Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies Read Online Free Page B

every inch of land you have.”
    Granny didn’t even look back. “You talk big about the land, but you don’t understand what’s important about it. I feel sorry for you. Goodbye, Ide. I think this is the last time we’ll meet on this earth.”
    Granny had to dig the grave herself, as none of the night-walking animals would be out for hours. She made the hole big enough for all the critters, so they wouldn’t get lonesome in the twilight, until they went back to nature. She picked up the baby. It fit in her two outspread hands like a puppy. Gently, she settled it into the hollow of the young female’s body. They weren’t mother and child, but they were kin. It would do.

    The hardest one to soothe to sleep was the male with his mangled paw. His mask was twisted into a rictus of agony. Granny stroked his forehead before closing his eyes.
    “Good night, children. You’re safe here, I swear it.”
    She went to stand over the other grave and folded her hands together.
    “I am sorry from my heart you don’t get to sleep, but that youngster who died was one of yours. I figure I got to give you the chance. I’d prefer you rested in peace, but that’s your decision to make. Do what you feel is right. If you leave it be, so will I.” She opened her hands. A globe of milky light dropped from them and landed on the patch of earth. It began to sink in like oil. It would take some time until her question could find that wandering spirit, but vengeance was just. She had to lay the truth before God and let nature take its course.
    Granny went inside, dusting dirt off her hands. Supper had to be gotten for her sons and her workers. Life for the living went on. That poor fool of an Ide Pilkington. She didn’t want to think about him no more.
    Pilkington was jubilant as he strode up and down the rows of tomatoes. The traps had worked. It had been over a week, and no more fruit turned up with bites taken out of them. No plants were uprooted. It looked like good common sense had won out over superstition. The critters wouldn’t go where some of their kind had died. He had not seen a single raccoon on the property for more than a week. With any luck they’d start getting decent picking going pretty soon.
    “You see what I told you, Ruiz?” he said. “No curse. No problem.”
    “Si, Señor Pay,” the foreman said. “I get people here in one week, okay?”

    “You do that,” Pilkington said. Damn, it felt good to get things rolling the way they should be. Superstition be damned. Farming was a science. Combine the elements of the right weather, the right seeds, water, fertilizer, pesticides, weeding, and harvesting at the right time, and everything ought to come out okay.
    Ruiz went back to supervise his men, who were hoeing the peppers, also untouched. Pilkington remembered he had to call the farm bureau. He headed for his old jeep to drive back to his office.
    Just ahead of him, something crossed the open space between rows. Pilkington halted. Could be a snake. Fields were always full of mice, good hunting for corn snakes and black snakes, all harmless to humans. But that had been too bulky. An animal? It didn’t scoot like a rabbit, and it wasn’t big enough or the right color for a fox or a coyote. In fact, Pilkington could have sworn it was a raccoon. But they didn’t come out in daylight unless they were starving or sick. He stepped over the row of plants, trying to catch up with it. Dammit, why couldn’t they stay away from him?
    He checked row after row. It was either too fast for him or it must have gone to ground. Well, if he found any more bitten tomatoes, he was going to reset those traps.
    Pilkington hated office work. There were more forms to fill out than vegetables to sell, the guys used to joke. And even in this day of computers, most of them couldn’t be done online. It was just a way for the government to keep the farmer from catching up and figuring out what a bad deal they were getting from