Set against the backdrop of the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak, a young woman, Gravely Eaton, is stuck working at the family funeral home with a father she hates. The world is dying around her, but there seems no escape from her boring life with no friend...
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We were prepared as best we could be. Crim had been through these things many times so Healy and I fell into line, good little soldiers. There wasn't much time to discuss our plan of action but, before we left the relative security of the graver mobile, Crim told us what he expected of us. For our part, there was only one thing to know - we would be facing a hideous-looking wild animal. Kill it before it killed us.
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Each of us had grenades. I carried a tire iron and Healy picked up a hefty tree branch along our route. Of course, blunt objects wouldn't deal a death blow to a graver, since they're already beyond their expiry date, but the items could help keep some distance between us and them. Crim wore a powerful LED headlamp strapped to his noggin. He would turn it on once we spotted our target. According to our leader, gravers had a certain weakness to bright lights shining in their eyes at night. It threw them off their game, at least temporarily. We could use that to our advantage. Good, I thought. We didn't have too much else on our side. Walking beside my boyfriend, I noticed an extra bulge on Healy's hip and felt it as we neared the bottom of the hill.
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"I can't believe you brought the fart machine," I said, rolling my eyes.
"You never know when one will come in handy," he whispered.
Crim shushed us. He was right. It was no time for talk.
There was no sign of father outside the crypt. No noise, no sound of any kind. We crossed the road through the fog, directly in front of the Eaton family tomb. Up the steps we went, the Englishman led us single file. Our plan of attack would depend on what we found. If we ran into father face-to-face, there was general agreement about our best move. Whoever was closest to the corpse would pull the pin on their grenade, force it into his wetsuit and run like hell – calling out for the others to take cover. The spongy Neoprene he was wearing would hold the bomb tight to father's torso, and he'd be gone before he knew what happened. Crim said the explosion would be almost as effective as the wood chipper at tearing him apart. If need be, we could carry what remained over to the Grim Reaper for a final chomp.
