by William Bebb
It squealed loudly on rusty hinges, as she got it opened all the way. A gust of fresh air made catching her breath a bit easier as the eight track player made a kachung sound and Jerry Reed started singing a song she once heard while watching a movie called Smokey and the Bandit.
Wish I had turned that off, she thought, as she started pushing on the right side garage door staring into the darkness. It was stuck. She turned and pushed her back against it with all her strength, but it wouldn't even budge. Then she caught an unpleasant whiff of decay somewhere outside in the darkness and started to kick at the door in frustration.
Mrs. Remlap unrolled the car's window and was saying something, but the music was too loud to hear what she was yelling. “Pull (something) atch! Oh look out (something).”
Maria looked out where the front left headlight lit up the dusty driveway. Someone was ambling up the driveway coming toward the garage, and she swore as she slammed against the door again.
“On the floor, pull the latch!” the old lady yelled. She looked down and saw a big rusty metal latch attached to the door, going into the dust covered concrete garage floor. Gripping the metal bar in the latch she pulled. It popped out easily and she started pushing the door as a man she once knew as Paco grabbed her hair and pulled. His mouth was open as he snarled and screamed at her. His teeth had never met a toothbrush while he was alive and being a zombie certainly hadn't improved his dental hygiene any. Screaming, she kicked back with her left leg. Her foot struck Paco and sent him rolling in the dust. Unfortunately he never released her hair and she was dragged down with him, as the garage door swung completely open.
From the driver’s seat, the old lady saw one her horrible friends come up and grab the girl and drag her to the ground. She's dead! Oh God, I have to get out here now! Mrs. Remlap thought as she shoved the gearshift into drive and stomped on the gas pedal. With a loud roar, the car sprang out of the garage and ran over Paco's body and just missed Maria's head.
She could hear the old woman screaming as she drove down the driveway crashed into another man who flipped over the hood, smashed into the windshield, then over the roof before finally falling into the driveway. Maria watched the car's rapidly receding tail lights and screamed a creative mix of both Spanish and English words that Mrs. Remlap would certainly have found uncouth and less than ladylike.
She ran after the car for a few seconds and quickly realized two obvious things. First, she saw the car was already down the hill turning onto the trailer park's main road, then she saw the two figures chasing the car were already much closer to it than she was. She slowed to a walk and was catching her breath as she watched the car speeding into the dark and heard it hit several unidentifiable objects. Then much closer she heard something between her and the garage.
She whirled around and saw the remains of one of her old friends lurching toward her. It was Enrique. He was still wearing a torn yellow shirt, with the words I swam the Rio Grande and all I got was this fucking T-shirt, and a pair of filthy denim shorts. His face was covered in dried blood and his eyes were wide and staring at her as he came closer. Apparently, Enrique was the one the car hit because his left leg was bent horribly at an angle in no way conducive to rapid mobility. With only a moment’s hesitation she ran around the slow moving Enrique and Paco, who had climbed back to his feet by the garage.
Slamming the right side garage door she bent down to slam shut the metal latch bolt back into the floor when she felt a hand grab her shirt and screamed while backing up. Had this been a bad horror movie her shirt might have ripped open exposing her chest, whereupon young adolescent boys would undoubtedly ooh and ah most appreciatively. But the material of her shirt, which she had made herself, was just too strong to rip. In pulling back she merely pulled Paco with her into the garage. He closed the distance as she realized she still held the screwdriver from earlier in her hand. She plunged it into his arm and twisted. His fingers released her shirt and she tried to pull loose the screwdriver, but it was stuck in his arm. She ran to the workbench and looked for something to beat Paco fiercely with.
While looking she spotted the dark hole in the ceiling, above the workbench she had seen earlier. When she asked Mrs. Remlap about it she said it was just a crawlspace full of her late husband’s stuff. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Paco was no longer alone. Enrique and another undead man staggered across the garage. Climbing on top of the workbench she reached for the ceiling crawlspace entrance.
