Q is for...

Qutrub

     He touched the stones as he wandered through the graveyard. Tapping this one, caressing the next.
     Inhaling deeply, he held the musty scent of earth and decay deep in his lungs before letting it out.
     Delicious.
     Had his brothers started without him?
     Hunger rumbled deep inside him and he weaved through the headstones, mist swirling around his feet.
     The moon hung high in the sky, playing peek-a-boo behind dark clouds, lighting their edges. There was a time when it had been difficult to find food; to eat without drawing attention to oneself.
     But now? The world overflowed with people, with the dead. If his kind didn't eat them eventually the humans would run out of places to put the bodies.
     Far back against the fence and the tree line, a small lantern glowed in the night.
     "The graveyard keeper has already been taken care of," a voice said from the darkness.
     "By taken care of, you mean...?"
     "Sleeping, of course," the voice said.
     "Of course," he said.
     The voice guided him to a grave, not new but not insipidly old. Two of his brothers poked their head up from the hole and grinned, tossing dirt aside.
     The third sibling, the voice, materialized out of the darkness, his grin stretched his face. "Brother, you're just in time for dinner."