Here's an homage to the original "Dawn of the Dead", and a filk-style song inspired by an actual song I found titled "The Night They All Came Out", performed by one Zoogz Rift. I knew of the performer (now deceased) because a long time ago, I made a minor hobby out of collecting weird names of rock bands. The name stuck in my mind more strongly than others, and I very seriously considered using it an otherwise fictional character in this story, but pretty well gave it up after I determined that the real-life Zoogz had a significant career. I wouldn't go so far as to recommend him, but what I was able to find was intriguing enough for me to work into a story.

As sundown approached, the encampment spread out on both sides of the road. Meg stayed close to Goliath, and so ended up with a front-row seat as the occupants of Farther set up stage. Five stage hands set up palettes as a stage and a modest but up-to-date sound system. Meg almost spit when their full banner was unfurled: HEDLEY KOW AND THE KRAPPERS.

"What's up with the band name?" Meg hissed to Carlos

"It's from an English legend," he said. "Hedley Kow was a fairy, or somethin' like that. He, or it, could change to any shape. It's prob'ly connected with legends behind the Loch Ness monster, which talk about a water critter called a kelpie that turns into a horse. George is into that sort of thing..."

"Okay," Meg said, "and what about... the rest of the name?"

"Well... they spelled it wrong."

Meg gave a perplexed frown. "What?"

Carlos pointed to two non-descript men setting up a synthesizer on stage. "Those are John and Harold. They're brothers, from England," he said. He pointed to a blond woman who moved in position to test the keyboard. "That's Jane, John's wife. And John's great-to-the- greath grandfather was an inventor named John... Crapper."

Jane stood at the keyboard, while the brothers set up a modest drum set plus a selection of less conventional percussion, including a child's xylophone, a washboard and a bicycle horn. Dick seated himself at the drumset, John picked up an electric guitar, and the trio went into some atonal warm-up free-styling. Jane closed her eyes and swayed sensually as she played, Dick banged away proficiently on the drums with inspired flourishes on the extra instruments, and John shuffled back and forth, keeping his eyes unapologetically on Jane. They were joined abruptly by a willowy redhead who alternated between short bursts from an instrument that looked like a fiddle with a crank and keyboard and snatches of unintelligible song that sounded almost like yodelling.

"That's Lady Elayne," Carlos muttered. "That thing she's got is a hurdygurdy. She's not really a part of the band. She and Hedley had an act together before he joined up with the brothers. I think they had a thing, too." The tone of his voice made Meg suspect that he had a "thing" for Elayne.

Then the man who could only be Hedley took the stage, playing a simple squeeze box with no particular proficiency. He looked to be in his early forties, with long dark hair that was starting to recede. He wore a plaid shirt and knee-length khaki shorts with an impressive selection of noise makers in various pockets. He pumped harder and played faster as he took the stage, and the band went wild, as if absolutely determined to drown him out. Elayne played and ululated simultaneously, Jane bobbed and weaved in place as she pummeled the keys, Dick used a foot pedal to pound the bass drum while he frenetically worked over the rest of his instruments, and John started to jump up and down like a child in a tantrum. Hedley more than matched them, flailing his arms at the bellows like Icarus trying to fly. Finally, an English terrier waddled out and started to bark, and all fell suddenly silent.

Meg glanced sidelong at Carlos. "Well, look at it this way," he said, "if any of them are around, you can bet you're going to know it." Sure enough, Daniel fired several bursts, and then all was quiet. The band continued to go through their motions in the silence, as if the music were still going in their minds. Then Hedley swapped the squeezebox for a banjo slung over his shoulder, and strummed along with lyrics he delivered with the sing-song quality of a nursery rhyme.

"Well one day old Lucifer called Heaven, said, `There ain't no more room in hell,' An' St. Pete says, `We need a curve to get more bodies in here.' So the dead returned to Earth, and it sure was a sight, the night they all woke up." He blew a slide whistle.

"So the unknown soldiers came out of the tomb sayin' `Peace out, man!' Lincoln got up and said `Segregation forever!' While Jefferson sat down and said `Brown sugar's better!' The night they all woke up.

