by William Bebb
“Okay I have the tank loose, when we start rolling it should fall off one side of the truck or the other then pulling the trailer should be easy. But even if the tank doesn’t fall off I’ve got enough chains rigged up that we could probably pull it anyway. Hopefully, before this valley gets nuked or we get shot or eaten.” He paused and a horrified look came over his face.
“What is it?” She looked around the truck to see if she’d missed something he had spotted. “What?”
“I just had a horrible thought. What if-,” he swallowed hard “it’s not just down here where the dead are attacking people. What if we pull the trailer all the way up and out of the valley only to discover the situation is just like this up there? What if it’s not just happening here? If the whole world is being overrun with undead and murderous crazy people what do we do then? Where would we go?”
She smiled and patted his arm. “You worry too much. I don’t think the immigration people would have bothered with me and my neighbors if the whole world was being overrun by monsters. You so Loco.” Her smile faded as she glanced out the truck's back window and looked doubtful. “Will this plan of yours really work?”
“Want the truth?” he asked, before limping around the front of the truck and climbing in.“I'll tell you the truth if you really want to hear it, but you might not like it.”
She leaned back in the passenger seat and moved some hair out of her face as she considered. She shook her head “No, don't tell me the truth.”
“Then it will work, 100% guaranteed.” He said, staring at the keys hanging from the ignition.
The sun was directly overhead and the truck felt like a large stinky oven. Leaning across the truck's bench seat he sniffed and asked “You're not wearing perfume are you?”
“I think the heat must be getting to you Gringo. And quit sniffing me this is no time or place for romance.” Maria said blushing, yet unable to keep from smiling. She had been thinking a lot about this man she had only recently met. He was not much older than her and his brown eyes and hair were very appealing but the situation was all so insane that she had pushed those thoughts away. She glanced over and saw him smiling at her with his boyish face and smiled back, unable to help herself.
“You didn't answer my question. I don't know if it’s just in comparison to the smells from the trash dump or the big tank of baked sewage, but I think you smell nice.” He said blushing.
Maria looked at him with a confused expression and then looked out the windshield at the distant men trotting toward them.
She didn't answer the question and in the awkward silence that followed he cursed himself for being such an idiot. Josey rarely had dates since he was a painfully shy man who never knew what to say to women. On TV and in movies it always looked easy to meet women and he'd tried several online dating companies, unfortunately when a woman found out his occupation they avoided him like the plague. His last date had been the most embarrassing event in his life.
Having heard some people talk about a classified ads website he gave it a try. After he sent out dozens of email messages he had found a girl his age who seemed interested in him. She said her name was Amanda and she wanted to meet him at a club downtown. She apologized for not sending him a photograph and explained that she was very shy.
He had sent a photograph of himself, from when he played football. She had written back that he looked very sexy. He decided to take a chance, in part, because she seemed very nice in her messages but mostly because he had just felt so damn lonely. She had written she'd be the girl wearing the white knee high socks and plaid skirt with a green shirt.
It was a noisy dimly lit club, which had an annoying sound system, with speakers playing heavy bass so loud the floor vibrated. After paying too much for a beer he leaned against a wall trying to look cool. He waited for a few minutes sipping his drink and hoping she would show up. Across the dance floor a girl matching Amanda's description moved toward him. She was tall, almost his height. In the back of his mind he thought about how big and tall their children would be if things worked out. Her face wasn't beautiful, but Amanda had a sultry voice when she spoke.
“Hi, you must be Josey.” She said, smiling shyly.
“Hi, it’s good to finally see you.” Josey said, smiling back.
After a few minutes, she asked if he wanted to go somewhere quieter where they could be alone. Josey readily agreed and they went for a drive.
“It's hard to meet guys like you Josey.” She said, sitting in the passenger seat.
“Well you found me now.” he said, parking his car in a deserted place he had taken girls on rare dates before.
“I'm drug and disease free you know.” She whispered, and giggled.
“Well, that's always good to know.” He answered, unsure she meant what he hoped she did.
“And I go both ways, if you like that.” She said, leaning closer, while putting her hand on his upper thigh.
“So you're bisexual. That's cool. Of course, after one time with me and I bet you'll only be interested in guys.” He answered, as he covered her large soft hand with his.
Amanda cleared her throat “You did read my description on the advertisement where it said I’m a cross dresser right?” She pulled her hand away looking serious.
Josey looked perplexed and wondered what she meant. There was a long awkward pause.
