by William Bebb
Boris slept curled up at the foot of the stairs. His ears twitched occasionally when he heard the scraping sounds of metal from upstairs. Josey studied the small collection of items he'd found after going through the boxes. There was an old glass kerosene lantern with no wick, a few ounces of kerosene in a glass bottle, a good size length of clothesline, a box of mildew rotted clothes, some rusty bloated cans of peaches and processed luncheon meat, and a few candles.
He remembered when he was seven years old his mom threw away several bulging cans of food she found in his grandmother’s house after she died. When he asked why she did it, she said “Bulging cans of food are poisonous.”
Unfortunately he hadn't believed his mother and retrieved one of the cans of meat from the trash. It was a can of Vienna Sausages which was one of his favorite foods. He had taken the can outside and pulled the lid off. The can didn't look very much bulged out and the small sausages smelled fine as he ate half of them and gave the rest to his grandmother’s cat, named Scalawag. He felt fine for about ten minutes.
As it turned out his mom had been right. He was extremely lucky to have just suffered explosive, painful, and unpredictable explosive diarrhea for the next two days. Scalawag wasn't so lucky. The cat’s yowls went on for most of the night after they shared the sausages then stopped. His mother found the cat's body on the back porch of the house the next morning. The poor animal had been throwing up and suffering diarrhea till it died sometime in the night. His father made Josey, between bouts of diarrhea, dig a grave and bury it.
After lighting one of the candles, he worked on the lantern trying to fashion a wick from some of the old clothes. Filling the lantern with kerosene he fiddled with the impromtu wick until it was wet and managed to get it to light with the candle. It flared to life and he blew out the candle.
“What now Boris? Go try and burn our way out upstairs or go down your hallway over there?”
Boris opened his eyes and yawned hugely then turned to look at him with his tail whacking the dust covered floor.
He packed the other items, minus the rest of the moldy clothes and cans of food, into his toolbox. He toyed with the idea of opening the poisoned meat and throwing it over the wall for the zombies to eat for a minute. Then wondered if they're dead what would poisoned meat do to them? He was tempted to try anyway, but then he considered the rickety wooden staircase and decided not to take the chance on having it collapse while he tried his experiment. Though he did have a smile on his face as he imagined the zombies eating the canned meat suffering from explosive diarrhea.
Getting back on his feet his knee was a little stiff, yet much sturdier and not shaking at all. He held the lantern and toolbox in his left hand and the crowbar in his right while walking toward the dark hallway. Spider webs festooned the ceiling and the floor itself was made of dust covered concrete. A small patch of bright red blood and a few tufts of rat fur was all that gave witness to the dog’s meal. Boris trotted ahead into the darkness with the clicking of his toenails echoing through the hallway. The sound was both unsettling and reassuring at the same time. At least it's not as hot down here as it was upstairs, he thought following the dog.
He opened a door on the right side of the hall and saw a dirty toilet and some empty beer cans on the floor. A bottle of tequila sparkled in the sink and Josey picked it up. If he had felt optimistic he might have said it was half full, but in his current situation he assessed it as half empty. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed the contents.
He had gotten into the habit of sniffing liquor bottles after an unfortunate incident he had the first and last day he tried being a garbage man. Being a garbage collector had never been in his career plan, but after his college dreams were shattered he took the job out of desperation.
Some of his co-workers told him of finding all kinds of wonderful things in trash cans. Pornographic magazines and bottles of booze were the two best things often thrown away. Usually after the former owners or the former owners girlfriends discovered or got sick of the stuff and threw them away.
His first day on the job he found the majority of trashcans were full of poop filled diapers and regular trash. In one particular trashcan, toward the end of the day, he found a bottle of whiskey that was nearly full. Not realizing how stupid he was being, he opened it and drank straight from the bottle. He drank for a couple of seconds when his taste buds informed him of what his nostrils should already have. Josey was drinking a bottle of whiskey that some bastard had urinated into.
