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Business had been unusually good lately.  Sure, if I was a store clerk or a salesman it would have been fine, but when the dead won't stay dead and you decide "Forget college, I'll be an undertaker" things have a way of becoming abysmal.  The border fence out by the city limits was thirty years old and maintained in large part by the Corps of Engineers.  Breaks were common and, thanks to this one, more than a few visitors had found their way into town. Living along the border was like living with a lazy roommate: no matter where you turn there's always one mess or another to clean up and the place always stinks.  Most nights you can still smell them through the fences on the outskirts if the wind is blowing your direction and that godless noise they make is echoes with the breeze.  The gurgling death rattle is miserable one-on-one but when a few hundred of them start a chorus at the fence it can be a deafening nuisance.  Pete and Gladys, my associates and really the only thing close to a family that I had, were taking shifts with me as we tried to contain the steady flood of dead bodies shambling through our quiet town.  The sheriff's office had lent a hand where they could but they were spread as thin as almost everyone else these days.

Even so, we were managing, controlling the symptoms even as the disease was spreading.  I'd been out all morning at Possum Branch Farm out by the city limits.  Herb Barrett, the owner, had told me he thought there was a crack in the wall.  When I arrived, a ten foot section of chain link and concrete had collapsed and he and a dozen hands were fighting off the over flow with pitch forks, axe handles and a single barrel, break action shotgun.  A few hours and a lot of bullets later the place looked like the set of a disaster movie.  We patched the fence as best we could, I filled out my paperwork and the coroner hauled off as many of the corpses as he could in the first trip.  All I wanted was a cigarette, a beer and a shower.  All I got was more trouble.

The hearse broke down on me two miles from the funeral home thanks to a box of nails that had flown out of someone's tool box.  Both tires on the driver's side were flat and all I had was a donut spare with a leaky valve.  I called Herb and he agreed to send one of his boys with the roll back they used to haul up stuck farm equipment but he told me it might take a while.  I made good use of my time, smoking the last cigarette in a weathered pack of Marlboros before I set to work on the flats.  The sun was baking me, not that black cover alls and a hat are airy to begin with but the summer heat was killing me.  More and more that beer sounded nice.  My shoulders were tense and, having the vivid imagination that I have, it wasn’t too shocking when I imagined a strong pair of hands kneading my aching muscles.  Of course every dream has to end and that’s when I noticed the smell.  If you’ve ever been around a body that’s been baking in the sun for a few days, you know it.  If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky.  My stomach churned and sloshed the handful of pretzels and RC that had been my breakfast up towards my throat.  They weren't the warm, inviting sort of hands that said help has arrived.  These were more like the hands of something that wanted to bite my face off.

He was wearing a mechanic's coveralls with a name tag that read Tinker in blue cursive over the left breast.  He was fresh... well, as fresh in the sense that he had only been dead a day or so.  If I'd seen him in passing I’d have never pegged him for a goner, at least not as tired as I was.  His teeth were chipped and worn into glistening white razors.  Judging by the looks of him, I was going to be his first.  Hell of a way to lose a cherry.  His teeth scraped along my collar, catching in the Kevlar lining as he tried to take a chunk out of my shoulder.  I wriggled free and rolled, inadvertently taking three nails into my thigh.  Damned if they hadn’t got me again!  It hurt like hell too but I managed to stagger up to my feet and draw my gun as Tink came lumbering up to me.  His legs weren't right.  I couldn't quite place it as he wobbled towards me but there was something just wrong about the way he was walking, even for a cadaver.  My first shot went wide and took him in the chest just under his name tag.  He stared down at the wound, looked at me and then bared his teeth again.  Rule one of successful undertaking: always hit the head!  The next one sank in his leg and twisted him up against the hearse still up on jacks on the shoulder of the road.  Plastic splintered and fell out of his pants as his prosthetic limb crumbled and sent him rolling under the car.  There was a groan, metal on metal this time, as the jack came loose and the car fell on top of his head.

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