Chapter Eight
We did not gotthis.
I found three gnomes with missing toes that night. Abner, who I’d propped on the dash of my truck so he could confirm his previous nights’ munchie victims, went through the five stages of zombie grief: denial, acceptance, hunger, more hunger, and knock-knockjokes.
Seriously.
“Gnock-gnock.”
“Nope.”
“Gnock-gnock.”
“Shut up,Abner.
“Gnock-gnock.”
The three other zombie gnomes I’d had to tag and bag were stowed on the passenger side floor of the truck. They chanted, “Gnock-gnock, gnock-gnock! Gnock-gnock!”
“No.”
“Gnock-gnock,” Abner askedagain.
Fine. “Who’sthere?”
“Police.”
Why did this feel like atrap?
“Policewho?”
“Police let me bite somebodyagain.”
Oh, the peanut gallery squirming in the duffle on the floorboards thought that washilarious.
“Okay, that’s it. You’re getting thebox.”
I picked him up, careful to keep my fingers away from his mouth, stuffed him in the box, then set him down on the floor with theothers.
Silence. Finally. I still had a few more houses with yard decorations to zombie proof before I went back to the station. So far it didn’t seem like the zombie gnomes had spread the bite-and-switch very quickly or veryfar.
Lack of knees really slowed down total zombiedomination.
Maybe we’d caught the zombie situation in time before it became something too annoying forwords.
“Gnock-gnock,” four voices called out atonce.
Or maybe not. I swallowed a groan and turned the radio uplouder.