She spotted the shotgun as she reached for the hole in the ceiling and thought fast. There are at least three zombies around. I'd have maybe two blasts with the shotgun, assuming I could get it to fire. The old lady never let it out of her grip while I worked on the car. Who knows, she may have even unloaded the damn thing. She shook her head and made a decision.
She jumped up and reached into the attic entrance. There was a loud snap and she pulled her hand back out of the crawlspace as her fingers screamed in agony. A rat trap was attached to her bleeding pinky and the two adjacent fingers. Blood covered the fingers as she started crying and felt hands pulling on her legs. Almost losing her balance, as they pulled, she ignored the trap and reached back into the crawlspace. Screaming and crying in equal measure, she pulled herself up into the darkness.
As Charlie dreamed of the girl who broke his heart, the rabbits who had taken refuge in his hideaway first heard then smelled the fast approaching screaming monsters. The men smelled of death and sickness and they stopped chewing on the remaining vegetables and marijuana plants as they could be sensed coming closer. At first it was just a few who broke and ran, yet within seconds a small furry stampede was underway. The only ones who were still in the compound, as the men found their way in, were the ones who had been eating from the marijuana plants. They may have sensed the danger, but were too relaxed to be very concerned about it.
The chain link fence that surrounded his trailer was indeed six feet high, but Charlie had grown complacent and hadn't checked its overall condition in for a decade. The sections nearest his trailer looked intact, overgrown here and there with climbing vines, but from where he could drive his scooter it all seemed secure. The problem was since nearly half of his fence was beyond the scooters range he never noticed the three separate sections which had fallen down, in varying degrees, over the years. Two medium size sections had been crushed by fallen trees, several years ago. The other section had lost its support poles concrete footing, from constant erosion and heat, and had also collapsed. As the record player continued, in repeat mode, playing the same album over and over the music attracted but in no way served to soothe the savage beast.
Charlie had installed speakers, on five foot tall wooden poles, in his garden because he believed his plants grew better when exposed to classic rock music. In addition to Lynryd Skynyrd he knew they grew best listening to a wide variety of music including The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Blue Oyster Cult, and Three Dog Night.
Stumbling into the moonlit garden the two men attacked everything around them including all the plants that got in their way. They pulled and tore at the poles and ripped and bit at the wires until the music was nearly silenced. Missing a couple of speakers on the far side of the garden the music continued to play as they noticed the rabbits on the ground. Being what the colonel would classify as Screamers they were both very much alive and extremely hungry. They both literally stumbled on the sleeping rabbits that had eaten marijuana plants, and ripped the furry animals to shreds and feasted as the songs continued to play albeit at a much lower volume. With over two dozen comatose rabbits there was no lack of food.
Since they had become infected they had been in an almost constant state of rage marked with explosive attacks on anything, including each other and the undead who got in their way. They had found very little fresh meat to eat, over the last few days, as the animals that used to reside in the park had run away. So finding the twenty rabbits, in a comatose state, had been an excellent opportunity to eat the
ir fill. They ripped and ate voraciously reveling in the feast, the way a fat man will make multiple trips back to the dessert offerings at a buffet.
After a while they stumbled about in the decimated garden and felt something other than the relentless explosive rage that had consumed their every thought since the moment of their infection.
The one who used to be known as Gabriel began to giggle as he stared at the moon, felt dizzy and finally fell into the dirt rolling over on his back smiling up at the black velvet sky pin pricked with stars. His mind was still extremely confused, yet for the time being he felt totally non violent as he stared at the stars and moon.
His infected companion who used to be called Exavier staggered over and saw Gabriel smiling serenely up at the sky and tried to scream, but his mind was just as affected with the Marijuana's chemical, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC for short, as his giggling companion. The scream didn't come forth instead he said “Hola.” and fell in the dirt beside Gabriel and giggled.
Gabriel smiled back and said “Hola.” then looked back at the moon. Gradually they managed to begin speaking in multiple word sentences as the moon floated across the night sky.
