———–

It happened late one night, out back of the bar. Edward was setting up his cook pots and slicing roots into a bucket. Franklin was busy starting a roaring fire. The men had taken to cooking late nights, Edward seemed to insist, and feeding whomever was still awake. It didn’t invite conversation, much other than thanks, but it warmed some of the locals to the two.

Johnny Boots saw it different. He felt that his woman, Betsy Klein, was paying that Bones man far too much attention. Betsy didn’t see it that way at all, but then she also didn’t see herself as Johnny Boots’ woman, either.

Boots was out back watching the fire grow along with his ire. He shot Edward a look, trying to warn the man off through sheer force of will. None of us knew, then, that battle was a losing proposition. Johnny Boots learned it soon enough though, and learned it for all of us.

“Hungry?” Edward asked Johnny, gesturing him closer to the cooking pots that were warming up over the fire. The night was dry and hot and the fire’s heat warmed men that didn’t need warming. Edward’s face was coated with a fine sweat but, like his partner, he still wore fine clothing and layers of it regardless of the heat.

Johnny shook his head at Edwards question, stopping his head shake to spit. “Naw, I jus’ don’t think you oughta be paying so much attention to my woman,” Johnny said slowly and then jerked a thumb over towards Betsy. She rolled her eyes and started walking towards the fire.

Edward held a hand up to stop her and smiled warmly at Johnny Boots. “Hey, man, I have no interest in her,” he told Johnny as easy as discussing the weather, “I mean, no offense.. uhh.. Betsy, right? But yeah, guy, I’m sorry if I gave you some sort of impression there. Whatdda ya say you have a plate with me when I’m done, we can call it the past?”

Johnny turned to look at Betsy, who was smiling, and looked back at Edward, turning his full attention on the slender man. Edward’s green eyes fairly twinkled in the firelight and his short black hair shone with beads of sweat. Somehow that managed to rile Johnny even more.

“How’sabout you stop lookin’ at her and I won’t have to deal with you myself,” he said, putting as much menace as he could into the sentence.

Edward laughed easily and gave Johnny another smile. Franklin didn’t even perk up at the exchange, bent over and busy with stoking the fire as he was. Both men looked as if nothing at all was going on, except making dinner.

“Hey, Frank?” Edward asked, his voice light and uncaring.

“Yeah, Eddie?” his partner answered, still not looking up.

“Do we have any oil, and perhaps another turning fork would come in handy, if we could spare one for a few hours.”

Franklin reached over and passed Bones an old glass bottle half full of oil. The makeshift wooden stopper was jammed into the bottle at an odd angle and it took Edward a second to pry it loose with his teeth.

“Yeah, we should have another turning fork,” Franklin added, glancing over at the large bag of cooking supplies they lumped out back every night. He stood up and walked over to the bag, undoing the flaps slowly and rummaging inside.

Johnny Boots stood there, confused for a moment. He wasn’t sure what was going on except that it seemed like he was being ignored. Growling deep in his throat Johnny took a step towards Edward, raising a fist.

Edward Bones threw the contents of the oil bottle at Johnny’s face without seeming to move, stopping the man mid-swing. Johnny stood there, sputtering, and reached a hand up to wipe at his eyes.

Bones grabbed a small stick from the fire and flicked it at Boots casually, turning to look at Cleaver before it even struck home.

“You know, I could really do with some potatoes, Frank,” he said as Johnny Boot’s face caught fire. Boots screamed and stumbled backwards, losing his balance and falling on his ass near the cook pot, upsetting it. Franklin was already moving, putting out a hand to steady the pot and then thrusting down with the fork. It caught Johnny Boots in the neck and he sputtered and gurgled, trying hard to figure out the trick of breathing blood. He died pretty fast, between the injuries, but not a second of it was anything but hellishly painful.

Edward walked back to his favorite standing spot, looking into the pot and considering the temperature before dumping out his bucket right into it. A sweet sizzle erupted from the pot, smoke puffing upwards tinged with the smell of fresh cooking vegetables.

“We don’t have any more potatoes,” Franklin said, handing Edward the fresh turning fork, “but that smells good there.”

“Thanks, Frank.” Edward looked up at the people who stood around. They were gaping, to a body, rooted to the spot in fear. “So who wants a plate?” Edward asked, sticking his hand into the pot to stir.

It only took one moment like that to convince everyone with a lick of sense to steer as clear of Cleaver and Bones as possible. Sadly some of the other folk in town didn’t have a lick of sense. They crossed paths with the men and ended up much the same as Johnny Boots, sometimes their deaths were simple and sometimes they were full of complex and strange plans of action, but they always ended up dead. Not once did Cleaver or Bones seem to care about killing a man.

The days continued to pass and the town grew used to Cleaver and Bones, ignoring them where possible and being respectful where they could. Everyone in town was respectful of the pair, except the men themselves. They berated each other and gave one another enough grief that some expected it to erupt into violence, which it never did. Outside of them though, the only other things which didn’t learn to respect both men were the Brainers and the weather.

