Gil's All Fright Diner Part 9

Duke had encountered the likes of Marshall Kopp before: the quiet, thoughtful sort of man who knew more than he'd ever come right out and say. Duke decided to stop s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around.

"I'm a werewolf."

Kopp went to the cooler and grabbed a soda. "Figured it was sumthin' like that."

"How'd you know?"

"Oh, I've had plenty of experience with this sort of thing. 'Bout seven years back, had an outbreak of vampire turkeys. And four years before that, Charlie Vaughn's daughter got herself possessed. And the Stillmans's scarecrow took to wandering around at night and scaring the bejeezus outta the kids. Point is, Rockwood has itself an unusual history, and being sheriff means dealing with those problems." Kopp c.o.c.ked his head to glance at Duke with a carefully calculated half-stare meant to appear casual, but was anything but. "You ain't going to be a problem, are you, Mr. Smith?"

"No, sir."

"Glad to hear it. And you can call me 'Marshall.' Everybody does."

Loretta's wide, jiggling frame emerged from the back. They exchanged polite nods.

"What can I do for you, Marshall?"

"Sorry to have to do this to you, Loretta, but I gotta ask you to close this place up."

"What for?"

"C'mon now," the sheriff sighed. "Y'know it's my job to look after the people of this county. I was willing to overlook the zombies as long as they kept to bothering you, but now with Walt's cows getting infected . . ."

"That ain't my fault."

"Yeah. But this whole walking corpse trouble started with this diner, and I have'ta figure it's connected some way."

"That's not fair, Marshall, and you know it."

"Fair or not, I can't have the dead shambling around and pestering my citizens."

"But I took care of the zombies." Loretta reached under the counter and placed the dusty mojo bag before the sheriff. "This here is what was making 'em."

Kopp flipped through the purse. "Ah h.e.l.l. Not another cult."

" 'Fraid so," Duke confirmed.

"Another cult?" Loretta asked.

"Yeah. Seems like one pops up every couple of years. It's gotta be the heat."

"You need a movie theater," Duke observed.

"I've been trying to get a public swimmin' pool."

"That'd help."

Wanda finished with the doors, and Loretta paid her bill in cash.

"You want me to order up another set?" Wanda asked.

"Thanks, but I won't be needing 'em."

The handywoman puffed on her cigarette stub. "Think I'll order 'em anyway. Just in case."

She packed up her tools. Loretta returned to the original topic of conversation. "Anyway, according to the boys, now that this is dug up, everything will finally quiet down."

"Guess I can give you another chance," Sheriff Kopp said, "but this is it. If anything funny happens, I'm gonna have to shut you down. Nuthin' personal, Loretta."

"I know, Marshall. Just doin' your job." She held up a large rectangle of cardboard with big black letters across it.

NOW 100% ZOMBIE FREE. ASK ABOUT THE BOTTOMLESS CUP OF COFFEE: ONLY 25.

"What do you think?" "Nice," Kopp replied.

"It'll do until I sc.r.a.pe up enough to rent the billboard by the interstate."

The sheriff tucked the bag under his arm. "I'll take this for evidence if that's alright with you." He tipped his hat. "I gotta be going. Somebody stole some bodies from McAllister Fields. Probably related to all this. Least, I hope it's related. Hate to think we got both grave robbers and a cult running around."

He dropped seventy-five cents for the soda.

"I haven't met your friend yet, Mr. Smith."

"He sleeps during the day."

The sheriff smiled crookedly. "Then I'll just have to drop by tonight. See you around, Loretta, Mr. Smith."

Kopp moseyed out of the diner with a generous swagger.

The nearest restaurant-supply store was a good four-hour drive there and back. Loretta persuaded Duke to come along and keep her company. He agreed reluctantly, worried about the awkward quiet that might fill the cab. His concerns were quickly put aside. Whether she bought his werewolf excuse or not, Loretta seemed to be handling the rejection well.

The truck skimmed down the interstate. Brief moments of conversation were broken by long moments of silence. Not the c.u.mbersome, unpleasant sort of silence, but the absolute calm of two people who didn't feel the need to fill every second with noise. Occasionally, Loretta would throw out some polite comment about the weather, and Duke would nod or shake his head as the situation required.

After exhausting every possible variation of "Hot 'nuff for ya?" Loretta couldn't resist indulging her curiosity.

"Mind if I ask you a personal question? It's about your condition."

"Nope."

"How'd you get it?"

He tugged the brim of his baseball cap lower over his eyes. "I killed a werewolf. That's how you become one. 'He who slays the beast inherits its heart.' Least, that's the prettiest way I've heard it put."

"You killed a werewolf?"

"I ran him over with an eighteen-wheeler. It was dark, and I wasn't paying enough attention to the road, and he just darted out in front of me and those rigs don't stop on a dime. Ended up mas.h.i.+ng the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d's head flat as a wafer. Ain't exactly decapitation, but I guess it was close enough. Anyway, I climbed outta the truck. By then, he'd gone back to being a naked human."

"What did you do?"

"I got back in my truck and got the h.e.l.l out of there."

"You didn't wait for help?"

"Aren't any doctors that I know of able to fix a mashed skull, and I'd just gotten my CDL. Didn't want to screw up my life 'cuz I flattened a naked guy running through the woods in the middle of the night."

