by Cedric Nye
Vanessa opened the glove box, and pushed the trunk release button before closing her door. She walked to the trunk and got her suitcase out. She set her suitcase on the ground, extended a telescoping handle from the top, and closed the trunk.
She turned back to look at Jango and said, “Well, let’s get checked into this hotel!”
After a long, hard look at the surrounding area, Jango put his stick under his left arm, walked up to the Big Country RV and tried the door. He was surprised to find it unlocked at first, but when he thought about it, it actually made sense. The place was out on the edge of town, and surrounded by chain link fence that was topped with barbed wire. The trailer was as safe as it could be.
Jango motioned for Vanessa to stay where she was, and then stealthily made his way into the trailer. A quick look through the place convinced him that it was safe and zombie free, so he helped Vanessa get her large suitcase up the metal stairs, and into the trailer.
After one more look at the area around the trailer, he closed and locked the door, and started to poke around until he found the circuit board for the trailer’s generator. He finally found it inside of a cupboard, and he flipped the master switch.
The results were nothing short of miraculous as the lights came on, and the high-dollar electrical generator began softly humming. He crossed his fingers as he watched the water level indicator light up. When it indicated that the water tanks were full, he pumped his hands in the air and smiled at Vanessa.
“What’s got you so happy?” She asked.
“The water tanks are full, the water tanks are full, hi-ho-the-derry-o, the water tanks are full!” Jango sang in reply. When he saw that she still didn’t comprehend why he was so excited, he explained, “We get to take showers tonight, hot showers, with WATER! These rich folks, the ones who own these behemoths, they almost always keep them ready to go. Well, at least they used to. There is water, and a generator for electricity.”
Realization dawned on Vanessa’s face, and her eyes lit up with joy. “Oh. My. God. You better not be shittin’ me, Jango.” Her southern accent became more pronounced in her excitement. “I swear, if you’re shittin’ me, I might cry!”
Jango solemnly walked to the kitchen area of the huge trailer, and turned the knob on the kitchen faucet. The faucet sputtered a few times, and then water started to flow out of it.
Vanessa whooped, opened her suitcase, and started digging through her belongings.
“We will have to wait for a little bit while the water heats up, but it shouldn’t be very long,” he said as Vanessa produced a variety of feminine hygiene items and fresh clothing from her voluminous luggage.
“I can wait, Jango, shoot, I can wait! Do you know when the last time I had a hot bath was?” She kept rooting through her bag as she talked. “That’s right, two damn months! Now, don’t get me wrong, I was happy to have a whore’s-bath from a washtub when there was no other option, but baby, I have dreamed about a nice, hot bath!”
Jango made a mental note to remember the term “whore’s-bath.” “Um, I don’t know if you will get a bath,” he said. “These things usually just have a little shower. But we can go check,” he added.
He led the way toward the front of the trailer, and to the door of the restroom. They both looked into the surprisingly large bathroom, and immediately saw that it included a full-sized Jacuzzi!
They both stared at the large hot tub in silence for several moments as they each thought about how much the world had changed in such a short time.
“I never would have thought that a hot tub would be such a big deal,” Jango said softly. “I mean, back before the Z-Virus hit, that is.” Then he added, “That lousy, stinking Z-Virus, I wonder where that shit came from.”
“You don’t know?” Vanessa asked incredulously.
Jango was taken aback. “You know where it came from?” He asked her. “Do you really know?”
“I thought everybody knew. It was on the news, on the internet, and even in the newspapers,” Vanessa said in a gentle tone. “It was Mosnato, that huge corporation that owned most of the seeds in the world.”
Jango nodded slowly. He had a feeling that he knew what she was about to say. He knew about Mosnato and their mad rush to genetically modify all of the staple foods in the world.