The sun beat down on the town like never before, causing even the weeds to shrivel up and die. Food got scarce and men went hungry. No one knew what to do. There was hardly ever even a wind to help cool off a man’s skin and the nights were just as hot as the days, heat radiating back off of the ground in uncomfortable waves.

The Brainers, they made occasional attempts at the wall. None got through, but with the heat and hunger depressing and addling so many hopes dropped and a general feeling rose up in its place: the Brainers would get through and over run the town.

Hadn’t, some asked, the government left the west for dead in the first place? Hadn’t they pulled out and then left places like the very town they stood in to defend themselves? Why wouldn’t the Brainers over run things, they reasoned. The idea spread and grew and overtook the sense of the town as a whole. Except, of course, for the minds of two people.

Cleaver and Bones seemed to be having a perfectly fine time of it. Hell, they almost seemed to be expecting and awaiting the mood of the town to shift downward. Franklin smiled more and the both of them conferred in hushed tones, not giving a damn who noticed them whisper to each other.

About a month after they showed up, Cleaver and Bones walked to the center of town and stood in the middle of the street, looking around and catching as many eyes as possible.

“Listen up, if you wouldn’t mind,” Edward said with his customary friendliness, “we have something that we think you might all want to hear.”

“We,” Franklin said with the mean, hard grin of a man thinks he can move boulders with his bare hands, “have a plan.”

It was the sentence that was to change everything, and even as it was said the whole town knew it.

People gathered up inside the church, filtering in as word spread like wildfire. Cleaver and Bones stood near the altar, but not directly on it. They watched the crowd in the room grow and conferred between themselves in quiet tones. Eventually they had to figure the mass of people was as big as it would get and Franklin nodded at Edward and then at the crowd, starting to speak.

“In case you all didn’t notice, the current situation won’t hold for long,” he said matter-of-factly, “and when it gives this town will fall. When it falls, the Brainers will move in, take down the wall and inch further across the land. That needs to stop.”

“But it’s more than that,” Edward cut in.

“Not yet, Eddie,” Franklin said with a glance over his shoulder, “one thing at a time.”

Barbara Haines stood up and looked around the church. “What can we…” she started to say, before she was cut off by a sweep of Franklin’s hand.

“Hold off for now. Let us tell you about where we were.”

“We’ve spent the last few years in the west, and it was,” Edward grinned slowly and tapped his partner on the shoulder, “Hey Frank, it was kinda like that time when we…”

“Don’t start, Eddie, just tell them what we discussed.”

A murmur spread out along the crowd. I had just gotten to town myself a few days ago and learned all about the two strange men, so when I found out about a gathering you can bet I ran there as fast as I could. Still, at the idea, the simple thought, that these two had spent time out west in with the Brainers made us all wonder. How did they survive, what were they doing, what could they want now?

“Right. Well, settle down some, folks.” We fell silent at Edward’s words, all attention on the front of the church again. “We were curious, you know how it is. So we traveled west and then came back east. We came back north of here, of course, but we’ve been going back and forth for a while. At first it was a job, don’t worry about that. But the second time we wanted to see what was really up.”

People were rooted to their seats. Edward stopped talking for a second to root in his pockets for what turned out to be a smoke and you could’ve cut the tension with a knife. He took his time lighting the cigarette and then took a long drag off of it, holding the smoke deep.

“The Brainers were a curiosity.” Edward exhaled and waved a hand around a bit in thought. “They weren’t at all like the old Vodoun ideas of a zombie, but they also didn’t seem to fit any other popular mythology concerning the concept. It was confusing. Myth is, I mean, it’s an engine and like Joseph Campbell said…”

“Eddie,” Franklin broke in, “the facts?”

Edward nodded and shrugged, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Something in his eyes though, something deep in there had flicked back on. We could all see it, even Franklin.

“Sorry, Frank. But yeah, we wandered a while. Looking. It was just like that time Frank and I had to deal with Freddie Six-Fingers…”

“Except for the fact that Freddie had otters.”

“We dealt with the otters, though didn’t we?”

“At the cost of my car. Again.”

“Still wasn’t my fault. But the Brainers were just like him. They were showing one hand and playing another. We all know they don’t kill everyone they meet. Who does, right?” Edward shrugged and then smiled. The both of them seemed to be warming up somehow, breaking out of a shell.

“Bennie.”

“Yeah, all right, Frank. Bennie. But the Brainers don’t. Some people they take with them. Now from what we heard when we got back the last time they were supposed to be taking them somewhere and using them for labor. What no one knew was how.”

They didn’t pace and didn’t move their arms a whole lot, standing as still as possible while they spoke, but something about the way they started to speak was different. More alive. They seemed younger as they went on, instead of the fifty-odd years of life that had weathered and etched into each man.

———–
High Noon of the Living Dead is copyright Adam P. Knave.