“Feel weird- Why here?” Gabriel asked, looking at the man he grew up with and was almost able to recognize.
For countless stoners the question “Why here?” was perhaps the most identifiable with that he could have asked. But unlike the deep philosophical debates regarding the question of existence often debated under the influence of Marijuana, Gabriel was meaning why are we here sitting in the dirt staring up at the moon. Of course that's not to say many uninfected college students hadn't found themselves in similar circumstances at one time or another, usually after a party or on Spring Break, for example.
“Dreams bad- smell shit.” Exavier responded feeling slightly less confused, yet still unable to make the leap back to where his mind used to be. He smelled his and Gabriel’s pants that were packed full of four days worth of shit.
Again, a not unheard of occurrence with some of the more experimental collegians throughout the world of academia.
He started giggling again and Gabriel joined him, as far off in the distance they heard a scream. They both felt a momentary urge to answer the call but just laughed harder rolling in the dirt. Chewing on rabbit meat, laughing at the moon, swaying to the music, and sometimes drinking from the small stream, time passed and they felt happy. They were both confused and disoriented with little sense of time passing, again similar to many other marijuana users.
Regrettably, all good things must come to an end. And just like kids caught getting high in their parents basement the good times came to an end. In this case it wasn't their parents, who were about to ruin their party, but a one armed hermit who did not like trespassers.
Charlie awoke to Cha-ka chirping and tugging at his ears. The little monkey bounced on his chest as laughter could be heard nearby in the dark. Momentarily disoriented, he looked around scared as he reached for his pistol. He pulled it out of it's holster and reached by the wall of his trailer for the fuse box he had rigged up between the solar panels on the roof of his trailer and the batteries he had in his storage shed. He found the floodlights switch and turned them on.
The lights exposed the devastated garden, across the stream that flowed by his trailer. Every one of his plants was destroyed. The corn stalks and tomato bushes were trampled or eaten, but more infuriating to Charlie every one of his nearly nine foot tall marijuana plants were gone. It looked like someone had purposely ripped them out of the ground. He noticed the music was much quieter as well and saw three poles where the speakers used to hang bent at angles as if they'd been pulled down. Tears flowed down his cheeks as he looked on the devastation of his garden, his life's work, his children senselessly ripped and torn apart. Over twenty years spent making his idea of a new Garden of Eden ruined. His fortress of solitude, away from the evils of the civilized world, was gone forever.
Charlie screamed a long loud bellow “Who did this?!” and managed to get up clutching his walking stick with his prosthetic arm while holding the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver in his shaking left hand. His whole body was shaking in rage, as he saw the two bloody dirty men stand up and look at him with vacant grins on their faces. He cocked the gun and took aim. The gun was shaking as he tried to focus on the intruders and not the devastation they had brought to his home.
Gabriel, the tall lanky one with a bandana tied around his forehead, had dark curly hair that matched the color of his mustache and dark black beard smiled widely with his dry blood covered face and faded blue jean vest and said “Hola.”
Followed seconds later by Exavier who was much shorter, and wore a bloody knit cap and a large Groucho Marx style mustache. He gave a sort of half remembered wave, with his fingers, and also said “Hola.”
Had they said anything else, without those gigantic idiotic smiles, he might have asked some questions before he fired, but seeing them grinning amidst his devastated life's work was too much for him. Charlie screamed and sputtered incoherently as he pulled the trigger. He fired three shots into the tall man and two at the shorter one, smiling briefly as they fell back into the dirt with confused looks of their faces. Cha-ka screeched and scurried onto the trailer's roof and stared down, her tail flicking rapidly in the air behind her. Charlie stood trembling staring at the carnage and destruction, thinking.
Your average one armed pot growing hermit who just murdered two men might be thinking about a variety of things. Will the police come? How can I dispose of the bodies? Will their friends come and exact revenge? Who the Hell did I just kill? However, Charlie had none of those questions floating through his mind.