“You know I'm a man, right?” Amanda asked, dropping his falsetto voice in exchange for a deep manly voice.
“You're what!?” Josey asked, pulling away.
Amanda sighed and shook her/his head. “I guess the wording in my ad needs work. I thought my name was hint enough. A-Man-Duh.”
“Yeah you should definitely work on that.” Josey said, starting the car and driving back to the nightclub. The ride back only took ten minutes, but it felt like it was the longest time in his life.
“Sure you wouldn't like to try it? You might like it.” Amanda asked, getting out of the car.
“Listen, you seem like a nice girl- uh guy, but I just don't think it would-” He wasn't sure how to say it, so Amanda said it for him.
“I'm just not your type. It's okay. You're a sweetie and I know you'll find a girl somewhere, someday. Probably sometime when you least expect it.” Amanda said, getting out of the car and going back into the club.
That was Josey's last date. It had been six months since he'd spent as much time with a girl as he had with Maria. He felt like an idiot and replayed the last thing he'd said before she gave him the weird look and stopped talking. I didn't actually tell her she smelled better than a truck full of sewage and a trash dump did I?
Maria saw he was trembling and his left leg was rapidly bouncing up and down as he looked ahead at the road that led back to the park. She realized he was nervous and wasn't sure if it was because of a valley full of zombies or because he was sitting with her. He was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as a faint breeze blew in across the dump.
“You have the strangest way of giving a compliment Josey.” She finally said, smiling at him. “May I ask you a stupid question?”
“It’s the only kind I ever ask, so go for it.” he said, looking at her.
“It’s a silly question and I will probably regret asking.” She cleared her throat and asked “Josey are you married or in love with anyone?”
“That's not a stupid question.” He cleared his throat and continued. “A stupid question is something like, Do you want fries with that? at the drive through.” He smiled at her. “The truth is I wanted to ask you the same question. The answer on my part is no. I'm just trying to make my way in the world alone.”
She smiled at him, reached over, took his big hand off the steering wheel and held it gently. “I don't wear perfume and also have been alone for a long time.”
Josey had never been good at talking with women, especially ones as pretty as Maria. He invariably said something stupid or had tried too hard to try and impress them. He scooted across the bench seat an
d kissed her softly as the breeze from the trash dump increased. She kissed him back feeling if this was truly the last day of her life what better way could she spend it than with a sweet man who thought she smelled nicer than a sewage truck and trash dump combined.
It was the nicest time either of them had ever spent with anyone. A kiss and less than a minute's embrace was all it was, but it was very nice. There were tears shed and whispered promises made. When Josey scooted back to the driver’s seat he held the ignition key ready to turn and smiled at her.
“Just remember one thing Maria. I always keep my promises. When I said my plan would work 100% guaranteed, I meant it. Just promise me one thing.” He said, staring at the running figures dressed in black a few dozen yards away coming down the road toward them.
“What is it Josey?” She asked, with slight tremble in her voice.
“When this is all over and we're safe. Promise me that-” He stammered, trying to find the right words. “We, you and I, that is, we will-” He faltered miserably and let the words die on his lips.
“Josey, when we get out of here, I promise we will see what we have together. You are a good, tender, and brave man and for what it’s worth I think I may be falling in love with you.”
He started and revved the truck's engine feeling like his heart had expanded to twice it's normal size. He smiled at her for a second more, then slipped the transmission into gear and floored the gas pedal. The truck left a plume of dust in it's wake as it sped toward the two dirty figures stumbling along the road.
“Do you like pizza?” he asked, as the truck hit one of the men with the name Puckett written just above three large letters that said ICE on his shirt. Puckett spun around and knocked over another man dressed identically except for his name which read Hadden.
“Yes, but without onions. Watch the road please.” she said, buckling her seat belt. Maria had been so pleasantly distracted she had almost forgotten the worst was yet to come. She held her small silver Crucifix and began to pray silently.
Hadden and Puckett were hurled into the piles of trash.
Puckett looked at the trail of dust in the air the departing truck had created and growled. He was tired and angry, after following the truck like a dog chasing a garbage truck only to have it drive away. A sudden sharp pain shot up his leg. He looked down and saw Hadden gnawing at it.
He screamed and kicked him in the face with his other leg. A long strip of bloody flesh tore free from his leg and Hadden quickly chewed and swallowed it. Puckett took the opportunity to hobble away grunting and bleeding. Hadden must have enjoyed the way he tasted because he chased Puckett across the dump. After a few yards he quickly caught up and sprang on his back.
