Trailer Park Zombies Page 19

  I saw the look of panic cross her face and the shotgun being raised to her shoulder. I couldn’t hear her, but I saw her lips move and did the only thing I could think of. I turned my pell-mell, headlong run into a headlong dive for the floor and flew the last several feet through the air. I felt a tug on my shoe but I was moving too fast for it to catch hold. I landed at Fannie Mae’s feet and I heard the familiar roar of my shotgun blasting above my head. One, two, three quick shots. Hot shells fell to the floor next to me, bouncing slowly through the air and giving off a small puff of smoke.

  I rolled over to my back, out of breath and wondering what the hell good I was going to be at this angle. Rodriguez’s headless corpse was still falling through the air, dead arms splayed out in a T around it as it crashed to the floor. He’d come through the entire crowd of 60 or so people to launch himself directly at me.

  Fannie Mae helped me to my feet, rubbing her shoulder where she’d braced the shotgun. She handed it to me quickly, wanting to rid herself of the infernal thing. I knew the feeling. After shooting the gun you felt like there was now a taint on your soul. Like you’d been doing something unclean. I was growing all too familiar with the feeling.

  I couldn’t help myself. She looked like some kind of Amazon goddess standing there. Protecting me as best she could. I held the shotgun out to the side as I pulled her into my arms and kissed her. Her lips were the softest thing I’d ever felt, parted slightly and wet to the touch. Her tongue darted tentatively into my mouth and then more boldly. I inhaled her scent and breathed her in deeply, feeling like we were in our own little world.

  We probably could have kissed until Judgment Day if it weren’t for Wash. He stormed out of nowhere and grabbed me by the shoulder. “What the hell you doing, Duke? What do we do?” His voice sounded panicky and like he was on that last precipice of sanity.

  Looking at his eyes I could see that he was most definitely on the edge. They were as wide as he could possibly make them and his skin was as pale as could be. He seemed on the verge of a total meltdown.

  I cleared my throat and glanced at Fannie Mae. A small smile escaped her lips as we locked eyes. Then I sighed and looked back at Wash, digging extra shells out of my pockets and reloading the shotgun. I put my hand on his arm and felt his pulse running rapidly and raggedly under my hand. “We have to kill them before they kill more people, Wash. If we don’t do it quick then they’ll outnumber us and we’ll all be dead. The only other option is to open the doors and run out of here. That’s really not an option at this point either.”

  He nodded and drew his breath slowly, closing his eyes. For some reason I was the voice of calm for him. He nodded again and brandished his gun before him. “Let’s go.”

  We skirted around the edge of the crowd. Most of them had gone directly for the front door, but Wash’s men were still watching it and they at least had the presence of mind not to let anyone out. Small pockets of people huddled throughout the room. Some had simply frozen where they’d been standing and were in the process of waiting to be eaten. There was at least a dozen zombies standing around the room and more being produced as we watched. You could almost feel the passing of the people into the land of the dead. Undead. Ever watch the shimmering of the sun across the desert? Seen how the heat just shines off the ground and makes the air look like water? That’s what I saw. Only it was the zombies munching on people and them turning around and doing the same.

  I shook my head and blinked my eyes, clearing the vision from them. I didn’t have time for that kind of foolishness.

  The zombies had spread out and there were no more than two or three in any given clump. They’d been too tantalized by the smorgasbord of food before them and spread out, running amok. It made it a little easier to try and pick them off, especially since Wash and I were the only ones who’d managed to hold on to our heads. I saw Felix in the corner holding off half a dozen zombies with his gun, but then the press of the people around us shifted him from view.

  I turned to Fannie Mae to find that she was at my side. I wanted to tell her to hide, but knew there was nowhere she could go that she would be safe. The safest place for her was next to me. She had the sports bag over her shoulder and a box of open shells in her hand. We looked at each other stoically and nodded at each other.

  Then Washington and I waded in.

  I’d like to say that we were a well-oiled machine, watching each other’s backs and making only headshots, not wasting a single bullet, but I really can’t. We’d both been field-hardened tonight, but there’s something drastically different about fighting zombies and shooting guns in the middle of a building than there is when you’re outside and have a slight chance of escape. We both knew that this was our one chance at survival and that if we messed this up that every single person in this building would die.

  And then get right back up again.

  We approached the first two zombies where they were bent over a screaming, obese woman who was flailing around on the floor. She was at least 400 pounds and there was a lot for them to eat. Her stomach was wide open and the zombies were pulling flesh out by the handful, pouring it into their mouths. One of them pushed the others out of the way and buried his whole head in her stomach. She screamed and screamed, feeling every inch of being eaten alive. Her eyes locked on me and Wash and she screamed for our help over and over again.

  The one zombie pulled the other’s head out of her stomach so he could have his chance and before he could bury his own head inside her I blew it away. Blood and gore sprayed over the other zombie and on the fat woman. The other zombie didn’t even notice as he prepared himself to go back inside of her. Both of his arms were buried to the elbow in her stomach and gray loops of intestine trickled out of the wound. Wash sighted his gun and shot that zombie in the eye and he fell over the woman.

