Trailer Park Zombies Read online

  But that was a pipe dream.

  Her face was drawn and pale, all color gone. The bite in her arm was the only color on her body. It shone brightly in the darkness of the room and I could see that the bleeding had finally stopped. She licked her lips trying to get moisture back on them but tongue was dry. The cracks in her lips gaped wider and I knew that blood should have been seeping out, but it wasn’t.

  “You need to shoot me, Dukey,” she said softly, slowly.

  I shook my head. “I can’t do that, Fannie Mae. You can’t ask me that.”

  She tried to smile at me, but all it did was make the split in her lip even wider. Tears of blood began seeping from the corners of her eyes. I choked back a sob. “You need to do it, Duke. And now. I can, can feel,” she stopped and rubbed her stomach, “hunger. I’ve never been this hungry before.” Her words came out in a rush, in a soft growl, “I can feel my brain dying and my thoughts are beginning to leak away. All I want to do is eat and eat and eat.” She laughed. “I can smell you, Dukey. Smell your sweat and feel your heat and I can see how alive you are.”

  Her eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. They would stop to rest on me and then start rolling again as she looked around. I had no words for her.

  Her whole body started to shake, tremors raging wildly. “Please, Dukey. Don’t let me become this. I can’t, don’t, want to be this. Don’t let me un-die.”

  I unwillingly picked up the shotgun. My hands were trembling and I couldn’t bring it to bear. The horror gnawing at my gut was almost too much. I thought I might pass out but then the butt of the shotgun rubbed against my bandage and a wave of pain passed through me. It brought everything back to stark reality and I could see her sniffing at the air as blood began soaking through the bandage. I slowly, ever so slowly, pulled in the catch and cocked the shotgun.

  Fannie Mae had her feet drawn up to her chest and her hands resting palm up on her knees. Her whole body was shaking like a leaf and her breaths were coming in quick gasps of air. She shook her head up and down several times, hanging it between her legs and then staring up at me. She was breathing faster and faster. She tried to speak but all that came out was gurgles. She couldn’t find the words but I could see them on her face.

  I stood up and closed the distance between us. She shook her head wildly at me, trying to tell me to get away. Then, suddenly, all sounds ceased. Her breath left her in a great whoosh of air and her arms fell to her sides, hitting the floor with a sickening thud. I leveled the shotgun at the side of her head.

  Her finger twitched.

  Still I waited.

  It twitched again, turning over and reaching out for my foot. Waves of cold rippled over me and I shook spastically . I cried out, “God help me,” and braced the shotgun on my hip. I pulled the trigger.

  I didn’t miss.

  The next amount of time was a blur for me. To this day I couldn’t tell you if it was only five minutes, an hour or three hours until I came back to myself. I have a blank spot in my memory after I pulled that trigger. I thank God or whatever powers there may be out there for taking that away from me. I pulled the trigger. I didn’t miss. The roar of the shotgun filled my ears and the fire from the barrel lit the room and then everything went black.

  When I came back to myself I was curled on the floor back by the couch, facing away from Fannie Mae. I shuddered at the thought, but I had to make myself turn and look. I breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently I’d covered her with a blanket when I was out. I had no desire to go over there and uncover her. Blood and other stuff was splattered all over the floor and walls. I hadn’t been too industrious I guess.

  I sat there on the floor until the sun came up, shining brightly through the windows. The sky was clear of clouds and it looked like the storm had finally passed. It was Sunday, October 26, and I was alone. All my friends in the world were dead. My mom was dead. God knows where my dad was. Tamara, the girl I thought I’d been in love with, was dead. I’d realized that my love for her had been nothing but a little puppy love and found what true love was with Fannie Mae. Then I’d had to blow her brains all over her living room floor.

  I gazed out the window and smiled at the rising sun. It truly was a beautiful sight. One of the first sunrises I’d ever stayed up long enough to see. The rays of light came in strong and glorious and played over my face. The heat made the blood rush to my cheeks and my eyes squint. I could feel every fiber of my being yearning to be out there and relish in the sun.

  The shotgun lay on the floor next to me. I had my hand resting on the stock and the wood grew warm under my touch. Two days ago – hell, not even 48 hours ago – I’d never fired a shotgun before. Now it felt like the exact right thing to be in my hand and it was the most comfortable thing in the world to me. It was me and my shotgun against the world.

  And against all my friend’s heads, let’s not forget that.

  I thought I heard a rustling of a blanket behind me but when I turned my head there was nothing there. It was just my mind playing tricks on me. Fannie Mae was dead. I knew that. I was a hundred percent positive of that, actually. Her brains were splattered all over the wall, weren’t they?

  I turned back to the window with that false smile on my face. Mustn’t think about that.

  Still staring at the sun I managed to pull the shotgun into my lap, resting the butt against the floor. My arm throbbed as a reminder but I ignored it. The pain was shelved in a far recess of my mind. I had to change the angle of the shotgun where it rested on the floor and scoot it out another few inches to be able to rest my chin comfortably on the barrel. I thought about getting a chair out of the kitchen and sitting on it to give myself a better angle but I didn’t want to miss even one second of this fabulous sunrise.