Spitting and swearing he never heard the kids in the frat house nearby laughing behind the closed window. He quit and swore never to drink from a strange bottle again.
Josey didn't know it, but he actually had several hundred thousand people who loved him for having drank it. One of the fraternity kids posted a video of the whole incident on the internet entitled Dumb ass garbage man drinks my piss.
Down in the basement the bottle's contents smelled of tequila. He decided to save it for later and screwed the cap back on reluctantly. He had been briefly tempted to just relax down here and get drunk, however the recurring idea that time was running out and the military would soon nuke the whole place changed his mind. After putting the bottle inside his tool box he closed the bathroom door and walked on in silence, save for the occasional sound of the dog's toenails ahead in the darkness.
After a couple minutes he came to a set of concrete steps going up. Boris looked up at him expectantly. He climbed the steps knocking spider webs out of his way. At the top there was an old wooden door, barred from his side with a large piece of wood sitting in metal brackets on the walls.
Brushing away the spider webs he pressed his ear to the door listening intently. He heard nothing and set down the toolbox and lantern. The board felt rough and he put his gloves back on, not wishing to tempt fate with a nasty splinter when he had a whole trailer park full of undead and a trick knee to contend with. After lifting the board as quietly as he could the door freely swung open a few inches and the sunlight nearly blinded him.
Exchanging the board for his crowbar he tried to slowly and quietly open the door more. It squealed, but not as horribly loud as he had feared, and he pulled it enough to see what was beyond it. A set of concrete steps led up to ground level and the bright blue sky above.
While staring up at the cloudless sky he grumbled, “How could a pack of zombies ruin a day as pretty as this? It just seems wrong, in the movies it’s a graveyard or something and always at night not the middle of the fucking desert first thing on a Monday morning.”
The dog stayed down, behind the now open door, sniffing the air and whimpering softly. Josey climbed the steps and peeked above ground level. He saw they were about a half mile from Mrs. Remlap's house. He looked in all directions around the stairs and saw he was only about fifty or sixty feet away from the trailer with the American flag where the old man lived with his dog. Looking the other way, he could see his truck in the distance with a few zombies wandering around it while others still pushed and scratched at the dryers he'd jammed in the doorway.
It was ten o’clock according to his watch and it seemed like it was a hundred degrees already. His skin felt like the sun was baking him as he tried to think.
A piercing scream ripped through the stifling air and he crouched down looking for the owner of the impressive set of lungs. An old man, wearing a straw cowboy hat, a dirty red and white flannel shirt, and filthy jeans, was chasing a jackrabbit toward the Remlap house. The last hope that he held that they were all just slow poke zombies, like he'd seen in countless movies, vanished as he nearly caught the jackrabbit.
He stared in amazement as the long eared beast zig zagged and picked up speed. It wasn't the jackrabbit’s speed that amazed him. It was that the pursuer did not seem appreciably to slow down or get dejected by it's quickness, but continued after it with a single-mindedness that was disturbing in a way he couldn't immediately understand. The man in the cowboy hat screamed again and Josey saw several other
men join the pursuit of the jackrabbit as it ran away.
He looked around shaking his head muttering, “Pretty fast for zombies, aren't they?” Josey stared at the distance to the trailer and began humming the tune to the song, Should I stay or should I go now, by The Clash. The dog’s tail wagged in rhythm.
CHAPTER 4
The jackrabbit was exhausted. It's heart pounded, as it ran an unpredictable pattern, but the screaming pursuers had not given up the chase. This particular jackrabbit had outrun everything from stray dogs to hungry coyotes before, yet the men that chased it we’re a very different kind of predator. As it ran through a dense patch of Saguaro and Prickly Pear Cactus it heard the pursuing men's screams change in both pitch and volume.
