The house had fallen quiet. Baron had shut off the television set as he stormed away. Norma knew what that meant: time to worry about her wifely duties and not waste time on shit that didn't really matter, as he liked to say.

Of course it mattered. It mattered more than he knew. If it weren't for the tube, warning everybody to steer clear, they might've been attacked by one of those things already--zombies, they're calling them. That's what happened to little Harriet over next door. Sure as Norma was squatted there, cleaning up the broken bottle, she knew that's what had come of the little girl a week ago. The zombies got her. She wasn't bothered with the tube at only thirteen, hasn't a clue what was on the news. She was out playing with her friends when she got gone. Nobody saw hide nor hair of her since. Norma would have betted that had Harriet seen those zombies climbing out of their graves on the news, she wouldn't been out there playing in the open like that.

Norma swept all the glass in a little dustpan and carried it into the kitchen where the dust bin sat. As she dumped the shards into the bag, her eyes rested beside the phone. Her foam message board was hung beside the landline--Bear didn't believe in cell phones on account of the cancer they caused. She tacked up lots of things on that little board and There just happened to be a missing flier or three there. She'd stacked them together on the same tack with Harriet's on top. There was also Susan from across the way, and Polly Blanchette, whom worked at the local gas station.

Harriet smiled in her photo, a normal happy girl in Shiloh Wellington Middle School on picture day, two whole months before she'd disappeared. The photo was an inky print off in black and white and didn't really show how yellow Harriet's bobbed hair was, nor how milky her skin, or even the green of her eyes. Norma knew all of that though, because the girl came to play crazy eights and old maid with her sometimes when Baron was out.

She never had any kids, but she did care for that little girl. She'd talk with Norma and laugh and laugh and pretty soon she'd have Norma laughing too. But when time came for Baron to stroll in, Harriet would scuttle off, because nobody liked Baron, not even Norma most days, not really. Not today especially. She really could use a good laugh with Harriet about now.

Norma sniffed softly. She hadn't realized she'd teared up. She'd better clean that up, because if she had red eyes when Baron came back in, she'd have to hear it. He hates when she acts like he don't take care of her. The zombies got Harriet, that's what, and Norma would just have to get over it. Probably Susan and Polly too, before the whole zombie thing turned into big-time news. Even knowing that much, Norma still couldn't bring herself to take the fliers down.

---

Baron dragged his ass in about three hours later, drunker than he was when he stepped out. Drunk as a skunk, Norma thought, whatever that actually meant. She'd never seen a skunk drunk before, but the way Baron smelled was pretty bad. He must have gone down to Pop's Beer Pit, had some cigars. He didn't smoke them in the house because he didn't want smoke to damage anything. He didn't like it to seep into the furniture or the carpet, so he went down to Pop's Beer Pit and let it seep in their furniture and carpet instead. He usually drank til Pop, the old-timer who owned the place, cut him off and told him to 'Get back on home to Norma now.'

Norma guessed that this time he must've gotten down wind to some zombies out there, because there was a faint smell of rot beneath the beer and smoke scent that usually followed Bear home from Pop's. The strangest thing happened right then. Instead of being worried, she felt a sense of disappointment. Could it be she was honestly a little sad that he didn't go missing? What if he was gone like Harriet and them other girls? Like all them people they'd seen on the news?

And then what if he came back?

That last thought gave Norma the chills. She imagined him shuffling up to the front door, dead as all-get-out, just dragging along. His big grey and torn hand reaching for the front doorknob, his mouth slack with deep groans creeping past his shriveled lips.

"Nooooooooorrmaa!" he would be saying. "Normmmmmaaa, get out heeeerre!"

She'd go out like the obedient wife she is. He'd take her into his mangled arms, into his dead embrace and he would give to her the curse of walking with the dead.

Holy crud, that was the most terrifying thing she could imagine. She breathed deep and even to steady her pounding heart, trying her best not to focus on that awful stench clinging to her husband. She half carried him to the bedroom while he staggered his part of the way. The bed caught him when he dove in and she pulled off his muddy boots, his shirt, and jeans. They stunk to high heaven. His shirt and jeans she threw into the washer, but his boots went outside on the stoop.

She listened hard as she poked her head and shoulders out to set his boots down and not a single sound was heard from anything whether alive or dead. It still felt like dread out there all the same. Like a thick miasma of doom, or like the sand falling in an hourglass, except the grains of sand were zombies and their little town just happened to be on the bottom end.

Norma shivered and made sure to lock the door up extra tight.