  I pumped the shotgun, my arm throbbing again from the strain of flexing it. The bullet had passed right through the fleshy part of the arm and any movement stretched it in different ways. Again, I ignored it.

  It was a weird angle to try to get my finger into the trigger guard and I realized why a lot of people use their toe for the job. It takes a lot of stretching to get that angle right, but I’d have to put the gun down to go back and take my shoes and socks off and I didn’t know if I’d have the guts to pick it back up. I finally managed to get just the tip of my forefinger in there and decided that would have to be enough.

  Then I waited. I wanted to watch the rest of this, my first and last sunrise.

  A shadow flitted across the window and cut off my sunlight for a moment as a zombie stumbled by. It dragged its hand against the metal of the trailer and the rasp it made brought goosebumps to my flesh. It passed me on by, ignoring the trailer as it went on in search of food. I guess I wasn’t making enough of a racket or wasn’t alive enough for them to consider me food right now.

  But that shadow made a thought start circulating in my head. I tried to push it away but it insisted on being heard. I sighed and let it show me what it wanted.

  A vision of the zombie plague crossing the Earth. A shambling army of the dead making their way slowly and inexorably from city to city, town to town. They could be contained now, while their numbers were still relatively small, but once the food supply was gone and they went on their numbers would increase exponentially. All it would take would be the downfall of one relatively middle sized town for them to have enough numbers to be able to take over America, and then the world. And they’d break free, I knew they would. For all I knew I was the last living survivor of the outbreak and the irony of me having been the cause of it all wasn’t lost on me. Soon they would spread and eat their way to the end of the world.

  The zombies felt no pain, no fear, and no shame. They didn’t need rest and would never stop. How could an army of men with puny weapons ever stop an onslaught of creatures like that?

  I didn’t know if I really cared whether that happened or not. The only people I’d ever cared about were dead. One of them was beginning to rot six feet behind me and the other was out there sham
bling around in search of food.

  But that was something I could bring myself to care about. Screw the rest of the world and their problems. Maybe it was my fault and I was the cause, but what could I do to fix all that? But my best friend Barrett? I cared about that. I cared about him. I needed to destroy him. Killing him again would take away another piece of myself that I could never get back, just like killing Fannie Mae had done, but I knew it had to be done.

  I slowly removed my finger from the trigger and lowered the shotgun to the floor.

  And after Barrett I needed to kill Mason. Find him, hunt him down, and make him pay for what he’d done to my Fannie Mae.

  I looked over at Fannie Mae and that was the first time I noticed the tears streaming down my cheeks. I wiped them away irritably and said a silent promise to her that I’d join her soon. I knew it wasn’t what she would have wanted, but I didn’t want to survive without her.

  23.

  I upended the sports bag over the couch, emptying its meager contents onto the cushions. I tore open the boxes of shells and threw the cardboard absently on the floor behind me as I made a pile of the shells. I patted my pockets and found a couple more and piled them up as well.

  They made a very tiny little pile.

  A quick count gave me a total of little more than 20 shells. Plus whatever I had in the gun, which I didn’t think was that much. I sighed and loaded the shotgun and then put the rest of the shells in my pockets. It wasn’t near as bulky as it had been last night when I’d done this. When I was done with that I went into the kitchen looking for food. There wasn’t much in there. Fannie Mae’s mom wasn’t really one for stocking up the fridge, but I scrounged and made myself a decent final breakfast.

  Every thirty seconds or so I found my eyes starting to travel in the direction of Fannie Mae and I’d have to stop myself with a jolt from looking over at her. I didn’t need or want to see that. That wasn’t how I wanted to remember my sweet Fannie Mae. She was my rock, my angel, she deserved better than to be remembered like that. I finally realized I just needed to get the hell out of there and begin my hunt for Mason and Barrett. Soonest begun, soonest done.

  Then I could pull the trigger.

  I picked the shotgun up and peeked out the window, making sure that there were no zombies hovering around the door. The coast was clear so I finally took a deep breath, steadied myself, and opened it. The light was like razors poking my eyeballs after being in the dark tomb of Fannie Mae’s trailer for so long. I held a hand up to shade them and said a prayer that they’d adjust quickly. Last thing I needed was to be taken out by a zombie while waiting for my eyes to adjust.

  They finally did and I brought the shotgun to my shoulder, ready to blast anything that was coming for me. But there was nothing. The Acres looked like a ghost town. All was silent in the land of the dead. No dogs barking (what the hell had happened to all the dogs, anyway? I later found out they’d all gone crazy and run away early Saturday morning), no children playing, no cars screeching by, no radios blaring. I expected to see a tumbleweed come blowing by, but of course none did. I saw a couple zombies off in the distance shuffling through the dirt but none of them were close to me and they didn’t even bother to look my way.

