“There’s no way he’ll fit. Pull him back out.”

“Why don’t you put down the shovel and help?”

Andy puffed on his cigarette, white smoke hanging in the quiet darkness, and tossed the shovel at Annie’s boots. The dead man’s black blood seeped into the soil.

“There. I put down the shovel.”

Annie scowled, but kept her mouth shut as she took hold of the dead man’s sleeve and tugged. His head pulled free of the soil, earthworms wiggling out of his straw-like hair, and Annie fell backwards onto her butt. Her elbow landed on the shovel and the handle slapped the man’s tombstone.

A loud crack echoed through the graveyard.

Both of them froze, the cigarette slipping from beneath Andy’s lips to the ground. He glanced around the abandoned, misty graveyard, watching for motion.

“Be careful next time!” hissed Andy as he turned back to Annie. “Someone could have heard that!”

“Says the guy with a lit cigarette in the middle of a graveyard at midnight.”

Andy stomped his cigarette under his boot, but offered his partner his hand anyway as she struggled to climb out of the hole.

Together they rolled the body a few feet away, his limbs stiffening again, his gray tongue flopping from black lips, and Andy grabbed the shovel.

“My turn,” he muttered, managing a small smile at Annie; she rolled her eyes. “You just get ready to roll him.”

Ten minutes later, his palm blistered and raw, he smoothed the soil covering the dead man’s enlarged grave. He stepped back, slipping the shovel back into his duffel bag, and reached into his jacket pocket. He held the lighter underneath a second cigarette and took a long drag.

“Nice job,” said Annie, slapping dirt off her jeans, “but the next time your friend here climbs out of his grave, please, don’t knock on my door. You’re definitely not paying me enough.”