Vanessa continued, “So Mosnato decided at some point that it would be a good idea to insert animal DNA into our produce, our fruits, and vegetables. They started getting larger fruits and better yields for crops, but it just wasn’t enough for them.” She paused for a moment. “Nope, it just wasn’t enough for those greedy bastards. They had to take it even further. They started to insert human DNA into some root-vegetables like yams, potatoes, and carrots. How the hell did we not know?” She yelled.
Vanessa took a deep breath, and then went on in a lower voice. “The vegetables even started to look like body parts, but we didn’t notice. The damn yams had things that looked like veins, for God’s sake! Well, pretty soon their genetic modifications gave birth to a virus that wasn’t even detectable at the time, and it was spread to people by the root vegetables. The first strain of the, what did you call it? Oh yeah, the Z-Virus. Anyway, the first strain of it had a two-week incubation period, so that shit was spread all over the globe by the time the first zombie popped up. Then it somehow went airborne, and the incubation time got shorter and shorter.” She looked at Jango, and asked, “How do you not know all of this?”
Jango took a deep breath, and decided that it didn’t matter anymore, and that he could tell her a little bit of his story. “Come on, let’s sit down, and I’ll tell you a tale,” he said in a somber tone. Vanessa let him lead her to the king-size bed that took up the front of the trailer, and they sat down on the edge of the mattress.
Jango set his shotgun on the bed beside him, and held his stick with both hands as he began to tell her how he had come to be in Prescott when the Zombie Apocalypse had first started.
“I lived in Phoenix for most of my life, and it just seemed to suit me. Nasty air, people pissed off because it’s over a hundred degrees in the shade, and the anonymity that comes with living in a city composed of people on the move. Functional transients; that pretty much says it all.” Jango toyed with his stick as he wondered how much he should tell her.
“So I lived in the city, and I started to lose my ability to see any good in the people around me. I was, I mean, I had a tough time as a kid, and I never really trusted anyone, but this was different.” Jango took a deep breath, and then blurted out, “I started hunting people! I mean, not people. I hunted humans.” He said the word “humans” like it was a curse-word.
“I paid attention, and followed my instincts. I tracked and traced any low-life I could find, and started to find the criminals that were in charge of different operations. I hunted rich thugs who ran sex-trafficking operations, rapists, pimps, and the middle management scum-sacks who operated dog-fighting facilities. Shit, I started finding those mother-fuckers, and I started hunting them through the city. I once fed a dog-fight operator to the dogs he had abused for so long. And do you want to know something? It felt so good. It was justice, girl. The fucking law never gave a shit about a victim, but justice is all heart. Anyway, I was on the run in Prescott when the wheels came off, and the Z-Virus threw us all into a Bruce Campbell movie. I had finally gone too far. I beat a man to death for punching his dog in the head. Shit, there were so many witnesses, so I just ran. I headed north, holed up in a shitty hotel with no TV, and then, the next thing I knew there were zombies trying to eat me.” Jango finished his story, fully expecting Vanessa to be freaked out by the fact that he had just admitted to killing people even before the Z-Virus had turned the world upside down.
He started when he felt her small hand on his large, scarred hand. He looked down in disbelief, and then looked up at her face and saw that she had tears in her eyes.
“You really are a knight in shining armor, aren’t you, Jango?” She said softly. “I used
to dream about someone coming to save me when my daddy used to….” She stopped in mid-sentence as her voice broke.
After she cleared her throat, Vanessa said, “I just want you to know, Jango, that you can do no wrong in my eyes, and I will never, ever, ever fuck you over.”
The look in her eyes convinced him of the truth, and he nodded his head in grim acceptance of the steel she had put into her words.
Jango started to feel uncomfortable, so he stood up and said, “I’ll bet you can get that bath now.”
Vanessa smiled and said jokingly, “I just wish we had some nice food to top off this evening of unexpected luxury!” She stood up, took her bundle of clothing and assorted bath items into the bathroom, and slid the door shut.
Jango waited until he heard the sound of water coming from the bathroom. When he did, he picked up his shotgun and went back out to his car.