It stopped in the middle of a dusty road just east of the trailer park, stood on it's hind legs, breathing hard and looked back at the pursuers. The men smelled of danger, much stronger than normal, and it had never before encountered such determined predators. First one man would spot the jackrabbit and give chase then others would join in. Some stopped chasing and others would join in. While it had no understanding of a relay race, that is perhaps the closest description to what had happened to it all morning.
Looking back down the road the jackrabbit saw only one man come through the patch of cactus. The man clawed at his face while running. It sat motionless watching as the man sniffed at the path it had taken. The jackrabbit turned and followed the road toward where the sun rose every morning.
The man who used to be called Hector was hungry and infuriated as he ran down the road. His hands legs and face were covered in sharp cactus needles. As he ran, smelling the delicious animal, he slapped and clawed at the cactus needles. Some of them fell out, as he slapped at them, but most were simply driven deeper into his skin. The pain had discouraged the other men, but Hector felt his blood surging as he spotted the long eared meal running steadily slower.
Food had gotten scarce since Hector and the others had changed a few days earlier. In addition to insane anger, he felt a ravenous hunger driving him to catch and devour the small animal.
The jackrabbit dove into the piles of trash and garbage at the end of the road. It laid still, under several rotten pieces of cardboard, as it heard the pursuer coming closer. Shuddering under the trash it heard footsteps approach, slow down, and gradually come to a stop as it's nose twitched slightly.
Hector smelled the animal and a million other aromas that drifted over the trailer park's trash dump. He sniffed the air again and stomped loudly, through the trash, trying to pick up the scent. The sheer quantity of smells made tracking at least by his nose impossible, so Hector listened harder as he moved slower through the trash dump.
He heard a scuttling sound several feet ahead and dove headfirst into a small cluster of prairie grass. A terrified rat squeaked and ran toward a small group of trees. Hector chased after it as saliva drooled down his chin. He dived for and seized the squealing biting rat just as they reached the trees. The rat bit at his fingers, but Hector simply opened his mouth and bit off it's head. Squatting in the shade of the trees he ate his well deserved and long overdue meal. It didn't take long to finish and Hector had eaten everything. He ate the fur, the bones, and of course the precious bloody meat.
Hector burped and wandered around his new surroundings. Stepping further under the shade of the trees he tilted his head and listened to a rhythmic chugging noise coming from deeper in the woods. Licking his blood stained lips, he followed the sound till it stopped and listened harder while sniffing at the air.
A skinny man, naked except for a red barbecue apron with the words Kiss the Cook written on the front, walked out of a small metal shed. In his hands, he carried a large white propane cylinder and grunted as he set it on the ground. He turned, put the padlock back on the shed door, and bent to pick up the cylinder again. While bending over he let loose a long, foul smelling, unmelodious fart.
A woman's deep voice came from a nearby double-wide trailer that was covered in camouflage netting. “You better get all that out your system while yer out there. And hurry up sweet cheeks the generator's about to go tits up.”
The skinny man hefted the propane tank and muttered in a strained voice “Where is that damn boy? He's the fucker who should be hauling this shit not me.”
The propane tank weighed fifty pounds and the man had to carry it hugged tightly against his chest as he duck walked back to the generator shed. The propane powered generator misfired and died as he dropped the tank by the wooden shed built beside the trailer.
He uncoupled the old tank and after a series of colorful profanities attached the fresh container. He checked for leaks, opened the valves, and pressed the generator's starter button. The generator made a loud backfire and failed to start.
A scream broke the silence, but unlike the other screams they'd heard over the last few days this one seemed very close. The man ran to the front of the trailer and saw the woman sitting on the wooden porch holding a double barrel shotgun out to him with one hand. Her other hand pointed toward the trailer park's dump and she looked excited as she whispered.
“Bet it's not a door to door salesman calling. Go make whoever it is feel welcome.” The incredibly fat woman said handing him the shotgun. Smiling at her he took it and winked.
