by Dixon, Chuck
Chuck Dixon’s Paranormal Double Pack
Gomers and Blooded
Chuck Dixon
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2019 (as revised) Chuck Dixon
Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
http://jcalebdesign.com / [email protected]
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy
Las Vegas, NV 89109
First US edition, October 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64202-512-5
Contents
Gomers
Blooded
About the Author
Other LMBPN Publishing Books
Gomers
WHEN THE DEAD WALK THE EARTH…
…THE LIVING GO SHOPPING.
Jim and Smash are looking for a safe place to sit out the zombie armageddon.
They choose a giant home improvement store as their sanctuary.
But an Afghanistan war vet and an attack dog with gender issues have already claimed the place.
And then there’s the girl…
1
The military vehicles passed them in the opposite lanes going hard and loud.
A long stream of deuce-and-a-halfs, Hummers and Army semi-trailers, including a tank on a flatbed, all rolling tight and fast, northbound.
“That’s the third one this morning, right?” Mercy said from the suicide seat of the Coachman.
“Some kind of maneuvers or something,” Uncle Fuller said, watching the trucks flash by on the other side of the grass median.
“Maybe those riots that were on the radio?”
“I don’t know much about being a soldier, but I don’t think they bring tanks to a riot.”
“Still, something’s going on,” she said.
“Nothing to do with us,” he said and lit another Camel.
Mercy turned on the dash radio and switched to AM. It was all talk radio, gospel, and Spanish language stations. Nothing more about the riots up north in Philadelphia and Camden. She moved the dial a little more to a country oldies station.
“Keep it there,” Uncle Fuller said.
Mercy sat back and watched the trees go by while some old-school redneck warbled about lost love and getting drunk. She liked riding up front in the RV, but Uncle Fuller’s taste in music had fossilized back in the ’70s. But she could deal with that.
The Coachman was better than riding in the minivan with Mom, Bill Tom, and Raquel. She didn’t miss Mom harping on her for every little thing. And she could do without the way Bill Tom, her mother’s latest boyfriend, watched her when he thought no one else was looking. And Raquel, her little sister, was only six months into puberty and having her time of the month, which turned her usual annoying self into the Bitch Queen of the Universe.
Her other ride option, which was no option at all, was in the crew cab of the pickup. Hard to tell which smelled worse: Doe at the wheel or the four-hundred-gallon tank of used motor oil sloshing around in the truck bed. Doe was a first cousin and named that for all the John Doe warrants out for him from Maine to Florida and as far west as Indiana. He smoked a lot and didn’t talk hardly at all.
Five miles before the next exit, a highway sign was flashing to tell drivers to be prepared to stop. State trooper cars, blue lights whirling and flashing, were parked behind barricades placed across both lanes. Troopers on the shoulder directed traffic onto the exit ramp. The staties wore surgical masks. Mercy saw that some of them had shotguns out and ready. One had a rifle cradled in his arms, an ugly black thing with a curved magazine. There were a few cars pulled onto the grass median with no drivers or passengers in sight.
Uncle Fuller slowed down for the exit. The crucifix swung from the rearview mirror on its beaded chain as he tapped the brakes enough to holler out to a trooper, asking what was going on. The trooper only waved on with more emphasis, stabbing his hand ahead, eyes hard over the top of the paper mask.
“Still think this is nothing to do with us?” Mercy said. Uncle Fuller grunted and powered up the exit ramp.
Mercy’s smartphone lit up playing “Fallout Boy.” It was Mom in the minivan following behind.
“Mercy? What’s going on?”
“We don’t know, Mom.”
“What’d that police say to your uncle?”
“He didn’t say nothing, Mom. Just waved us on.”
“What’d Fuller ask him?”
“Same thing you’re asking me, Mom.”
“Tell her I’m pulling off into that K-Mart up ahead,” Uncle Fuller said.
“You hear that?” Mercy said into the cell.
The phone went dead. Mercy sighed heavily and tossed the cell phone to the dash hard enough to bounce it off the windshield.
“You know, you don’t need to be a bitch alla the time,” Uncle Fuller said.
She looked at him, brows furrowed, eyes mean.
“Like that.” He laughed and turned his eyes back to the road.
“I don’t like how she treats me,” Mercy said.
“That ain’t it, and you know it.”
“Then why don’t you tell me what it is, Dr. Phil?” she said with a crooked smile, eyes still mean.
“She told me you want to go to school. College. And I’ve seen you reading that GED book.”
“And why can’t I go to school? Learn something?”
“You’ve learned plenty of knowledge out here on the road. You knew more about human nature at ten years old than most girls learn their whole lives,” he said, slowing as he came to the rear of the stopped column of cars.
