Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Uprising

[froodle]

Lightning had struck the graveyard and, as is so often the case, the dead rose. Moaning, shambling, shedding clumps of soil and skin and hair and flesh with every step, they congregated at the great iron gates. Broken-nailed fingers, swollen with putrescence and mottled green-black with decay, reached through the bars and pawed at the air beyond the burial grounds. The blessed iron barricades flared with white fire where the zombies pressed against them, and the smell of burning battled the stench of rot.

Euclid Daganfort, swathed in a borrowed bee-keepers outfit and armed with an inappropriately named life hook scavenged from the wreckage of the Eerie Boardwalk many years prior, grimaced behind his thick veil. The corpses still wore the clothes they had been buried in, and from the front the ruined suits and favourite dresses carried a certain air of pathos. From behind, it was a different story, a massed vista of undead backsides exposed in the harsh light of day by clothing that had been split open in order to dress the deceased. It was not an edifying sight.

He navigated the broken ground with unaccustomed difficulty, his long familiarity with the ways between headstones less of an advantage now that shattered grave markers and gaping furrows of dark upturned earth marred the paths he had so painstakingly maintained. The heavy headgear also obscured his vision and the suit was hot, even in the cool November morning. He cursed whatever idiot had decided to stage an impromptu Easter Weekend in his cemetery.

The zombies towards the back of the crowd turned to regard him as he approached, filmy eyes tracking his awkward movement. He looped the wire aperture over the head and shoulders of the nearest one and yanked it into an open grave from which the broken ends of a shattered coffin still protruded. The zombie gave a low groan of protest, but Daganfort skewered it through the meat of its shoulder with a gardening stake, pinning it to the grave bed. He’d been planning to cultivate some flowering shrubs around the pathways that wound through the older sections of the burial grounds, but that project would need to take a backseat for the time being.

He had worked his way through a couple of dozen of Eerie’s reanimated citizens and was just considering a break for lunch, when a commotion near the gates caught his attention. A couple of teenagers, their caps on backwards and their eyes covered with mirrored shades, had ventured too close to the ambulatory dead and were now struggling against the grip of a dozen ripe zombie hands. He lifted his beekeeper veil, kicked a recalcitrant revenant in the head as it tried to climb from its makeshift grave to bite him, and squinted in the direction of the ruckus.

He sighed. He recognised the boys, small town nuisances who regularly rode their bikes past the cemetery on their way to smashing mailboxes up on the high street. They dragged sticks against the iron railings that served as a protection for things both within and without the graveyard, aggravating the spirits within with the resulting racket. He contemplated just letting the zombies have them, then contemplated the horror of dealing with their moronic antics inside these hallowed grounds once they became permanent residents.

The risen dead were not finding the afterlife to be everything they hoped; a great deal less celestial harp music and rather more bodily decay than was really feasible in the long-term. When the heads of their fellows began to burst like over-ripe fruit dropped from a second floor window onto passers-by in the street below, it was just another indignity inflicted upon them by a cruel cosmos. Then the newly-decapitated zombies collapsed in steaming piles of offal and bone, and those whose lungs still worked hooted and wheezed a deep sigh of relief that deliverance was near.

Euclid Daganfort concentrated his will, and the rancid blood and formaldehyde within the zombies burst into flames, their brains boiling in their skulls and the rotting bone shattering under the sudden increase in pressure. He’d pay for it later, could already feel a nascent migraine turning the edges of his vision to flickering fire, but it was a fast and effective way of stopping a mass resurrection in it’s tracks.

Plus, he got the satisfaction of seeing two of those wretched Bob brothers splattered with putrid zombie brains, so there was also that.

When he was satisfied that the last zombie had been safely led to its second death, he turned away and headed back to his work shed for coffee and a sandwich.





Trusted Associates, Inc.

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Comments

[deifire]

The more we learn about Euclid, the more intrigued I am!

I love that his motivation here is not wanting to deal with Bob brothers after the zombies get them. Who would?

Several parts where I laughed out loud, including this, the best opening line ever:
Lightning had struck the graveyard and, as is so often the case, the dead rose.

[froodle]

Yeah, he's used to the zombie infestation but the Bobs? Nope. Not part of his job description

[eviinsanemonkey.livejournal.com]

I like Euclid.

I love how you flesh out the world of Eerie, it's glorious

[froodle]

Thank you :D