He started to walk toward the dump and stopped abruptly. Snapping open the shotgun he confirmed it was loaded. As he looked at the shells in the gun the scream came again only now much closer.
The fat woman on the porch ripped open a candy bar wrapper and bit into it as she stared. She leaned forward in her chair, grinning in anticipation as the nearly naked skinny man moved quietly past a large boulder pointing the shotgun ahead. “Be vewwy quiet. He's not huntin wabbits.” she whispered to herself and crammed the rest of the chocolate bar into her mouth with a stifled giggle.
There was a metallic clang, followed by an extremely loud scream from further down the path and the man in the apron ran forward smiling holding the shotgun almost casually. He looked down the path and saw a man, sitting on the ground yanking on his leg, yelping like an animal caught in a trap which is precisely what he was.
Hector had stepped in one of the dozen hidden metal bear traps that they had placed around their trailer to discourage unwelcome visitors. The sharpened metal edges had nearly removed his foot from his leg. Blood poured from torn arteries as he grabbed the trap and his leg pulling ineffectually on both.
“Well amigo, it looks like you might have to skip running the Boston Marathon this year.” The skinny man said while scratching his butt and smiling down at the slowly dying yelping man.
Hector was in agony, but upon hearing the man’s voice his first and strongest impulse was to kill. He moved toward the man with incredible speed on his hands and one free leg, screaming up at him as he dragged the leg in the bear trap behind him.
The man with the shotgun wouldn't have believed it possible that anyone in that much obvious pain could move so fast if he hadn't seen it himself. He backed up several steps and aimed the shotgun at the charging man.
The bear trap was attached to a chain that was padlocked to a sturdy tree. When the chain reached its maximum length the odd looking and unbelievably fast man fell face down in the path with a sudden jerk. He howled and within seconds turned back on the trap and tried to pull himself loose of it again.
“Damn boy. You just don't know when yer licked do ya? Are those cactus needles stuck all over your face?” The stranger didn't answer. Instead he started whining as his fingers were torn on the bear trap's blades. “Will you quit yelping like a bitch in heat and answer me?” The man asked looking down, with a mixture of disgust and fascination, as Hector strained forward drooling and snarling at him.
Hector was infuriated and dying, yet the man’s voice triggered one last surge of inner strength and he sprang forward screaming. As he leaped the sharpened metal edges of the trap broke through the last bit of bone that was holding him back, and he was free albeit m
issing a foot. He snarled and started forward leaving behind a severed foot and a trail of blood.
“Vaya con Dios!” The man said firing both barrels of the shotgun at the now free one footed mad man. At a distance of less than three feet the double barreled shotgun blast left nothing above Hector’s neck. His body, minus a foot and a head, collapsed in the path. A bright drippy splatter of red, white and gray coated the plants where the remnants of Hector's head had been blown apart.
The man with the shotgun listened for over a minute, and didn't hear anyone else in the area. Satisfied that he had efficiently defended his home, he whistled happily as he walked back to the trailer.
“Did you get him? Was it anyone we know?” The fat woman asked, through chocolate coated lips, from the porch.
“We didn't get a chance to exchange pleasantries.” he said, handing her the shotgun. “But I'll tell you one thing sugar tits, I think he was royally fucked up. Looked like the dumb beaner had rabies or got a hold of some really nasty drugs.”
“I'm very proud of you. Now go fix the generator, numb nuts. It's hotter than Brad Pitt in his birthday suit, but not near as nice.”
“Yes dear.” he said, trudging back to the generator shed.
Billy was cooling off and playing in the bathtub, as his grandfather tapped the ceramic thermometer shaped like a cactus indicating it was 98 degrees in the shade.
“Why, oh why Dear Lord didn't I retire to Alaska?” He mumbled, looking up at the blazing sun through the window. The binoculars felt heavy as he yawned and looked for any changes at the laundry building entrance. Only half a dozen men were still around there, and most looked like Dead Heads. They were feebly scratching and pushing at the barricaded door.