Free Project Lazarus by Michelle Packard Page A

calling about the dead people, please continue to wait on the line.”
     

Chapter 11- Closed Doors
     
    Emma Winters and Audra Thyme were neighbors for twenty years in Cotter.  Together, they resided in a small subdivision of houses that most would envy given the current economy.  Their families exemplified the remainder and reminder of the middle class.  They survived economic hardship by luck. Their husbands had good jobs and hadn’t been fired. Their continued survival depended on how well they continued their new part time jobs as scavengers.  Scrimping and saving every penny was a past time and the two women talked about it often.
     
    A new reality set in that morning at Emma’s house, over coffee and conversation about the latest coupon website.
     
    Audra, with her coffee mug in hand, stared blankly outside the pretty ivory curtains shading Emma’s front window, watching.  Money faded quickly from her mind.  The world outside the house of savings was now about real survival not material survival.
     
    “Emma,” she started, “Look outside,” she commanded.
     
    Emma obeyed.  Startled, she saw all the people walking, wandering around, really.  Women in dresses and men in suits.  Walking like zombies.
     
    “What’s going on out there?” She asked Audra.
     
    “I don’t know.  Who are all those people?”
     
    “Beats me.  What do you make of it?”  Emma asked, becoming more bewildered by the minute.
     
    The two women sat silently, watching the strange scene before them.
     
    A group of the dead had just woken up from the gravesite nearly five miles away.  They gathered and seemed to like their neighborhood.
     
    “Look at that one,” exclaimed Audra, pointing to a woman wearing a long white dress, obviously from the eighteenth century.
     
    “Come on.  Let’s go outside and see what this is all about,” Emma urged.
     
    She was always the more adventurous of the two.
     
    “No way,” Audra told her, “something weird is going on.”
     
    Emma, already out of her seat, was heading for the front door.  Audra hesitated and followed reluctantly.
     
    The two women opened the door slowly.  Emma stood in front with Audra right behind her, ducking, as if ready to take cover behind her.
     
    They had no idea what was beyond that door.
     
    They peered out first, as the strange group of people, kept wandering, aimlessly.
     
    “Who do you think they are?”  Emma asked.
     
    “They act funny.  Like they’re in a daze or something.”
     
    “Yeah,” Emma agreed, “what do you suppose happened to them and why are they all dressed so funny?”
     
    “Look,” Audra pointed, their neighbor across the street Jim Walters was on his porch.
     
    Jim was a big burly guy, not someone to be messed with and he was one neighbor’s feathers no one wanted to ruffle.
     
    “I said get off my property,” he shouted at a woman dressed in black.
     
    “I’m looking for my husband Walter.  Have you seen him?” She asked.
     
    ‘No, now get off my land,” he told her.
     
    The incident on Jim’s property was heating up.  More of the strangers approached the woman dressed in black.
     
    Emma and Audra’s attention was quickly taken from Jim’s house to the screaming voice of a man, about thirty years old, with sandy blonde hair.
     
    “I want to go back to hell,” he screamed so loudly, both women inched back to the door.
     
    The strange group was crowding on Jim’s land and he too retreated quickly inside.
     
    “Why did they take me from heaven?” One young girl with black hair and startling blue eyes asked.  Her hands rose to the sky and she fell to her knees, in one distraught motion.
     
    The strangers seemed to think Jim had the answers and began knocking on his door.  Then ponding.
     
    “Where’s Mommy?”  Asked a little girl.
     
    “I want to find my sister Nancy,” said another man.
     
    “Go to hell,” roared one to another.
     
    “Help me,” screamed out