“What’d she say?”

  “It’s not what she said so much as it was her hitting Sophie in the back of the head with a shovel.”

  “That’ll do ’er.”

  “It dropped Sophie for a while, and I hustled out and bought some chain and locks. By the time I came back, Catherine was in a complete state. Sophie kept waking up, you see, and she had to clout her a fair few times to keep her tractable.”

  “So, where’s the missus now?”

  “Abed. Seems she’s discovered the medicinal qualities of our whiskey.”

  “I’ve been saying it for years.”

  He nodded and we stood there, watching Sophie eat the cow.

  “So, Paddy me old mate,” I said softly, “what do you think we should do?”

  “With Sophie?”

  “Aye.”

  Paddy’s bruised faced took on the one expression I would have thought impossible under the circumstances. He smiled. A great big smile that was every bit as hungry and nasty as Aunt Sophie.

  -3-

  It took three days of sweet-talk and charm, of sweat-soaked promises and cajoling, but we finally got him to come to Paddy’s cowshed. And then there he was, the Mean-Dog himself, all six-and-a-half feet of him, flanked by Killer Muldoon and Razor Riley, the three of them standing in Paddy’s yard late on Sunday afternoon.

  My head was ringing from a courtesy smacking Mean-Dog had given me when I’d come to his office, and Pat’s lips were puffed out again, but Paddy was still smiling.

  “So, lads,” Mean-Dog said quietly, “tell me again why I’m here in a yard that smells of pigshit instead of at home drinking a beer.”

  “Cow shit,” Paddy corrected him, and got a clout for it.

  “We have a new business partner, Mr. Mulligan,” I said. “And she told us that we can’t provide no more whiskey until you and she settle accounts.”

  “She? You’re working with a woman?” His voice was filled with contempt. “Who’s this woman, then? Sounds like she has more mouth than she can use.”

  “You might be saying that,” Pat agreed softly. “It’s my Aunt Sophie.”

  I have to admit, that did give even Mean-Dog a moment’s pause. There are Cherokee war parties that would go twenty miles out of their way not to cross Sophie. And that was before the comet.

  “Sophie Kilpatrick, eh?” He looked at his two bruisers. Neither of them knew her and they weren’t impressed. “Where is she?”

  “In the cowshed,” Pat said. “She said she wanted to meet somewhere quiet.”

  “Shrewd,” Mean-Dog agreed, but he was still uncertain. “Lads, go in and ask Miss Sophie to come out.”

  The two goons shrugged and went into the shed as I inched my way toward the side alley. Pat held his ground, and I don’t know whether it was all the clouting ’round the head he’d been getting, or the latest batch of whiskey, or maybe he’d just reached the bottom of his own cup and couldn’t take no more from anyone, but Paddy O’Leary stood there grinning at Mean-Dog as the two big men opened the shed door and went in.

  Pat hadn’t left a light on in there and it was a cloudy day. The goons had to feel their way in the dark. When they commenced screaming, I figured they’d found their way to Sophie. This was Sunday by now, and the cow was long gone. Sophie was feeling a might peckish.

  Mean-Dog jumped back from the doorway and dragged out his pistol with one hand and took a handful of Pat’s shirt with the other. “What the hell’s happening? Who’s in there?”

  “Just Aunt Sophie,” Paddy said, and actually held his hand to God as he said it.

  Mean-Dog shoved him aside and kicked open the door. That was his first mistake, because Razor Riley’s head smacked him right in the face. Mean-Dog staggered back and then stood there in dumb shock as his leg-breaker’s head bounced to the ground right at his feet. Riley’s face wore an expression of profound shock.

  “What?” Mean-Dog asked, as if anything Pat or I could say would be an adequate answer to that.

  The second mistake Mean-Dog made was to get mad and go charging into the shed. We watched him enter and we both jumped as he fired two quick shots, then another, and another.

  I don’t know, even to this day, whether one of those shots clipped her chain or whether Sophie was even stronger than we thought she was, but a second later Mean-Dog came barreling out of the cowshed, running at full tilt, with Sophie Kilpatrick howling after him, trailing six feet of chain. She was covered in blood and the sound she made would have made a banshee take a vow of silence. They were gone down the alley in a heartbeat, and Pat and I stood there in shock for a moment, then we peered around the edge of the door into the shed.

  The lower half of Razor Riley lay just about where the cow had been. Killer Muldoon was all in one piece, but there were pieces missing from him, if you follow. Sophie had her way with him, and he lay dead as a mullet, his throat torn out and his blood pooled around him.

  “Oh, lordy,” I said. “This is bad for us, Paddy. This is jail, and skinny fellows like you and me have to wear petticoats in prison.”

  But there was a strange light in his eyes. Not a glowing green light—which was a comfort—but not a nice light, either. He looked down at the bodies and then over his shoulder in the direction where Sophie and Mean-Dog had vanished. He licked his bruised lips and said, “You know, Pegleg … there are other sonsabitches who owe us money.”

