Free More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse by Joel Arnold Page A

reopened coffins. The women
and children brought food and water and beer to the men, and kept
the coffee brewing in the church.
    Bogen’s Tuva was still there, unmolested in
her coffin, and Bogen relatched the lid. He, Amund, and a couple
other men hoisted the coffin out of the grave. “Where will you put
her?” Amund asked.
    Bogen shook his head. “I don’t know. On the
farm, I guess.”
    “ Do you think it will be safe
there?”
    Bogen stared at Amund a moment. Before he
could answer there was a shout of “No, God!”
    It came from one of the Mikkelsen brothers.
Amund ran over to them and looked down at the graves of their
mother and father, dead from a barn fire years earlier. Their
coffin had been splintered from the bottom, the corpses removed
from below.
    Thunder rumbled in the distance. Amund
squinted at the cloudy sky.
    Knute Mikkelsen tossed the remnants of his
father’s coffin up and out of the grave and began frantically
digging in the disturbed earth at the grave’s floor.
    More thunder, closer now, but the clouds
were not dark. There was no lightening.
    A scream rose from another grave. Two
screams. Amund looked toward the sound. A woman lay on her stomach,
reaching over the edge of another reopened grave, holding onto
something and screaming.
    Amund ran to her.
    Jacobine Overland, she of the nocturnal
couplings with the much younger Frode, holding onto her husband
Gunnar’s arm as a creature gripped the lower half of his torso. It
bit down on Gunnar’s waist. His screams stopped, cut off abruptly
as gouts of blood erupted from his mouth.
    The creature disappeared back down into the
earth, taking the lower half of Gunnar with it. Jacobine continued
holding onto the upper half of her husband’s body. His head
remained tilted up toward her, eyes fixed on her, face frozen in
agony.
    “ Let go,” Amund shouted. Jacobine
continued to scream.
    “ Please!” Amund said.
    Another scream. This time from one of the
Mikkelsen brothers. Amund looked back in time to see the creature’s
head rise from their parent’s grave, grab hold of Knute and pull
him down.
    Now Amund joined the chorus of voices
shouting “Out! Get out now! Get out of the graves!”
    He turned back to Jacobine, her screams
turned to sobbing. She still held onto the upper half that remained
of her husband. Amund heard more thunder. Louder now.
    He knew it wasn’t thunder.
    “ Please, Mrs. Overland. Let go. Now!
You must.”
    She didn’t seem to hear, or at least didn’t
care. She couldn’t take her eyes from the fixed, dead eyes of
Gunnar.
    Amund felt the earth shake. As he reached
down to grab Jacobine by the shoulders, the creature rose again
from the grave, grabbing the rest of Gunnar. As it gulped him down,
it opened its jaws wider, rose another foot from the ground and
snapped over Jacobine’s head. Amund fell backward as the creature
burrowed back beneath the earth. Blood from Jacobine’s neck spilled
into the dirt and splattered onto the remaining splintered coffin
boards.
    More than one. There has to be more than
one.
    People ran to the church, dropping shovels
and picks along the way.
    Pastor Blom was already in the bell tower,
ringing the church bell. As townspeople gathered in the church,
Amund watched Blom and finally put his hand on his back. “Stop!” he
shouted. “Stop now, Pastor.”
    Pastor Blom looked over his shoulder at
Amund and slowed down his frantic tugging of the thick rope. Blood
dripped from his palms. He struggled to pry his fingers off the
rope.
    Amund’s ears rang. “Go talk to your flock,”
Amund said. “They need you.”
    Pastor Blom looked at Amund, perplexed.
Fearful. “But – I don’t know what to tell them. This – whatever it
is that is happening – what do I say to them?”
    Amund thought a moment as the sound of
thunder rose outside. “You will know what to say.”
    “ But there are no words,” Blom said.
He paused a moment as the echo of the church bell died. Then he
walked down