said in a hysterical shriek.
Binkle squatted next to the unconscious body and lifted his head.
"Do you always date guys with bald spots?" he said.
She folded her arms over her chest and looked pissed.
"Ok. Fine. He's my Dad's business partner. He likes to buy me things. And I like to let him fuck me," she said.
She set her jaw with a smug, defiant look. Binkle let the guy's head drop in the dirt with a thud and stood up.
"You're cute, kid. How old are you?"
The thing inside the barn bumped against the door again, but this time her defiant look did not waver.
"I'm ... sixteen," she said.
