Page 21 of Midlife Shifter Unexpected

“Yeah, I’m starting to figure that out,” I grumbled, sniffing around at the grave. “But the point is, why does it have to be zombies? I don’t want it to be zombies. I want it to be something else, anything else. Just not dead creepy things.”

“Carl’s not a dead, creepy thing,” Mae pointed out.

“I beg to differ with you,” I said. “Carl is very much a dead creepy thing. You just think he’s cute.”

“But don’t lie. You think he’s cute too,” Mae said.

“Okay, he’s a little bit cute,” I agreed. “But it’s mainly just his left ear. His left ear is super cute, like if there was just a left ear, I would like cuddle that left ear all day long.”

“I need you to smell this glen,” Mae said. “It has the freshest graves in it.”

“Do you want me to sniff out the zombie?” I asked. “Figure out where they are?”

“We know where it is,” Mae said. “It’s back in the hole.”

“Seriously? It dug the hole and then came up, didn’t do anything, and went back down the hole?” I asked looking around.

“We’ve begun to see more and more holes around the cemetery, and we just think that pretty soon, all the zombies are going to be coming out of the ground. I don’t know if the walls of the cemetery are going to hold them in or not.”

“Can I throw up now?” I said, my stomach turning in knots.

“Not until you smell the place,” Mae insisted. “We’re trying to figure out where their power is coming from.”

“You want me to smell power?” I asked grabbing a branch and pulling it toward my nose. “How does one smell for power?”

“I don’t know. Just close your eyes and try?” she suggested. “That’s all I’ve ever been doing.”

“And how is that working for you?” I asked with a slight grin. “Just kidding. I know how tough this has been.”

“Have you thought about what you’re going to tell your kid?” Mae asked me.

“No, I have not found one single thought about what I’m going to tell my son. I’m hoping to not have to tell him at all, but I guess we need to find out if he’s going to be a werewolf or not.” I muttered.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about my daughter. The vampires already know about her, and I need to get her out here as soon as possible to talk to her about this whole thing, and probably protect her at this stage.”

I hadn’t even thought about all of that. “Is my son in danger?”

“Eventually he could be,” Mae said.

It was too much. “I’ve got to get home. Jane’s going to be there. I’ve got to deal with one thing at a time. Let me just smell around and then I’ll let you know.”

Mae dutifully closed her mouth, and I closed my eyes, standing there in the silence. I slowly inhaled deeply through my nose, tracing each scent as it came in one nostril and out the other.

The stench of rotten corpses was ripe in the air. It reminded me of a time when I would be walking on a country road as a kid and discover roadkill that had been there for a few days. The ravens would’ve picked out inside its guts, but the stench would still be ripe in the air as its bloated corpse rotted in the sun. It smelled like the sweet-sour smell of three-day dead flesh.

“How old is this graveyard?” I asked.

“A hundred and fifty years old.”

“How long ago did they stop burying bodies here?” I asked.

“God, I think probably just my family has been buried here, like my aunt and my grandparents, in the last fifty years.” Mae turned to me a look of horror growing on her face. “My aunt. You don’t think my aunt has anything to do with this?”

“I can’t say if she does or she doesn’t, but most of the dead in this grave should be skeletons by now if it has been more than fifty years. Even your own grandparents, it’s been a few years. it’s not like there’s going to be a lot of fresh corpses, are there?”

“OK, so skeletons are coming out of the graves?” Mae asked.

“No, you don’t get it. I’m smelling fresh dead people,” I said. “Like someone who was alive a few days ago but is now dead.”

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