“Maybe I’m tired of always moving. Spending half the year on the road. Maybe I’d like to stick in one place. Learn something different. Talk to someone who isn’t a cousin of mine for once,” she said, gazing ahead to where a group of men was pushing a stalled pickup off the road. Horns hooted encouragement.
“Well, that’s between you and your mother,” he said, pulling up as the traffic ahead began to inch forward.
“And there it’ll stay,” she said with a bitter smile.
They gathered in the K-Mart lot. The lot was close to full, so they had to park in a row of far spaces near the road. Cars were pulling in and pulling out. Some parked on the walk in front of the store. People were pushing loaded carts from the store. More people crowded the entrances.
Mom and Bill Tom were busy talking to Uncle Fuller. Mercy took the opportunity to bum a beer from the cooler Doe kept in his truck bed by the oil tank. Doe made a chirping sound and she tossed him a cold Miller.
“Is there a hurricane coming or something? Looks like a hurricane,” Doe said, leaning back in the open door of his cab after his first pull on the can. His usual Marlboro burned between his yellowed fingers like a natural appendage.
“Nothing on the radio but bullshit,” Mercy said.
“Sure looks something like a hurricane. Everybody shopping like Jesus was on his way.”
“Look at the sky. Not a cloud.”
“I mean the people. T
hey’re stocking up on shit like there’s no more shit left. At a K-Mart, for Christ’s sake. You know what that means, right?” Doe said, nodding toward the crowded storefront.
“What?” Mercy said.
“Means the Walmart ran out of shit.” He grinned, showing the silver tooth in the middle of his uppers.
“Is that a beer?” Mom said, leaving the conference by the RV to charge back toward the pickup.
Before Mercy could answer, her mother swatted the can from her hand. Foam went everywhere.
“What’d I tell you, Doe?” her mother said, voice rising, her own Marlboro waggling where it was pressed in the corner of her mouth.
“What? She ain’t driving.” Doe shrugged.
“You’re riding with us, Mercy. Get in the car with your sister,” Mom said, taking Mercy by the arm.
“Where are we going?” Mercy asked.
“This county road takes us to Harrow. There were new developments going up last time we were through here.”
“That was only last year,” Doe said, crushing his empty in his fist.
“Fuller says two years. We passed it by last year,” Mom said and
turned to follow Mercy to the minivan.
“Could be right,” Doe said and climbed behind the wheel of the pickup.
Mercy got in the rear seat of the minivan beside her little sister. Raquel never left the minivan, and her eyes never left the monitor set in the back of the driver’s headrest. The movie on the screen was something with cheerleaders. Tinny music escaped from her earbuds. Her full attention was fixed on the movie.
“Nice to see you too, sis,” Mercy said and strapped in.
2
They reached Harrow and split up to go to work. It was a small town set astride the county road. The main business street was going through gentrification as a result of development growth all around. There was a Starbucks on the main drag, a sure sign of rising status and disposable cash.
Uncle Fuller would do his usual, walk the main street, making an easy couple hundred bucks working hand cons and short change scams. Mom and Raquel would hit the Target where they’d play suburban mother and child returning a high-priced item they’d lost the receipt for. Bill Tom told them he’d be at the local bar hustling, even though they all knew he’d just drink himself stupid and someone would have to go get him.
Mercy opted to hang with Doe for the afternoon. Her mother agreed only after Doe took the cooler from the Ford and put it in the cargo rear of the minivan. Mom pointed in wordless warning at her and then at Doe as the truck pulled away.
“You never want to ride with me,” Doe said after a while.
“Thought the change would do me good,” Mercy said, her hand cupped out the open window to make a scoop in the wind.
“Uh-huh.”
“Tired of listening to her carping and Uncle Fuller’s ‘helpful’ advice,” she added despite Doe’s indifference to the subject.
“You’re like Cousin Danielle,” he said and elaborated no more.
“I never heard of her.”
“You wouldn’t. Your Aunt Letitia’s daughter. Left the family before you were born. Thought she could sing. I guess she could sing pretty enough.” Doe seemed happy to leave it there.
“Are you going to make me beg?”
“She ran off to Nashville. We didn’t hear anything from her for a few years. Then we found out she ODed on something. Police found her dead in a Motel 6.”
“And everybody thinks that’s what’s going to happen to me? Is that why Mom won’t let me go to school?”
“That’s between you and your mother,” Doe said.
Treywood Farm was the new development that Uncle Fuller remembered had been under construction two years before. Doe caught some luck and followed an Escalade in through the automated security gate. The Escalade leaped the speed bumps on the entry road behind the gates. It sped off out of sight, going well above the twenty-five-mile speed limit posted along the road. They could hear the tires squealing through the trees.
They pulled well into the development and parked in a cul de sac ringed by four-thousand -square -foot mini-mansions. Mercy stayed in the truck, playing with the radio while Doe worked his trade going door to door.