He grabbed his backpack, and some canned vegetables from the trunk of the car. He listened intently to the desert for a few moments before he went back inside the RV.
While Vanessa luxuriated in her bath, Jango prepared a simple meal. He had rooted around in the kitchen cupboards and drawers until he had found a large stockpot, and a can opener. He ran some water into the pot, lit the propane stove, and set his water to boil.
He added beef jerky to the water, and then added the canned vegetables to the mix. He seasoned it with some iodized salt, onion powder, and some black pepper, then he lowered the heat and let the food simmer.
In only a few moments, the heavenly smell of the simmering stew had filled the trailer. Jango heard Vanessa say, “What is that smell? My stomach is practically climbing out of my mouth to get to whatever that is!”
He laughed as he listened to her splash out of the tub in a hurry. She was dressed and out of the bathroom in less than a minute.
Vanessa had dressed in red and yellow striped pajamas that reminded him of how The Killer had looked when the girls had finished exercising their demons on the big man’s flesh. The red blood and the yellow color of his fat showing through in the long cuts popped into Jango’s head. He laughed at the memory.
“What’s so funny?” Vanessa asked him as she headed straight toward the simmering pot of beef stew.
“Nothing, kid, don’t worry about it. It’s just that you reminded me of someone that I knew.” Jango started to laugh again, but quickly stifled it with a fake cough.
“What was she like?” Vanessa asked.
“What was who like?” Jango responded.
“The girl that I reminded you of, silly; what was she like?” she retorted.
Then Jango did laugh. His laugh was the long and rolling laugh of a lunatic, and it sounded like it came from the depths of an insane asylum.
Vanessa’s eyes went wet with fear as the hard tones of Jango’s madness struck the chords of fear within her heart. She wondered if he was really any better than the men he had saved her from. She wanted to believe in him, but his laughter raised a primal and atavistic fear from the depths of her hindbrain, and she felt as though her bladder would burst and her bowels would let go if the sound went on much longer.
Vanessa saw Jango’s nostrils widen as he stopped laughing and sniffed at the air. He turned to look at her, and she shrank back from the fires that pin wheeled through his eyes.
“Whoa, whoa, Vanessa,” he said. “You don’t have to be scared of me, kid. Us against them, remember?”
“You just looked scary, Jango, like you had hell’s own fires burning in your eyes. I almost peed in my pants when you looked at me like that,” Vanessa said.
“Fair enough,” said Jango reasonably, “But in the future, no matter what I look like, I won’t hurt you. Well, unless you tried to hurt me first. At that point, bad shit is bound to happen.”
Vanessa let out a long breath. Then, without missing a beat, she said, “Well, are we going to eat that delicious smelling food, or are we just going to sit here and fade away to nothing from sheer hunger?”
Jango laughed and grabbed some bowls from the cupboard. He dished liberal portions into each bowl, and then he and Vanessa sat at the table and fell on their meals like starved animals.
They refilled their bowls, and continued eating until all of the stew was gone. When they finished, they both sat back and groaned in contentment.
“Oh, man!” Jango exclaimed.
“What is it?” Vanessa asked him.
“Shit, I am really slipping lately, kid. I forgot to clean the car off after I got done with some work in Prescott. All the dried blood, and that other gunk smeared across my ride is liable to bring the goobers down on us. I’ll be right back,” Jango said as he rose from the kitchen table.
Jango grabbed the large pot he had cooked their meal in, and rinsed it out in the sink. He then filled it all the way to the top, and looked under the sink to see if he could find some kind of cleaning product. He was rewarded with a large bottle of blue dish detergent. He squirted a liberal amount into the pot, and then went over to the table to retrieve his stick. He looked at his shotgun, and then looked at Vanessa for a moment before he turned and went back to the kitchen.
Jango held his stick in his right hand, and carried the pot with his left arm cradled around it. He went to the door of the trailer, tucked the stick through his belt, and peeked out through the window that was set into the door. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, so he decided to get going.