  I walked out to the middle of the street, the silence and the sun rising making me feel like I was in the middle of a Western. I felt like calling out to Mason, but I knew (hoped) that he wouldn’t answer. If he was intelligent enough to answer to his name then my limited knowledge of zombies would be completely blown out of the water. I looked around the Acres, uselessly wondering what to do next when I noticed my trailer.

  It looked like a bomb had gone off near it. The front door was lying on the ground in a dented heap of metal. Ripped from the hinges like the lid of a sardine can. A couple of the windows were busted and I remember how we thought before that they were too high for zombies to climb into. I guess we were wrong. I took two steps toward my trailer and wondered what I should do. I couldn’t see any zombies waving to me from the windows but there was a good chance there was at least one in there and I didn’t relish being trapped, but on the other hand maybe this was Mason getting back at us yet again. He’d trashed Barrett’s car after all.

  I finally sighed and slowly closed the distance to my trailer, keeping on the lookout for any zombies near me. It felt like I needed about 30 eyes to watch all the directions I was trying to watch but there was no help for it. I was all that was left. I finally reached my trailer and stood about four feet from the door, fully prepared for anything to come jumping out at me. Something creaked inside, but I couldn’t see anything.

  I heard a noise behind me and whirled, bringing the shotgun up to my shoulder in a blazing fast burst of energy that brought a wave of pain to my arm. I almost pulled the trigger, but that was when I realized there was nothing there. Shit. My heart beat about a thousand miles per minute and I could feel the veins in my forehead pulsing in rhythm with it. I was spooking myself. This had almost been easier in the middle of the night.

  I let the shotgun lead the way as I slowly eased myself inside the trailer. The living room was a shambles. There was glass all over the floor and most of the pictures had been knocked off the walls. There were smears of dried blood everywhere and I had a vision of zombies traipsing through here leaving their marks from their wounds or from the bloody meat they’d ingested. I shivered again. This place no longer felt like home to me. Now it was unrecognizable.

  There were no zombies in the living room or the kitchen. It took only a quick swivel of the head to see that. There were no windows in the hallway so it was still dark as sin down there, but I could see a little from the ambient light coming from the living room and the bedrooms. Enough to see that the kitchen table had been rudely thrust aside and was now in pieces on the floor. Enough to see that the door to my parent’s bedroom stood gaping open.

  I muttered a curse, wondering what the zombies had done to my mom. Had they eaten her dead flesh? Seen it as a little after-dinner snack to ease their palates? No hot, salty, rushing blood to mess up the meat?

  As much as I’d hated my mom I felt that it was my duty to go down there and see. It was possible the zombie virus could infect already dead tissue as easily as it could infect living tissue and if mom was out there shambling around as a zombie I knew it was my duty to take care of her, too. All my duty hung around my shoulders like a mountain. All I wanted to do was go lie down somewhere with my trusty shotgun and fall asleep to the world.

  But I set my shoulders, redistributing my burden, and set off down the hallway. I went into my room first to make sure there was nothing in there and half-expected Mason to be sitting there at my desk, smiling his dead smile at me. But he wasn’t. There were no zombies in there anywhere. I breathed a sigh of relief and went over to my desk. There was a picture of me, Fannie Mae, and Barrett smiling and having a good time at school. I don’t remember who had snapped it, but there were days when just looking at that picture had helped me survive and now when I saw it a wave of those feelings crashed over me again. God, did I miss them.

  I put the shotgun down and tore the back of the frame off, pulling the picture free. I smiled at it and held it to my chest, hoping that it could fill the void I felt there. It didn’t, of course. I put the picture in my pocket, glad that I’d come in here for that if for nothing else. That picture could help me survive in the years to come, if surviving was something I wanted to do.

  There was a whisper of air behind me and I cried out, grabbing the shotgun, and whirling around, diving backwards onto my bed. There was nothing there. Again. This was getting old.

  I suddenly caught a whiff of myself as I lay there on the bed. God, did I stink. I’d completely pitted out my shirt at some point and between the blood and grime that was caked in it I was pretty sure that it was ruined forever. I stripped it off and wiped myself down with it as best I could, wincing when my arm flexed. The bandage was dirty and bleeding through but I didn’t really care enough
to worry about changing it at this point. I grabbed another shirt off the floor and quickly put it on. I hadn’t yet checked mom’s room. I’d been drawing it out as long as I could and I knew I needed to.

  To this day I’m still not sure if I actually wanted her body to be there or not.

  It was. The light streamed in through her broken window and a breeze made the curtains billow inward. The blanket had been removed from her body and it lay in a pile on the floor. She was fully exposed to the world, her body still bent in the upright position she had died in. Her hand still clenched closed as if she had a bottle in it. I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that she had neither been eaten or was up and about walking around.

  I went forward and stood over her. For the first time since coming home Friday night and noticing that she was dead I felt a wave of sorrow touch my heart. I had a few memories of her being good to me when I was very small, before the drink had overtaken her. They were very few and very far between, but there were a couple there. I’d hated the woman most of my life but with all the trauma and tragedy of the last two days I felt like even she deserved a little better than this. I remembered mom buying me ice cream a time or two and a small, sad smile crossed my face.