Earl was an undistinguished man. He never graduated high school and jumped from many odd jobs. Earl was not very special. No one really liked him because he never really stuck out. Earl preferred being in solitude. He worked as the night watchman in an old church graveyard. His reason was that "the dead keep better company than the living, they don't argue."
On the darkest night of November, Earl was posted in his small booth. The only sound was the hum of the small television, playing the sports station, sitting on the desk. Earl had only one small lamp lit. The moths outside were fluttering outside the window, drawn to the light.
The clock struck midnight and Earl heard the howl of a wolf out in the distant woods. At 12:07, he heard a ripping sound coming from the graveyard. "Lousy, kids." he muttered, getting out of his chair.
Outside, the smell of something rotting jabbed at his nose. The moon was crescent, barely visible behind the clouds. Earl took out his flashlight. "Get out of here, you hooligans!" he yelled, but no one was there to listen. The ripping sound grew louder and louder. He realized it was coming from somebody ripping out the grass. Earl wandered to where the sound was coming from. Before he could choke it down, a high-pitched scream escaped him.
The corpses of the deceased were climbing out of the ground. Not one looked the same. They had grey skin clinging onto their broken bodies. Their bloody flesh hung like threads on their bones. Their matted hair was long and wind-blown. Earl found their eyes the most disturbing. The twenty eyeballs were completely white, the pupils rolled back into their heads. Blood trickled down from the sockets and ran all the way down to their skeletal feet. Their mouths were wide open and a foamy, neon yellow liquid poured out. All of their arms were stretched out in front of them, except one of the boy's…
There was a boy dressed in old overalls. He had a straw hat on his head, covering his exposed brain. He slowly walked towards Earl, who walked backward, falling over a headstone. Earl tried to protect his face with his arms, but the boy ripped them away.
"Come with us!" exclaimed the boy.
"No!" Earl cried, as loud as he could.
It was too late to run, too late to hide. Earl gave up fighting as the other corpses advanced upon him. There was nothing left he could have done. Earl's screams echoed all throughout the graveyard as the zombies ripped at his flesh. They sucked the blood from his veins. The boy snapped his bones apart and thirstily drank Earl's bone marrow.
In the end, Earl did not put up a fight. It's no wonder, because he never really had much to fight for. There is nothing left to say about Earl, except that he now haunts the old church graveyard. The television is still on, tuned to the sports station. It is said that on the darkest night of November during the last stages of the moon, he sits in the night watchman's booth of the graveyard, looking over the cemetery and its residents. After all, he always did prefer to be in the company of the dead than the living…