Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies Read Online Free PDF

he felt eyes on him again. He turned cautiously around.
    The raccoon stood in the middle of the room. Its narrow jaws snarled at him. The eyes in the black mask were hollow. Pilkington scrambled up. It wasn’t healthy. Nothing should look like that and still be moving. It lurched toward him, teeth bared. He felt behind him for the shovel. The raccoon snapped at him. He swept downward with the face of the shovel and smacked it right in the head. It rolled backwards. Before it could move again Pilkington went into a frenzy, battering the body over and over. He chopped off one paw with the blade of the shovel and pounded the head. He heard the skull let out a dull crack. He stood back, panting. It ought to be dead now.
    To his horror, the creature stirred. How could it move? But it staggered up and resumed its march toward him. The foot he had chopped off remained on the floor, along with a chunk of furry belly. There were smears of dark slime but no blood. The critter didn’t bleed!
    The hollows in the dark mask regarded him balefully. He would have called anyone crazy who’d have suggested it to him, but that raccoon looked familiar. It looked like the one he had chased across the road to Granny Morrow’s. But that was impossible. It was dead. She had buried it!

    “What are you?” he asked, his voice hoarse with shock.
    He should call someone. He ought to get Sill back here.
    Granny had told him he had to make amends, or there would be consequences. Was that what it would take to get this specter to go away?
    “What do you want?” he asked.
    But raccoons, even those returned from the dead, couldn’t talk. He backed away from it. The raccoon lowered its head. He’d seen that behavior among animals that were setting up for a dominance contest. He felt at a loss. He couldn’t kill it. All he could do was get away from it or trap it so it couldn’t follow him no more.
    That was it! The traps! If he could get it stuck in one of those, he could bury it somewhere. It wouldn’t be able to dig its way out of a grave with twenty pounds of metal clinging to it.
    He backed out the door. Dagwood whined as he went, but he never made a sound as the raccoon went past. Didn’t he see it?
    He’d take the dog in for a checkup later. He had to take care of that damned raccoon first. Like a bad nightmare, it followed him around the side of the big barn toward the trash heap. Granny had been mighty obliging, opening all them traps up and leaving them set for him. That’d be just perfect. He looked over his shoulder to make sure it was following.
    Was it grinning? No, that had to be its broken jaw. Pilkington ran. On three legs, his nemesis loped behind.
    He reached the waste pile long before it did. He kicked all the rotted straw off the tarp that concealed the traps. He’d piled them up, not troubling to trigger them. It saved him time now. He set them in a line. All
he had to do was lure the raccoon into one or more of them, and bang! Problem solved.
    It looked so easy when the matadors on television did it, but bulls were straightforward animals. Raccoons were wilier. This one, dead or not, tracked him with its hollow eyes. Pilkington dodged back and forth, trying to draw it to leap at him again. It didn’t take the hint. It followed his movements with its sunken eyes.
    “Señor Pay!” Ruiz’s voice distracted him. “You there, Señor?”
    At that moment, the raccoon bounded toward him, mouth snarling. It hit him square in the stomach. Pilkington fell backwards onto the line of traps. SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! The steel teeth banged shut on his arms and legs, crushing bone and tearing tissue. He lay spread-eagled, unable even to moan at the horrible pain. He felt hot blood pour out of torn arteries. His life was seeping into the soil he’d spent his whole life on.
    The raccoon sat on top of the waste heap, looking down on him from the hollow sockets in its mask. It looked satisfied.
    Ruiz came running toward the sound. He