Everything is gone. They stole it from me. What do I do now? True, I have enough seeds to grow a whole forest of weed but what was the point. Grow more and wait for another pair of Cheech and Chong lookalikes to come destroy it? How much do I need to suffer in this life?
Cha-ka made an inquisitive hooting noise from the rooftop and he looked up and smiled weakly at his small simian friend. “It's okay sweetie. Sorry about the noise, daddy is having a bad day. You can come down now, it's okay. I'm not mad at you.” He said holding out his prosthetic arm toward her. She jumped off the roof, climbed up his arm and sat on his shoulder nuzzling his face with her own. He stood on his two prosthetic legs and tried to calm down, except even with his eyes closed he saw the garden in his mind utterly ruined.
“Oh Cha-ka, what should I do? What can I do?” he said, feeling dizzy and nauseous after witnessing all the senseless devastation. He turned, to fall back into his lounge chair, as tears rolled down his cheeks unchecked. With his vision obscured by tears, he tripped over one of his half full plastic jugs of urine which spilled across the porch.
Badly off balance, he tried not to fall into the pool of fluid and collapsed onto his lounge chair. He landed badly and felt his remaining testicle smash painfully against the wooden armrest. Laying face down on the lounge chair he grunted and cried harder. Cha-ka climbed back to the roof, looked down at the man, and scratched her butt.
His testicle felt like it had burst like a small water balloon filled with warm water. His stomach was filled with an earth shattering pain. Moaning, he slowly rolled onto the lounge chair in a less painful position. The pain was almost the worst he’d ever felt in his life. Almost.
It felt nearly identical to a pain he endured back in Vietnam. He had lied to the beautiful girl and everyone else who ever learned of his missing testicle. He had been in a brothel a friend of his has recommended when he learned of his desire for younger girls. It was a place where young children had been enslaved, in the worst conditions imaginable, and abused in every degenerate way possible. Thinking he was being smart, he paid extra for a girl who was still a virgin.
The headmistress introduced him to Kim Soo, a sweet looking girl, who always reminded him later of the girl who had broken his heart. She was terrified, as he had spent the afternoon abusing her,
and she became more violent as the night wore on. She slapped at him and tried to defend herself, but he was too strong and excited to be put off. Finally, she seemed resigned to his wishes and he felt she had learned her proper place in life. It wasn’t until he felt her small sharp teeth tearing away half his scrotum, mangling his right testicle beyond the surgeon’s ability to save, that he realized as he vomited from the agony he should have stayed in his barracks and just masturbated.
How could everything go to shit so fast? Charles wondered. On top of losing everything he'd cared for in life, the intense throbbing pain throughout his lower body started to hurt more instead of less. Afraid to look he reached down carefully with his left hand, and felt a warm wetness on the crotch of his tattered blue jeans. He raised his fingers and stared at the blood that coated them. Crying pitifully he pulled the gun, back out of the holster, and looked at it through eyes filled with tears.
Karma's a bitch. That was what his squad leader Carl, always said back when they served together in the war. As his remaining testicle bled, and tormented him, all he could think about was how much he hated him.
Carl never shut up about how Karma was sort of like the Golden Rule with a bad temper and an ironic sense of justice. Kids would always run up and catch the candy he would throw to them when he walked the streets. Carl was the only son of an Alabama Baptist minister and always went out his way to help anyone whenever he could. He even won a medal for rescuing three other grunts that were caught in an ambush.
Charlie thought about Carl, with his buck teeth, and holier than thou attitude, and felt like puking. The son of a bitch helped at the schools teaching kids how to read and speak English. The dirty cocksucker even visited and brought me magazines and flowers, while I was in the hospital, the day after the little bitch bit off my testicle. Charlie had been so happy to hear that the landmine he tripped had killed Carl, in addition to leaving him a triple amputee, he couldn't stop smiling for a week. Of course the morphine probably accounted for some of his happiness. But there was no medic here, and no morphine, just a couple of corpses in the middle of his decimated garden.