{"id":35112,"date":"2025-11-07T05:00:52","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T10:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=35112"},"modified":"2025-11-06T20:11:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T01:11:29","slug":"its-a-lousy-job-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/07\/its-a-lousy-job-but\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a Lousy Job, But\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Dunwich Autumnal Zombie-fest officially ended yesterday at 4pm when I and the other town officials who conduct this marathon nightmare put out the flames that we use to cremate the zombies.\u00a0 It\u2019s a really exhausting process.\u00a0 We spend two weeks excavating a forty-foot deep 100 yard in diameter hole and then the guy who loses a series of card cuts has to sit all night in a cage suspended over the pit to lure the zombies into falling into the hole.\u00a0 It\u2019s a really disgusting job because the zombies smell awful.\u00a0 Well, you guessed it.\u00a0 I was the lure.\u00a0 It\u2019s such a long two nights.\u00a0 But eventually the sun came up on Wednesday and I climbed along the boom of the crane and down the mast to the side of the pit and flooded the zombie-infested hole with diesel oil, topped it off with some gasoline, stepped back a good way and threw in a road flare.\u00a0 It\u2019s an interesting spectacle.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think they can feel pain so they just keep walking around in the inferno until they they\u2019ve been thoroughly cooked.\u00a0 By 4pm there was nothing left but bones and we bulldozed the soil back in again.<\/p>\n

But it takes a couple of hot showers and a really good night\u2019s sleep to feel normal again.\u00a0 Listening to them moan sends shivers down your spine and at some point, they began trying to form a pyramid to reach me.\u00a0 They never come close but it\u2019s unnerving to watch them try.\u00a0 And a few really smart and coordinated zombies climb up the crane.\u00a0 I keep a bunch of long poles in the cage and when I\u2019m sick of looking at them I push them off the boom into the pit.<\/p>\n

I really need to find a better gig but it does pay rather well for a couple of weeks\u2019 worth of work.\u00a0 Plus, I get to see some old familiar faces one last time before recycling them for good.\u00a0 Toward the end of the night, I saw a guy who had been driving behind me a few weeks ago.\u00a0 It was four o-clock in the morning and the one light in Dunwich was in its blinking yellow mode.\u00a0 So, I stopped to check the intersection for oncoming traffic and this guy starts laying on his horn and flashing his brights.\u00a0 Then he almost side swiped me when passing me and drove off at about thirty miles an hour faster than the speed limit.\u00a0 I\u2019m guessing he must have ended up hitting a pole or boulder and the zombies must have come by and munched him before anyone found him.<\/p>\n

Well, I flipped him off from inside the cage and then knocked him into the pit.\u00a0 It might have been my imagination but it seemed like after he got up, he was shoving and bumping the other zombies in the pit quite a bit.\u00a0 Well, old habits die hard they say.\u00a0 I have to confess I was smiling while I watched him roasting in the pit.\u00a0 Well, every job has its points.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dunwich Autumnal Zombie-fest officially ended yesterday at 4pm when I and the other town officials who conduct this marathon nightmare put out the flames<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3366,1289,1263,4],"tags":[3341,354,1290,883],"class_list":["post-35112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-dunwich","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-dunwich","tag-horror","tag-my-fiction","tag-zombies"],"yoast_head":"\nIt\u2019s a Lousy Job, But\u2026 - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/07\/its-a-lousy-job-but\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"It\u2019s a Lousy Job, But\u2026 - 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