Alex Lee Martinez - Gil's All Fright Diner

He hopped the fence and carefully snuck up on the cow. The beasts were easy pickings most of the time. Repressing a shudder, he remembered the time he mistook a bull for a heifer and found himself on the receiving end of a nasty goring that left an inconvenient hole in his intestines for the rest of that night and ruined a brand-new shirt. He double-checked for an udder before biting into the cow's jugular. He drank his fill (as much as he could stomach). The cow slept through the whole process.

He took his time walking back to the cemetery. Graveyards creeped him out. They always had. As a mortal, whenever he'd strolled past one, he could feel the eyes of the dead staring at him. He'd remind himself that there were no such thing as ghosts, no boogeymen or monsters. They were just figments of his imagination. Then he'd died and risen from the grave as one of the undead. Pushing monsters away into childhood fantasies was much harder after you'd become one. He'd discovered that most of the terrors that stalked the night weren't really terrors at all. They were mostly like regular folks, just trying to live their lives. As long as they were left alone they were perfectly harmless except for the occasional bite on the neck. Humans were the real terrors, always getting worked up and looking to kill something.

But cemeteries still creeped him out because ghosts creeped him out. And experience told him that every cemetery had at least one ghost in residence. Most people couldn't see them except as flitting shadows on a spooky night when the moonlight shined just right. As a vampire, Earl wasn't so lucky. He stood on that fine line between death and life, one foot on each side, though not truly belonging to either.

A waist-high wooden fence surrounded the two acres of neglected graveyard. The fence was barely standing in some places, completely fallen in others. A tall wrought-iron arch marked the entrance. The left gate clung to the arch by one rusty hinge. The right side creaked as it swayed back and forth. The plots on the other side were marked by homemade wooden headstones or the rare modest stone marker. Several tall cacti stood like unblinking watchmen. The wind picked up just long enough to raise a cloud of dust and bounce a tumbleweed across Earl's path.

"I ain't scared of nuthin'."

He walked through the gates.

Right away Earl saw something was wrong. Gaping holes covered the ground where zombies had dug their way out of their resting places. Earl counted sixty before losing interest. It looked as if not a single corpse had had the decency to stay in its grave. Except one.

It was near the back in a plot marked only by a sagging wooden cross. The cemetery guardian sat beside it. Earl could see the ghost plain as day. She looked as real and solid as any person of flesh and blood. There was little ghost-like about her, but he could tell. He could always tell. There was something about the pale, smooth consistency of ectoplasmic skin and the milky color of spectral eyes. The spirit wore cutoffs, a flannel shirt, and a pair of sneakers. Her long brown hair, tied in a ponytail, waved in the breeze. With dimpled cheeks, full blue lips, and a trim, athletic build, she was cute. But even a cute ghost was still a ghost and sent a shiver down Earl's spine.

He cleared his throat. "Pardon me, miss."

She looked up at him, then over her shoulder, then back at him. "Are you talking to me?"

"Don't see nobody else here."

"You can see me?"

He nodded.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

She got to her feet and waved her hands in his face. "Really?"

He grabbed her arms. "Really."

The ghost gasped and pulled away. "You touched me!"

If there was one thing he disliked more than ghosts, Earl decided, it was a ghost who didn't know how things worked.

She reached out and experimentally prodded him in the chest with her finger. When her hand didn't go through him, she smiled. "Seems like forever since I touched anyone. I almost forgot what it was like. Are you dead, too?"

"Undead," he corrected.

"Like a vampire? You're a vampire?" She looked the thin, gawky man up and down. "You?"

"We stopped wearing capes a while back. Name's Earl."

"I'm Cathy." She held out her hand for him to shake which he pretended not to notice. He didn't like touching ghosts if he could help it.

"Who's grave is this?" Earl asked.

"Mine."

"So you were the last person buried here."

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"The last person buried in a graveyard usually stays behind to keep watch over it."

Cathy pounded her fist into her palm. "So that's it! Boy, is that a relief. I thought I was here because I had unfinished business or something."

"Didn't the last guardian tell you anything?"

"No. He just said, 'Adios, sucker,' and disappeared."

Shaking his head, Earl bent over to read Cathy's marker. There was no name, just the words "Rest in Peace" carved in the wood.

"I was just passing through when I got hit by a car. I didn't have any I.D. or family to look for me so they just buried me here. I guess they thought they were doing me a favor. So how long do I have to stay here?"

"Till the next body gets planted."

"But they don't bury anyone here anymore. That means I'm stuck here forever?"

"Might. Couldn't say for sure."

She frowned. "Great. Just great."

"Yeah. Sorry to be the one to tell you." He patted her shoulder in a halfhearted attempt at comforting. "So have you seen anything weird lately?"

"You mean, besides the zombies? Well, I did notice something odd. See that hole over there. A corpse crawled out of there yesterday, but there's no grave there." She pointed out a few more places where zombies had popped up without first being buried.

Earl considered the facts. Restless corpses might rise from their graves for a variety of reasons. Perhaps an ancient Indian curse or bad voodoo in the soil or any number of causes. But zombies did not spontaneously sprout like weeds. You had to have a corpse before you could have a zombie. It was the rules.

Unless someone was using black magic. Not just the everyday evil eye kind of black magic either. Something far more sinister, far more powerful, and far more dangerous.

This wasn't going to be as easy to fix as he had assumed.

Cathy followed him back to the cemetery gates. "You're leaving already?"

He tried to look into her eyes but couldn't do it. "I got some things I gotta take care of."

"Oh. Okay. Will I see you tomorrow?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

She smiled. "I'll keep an eye out for anything unusual. You should see me tomorrow."

"We'll see," he replied.

He briskly jogged back to the diner. He glanced over his shoulder one last time.

The ghost waved from across the street.

Earl waved back and ducked inside.

Around nine o'clock, the diner received its first customers of the night. Four teenagers in a Volkswagen Beetle. They ordered the soup-and-salad special. While Loretta tossed their salad, Earl discussed the zombie problem with her.

"The way I see it, the problem can't just be with the cemetery like I first thought. See, your average zombie ain't all that bright. They just sort of wander about without someone telling them what to do. Now, so far, all these zombies have done is come into your place and hassle you. There ain't been any attacks on anyplace else?"

"Yeah, but mine is the closest," she reasoned.

"That's what I figured at first. Just a matter of location, but a'hundred-and-eighty-one zombies picking out this place just 'cuz it's the closest place don't add up when you think about it. That's just too many not to have a couple wander off some other direction. 'Less they're being directed."