  I held out my hand to Fannie Mae and she slapped another shell in it as I chambered the shotgun. The woman was still screaming from the pain but she looked on Wash and me with gratitude. I paid that gratitude back by putting the shotgun an inch from her head and pulling the trigger. At the last second more panic had filled her eyes but I hadn’t given her the chance to protest. She didn’t realize that she’d been dead from the moment the zombie’s had touched her.

  Several people had finally regained their equilibrium and were holding weapons as they raced toward the zombies. I wish they would have just stayed back rather than try to help. Their definition of zombie-killing weapons was definitely lacking. A chair leg here, a baseball bat there. A knife or two. If you had to get that close to a zombie to kill it then the chances were that you were already dead and just didn’t know it. Of course with this being a trailer park in the middle of down home Kentucky it didn’t take much for these people to think they had what it took to survive.

  They didn’t.

  Shove a knife into the chest of a zombie and what do you get? Um, a zombie with a knife in its chest that was now close enough to take a bite out of you. Aim for the head and the knife would likely bounce off of the thickness of the skull. Aim for the eye and if you were lucky enough to hit you should hope that you push it in deep enough to skewer the brain and that you did it quickly enough for it not to bite or infect you.

  Dare I even tell you about the effectiveness of a chair leg or baseball bat? Break a zombie’s arm or leg and it just plain doesn’t care. I saw someone hit a zombie in the back of the head with a baseball bat hard enough to hear the crack of it over the cacophony of screams and it merely turned its head and bit the arm off at the wrist.

  Zombies don’t feel pain and don’t care what happens to them. All they want to do is feed.

  Wash and Fannie Mae and I made our way slowly across the room, killing zombies as we went. A path of destruction lay behind us. We left nothing moving and at first Wash wasn’t capable of shooting the ones who weren’t dead yet but when one of them was looking at him imploringly one second and the next was scrambling to bury her teeth in his throat he quickly ch
anged his mind. I tried not to let it touch me as we killed my friends and neighbors, both the living and the dead. But the survival of the group was the most important thing. Actually, I lie, the survival of myself and Fannie Mae was all I really cared about. It was obvious that the group was doomed from the start.

  The smell of gun smoke permeated the air and filled my nostrils. My shoulder was numb to the pain of the kickback of the shotgun and my fingertip was raw from the constant cocking of the gun. Fannie Mae had dropped the empty box of shells and we were halfway through the next one before we reached the final clump of zombies. It was the group that had cornered Felix and had him surrounded. I could still hear the sporadic gunshots coming from him but it was obvious he was overrun.

  I looked at Wash wordlessly and he stepped forward, taking out the zombies one by one. His gun clicked on empty with two still remaining. They turned to us noiselessly, gore dripping from their mouths and hands. I stepped forward, gently pushing Wash out of the way, and blasted them into smithereens. Wash, with a blank expression on his face, kept pointlessly pulling the trigger on his empty gun.

  A gasp of breath and a cry for help came from underneath the pile of zombies. A hand came out and gestured feebly. It was Felix. All the zombies had fallen on top of him. I reached out and grabbed a blanket off the floor, wrapping it around my hands and pulling the zombies away. I was afraid of what would happen if a zombie’s blood got on me. Could the blood itself transmit the infection? I looked at my blood-splattered clothes and prayed that it did not. If so I was most definitely screwed.

  We cleared the zombies off of Felix. He lay there gasping and staring at us. His face was pale and chunks of skin were missing from his legs and arms where he’d tried and failed to fight the zombies off. He was still alive.

  His eyes were glassy and unfocused until he caught a look at me and then intelligence crept into his gaze. He mouthed words silently but I had no idea what it was he was trying to say. I can’t read lips anyway, and he was doing it in Spanish. A whisper of breath entered his lungs and he said, “Madre de Dios. Puedo sentirlo en mi cerebro rastrero. Siento que mi vida comer.”

  He shuddered and took another breath. Then he said the last words he’d ever say, “Es usted. Dios mío, es usted.” Then as we three watched him silently he pulled his gun up to his mouth, inserted the barrel, and pulled the trigger. I jumped back, feeling his words washing over me.

  I had no idea what the hell he’d just said.

  18.

  That was pretty much the end of the zombies in there. Wash and I did our best to go around to the 40 or so survivors to see if any had been injured but most shrunk back from us in terror. They’d just seen us slaughter their family, friends, and neighbors and for some reason they didn’t want much to do with us. There were a few cradling hands to their chests and clutching towels to wounds. Pale skin marked their body and dark circles ran rings around their eyes. It was easy to pick out those who’d been marked and pull them from the herd.

  They all protested that they’d been hurt some other way but no one stopped us as we did what needed to be done. One man with a tiny scratch had taken out nearly a third of our population in minutes and if this many people with wounds were allowed to live then we’d all be dead within the hour. Washington had glassy eyes and shaking hands but he didn’t protest as we did what needed doing.

