Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy by James Roy Daley

considering the circumstances.
    Dad smiled. “Maybe I can get a couple Xanax into her before we tell her. That might make a little difference.”
    Dad drove up Witch’s Hill. At the top, Kirk saw a Sheriff’s cruiser parked at the road’s dead-end.
    “Bobby beat me here,” Dad said as he parked beside the cruiser. “You guys stay in here, I’m going to go talk to Bobby.”
    “Why do you have to talk to Bobby?” Kirk asked.
    “He’s the only one who knows about what happened with Duke. He came here with me to talk to Mrs. Kobylka the night I brought Duke back. He’ll understand all this. He’s also a cop, so he’ll know what we should do next. Natalie killed someone, Kirk, and there’s a good chance you could get blamed for that. I don’t know if we should take her to Mrs. Kobylka, or if we should go to the cops with this whole story. So I’m going to ask Bobby.”
    Dad got out of the SUV, closed the door, and got into the cruiser with Bobby.
     
     
    4.
     
    Randy said, “You think we could get in trouble, too? ‘Cause we were there when she killed him? We didn’t do anything about it.”
    “There was nothing we could do,” Kirk said. “As soon as she got out of the trunk, it was out of our hands.”
    “She moved so fast,” Liz said.
    “Hungry,” Natalie said in back. “I’m hungry.”
    “Wait just a little bit longer, okay, Nat?” Kirk said.
    She turned and looked him. “Longer?”
    “Just a little longer, honey.” His voice broke on the last word and he turned away from her. Staring at the dashboard, he whispered, “I can’t believe I’ve done this to her.”
    “You didn’t know it was going to be like this,” Liz said. “If you’d known, you wouldn’t have done it.”
    A noise in the back made them all turn toward Natalie. She was starting to climb toward them over the seats. She tried to smile, but it only made her broken face look more horrific.
    “No, Nat, stay there, okay?” Kirk said. “Just for a little while longer, okay? Please?”
    She slowly moved back to the rear compartment of the SUV without taking her eyes from Kirk. He could not look at her collapsed face long. It made him feel like dying.
     
     
    - EIGHT -
    1.
     
    A few minutes later, Dad and Bobby got out of the cruiser.
    Bobby was tall and beefy with short-cropped black hair speckled with gray and wire-framed glasses that looked small on his large face. His right arm was in a blue fiberglass cast. He and Dad came to the driver’s side of the Durango and Dad opened the door. They moved in close. Bobby wrinkled his nose and recoiled at the smell at first.
    “Bobby needs to ask you a few questions, Kirk,” Dad said.
    Bobby had a high, scratchy voice. “What happened with Wyatt Parks?”
    “We went over to see Dicky, but he wasn’t home. We had Natalie in the trunk, and when we––”
    “In the trunk ?” Dad said. “How could you do that, Kirk?”
    Kirk closed his eyes a moment. “I didn’t think it was Natalie. I thought it was just her body, not her . If she’d complained or made any noise, I would’ve taken her out, but she didn’t. Not until Wyatt walked us out to our car. Then she pounded on the trunk and started talking. Wyatt got upset and wanted to know who was in our trunk. So we showed him. And she attacked him.”
    “She didn’t just attack him,” Liz said, “she was on him in a second.”
    “What did she do to him?” Bobby asked.
    Kirk said, “She ripped his throat out with her teeth. He didn’t… last long.”
    “And then she ate him,” Dad said. “Right?”
    Kirk nodded.
    “Jesus,” Bobby said. “Well, it hasn’t been reported yet, so I’m guessing nobody’s found him. Did you touch the body, any of you?”
    “We didn’t go near the body,” Kirk said. “We went to the car.”
    “And you let her eat him?” Bobby said.
    “We didn’t know what else to do ,” Kirk said. “I knew if we went over there, we’d have to pull her off him, and we could leave