  “Those are bad thoughts you’re having, Paddy my dear.”

  “I’m not saying we feed them to Sophie. But if we let it get known, so to speak. Maybe show them what’s left of these lads …”

  “Patrick O’Leary, you listen to me—we are not about being criminal masterminds here. I’m not half as smart as a fencepost and you’re not half as smart as me, so let’s not be planning anything extravagant.”

  Which is when Mean-Dog Mulligan came screaming back into Paddy’s yard. God only knows what twisted puzzle-path he took through the neighborhood, but there he was, running back toward us, his arms bleeding from a couple of bites and his big legs pumping to keep him just ahead of Sophie.

  “Oh dear,” Pat said in a voice that made it clear that his plan still had a few bugs to be sorted out.

  “Shovel!” I said and lunged for the one Catherine had used on her aunt. Paddy grabbed a pickaxe and we swung at the same time.

  I hit Sophie fair and square in the face and the shock of it rang all the way up my arms and shivered the tool right out of my hands, but the force of the blow had its way with her, and her green eyes were instantly blank. She stopped dead in her tracks and then pitched backward to measure her length on the ground.

  Paddy’s swing had a different effect. The big spike of the pickaxe caught Mean-Dog square in the center of the chest and, though everyone said the man had no heart, Pat and his pickaxe begged to differ. The gangster’s last word was “Urk!” and he fell backward, as dead as Riley and Muldoon.

  “Quick!” I said, and we fetched the broken length of chain from the shed and wound it about Sophie, pinning her arms to her body and then snugging it all with the padlock. While Pat was checking the lock, I fetched the wheelbarrow and we grunted and cursed some more as we got her onto it.

  “We have to hide the bodies,” I said, and Pat, too stunned to speak, just nodded. He grabbed Mean-Dog’s heels and dragged him into the shed while I played a quick game of football with Razor Riley’s head. Soon the three toughs were hidden in the shed. Pat closed it and we locked the door.

  That left Sophie sprawled on the ’barrow, and she was already starting to show signs of waking up.

  “Sweet suffering Jesus!” I yelled. “Let’s get her into the hills. We can chain her to a tree by the still until we figure out what to do.”

  “What about them?” Pat said, jerking a thumb at the shed.

  “They’re not going anywhere.”

  We took the safest route that we could manage quickly, and if anyone did see us hauling a fat, blood-covered, struggling dead woman in chains out of town in a wheelbarrow, it never made it into an official report. We chained her to a stout oak and then hurried back. It was already dark, and we were scared and exhausted and I wanted a drink so badly I could cry.

  “I had a jug in the shed,” Pat whispered as we crept back into his yard.

  “Then consider me on the wagon, lad.”

  “Don’t be daft. There’s nothing in there that can hurt us now. And we have to decide what to do with those lads.”

  “God … this is the sort of thing that could make the mother of Jesus eat meat on Friday.”

  He unlocked the door, and we went inside, careful not to step in blood, careful not to look at the bodies. I lit his small lantern, and we closed the door so we could drink for a bit and sort things out.

  After we’d both had a few pulls on the bottle, I said, “Pat, now be honest, my lad … you didn’t think this through, now did you?”

  “It worked out differently in my head.” He took a drink.

  “How’s that?”

  “Mean-Dog got scared of us and paid us, and then everyone else heard about Sophie and got scared of us, too.”

  “Even though she was chained up in a cowshed?”

  “Well, she got out, didn’t she?”

  “Was that part of the plan?”

  “Not as such.”

  “So, in the plan we just scared people with a dead fat woman in a shed.”

  “It sounds better when it’s only a thought.”

  “Most things do.” We toasted on that.

  Mean-Dog Mulligan said, “Ooof.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, the jug halfway to my mouth.

  We both turned and there he was, Mean-Dog himself with a pickaxe in his chest and no blood left in him, struggling to sit up. Next to him, Killer Muldoon was starting to twitch. Mean-Dog looked at us, and his eyes were already glowing green.

  “Was this part of the plan, then?” I whispered.

  Paddy said “Eeep!” which was all he could manage.

  That’s how the whole lantern thing started, you see. It was never the cow, ’cause the cow was long dead by then. It was Patrick who grabbed the lantern and threw it, screaming all the while, right at Mean-Dog Mulligan.

  I grabbed Pat by the shoulder and dragged him out of the shed and we slammed the door and leaned on it while Patrick fumbled the lock and chain into place.

  It was another plan we hadn’t thought all the way through. The shed didn’t have a cow anymore, but it had plenty of straw. It fair burst into flame. We staggered back from it and then stood in his yard, feeling the hot wind blow past us, watching as the breeze blew the fire across the alley. Oddly, Paddy’s house never burned down, and Catherine slept through the whole thing.