Loretta frowned. "Doesn't seem right."

"It wasn't right, but it was what I did. Still don't know his name or even what he looked like, but he was a werewolf alright."

"So you just knew that you'd become one?"

"Not 'til the next full moon. Now that stuff about the moon affecting werewolves is only half true. I get stronger with the full moon, but I don't have to change if I don't want. But I was just a kid, and I didn't even know I'd become what I was. I get in this bar fight over a turn at the pool table. This biker breaks a cue over my head, and I lose control. I change right there in front of everyone. Scared the living s.h.i.+t outta everybody, including me." He chuckled. "Good thing, too. I was so freaked out that I ran off instead of killing everyone in the place.

"Spent a couple of months on the move after that, changin' every full moon, thinking I couldn't get close to anyone 'cuz I might end up ripping out their hearts. Werewolves can't hold that stuff in. It just kept building and building until I finally found this guy alone in the woods and tore into him."

Quietly disapproving, she shook her head.

"So I've ripped him to shreds, and I'm hunched over his gutted corpse, gnawing on his intestines. Which tasted like s.h.i.+t. So I snap off a hunk of innards and choke it down 'cuz I figure that's what I'm s'posed to do. And I get this picture of how my life is gonna be. Eating rotten intestines, stalking through the woods, barfing up rotten intestines, throwing myself under an eighteen-wheeler on a lonely stretch of interstate."

"You seem alright now," Loretta observed.

"I was just gettin' to that. I stop chewing on the guy long enough to gag, and when I turn back, he's busy shoving his guts back in. He gives me the hairy eyeball, and asks me to help him find his pancreas."

Duke smiled widely or as wide as he ever did, which was wide enough for someone to notice without making a big deal of it.

"It was Earl."

"That when you first met?"

"Yeah. He helped me unlearn every wrong thing horror movies had ever taught me. Probably saved my life."

Quiet fell upon the pickup and lasted for a little over nineteen minutes.

"Is that why you hang around with him?" Loretta asked. " 'Cuz he saved your life?"

"Sort'a. I know Earl isn't always easy to get along with. Fact is, he can be a real pain in the a.s.s more often than not, but after you spend enough time with him, and you learn to ignore his personality, he's a pretty decent guy."

"If you say so."

"Plus it ain't easy being a monster in this world. Helps to have someone around who understands, somebody who can give you a hand when things get complicated."

"That happen a lot?"

"More often than it should. When you cross over into the weird stuff, there's no going back. Hector has a theory on it. Calls it the law of 'Anomalous Phenomena Attraction.' He explained it to me once. Didn't really pay close attention, but it boils down to 'weird s.h.i.+t pulls in more weird s.h.i.+t.' Figure it's gotta be true. Ever since I killed that guy, I keep runnin' across cults and monsters and fallen G.o.ds."

"So this sort'a thing happens a lot."

He snorted deeply and spat a wad of phlegm out the window.

"All the d.a.m.n time."

And another long silence descended on the pickup.

Tammy whiled away every study hall engaged in the complex and often seemingly impenetrable science of the arcane. Even for one of her considerable occult talent, it was a difficult task. It was a ch.o.r.e she did not particularly care for, but the rewards it would eventually bring kept her at it. The key to unlocking the old G.o.ds required that just the right ritual be performed at just the right time in just the right place by just the right person. It wasn't easy deciphering important heavenly movements when the best reference book available was her mother's three-volume astrology collection. And the records of ancient Atlantis were absurd in their verbosity. And Mrs. Richards didn't make things any easier.

The wrinkled, old teacher cleared her throat.

"May I ask what your doing?"

Tammy closed her notebook. "Nuthin'."

"May I see that please?"

Sighing, Tammy handed over her sacred notebook. Mrs.

Richards glanced through the pages. She had no idea of the importance of what she looked at. To such an unenlightened fool, the secrets of the universe were little more than the scrawlings of a stupid, teenage girl. It helped that Tammy made it a practice to dot all her "i"s and "j"s with little hearts and smiley faces. The hearts were those ripped from the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of all foolish enough to stand in her way. The smiley faces just made the notes prettier.

"What did I tell you about this?"

"I'm sorry, ma'am."

"I told you I'd take this away if I saw it again."

"I'm sorry. I'll put it away."

"This is the last time." The old hag looked down her nose at Tammy. "This is study hall. I want to see some studying. Am I making myself clear, young lady?"

Tammy struggled not to scowl and managed a not-quite-hidden frown. "Yes, Mrs. Richards."

"Very good."

Mrs. Richards returned to her desk in the front of the room.

"Uck-fay oo-yay, oo-yay old-ay at-bay," Tammy grumbled.

The slate blackboard shuddered, and a single long crack split down its middle.

The cla.s.s filled with murmuring students. Mrs. Richards shushed everyone with a hard glare and explained away the incident as the foundation settling.

Chad, who sat three rows away from Tammy, pa.s.sed a note through a chain of students.

"Are we doing anything tonight?" it inquired.

She sent back her reply. "Yes. And bring your mom's good silverware."

He read it and grimaced.

Tammy reached under her desk and pulled out her English book. She pretended to read it while she mused on the approaching fate of the world in general, and Mrs. Richards in particular.