Free Cemetery Club by J. G. Faherty

firecrackers going off. White flashes of light detonated around him, accompanied by crackling sounds and a pounding in his skull.
    Lost amid the noise and pain was the single, sharp sting of the jagged glass shard that sliced his throat open. His blood sizzled on exposed wires and electronic boards as it ran from his neck but Duffy never noticed, just as he never noticed when the darkness inside the television set blended into the darkness of death.
    Pete dragged the old man’s body out of the fragmented screen and dropped it on the floor. At the same time, Lester removed his hands from Patty's neck and stood up. They both stepped away from the bodies as a swirling cloud of grayish-black matter entered the room and rapidly coalesced into a twisted parody of a human form, like a skinny ghost caught in a miniature tornado. The red-eyed apparition dropped onto Patty’s face and proceeded to drag itself into her mouth and down her throat.
    Patty’s eyes opened and she gasped for air, clutching at her throat. After a moment, her hands fell away and an emotionless expression came over her features, matching the ones worn by Pete and Lester. Patty sat up, her overweight form showing a grace of movement she’d never had while alive. Red marks in the shape of thin fingertips marred the pale color of her neck. She looked to the side, where Duffy’s corpse was slowly staining the carpet dark crimson.
    A thin string of saliva escaped from between her lips. Without hesitation, she bent over and attacked her husband’s body with her mouth and hands.
    Pete and Lester stood up and exited the house.
    Patty ignored them as she continued to eat the man she’d been married to for almost fifty years.
    Down the street, Pete and Lester kicked in another door, their night’s work just beginning. Not long after, more cries for help echoed through the warm night air.
    Sometime after midnight, five blood-soaked people followed Pete and Lester back to the Gates of Heaven Cemetery.
    Not one of the neighbors thought to call the police.
    In the Lowlands, people made it a habit not to get involved.
     
    *  *  *
     
    It was just before noon when John Boyd sat down at the farthest booth in the McDonald’s dining area. He didn’t need to see the looks the other patrons cast his way to know he wasn’t welcome; he was well aware of his current state of repulsiveness. His clothes gave off the rancid cheese smell of weeks-old perspiration and layers of dirt had combined to stain everything he wore to the same dun-colored brown. Even the hot, greasy odors of grilling burgers, sizzling French fries and steaming buns couldn’t overpower the acrid reek surrounding his body. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t made a fuss when he’d been given a wide berth while waiting in line for his food.
    Even now, sitting only a few feet from the bathrooms, his own stink seemed more than a match for the antiseptic pine scent and stale urine odor that drifted past him each time someone emerged.
    Fuck ‘em all, he thought with a mental smile as he tore a huge, dripping bite from his Big Mac. Sauce, lettuce and melted cheese dripped onto his thrift store sports jacket and he scooped it up with a filth-encrusted finger, ignoring the black specks that rested atop the spillage like cinnamon on rice pudding. I got just as much right to eat here as they do.
    Besides, he was starving. It had taken him two days of collecting bottles and cans to make enough money for this meal. The shelter provided coffee all day but unless you got in line before seven a.m. you missed out on the free pastries. Thanks to booze and exhaustion, he rarely got up before nine. Of course, sleeping late was just one of many bad habits he’d developed since joining the unwashed masses.
    In fact, when he really thought about it, the only things in life he could still be proud of were his ability to not shit himself the way some of his shelter-mates did and the fact that no matter how polluted he got,