Before he opened the door, though, a thought occurred to him, and he quickly turned off all the lights. “I’m sorry about this, Vanessa, but I have to be careful. I’ve been slipping a lot lately, and I don’t want to make a fatal mistake, you know?”
Vanessa nodded, and watched as Jango opened the door, and slipped out into the night.
He looked around for several minutes, standing as still as a stone, letting his senses expand and become one with the desert night. When he felt sure that there were no threats in the area, Jango gave the car a cursory cleaning which consisted of dumping the pot of soapy water along the length of his car. He then swiped the water and blood off of the car with his hand. He used his hand like a squeegee and when he had finished, the car looked remarkably clean. He had been covering his tracks for two months, and he had gotten fast at doing what he needed to do to survive.
Jango looked around again, and then went back inside the trailer. He entered quickly, and at an angle. When he saw that Vanessa hadn’t moved, and hadn’t picked up the shotgun, he relaxed, closed the door, and turned the lights back on.
“I guess it’s my turn in the spa, eh?” Jango said with a smile. He was happy that Vanessa hadn’t tried anything, and he started to trust her a little bit.
Jango rooted through his backpack for clean socks and underwear. He took the clean undergarments and his stick with him into the bathroom, and closed the door.
Once he was in the restroom, Jango quickly stripped off his boots and clothing, and turned on the water. He pulled the little plunger that made the water come out of the showerhead, and climbed into the large tub.
Jango showered quickly, and was done in just a few minutes. He had never been able to relax in a shower. Every time he went to take a shower, he would start to imagine that he heard noises coming from the other side of the door. Sometimes, he would even shut the water off so he could listen for noises from the other room. His imagination would be filled with Norman Bates, alien abductors, zombies, and home invaders until he had finished with his bathing.
When he came out of the bathroom, he saw that Vanessa had fallen fast asleep on one side of the king-sized bed. She lay on her side, and she had fallen asleep with one of the large pillows clutched tightly to her chest. Jango pulled the blanket loose from the other side of the bed, and tenderly covered her sleeping form.
He retrieved his shotgun, made sure that the front door was latched, and then turned the lights off. He made his way to the kitchen, and turned on the small light that was set into the ventilation hood over the stove. He
didn’t want Vanessa to wake up scared, and in the dark.
With the stick and his shotgun on his lap, Jango settled into a plush chair, and fell asleep almost instantly.
Wild visions haunted Jango’s slumbering mind. His body twitched as images flashed through his dreamscape. He saw moving images of his blood as it rushed through his veins in perfect synchronization with the thunderous beat of his heart.
Jango saw himself cloaked in shadows as he dealt death with his stick. He saw himself battered, torn, and dying as the world spun out of control. His heartbeat started to grow louder, and louder, thumping and booming until….
He awoke to soft thumping noises. He was drenched in sweat, and he clutched his stick in a white-knuckled grip. He heard moans outside the trailer, and Jango’s heart dropped into his stomach.
He heard and felt the thumps of what he knew to be zombies as they moved around outside the trailer. Jango went to the front of the trailer, covered Vanessa’s mouth with his hand, and woke her with a shake.
Vanessa woke up with a muffled scream, and started swinging her fists at Jango. He batted her hands aside, and whispered, “Cut that out, we have a bad situation, and we need to get this shit sorted out.” He squeezed her face for emphasis, and then let her go.
“Be quiet,” he cautioned her. “We have a goober problem, so just be quiet.” Jango’s mind was working at a rate of speed that few minds would have been capable of. He sorted through all the available information as he sought a way out of their predicament.
His first thought was to simply abandon Vanessa. He had spent the last two months hunting zombies, and he knew he could outrun them. He could lead them on a merry chase, and then double back to get his car.
Jango immediately discarded the idea of abandoning Vanessa, but he kept one part of the plan. His eyes had been ceaselessly searching the inside of the trailer, and he had spotted the large vent in the ceiling of the RV. The vent had a skylight that looked like it opened outward.