  After we’d culled the herd I looked around the room – the slaughterhouse – and then looked at Wash. “I can’t help anymore. I’m bone-tired and need to sit down before I pass out. Can you have your men stack these bodies somewhere out of sight?” I waved my hands at the crying, moaning people around us. “They’ll riot soon if they have to keep staring at their dead loved ones. And they’ll want payback.”

  He nodded wordlessly and turned to take off.

  I stopped him with a word but he didn’t turn back to face me. Just stopped in his tracks, head cocked to the side to listen to me. “Wash. Don’t let them touch the blood. I have no idea if the blood is infectious or not but there’s no reason to take any chances.”

  He didn’t acknowledge me, but I heard him barking orders at what few of his men were left as I turned to Fannie Mae. I don’t know what happened but the next thing I knew I was laying on the floor with my head in her lap. The shotgun lay at my side.

  “What happened?” I asked, struggling to sit up. My head was pounding and I winced, putting my hand on my forehead.

  She gently forced me to lie back down. I finally accepted it and looked up at her from her lap. “You passed out,” she replied. “You looked exhausted, Dukey. I was scared. You were pale and there were circles under your eyes. I had to fight off some of the men. They wanted to drag you out and shoot you, thinking you were one of the them.” She shuddered and closed her eyes for a second. “But I wouldn’t let them. And then Washington intervened and threatened to shoot them all if they didn’t back off. He convinced them that you weren’t infected.” She laughed. “It helped that you started snoring.”

  I blushed. “I don’t snore.”

  “Maybe not, but you were definitely sawing logs there for a little while.”

  I finally convinced her to let me sit up and then I put my arm around her. We cuddled up close as we looked at the motley group of fools huddled around the room. Paranoia had swept in and now people only sat by twos and threes, with the few people they trusted. There were blood splatters everywhere (as well as splatters of other things) but I didn’t see any bodies lying on the floor.

  I stretched my muscles, wincing as my back popped. “Where’d Wash put the zombies?”

  “The basement,” she said softly. “He and a few of his men stacked them up on the floor down there. They were just going to throw them down the stairs and then seal the door but the people were getting upset by that idea. So they lugged them all down there. I’m surprised none of them passed out from exhaustion, too. Washington promised them all that the people who’d been turned would get a real burial when this is all over.”

  I snorted.

  She looked at me. “Do you think this will ever be over, Dukey?”

  I looked at her and wished I had it in me to lie, but I couldn’t lie to those eyes. “No, Fannie Mae. I don’t. I don’t see how this could ever be over. We’d have to kill every zombie without anyone else getting infected and I don’t see how that’s even possible. Even assuming we could get a group of people together and go out hunting how could we be sure that we got them all?”

  Washington walked down the hallway from the kitchen into the main room. He paused and wiped a hand on his brow. I could see the hand shaking even from here. He was on the verge of breaking down. How can you lead the people when the people don’t want to be led? And when the people keep trying to get up and eat you?

  He caught me looking at him and nodded, visibly straightened himself and came the rest of the way into the room. He started going round to his men at the windows.

  I finished my thought to Fannie Mae. “All it would take is for one to get away for this to start all over again. For all we know they’ve already spread out through the town and the town is nothing but the zombie horde Barrett kept predicting we’d have. We may be the only people alive within a hundred miles of here.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t believe that, Dukey. I refuse to believe this has gone that far.” Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. “I have to believe that we’ve got some chance to get out of this alive. Now that we’ve found each other I can’t stand the thought of not having you in my life.”

  I drew her in tighter to my embrace. “I’m sorry, Fannie Mae. You’re right. We still have a chance.”

  I eyed Washington as Fannie Mae drifted off to sleep next to me. It was 1am on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Where had the day gone? I wanted to sleep some more, too, but I didn’t trust anyone in this room enough to have both Fannie Mae and I asleep at the same time. I’d seen quite a few jealous glances at my shotgun (how many shells did I have left anyway?) and not a
few looks at me that were filled with anger and shame. They were afraid of me for what I’d done and ashamed that they couldn’t do it themselves.

  But I did drift. I’d like to say I was able to keep myself awake and protect Fannie Mae the way she’d done me, but I failed. Only minutes after saying I’d stay awake I was completely off in snoozeville. Confused images of zombies slaughtering people and people slaughtering zombies filled my dreams. Nothing coherent, just image after image. I probably would have slept the night away if I hadn’t felt a tugging on my hand. In my dream it felt like a zombie was pulling on me.

  I jolted awake. There was a man standing in front of me, a thoughtful expression on his face. He was white, pasty, somewhat out of shape like a football player gone to seed, balding with little tufts of hair sticking out the sides of his head. And he was tugging gently on the shotgun cradled in my lap. If I hadn’t had a grip on it he would have already had it.

  My hand tightened on the stock and I jerked it back. He didn’t let go of his grip on the barrel.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He licked his lips and stared at me. He didn’t answer me as he kept tugging on the shotgun. I pulled my arm from around Fannie Mae and got a better grip on the gun. He wouldn’t let go of the freaking gun. The jostling woke Fannie Mae and she rubbed her eyes as she looked at the both of us.