Free Project Lazarus by Michelle Packard

phone dialing 911.
     
    “911 what’s your emergency.”
     
    The dead man watched him.
     
    “I’m at the Cotter Gazette and there’s a dead man here.”
     
    Edwin looked at him amused by his fright, leaned over the desk and announced, “Pack up your things.  I’m taking my place as the Editor of the Gazette.  You stole that position from me long ago and I’ve come back to get what I deserve.”
     
    “A dead man?  Did I hear you right?” The rattled woman’s voice asked from the other end of the phone.
     
    “Yes, his name is Edwin Lurch and he died two years ago.”
     
    “How do you know he’s dead?”
     
    “I wrote his obituary.”
     
    “And he’s alive now?” She asked.
     
    Edwin smiled at Robert. He picked up a reporter’s pad and pen off the desk, forcefully telling him, “Finish up your call then vacate your desk.  I’ll be taking over for today and by the way Fielding you’re fired.”
     
    Robert didn’t know what to do, so he conceded and removed himself from the chair.
     
    “Yes he’s alive.  Get the Sherriff over here now.  It’s an emergency,” he yelled in panic, before the icy yet warm hand grabbed the phone out of his hand and slammed down the phone.
     
    Louisa Startling always had a good shot.  Her daddy, Wilfred, God rest his soul, taught her how to shoot a rifle before the age of ten.
     
    The Cotter Town Board meeting was at 10 am and she arrived loaded with heavy artillery and a heavier heart.  Town Board Chairman Danny Tintet would be there.
     
    The group of  five men, one woman and the town lawyer were all present.  They sipped their coffee and whispered alibies and answers for their corruption, for they fostered most of it.  It wasn’t too long before a measly few residents showed up and they were in the thick of it. One town member was yelling at them for neglecting a  problem with the rezoning of their property.  The man’s voice grew louder when Louisa walked in with her shotgun aimed at Danny Tintet, a fifty five year old real estate mogul, who had walked the fine line of conflict of interest one too many times.
     
    “Found you,” she yelled, grabbed the microphone from the startled town resident and dropped it to the ground.
     
    “No sound amplification required,” she announced, pointing the shotgun directly at Danny Tintet.  There would be no ceremonial warning shot to the ceiling.  She squared her aim and shot him straight through the heart.
     
    The town board members froze in horror.  No one moved to help the man shot to death.  They all stared at Louisa Startling, knowing she was a walking dead woman.
     
    She put down the shotgun and lifted the microphone off the ground.
     
    She tapped it, “Testing….testing…one…two…three…Can everybody hear me?” She asked making a mockery of it all.
     
    They nodded feverishly, gasping, terrified, none of them knowing what to do.
     
    “The man dead on the floor rezoned my residential property five years ago so he could steal it and sell it under his own company as business property.  He destroyed my family and left us for broke.  When I died of cancer, I was penniless and I couldn’t afford medical treatment because we were living in a one bedroom apartment.  My kids have suffered ever since and my husband went into a deep depression.  I think my kids are in foster care.  I’m going to get them now.  Their mother has come home.”
     
    She turned away from the horrified group, who now shuttered with fright as the dead man on the floor started to whimper and move.
     
    The town clerk, sitting in the back row, managed to get to the corner office of the building and the phone.
     
    “Sherriff Traves, you’d better come quick we’ve got a dead woman here at the Town Hall.  She just shot a man.”
     
    In her panic, she didn’t her the beep.  The phone went straight to voice mail.
     
    Her eyes widened, as she listened the Sherriff Traves message again.
     
    “If you’re