"What about that trucker last Tuesday?" Duke asked.

"Oh hell, he don't count. He was asking for it. Look, miss, under all that hair, Duke is just a big ol' puppy dog, and I already ate. What say you lower that. We won't hurt you, and unless you got silver buckshot in there, it won't really do much to either of us."

Loretta, seeing the wisdom of his words, laid her shotgun on the counter. "Well, you fellas seem nice enough, and you did save me some ammunition. Guess a free slice of pie ain't too much to ask in return."

She went to the rotating pastry display, currently empty save for half an apple pie.

"This sort of thing happen much around here?" Earl asked.

She sighed. "Every couple of weeks. It's usually only three or four of the bastards. I don't have to tell you, it's really cut into my business."

"You tried anything about it yet?"

"Got the preacher to bless and exorcise the cemetery after the second time. I guess it didn't take. After that, I figured I could wait them out. That's the weird part. Can't be more than a hundred graves in that place, but I've killed more than a hundred and fifty since. Hundred and eighty-one counting that batch. Damned if I can reckon where they're all coming from. Nobody's been buried in there for years."

"Sounds like a problem," Earl remarked.

She nodded, setting a plate before Duke.

The werewolf wrapped his immense hands around a fork and took an experimental bite.

"Well?"

She stared at his wolf's head, looking for any sign of a smile on his muzzle.

"He likes it." Earl pointed to the werewolf's briskly wagging tail.

"Glad to hear it. I made it myself."

She clapped her meaty hands together. "Say, you fellas looking for work?"

"We can look into that zombie problem for you," Earl agreed.

"Actually, I was talking about helping me lay a new gas line for my stove. But if you take care of those damn corpses, I'd throw in a hundred bucks and some gas."