Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies Read Online Free Page A

closed ranks behind, whispering to one another in Spanish.
    “Well?” Granny asked. “Perfidy don’t get any better in waiting.”
    “You got a lot of nerve coming here and saying something like that in front of my people!”
    “Better they know what kind of trash they’re workin’ for,” Granny said. “Take me to the bodies. Right now.”
    There was no sense in arguing with her. He took her by the arm and steered her around the side of the hay barn to where the men dumped the organic trash like dead vines and branches they intended to burn. He kicked aside a canvas tarpaulin and stepped aside. He had gotten up before dawn and buried the dead raccoons, traps and all, figuring to set the whole thing on fire. No one would ever know what he had done.
    But someone had told her. He refused to believe it could have been the raccoons. Someone must have seen him!
    In the nest of rotting hay and leaves, the bodies looked pathetic, not dangerous. The black masks wore a tragicomic aspect. The largest of the trapped animals was a big male. Blood stained the sides of his jaws. His handlike paw was a mass of torn tissue and blood below the teeth of the snare. He must have tried to chew it off before he died. Guiltily, Pilkington recalled what Bob
in the hardware store had said about the video the Fish and Wildlife people had made him watch.
    Granny dropped to her knees beside the bodies and keened aloud. She looked up at Pilkington, tears in her eyes.
    “O woe unto you, who have sinned against God! Weep for the children! That youngster isn’t more than three months old. Poor little pup. This is the child of the one you killed before.”
    “You’re a crazy old woman. You can’t know about wild animals. They can’t talk!”
    Granny’s voice was husky. “I know. I know them all. And her! It was her first season out! Your poor wife, may God keep her at his right hand, would have been so ashamed of you!”
    Pilkington felt hot fury boiling enough to blind him.
    “Now it’s my time to tell you to get off my land, you crazy old bitch!” he roared. “Go on. You saw them. Now, go!”
    Granny took her time prizing each trap open flat and easing each of the ragged bodies out. She rose to her feet and looked around. A wheelbarrow was propped against the wall of the barn next to the waste pile. She retrieved it and piled the small corpses in it. Pilkington watched her stonily.
    “That was a crime against decency,” Granny informed him, as she settled the last body. “Against Mother Nature herself. You can make amends.”
    “I ain’t gonna make amends to a bunch of thieving varmints, and I sure ain’t gonna make them to you.”
    “You’re gonna pay for that, you idiotic Ide Pilkington. May God have the mercy on you that you didn’t have on none of His natural creations.”
    Pilkington had had about enough of her preaching. “I
don’t care what kind of delusion you have. I gotta make money to make a living, to keep this farm going. If this is what it takes, then I’d do it again.”
    Granny regarded him sadly. “We all have to live, unless we forfeit the privilege.”
    “Well, that’s what your varmints did.” Pilkington let righteous indignation overwhelm the chill he felt. “They uprooted my plants. I had to make them stop. Well, they stopped. Now, get out of here. We might be neighbors, but we ain’t friends.”
    Granny shook her head sadly. “You could’ve lived in harmony, Ide Pilkington. Your pop would have been so ashamed of you. It’s a good thing he’s dead.”
    “Don’t you dare talk about my father,” he exclaimed. “He shot plenty of critters.”
    “No. He never laid a baby to rest that did no one harm. He never destroyed nothin’ that wasn’t mad or an outright danger. You’re a disgrace, and I am sorry you set your own destruction in motion.” She picked up the handles of the barrow and started back to her car.
    Pilkington shook a hand at her. “You try anything, and I will sue you for