Free Jigsaw World by JD Lovil

graveyard. A few more feet saw the group at
one of the ancillary gates to the bone-yard. They entered the final
resting place of the local deceased.
    It was immediately apparent that the recently
deceased were no longer at rest. Indeed, it could be said that the
deceased were not even at their ease, as the entirety of the graves
in this graveyard had been dug up, and at the bottom of each of the
open graves could be seen an open and empty coffin.
    “ What the hell do you think
happened here?” Sidney asked.
    “ There are only a couple of
possible explanations.” Tom replied. “Either somebody dug up all
these graves, or the bodies inside them dug their way
out.”
    “ Check this out. These graves have
compacted soil inside them, with only a small amount of loose soil
thrown up out of the grave.” George remarked. “I am going out on a
limb here, and say that the bodies clawed their way up out of the
grave. They made room at the bottom of the grave by compacting soil
until they could open the lid and get out, and work their way up
toward the surface until they could break out to the
surface.”
    “ Seems a mite premature to be
burying folks before they are dead.” George ventured. “Anything is
possible, but I haven’t seen any zombies lately, so what is going
on?”
    “ I saw a bit of Zombie action on a
newscast a few days ago. This could be more of that, but I would
place odds that this is something else.” Tom mused. “Zombies are a
bit more aggressive in trying to find human flesh to chow down on.
We would be hip deep in rotting walkers right now if it were
zombies.”
    “ Well, there are just a few body
riders out there that it could be.” Sidney shared. “Maybe some kind
of vampire or some weird possession that only happens to dead
bodies. I don’t think that these are examples of mummies, and all
of the eaters of the dead would tunnel down to get to the bodies,
not up and out.”
    “ Whatever they are, why don’t we
just get the fuck out of here?” Charla chimed in. “I don’t see what
good figuring this out does for us, and I am not in the mood to
deal with walking corpses right now.”
    “ Get the girl a cigar!” Tom said.
“I don’t think we can do a lot for this town, and we have more road
to cover.”
    The group having generally agreed to vacate,
they all started walking toward the gate to the graveyard that they
had entered. At this point, they were perhaps a thousand feet away
from the RV, and once they had found a source of fuel, they could
be on their way.
    “ Hey guys, I think we are a little
late!” George said. He pointed at the gate they were approaching,
where several disheveled and dirty people were blocking their
exit.
    “ We were just leaving!” Tom called
out. “Leave us alone, and we will leave you alone!”
    A few of the people ahead smirked at that.
Tom’s group continued toward them, while surreptitiously checking
themselves for ready access to their weapons. Tom and George took
point, and Sidney took up position behind Charla. A quietly
growling Bailey walked just to the right of Charla.
    If the people blocking their exit were a cross
section of resurrected corpses, they were certainly in better
physical shape than Tom would have expected. While some of them
looked as though they had been awakened to pursue activities from
the middle of some pig pen without getting their morning coffee,
none of them had flesh rotting off of their bodies. None of them
were even missing body parts!
    As the group got within a dozen feet of the
possible zombies, Bailey launched himself at the nearest one. As he
made contact with the person, there was an arc of some sort at the
point of contact, and Bailey was propelled back the way he came
from at about the same rate as his charge. When he hit the ground,
he rolled a couple of times. He regained his feet promptly, and
looked more surprised than hurt.
    The opposing group looked as though they were
about to charge. Tom produced his knife