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  The two judges started limping over to the car.

  “They’re normal,” Bob said.

  “Sort of,” Tom replied. “What they are is a couple of assholes.” He got out and opened the trunk, getting blankets while Bob stood off to one side, shotgun ready in case the two men were infected.

  Bob relaxed when Silas said, “Something terrible has happened down at the hunting camp. This is going to sound awfully stupid, but——”

  “Creatures attacked you,” Tom interrupted. “Human beings that look like zombies.”

  “Why, yes. But——”

  “It’s happening all over the county, Judge.” He held out the blankets. “Wrap up in these and get in the back seat. I’ve got to call this in.”

  “Those things might be all around us,” Roscoe said, wrapping the blanket around him.

  “Probably are,” Bob said. “But they can be stopped.”

  “What in God’s name are they?” Silas blurted.

  “People who have crawled out of their graves,” Tom told the man. “We call them walking dead. The undead.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s the best we could come up with on such short notice.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the old roadhouse?” Roscoe asked.

  “It has everything to do with it,” Bob said.

  “It’s all over, gentlemen,” Tom told the woebegone-looking pair. It was getting light in the east; dawn was breaking. Both Tom and Bob had been in touch with the sheriff’s office moments before the judges were spotted au natural. “The walking dead have attacked the people out at Victoria Staples’s. We know that Albert Pickens killed Tommy Baylor. We know that snuff films were being made out at the mansion. The FBI called us less than thirty minutes ago. Carlos Washington aka Brother Long Dong was picked up in Los Angeles and spilled his guts. Do I have to read you two your rights?”

  “We know our rights, young man,” Roscoe said, doing his best to maintain some dignity. “We certainly don’t need to be reminded of them by the likes of you.”

  “We also have Doc Drake in custody, Judge,” Tom didn’t let up. “He told us all about your bunny suit.”

  All the hot air went out of the judge.

  “Fuck it,” Silas said, crawling into the back seat of the squad car. “They can’t prove a damn thing, Roscoe. All they’ve got is hearsay.”

  “Yeah,” Bob said. “That’s what the sheriff said. He said that he doubted any of this would ever come to court. But you two are through.”

  “Don’t count on that,” Silas said.

  Bob smiled. “Let’s take them back to the hunting camp and dump them out, Tom.”

  “That’s a damn good idea.”

  “Wait!” Roscoe screamed.

  “No!” Silas shouted.

  Tom got a small cassette recorder out of his briefcase in the trunk and made sure it was loaded with tape. “You have a lot to tell us, don’t you, gentlemen?”

  “Yes,” Roscoe blurted, his eyes wild with fear. “Where do you want to start?”

  “First we start with this: You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right . . .”

  Fourteen

  When Victoria, naked, eyes wild, face pale, lips blood red, came stumbling out of her mansion, grunting and mumbling, slobber leaking from her mouth in stinking ropes, Cole shot her.

  The richest woman in the state died for the second time in two hours. Cole and the others hoped she would stay dead.

  It was the beginning of the end of a long night of terror. But the day wasn’t going to be much better, as the hunt for the walking dead intensified.

  At the mansion, Nick Pullen was shot dead by Agent George Steckler. Arlene was killed by Agent Scott Frey. Sheriff Pickens put Win Bryan out of his misery.

  Young Albert Pickens was found huddled in a closet in the basement of the mansion. Physically, he was all right. Mentally, he was a nightmare. EMT’s called to the scene had to pump him full of tranquilizer before he could be transported to the hospital.

  The basement was a chamber of horrors.

  Victoria had been holding several prisoners in the cells. They were all right, just scared and confused. The undead had been unable to get to them, because of the heavy locked doors.

  “This is incredible,” Scott said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Silas Parnell and Roscoe Evans were picked up out in the country by Tom and Bob,” Al said, after using the phone to call in. “They’re spilling the whole miserable story now. It jibes with what Brother Long Dong and Doc Drake said.”

  “Great God!” George thundered from a room just off the projection room in the basement. “There must be millions of feet of film in here. And still shots. There are some really prominent people involved in this . . . sickness.”

  The men gathered around and began looking at the 8 x 10 glossies.

  “This is going to end some careers,” Cole summed it up.

  “Amen. Well, all this is now yours, boys,” Al told Scott, dropping the ring of house keys into the Bureau man’s hand. “And welcome to it. Come on, Cole. Let’s go meet the CDC people. I really want to hear their explanation for all this. Then I’m going to grab a shower, some food, and sack out for a few hours.”

  “As soon as our people from Memphis, St. Louis, and Little Rock get here,” Scott said. “I plan on doing the same. See you, guys.”

  Back at the motel, which had been secured and was being patrolled by national guard troops, Cole showered and laid down beside Katti.

  She turned in his arms. “Is it over, now?”

  “All but the mop-up. And that’s underway right now.”

  “Are you going to be a part of that?”