  It was about 9 pm when it started, and by midnight the fire had spread all the way across the south branch of the river. We watched the business district burn—and with it, all of the bars that bought our whiskey.

  Maybe God was tired of our shenanigans, or maybe he had a little pity left for poor fools, but sometime after midnight it started to rain. They said later that if it hadn’t rained, then all of Chicago would have burned. As it was, it was only half the town. The church burned down, though, and Father Callahan was roasted like a Christmas goose. Sure, and the Lord had His mysterious ways.

  Two other things burned up that night. Our still and Aunt Sophie. All we ever found was her skeleton and the chains wrapped around the burned stump of the oak. On the ground between her charred feet was a small lump of green rock. Neither one of us dared touch it. We just dug a hole and swatted it in with the shovel, covered it over and fled. As far as I know, it’s still up there to this day.

  When I think of what would have happened if we’d followed through with Pat’s plan … or if Mean-Dog and Muldoon had gotten out and bitten someone else—who knows how fast it could have spread, or how far? It also tends to make my knees knock when I think of how many other pieces of that green comet must have fallen … and where those stones are. Just thinking about it’s enough to make a man want to take a drink.

  I would like to say that Paddy and I changed our ways after that night, that we never rebuilt the still and never took nor sold another drop of whiskey. But that would be lying, and as we both know, I never like to tell a lie.

  About the Author

  Jonathan Maberry is a New York Times bestselling author, 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, anthology editor, and comic book writer. His vampire apocalypse book series, V-WARS, was a Netflix original series. He writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, fantasy, and action; and he writes for adults, teens, and middle grade. His works include the Joe Ledger thrillers, Ink, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, Mars One, and many others. Several of his works are in development for film and TV. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies including The X-Files, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, New Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Baker Street Irregulars, Nights of the Living Dead, and others. His comics include Black Panther: DoomWar, The Punisher: Naked Kills, and Bad Blood. His Rot & Ruin young adult novel was adapted into the #1 comic on Webtoons and is being developed for film by Alcon Entertainment. He is a board member of the Horror Writers Association, the president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and the editor of Weird Tales Magazine.

  He lives in San Diego, California. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com

  Additional Copyright Information

  “Fat Girl with a Knife” ©2015 by Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in Slasher Girls & Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke, Dial Books.

  “Chokepoint” © 2013 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in The Uninvited Magazine #2.

  “Lone Gunman” ©2017 by Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in Nights of the Living Dead, edited by Jonathan Maberry and George R. Romero, St. Martins Griffin.

  “Not this War, Not this World” ©2015 by Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams, Titan Books.

  “Calling Death” © 2012 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; originally published in Appalachian Undead, edited by Eugene Johnson, Apex Publications.

  “Gavin Funke’s Monster Movie Marathon” ©2020 by Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in Monsters, Movies & Mayhem, edited by Kevin J. Anderson, WordFire Press.

  “Overdue Books” © 2013 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; originally published in Dark Moon Digest Young Adult Horror Issue Vol 1.

  “A Small Taste of the Old Country” ©2017 by Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in Haunted Nights, edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton, Blumhouse Books.

  “Sisters” © 2013 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; originally published in Decision Points, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt, WordFire Press.

  “Jack and Jill” © 2012 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; originally published in 21st Century Dead, edited by Christopher Golden, St. Martin’s Griffin

  “The Wind through the Fence” © 2011 Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in Death Be Not Proud, edited by Thomas Erb; Permuted Press.

  “Jingo and the Hammerman” ©2015 by Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in The End Has Come, edited by Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams, Broad Reach Publishing.

  “The Death Poem of Sensei Ōtoro” © 2012 by Jonathan Maberry Productions, LLC; first published in Hungry Tales: Blackstone Audio.

  “Son of the Devil” ©2015 by Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in The Weird Wild West edited by Misty Massey, Emily Lavin Leverett & Margaret S. McGraw, eSpec Publishing.

  “Pegleg and Paddy Save the World” ©2007 Jonathan Maberry Productions LLC; originally published in History is Dead, edited by Kim Paffenroth; Permuted Press.

  “Cadaver Dogs” is an original for this collection

  If You Liked …

  If you liked Empty Graves, you might also enjoy:

  Dan Shamble 1: Death Warmed Over

  by Kevin J. Anderson

  * * *

  Drumbeats

  by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart

  * * *

  The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard

  Other WordFire Press Titles

  Monsters, Movies, & Mayhem

  A Fantastic Holiday Season

  * * *

  The Wolf Leader

  by Alexandre Dumas, Introduction

  by Jonathan Maberry

  * * *

  Our list of other WordFire Press authors and titles is always growing. To find out more and to shop our selection of titles, visit us at:

  wordfirepress.com

 

 

  Jonathan Maberry, Empty Graves

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends