He took his time walking back to the cemetery. Graveyards creeped him out. They always had. As a mortal, whenever he'd strolled past one, he could feel the eyes of the dead staring at him. He'd remind himself that there were no such thing as ghosts, no boogeymen or monsters. They were just figments of his imagination. Then he'd died and risen from the grave as one of the undead. Pushing monsters away into childhood fantasies was much harder after you'd become one. He'd discovered that most of the terrors that stalked the night weren't really terrors at all. They were mostly like regular folks, just trying to live their lives. As long as they were left alone they were perfectly harmless except for the occasional bite on the neck. Humans were the real terrors, always getting worked up and looking to kill something.

But cemeteries still creeped him out because ghosts creeped him out. And experience told him that every cemetery had at least one ghost in residence. Most people couldn't see them except as flitting shadows on a spooky night when the moonlight shined just right. As a vampire, Earl wasn't so lucky. He stood on that fine line between death and life, one foot on each side, though not truly belonging to either.

A waist-high wooden fence surrounded the two acres of neglected graveyard. The fence was barely standing in some places, completely fallen in others. A tall wrought-iron arch marked the entrance. The left gate clung to the arch by one rusty hinge. The right side creaked as it swayed back and forth. The plots on the other side were marked by homemade wooden headstones or the rare modest stone marker. Several tall cacti stood like unblinking watchmen. The wind picked up just long enough to raise a cloud of dust and bounce a tumbleweed across Earl's path.

"I ain't scared of nuthin'."

He walked through the gates.

Right away Earl saw something was wrong. Gaping holes covered the ground where zombies had dug their way out of their resting places. Earl counted sixty before losing interest. It looked as if not a single corpse had had the decency to stay in its grave. Except one.