J. Gonzalez - Back From The Dead

“Nobody saw us leave Susan’s party,” Dave said. “I made sure of that.”

“And he didn’t say anything to anybody else,” Steve confirmed. “John just talked to us.”

“His friends left him,” Gordon added.

Scott nodded. “If the cops ask where he went we just tell him we don’t know.”

“And if somebody did see him get into the car with us, we tell the cops we dropped him off on Mill Valley Road near his house.”

They all nodded. Mill Valley Road was in a remote area of the county. It would be perfectly plausible for somebody to be dropped off there with no witnesses. It would be their collective word against anybody else’s.

“But we don’t volunteer that information,” Dave said.

“That won’t work,” Gordon said, his mind working at all the angles. “If we say that we don’t know what happened to him during a first round of questioning, then they find somebody who saw John getting into the SUV with us outside of Susan’s and they come back to us with that and we say, ‘oh yeah, well we did drive him home, but John wanted to be dropped off on Mill Valley Road. He wanted to sober up before he went home.’ We say that, it’ll look like we’re trying to hide something.”

“So we should contact the police and volunteer this information?” Scott asked.

“No. We just mention it the first time the police question us. If the police don’t question us, we don’t say anything.”

Scott mulled this over. It was a good approach. “I agree,” he said. He regarded the others, more confident. “This stays between us. If any of us is questioned separately we stick to the same story. John met up with us at Susan’s, we talked, he was really drunk and we drove him home, only he wanted to be dropped off at Mill Valley Road. That’s the last we saw of him. We don’t deviate from this simple story. Not one bit. Got me?”

The others nodded and Gordon grinned at him. “Yes sir, Master Scott!”

Dave and Steve laughed at this, guzzling their beers. Gordon cracked a grin. His take-charge demeanor was working.

In reality, he was a complete mess.

They spent the rest of the evening drinking and talking, reliving the incident. Gordon was mostly silent, observing his friends with subtle glances. They were gung ho, excited about what they’d done and they laughed about how they’d pulled one over on their long-hated nemesis. At one point Steve suggested they feed one of their other enemies to the zombies and Scott brought up Tim Gaines again. That was when Gordon spoke up. “We do that, especially if we’re questioned about John, the police are going to zero in on us,” he said. “The fact that they questioned me about losing that book at the cemetery is enough to nail me, but you guys have a history with him.” He settled his gaze on Scott. “And they’ll put two and two together.”

Scott sighed. “Fuck, I hate it when you’re rational.”

“Yeah,” Dave chuckled. “Thanks for blowing that particular fantasy, Gord.”

“He’s right, though,” Scott said. He drained the rest of his beer and quickly retrieved more. In the past hour they’d gone through a complete case. Scott’s parents wouldn’t notice. “Okay, so I guess the next one is just gonna have to be another homeless person.”

“Let’s nab one next week!” Steve said.

“I’m for that,” Dave agreed.

“First we gotta clean up what’s left of John and do what we can to mask the smell of those zombies,” Scott said. He was addressing all of them now and Gordon leaned forward, wanting to be involved in cleanup. It was his ass too. “We can’t get plastered tonight. We need to be sober enough to check them out in a few hours. If they’ve stopped eating, then we get them tied up and — ”

“How the hell are we going to do that if they’re still hostile?” Steve asked.

“Okay, so maybe we can’t tie them up,” Scott conceded. He was beginning to look frustrated. “We can…I don’t know…get some gardening tools like rakes and shit to pull body parts over to us and get rid of whatever’s left over. We’ll burn them. And as for the blood on the floor, we can throw lime on it.”

“Where the hell are we going to get lime?” Steve asked.

“There’s a bag of it in the gardening shed,” Scott answered. “Our gardener uses it.”

Gordon’s mind was working, thinking about all of this. “I think we can pull this off. Air fresheners to mask the smell is the next step. I say after we get whatever remains of John’s body out of there, we get some sleep, then three of us split up in opposite directions in the morning and get some air fresheners. Scott should stay here in case somebody comes around. Me, Dave, and Steve could head out to different counties to get air fresheners.”

“A whole shitload of them,” Dave said.

“Not enough to arouse suspicion,” Gordon said. He was surprising himself with how logical he was in his thinking process. “I say we make three stops each, in different parts of our assigned counties.”

Scott nodded. “Good idea. I say grab ten from every store you hit. That’ll give you thirty each.”

“That’s ninety tops,” Steve said. “That’ll be enough.”

“I’ll hit Dauphin County,” Gordon said. “Dave can hit York County and Steve can take Berks.”

The others were enthused with these plans. Scott got up and began collecting the empty beer bottles. Dave began to help clean up and Gordon joined in. As they cleaned the living room, Gordon worked everything over in his mind. This effort at covering their tracks would work. He was positive of it. They’d been careful until the last week, when they’d accidentally killed Zombie #2, and tonight, when they’d lured John away from Susan’s party. That had been an incredibly stupid thing to do, and Gordon had been against the idea from the beginning. The more he’d argued against luring somebody away from Susan’s party with the idea of feeding them to the zombies, the more Gordon realized that not only were the other three completely serious about it, but Scott was beginning to send shards of disappointment at him. He didn’t want to give Scott the impression he was going against the group. He wanted to appear that he was firmly on their side.

He didn’t want to give Scott the excuse to eventually feed him to the zombies.

Gordon had caught a little buzz while they spent the past hour reliving the feeding, and now as he assisted in living room cleanup he sobered up instantly. He still felt afraid for what was to come and felt a sense of shame at himself for what he’d participated in, but he was going to deal with it. He had to do something. Things were already going too far. It was only going to get worse in the days and weeks to come.

He had to put a stop to this somehow. Not to save somebody the pain and horror of being eaten. Not to save another homeless person.

He had to save his own skin.

He didn’t want to get in trouble.

Couldn’t afford to get in any kind of trouble of this magnitude.

As Gordon loaded the dishwasher he thought about his future, which was something he was beginning to take seriously, thanks to long talks with his parents. He wanted to go to college. His grades were fairly decent, and he was interested in Engineering. He wanted to go to college, major in Engineering, carve a future for himself. If he were arrested for the crimes he’d participated in, that would blow his future. He couldn’t let that happen. Why Scott wasn’t thinking about that was bewildering. Scott got better grades than Gordon, had a chance at being accepted into a good university. Scott’s parents were very successful executives and he knew they were grooming Scott for a similar path. Was Scott’s uncaring attitude rebellion against his parents? That was Gordon’s impression, but no way was he going to suggest this to Scott. That would only spell trouble.