The pitch was an old one but new to young homeowners. Doe looked for bikes or Big Wheels on the driveway. A wife, home alone, mid-twenties to thirties was the prime mark. New home, new family, money tight since moving into more house than they could handle. And here comes cousin Doe with a deal too good to resist.
He hit the doorbell, and a little brunette with an infant on her hip came to the door. She looked Doe up and down, a smiling stranger on her front walk in grease-stained jeans and a work shirt with the sleeve rolled up over a pack of cigarettes.
“I thought you were my husband. I’m waiting on my husband,” she said. Her eyes cut to the street, looking for her husband’s car.
“Well, see, I’m done coating a driveway a street over for one of your neighbors. I have a half-order of sealer left on the truck.” He jerked a thumb at the Ford parked in the shade across the street. “I can coat your driveway for a couple hundred, seal it good for summer. That’s a thousand-dollar job, ma’am.”
“I thought you were my husband,” she said again and shut the door before he could get to the close of his pitch.
He shrugged and returned to the sidewalk. Mercy, eyes squinted, was smiling broadly at him from the cab. He grinned and gave her the finger.
She returned the gesture before turning her attention to the radio. The station she was listening to went to dead air in the middle of a song. The dead air was replaced by the urgent bleat of an emergency alert announcement. A recorded announcement urged anyone within the station’s range to remain indoors.
“If you are not within the vicinity of your home or are traveling, seek shelter and remain in place, in a secure location, until further notices from this station,” the strident voice pronounced.
Mercy moved the dial in either direction. She found only static or further repetitions of the same announcement. She looked for Doe and saw him moving along the walk toward the next house.
A tubby old guy was on hands and knees on the front lawn. Doe thought he was weeding at first. The man was in a bathrobe and one slipper. These assholes do obsess about their goddamn lawns, Doe thought as he stepped up behind the old guy.
The man was down on all fours, heaving in the grass, shoulders hunching, puke spraying from his mouth and nostrils.
“You okay, brother?” Doe asked.
The spray of vomit was dark on the grass. It was blood and chunks of something that looked like sushi or strips of raw steak. Doe tasted the last Miller trying to come back up.
“You need me to call someone?” Doe said. This guy is one sick fucker, he was thinking.
The old guy raised his head, noticing Doe for the first time. Long strings of black mucous swung from his foam-flecked lips. His teeth worked, clamping together with wet sounds.
Something gleamed in the slick of vomit. It was a diamond ring in a white gold setting. On a human finger, bit off at the third joint. The manicured nail was painted hot pink.
Doe backed away. The old guy lunged off his knees, grabbing for Doe’s leg. He fell when his foot twisted on the lawn’s slope. The old guy pulled himself closer, mouth wide open. He clamped down on a mouthful of Doe’s calf. Doe howled at the vise-like pain of the teeth trying to cut through the thick denim of his Levis.
He kicked out with a work boot, catching the old guy hard in the forehead with the whole heel. The old guy’s head rocked back, leaving the teeth, a gleaming pair of dentures, behind on the lawn. Doe tumbled the rest of the way down the slope to the sidewalk. The old guy, gums bared, slithered after on his belly. Doe rolled to his feet and turned to run only to slam into a cast iron mailbox set along the drive. His feet flew from under him. He crashed to the curb.
The old guy was on hands and knees, crawling like a hyperactive infant, crossin
g the sidewalk toward Doe. His eyes brimmed with hunger, the mouth smacking open and closed, tongue working.
Doe spider-walked into the street, eyes on the contorted face of the old guy staring at him through the pewter gleam of cataracts. Mercy stepped past Doe to swing down with a shovel. The flat of the blade took the old guy on the crown of the head. He dropped to his belly, chin striking the paving with a meaty crack. He was up again, jaw dislocated and hanging, as determined as before to get another chance at her cousin.
The shovel came down again. This time Mercy swung for the fences, striking the old guy across the side of the skull hard enough to pop an eye from its socket. Not even a flinch. The old guy kept on, a bubbling wheeze escaping from his mouth with the effort.
“Let me take over, girl,” Doe said, snatching the shovel from Mercy’s hands.
He turned the shaft in his hand to bring the blade down edge-on. It drove into the flesh and bone of the head with a woody thump. He twisted the blade out of a cut that cleaved the old guy’s skull down to the brows. The shovel came back greasy with brain matter. The old guy sank to the street and lay motionless.
“What. The. Fuck,” Doe said.
“We have to leave,” Mercy said, tugging on Doe’s arm and pointing past the now-still corpse.
A woman stalked down from the house toward them. An old woman in a once-white nightgown stained pink and crimson with blood from a ragged wound torn in her throat. She reached out hands for them as she crossed the lawn. Her mouth gaped open in a silent harangue. The fingers of her left hand had been torn off.
The old guy’s lunch.