"Lenin climbed out of the box and said, `Capitalism rocks!' Gandhi said `No more Mister Passive Resistance!' And John called Ringo an' said `Tell PaulWings sucks!' The night they all woke up!"

"Then all the stiffs in the churchyard came in and said to the priest, `You told us when we die we'd live up in the sky in the sweet by and by. Instead we wake up in the same old muck, so Padre whatthe-!" A riff from the band and a blast of the squeeze box covered the obviously intended profanity. "The night they all woke up." The band went through one last extended riff that cut off abruptly at the dog's bark.

The song was obviously their signature number. Meg clapped, and was moderately disturbed to see Janie doing the same. After that, they went into mostly covers, mostly mild sixties numbers that by their very benignity took on a disturbing quality. The weirdest was a muzak-like instrumental from the band that Carlos identified as "the Gonk". "Theme from a British kids' movie," he said. "Bloody crazy Brits..." A close second was John joining Jane at the keyboard for "Heart and Soul". He proved to have a eerily soft pitch, while his wife sang with a jarringly deep contralto. That was followed by a spaced-out version of "Georgie Girl" with the redhead singing the vocals. The performance wrapped up with everyone singing along with "Good Morning, Starshine," at which point Dianna carried Janie off to Moby Ralph.

As the stage came down, Carlos called to John: "Hey, I gotta talk to Hedley."

While Carlos waited, Meg talked briefly to Jane: "So, Carlos told me about the name..."

"What about it?" she said. "A name's a name."

"Yeah, but... Well, did you take his name?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Meg tried not to look perplexed. "What, are the hip girls against a woman taking her husband's name now?"

"No, of course not, but... you shouldn't have to."

"I didn't." Meg stopped trying to hide her bafflement. "Look, I thought about it, and I figured, most important inventions in human history: fire, the wheel, the flush toilet. Nobody knows who made the first two, and I didn't want to be the reason people forget who made the other one. So I took his name, and when we have a son, the world will have another John Crapper." By then, Jane was smiling herself, and Meg finally allowed herself to laugh.

Hedley arrived with a set of bongos under one arm and a didgeridoo over the other shoulder. John took his wife's hand, and they hustled for the bus. "Put those down," Carlos said sternly. Hedley complied. "We've got some new vehicles, and we need to do some recon. First light tomorrow, if not before, I'm leading a scouting party west, and I'm taking some of our new acquisitions with us to make it a shakedown. I want your bus with them as backup." Hedley shrugged in resignation. Carlos looked to Meg. "I want you to go with them, show us where you been."

"I can do that," she said hesitantly, "but I don't know if I can be much help. There really isn't much to see. Just... a lot of them." She saw that her hands were trembling.

"Then show us where you saw them," Carlos said. "Tell us how many. You might see things that jog or memory, even notice things you didn't the first time. You can help us, and it's going to help you too."

Meg squeezed her hand into a fist, and the trembling stopped. "I'll do it," she said. "We can take my Audi."

"We have enough vehicles already, and I want you in the old Jeep with Joe," Carlos said. "But it's appreciated. Now, I need you to prepare... by getting in that van now and getting a good night's sleep." Meg found she was more than happy to comply, and found she was especially comfortable in the upper bunk.

Not long after, Carlos looked in, with Laramie looking over his shoulder. "You haven't told her," his student said casually.

"What good would it do if we did?" Carlos responded rhetorically. "If there's anything we know, it's that whatever happens is mostly in the head. Telling them it could happen is the surest way to make it happen."

The fiberglass boat had a plexiglass window on the bottom, with one edge just over the bunk. Meg slept, not so much peacefully as simply without conscious thought. Thus, when she awoke, she had no notion of the passage of time, except that it was darker than when she went to bed.

She was on her side, and tried to shift, which was when she discovered she could not move. She could not even raise her head. She found she could move her eyes, though. She looked down, and saw Laramie stretched out on the couch. Then she looked up, at the skylight, and saw a face peering down. She saw only a face, as clearly as if it was illuminated by full moonlight.

It was Greg.