"Yep." Earl shut his bed.

Morning came to Rockwood. Duke was nocturnal by nature. Loretta, as owner/operator of Gil's All Night Diner, slept days as well. But the former zombies (now just plain rotting corpses) weren't about to clean themselves up. Duke loaded the bodies onto Loretta's pickup while she swept up the broken glass.

"Why is it," she asked, "that not one damned zombie can figure out how to work a door? Even the stupidest danged fool can push."

Duke tossed the last corpse onto the bed as a brown police car pulled into the diner's unpaved parking lot. A tall, lean man stepped into the hard morning light.

"Morning, Sheriff."

He tipped his Stetson to her. "Loretta. I thought I saw buzzards. Had another incident last night, did'ja?"

"Yep. Sheriff, this is Duke. He'll be staying awhile to help me put in a new gas line. Duke, this is Sheriff Marshall Kopp. He's the law in this county."

Kopp chuckled. "She makes it sound more important than it is. We got good people in this county. All the trouble comes from passers-through. Didn't catch your last name there, pardner."

Duke wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hands. "Smith."

Kopp smiled skeptically. He stood tall as Duke, but his slender frame fell under the larger man's shadow. He pulled off his sunglasses and looked Duke square in the eye. "Well, Mr. Smith, you look like a decent, law-abiding fella. I don't think we'll have any problems."

"No, sir."

"Glad to hear it." He bent down to scoop up a zombie leg. "Phew! These things ripen real quick in this heat."

"Tell me about it," Loretta agreed. "You ain't going to report this, Marshall?"

He shrugged. "Don't see why I should. Just as long as you clean it up before the buzzards get hungry."