  “Not unless the sheriff asks for my help. I don’t think he will. He’s got hundreds of people at his disposal, and the number is growing by the hour.”

  “What now?”

  “I want us to go home.” He smiled. “And get married.”

  “Oh, I know we’re going to do that. I mean, right now.”

  “You have something in mind?”

  “If you’re not too tired.”

  He wasn’t.

  Fifteen

  Bad water.

  “Are you serious?” Cole asked Scott.

  “That’s going to be the official government stance. Sure as hell wasn’t my idea.”

  “Five hundred or so people dead, the downtown area looking like Beirut, corpses rising out of graves and lurching around attacking people, ghosts appearing out of a roadhouse that has been gone for ten years . . . and bad water caused it all?”

  “Extremely stupid, isn’t it?” George said. He shook his head in disgust.

  “What about all that film the reporters shot?” Katti asked.

  Scott shrugged. “Let them go on showing it. Freedom of the press and all that. It’s already being attacked by some as a big hoax. And we’ve been instructed to have absolutely no comment on anything we might have witnessed here pertaining to the, ah, supernatural.”

  Cole smiled. “Bad water.” He laughed out loud.

  “The public will buy the story,” Al said. “You just wait and see. By and large, they’ll accept it. Hell, it’ll be old news in a week.”

  Jim Deaton and his crew had returned to Memphis. Bev had ridden back with Hank.

  Bob Jordan had gone back to Memphis, but not before predicting the government would try to cover all this up with some outrageous story.

  “People just want their lives returned to normal,” Al said. “I think they’re ready to accept just about anything and get it over with.”

  “How’s your son?” George asked, his voice softening.

  Al shook his head. “Prognosis is not good. I think he’ll be confined to a mental institution for a long, long time.”

  All the major players in the porn and snuff film business—with the exception of Long Dong, Doc Drake and a few others—were dead. Those left alive were facing long prison terms.

  “How abou
t the old roadhouse site?” Scott asked.

  “I was out there earlier this morning,” Cole said. “There is a huge burn mark, where the club used to sit. The burn goes down several feet. It took a lot of heat to burn the earth down that deep. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  No one asked what might have caused the burn. They all knew who was responsible for that.

  Judges Parnell and Evans were in jail, awaiting trial for their part in the snuff and porn films.

  Several sheriffs and deputies and chiefs of police in north Akansas and southeast Missouri were in jail on various charges, all related to the snuff and porn film business.

  Cole stood up and shook hands all the way around. “I guess this wraps it up, guys.”

  “Stay in touch, Cole,” Al said.

  Cole walked out into the sunshine of summer and drove back to the motel. Katti was waiting. They packed up and were on the road thirty minutes later.

  They drove past the old roadhouse site one more time, slowly, but not stopping.

  Katti said nothing as she stared at the huge burn mark on the earth.

  Once they were past the old site, she said, “There are dozens of these clubs, Cole. All over the nation. What about them?”

  “I don’t know, Katti. When I brought it up, Scott and George were sort of evasive about that. I don’t think the government wants to get involved in the ghost-chasing business.”

  The press had hung around for a few days after that bloody night of terror, then vanished after hearing what the government’s official stance on the matter would be.

  Few people had noticed it, and the press had not reported on the strange scorched areas, but all over the South and in parts of the West, where dozens of old roadhouses used to stand, there were deep burn marks in the earth.

  Katti was silent on the ride back to Memphis, and Cole did not attempt to make any conversation. He knew she was thinking about her brother Tommy.

  They stopped at a supermarket in Memphis and bought groceries, before heading on to Katti’s house.

  There was an message on her answering machine to call the garage where Tommy’s car was in storage.

  “Miss Katti,” the man said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what happened. I called the po-lice and they come out and done all sorts of investigatin’, but they can’t explain it either.”

  “What are you talking about, Sam?” she asked.

  “Your brother’s car, Miss Katti. It just disappeared. And no one can explain it, neither. None of the doors shows any sign of being opened. That would have set off the alarms. That Mustang sure wouldn’t have fit through no window. And nothing else is missin’. It’s like it just vanished into thin air! The insurance people come around, and they can’t explain it, neither. But they’ll pay off. ’Cause it damn sure is gone. I’m terrible sorry about this, Miss Katti.”

  “That’s all right, Sam. It wasn’t your fault. I’ll come down and sign whatever papers have to be signed. Thank you, Sam. No, put it out of your mind. It wasn’t your fault.”

  When she hung up and turned to Cole, he was pointing to something on the dinner table.

  Katti picked up the shiny object. It was an ID bracelet. There were happy tears in her eyes as she held the bracelet. TOMMY was engraved on the front. She turned it over. LOVE, KATTI was engraved on the back.

  She smiled at Cole. “Some stories do have happy endings,” she said.

  Look for these other horrifying tales from William W. Johnstone.

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