The fight continued for several minutes and ranged over a large area of the dump. They fought fiercely till Hadden tackled Puckett and, sitting on top of him, bit off a couple of his fingers. Puckett screamed and rolled loose as Hadden chewed and swallowed the fingers, bones and all.
Puckett ran at Hadden with a rock held in his hand that still had five fingers, but stopped within seconds of bashing him in the head. He stopped and tilted his head listening. Hadden stood and heard the sounds too. Their disagreement forgotten, they followed the sounds coming from the nearby woods.
Randy Wallace breathed through his respirator mask as he poured out his latest batch of Methamphetamine crystals onto an aluminum cooling tray. The glass-like shards twinkled under the florescent lights like cloudy diamonds. The only the kind of diamonds that could be home grown. He turned on the exhaust fan, weighed, and separated his latest creations into one pound plastic bags and laid them on the growing stack awaiting the arrival of the long overdue son Yugo. Randy slipped the respirator partly off, sniffed the air, then took it off and left it on the counter. He took a few small shards of his new batch, for quality assurance testing and looked in the mirror.
“Who's the chef, baby?” He said, staring at the nubbins that remained of his teeth. They had been worn away to just a few pieces of deeply stained yellow and blackened enamel. “Gotta get these suckers capped someday so I'll be as pretty as I feel.” He winked at himself in the mirror and took the sample crystals into the living room.
Looking over his collection of glass pipes on the shelf by the big screen TV, he pondered which one to use. There were a dozen pretty ones that were liquid filled glass to help cool down the smoke, but he passed them by. His stepson Yugo gave some of them to him last Christmas. They were the nicest present he'd ever received. He passed by the pipes with another brief thought where that boy had gone off to, but like most of his thoughts it was brief and ill formed.
He smiled at his favorite pipe, shaped from red blown glass. It had been made in Mexico and cost a little over a thousand dollars which he thought was well justified. Randy had paid the glass blower to make a beautiful pipe that looked like a large red dragon with green eyes.
“We meet again Smaug.” he said, holding it gently as he sat on the dirty couch and made himself comfortable. Randy had been a Tolkien fan since his early teens and had grown up using almost every known type of drug known to modern man.
Smaug, the villainous dragon from the book The Hobbit, was one of Randy's greatest literary heroes and as he stuffed crystal shards of Meth into the dragons open mouth he giggled.
He was truly a well rounded expert, of all things drug related, and quickly prepared his new batch for the only true test that mattered- the taste test. Unfortunately, Dawn Mary was ruining the mood with her damn TV blaring on the porch. From the sounds of swearing and gunfire he knew she had to be watching the DVD of Scarface, yet again. She must have watched that movie every damn day for the last twelve years he thought, shaking his head. He could tell the film was closing in on the climactic scene where all the gunmen attack Tony and ultimately bring him down.
Dawn Mary is a stupid fat cow, but she's my cow and if watching that damn movie makes her happy so be it, he thought, as he shoved a pair of foam earplugs in his ears so he wouldn't be annoyed by the noise. Using a lighter shaped like a mushroom he lit the meth crystals while staring into Smaug's glowing red mouth and sucked the dragon's tail.
Sitting in her custom made motorized wheelchair, Dawn Mary cackled as she stared raptly at the TV. Tony in Scarface, played by Al Pacino, was about to say the best line in the whole movie. Dawn Mary rocked back and forth in her chair that Yugo had pimped out last Christmas and she loved it. It had rhinestone and mirrored wheel covers that made her feel like a queen in a royal chariot. Plus he installed bright neon sparkle lights under the armrests and on the back. She would flip on the lights and do her version of dancing, which consisted of spinning her chair in a circle, while playing Dancing Queen her favorite song by ABBA.
The favorite part of her chair was something she only saw after unbuckling the seat belt and climbing into bed. It was a yellow square that looked like the annoying ones overanxious mothers would put in the back of their minivans years ago that read Baby on Board. She always felt tempted whenever she'd see those annoying signs, to crash into those cars on general principle. Her little yellow square was the same style and size as the original version except her's had the words Bitch on Board, instead. Her son also put a bumper sticker with the words From zero to bitch in 2.5 seconds on the back of the chair. The motor also had a special toggle switch that could make the chair go almost twenty miles an hour.
It moved a lot faster than she ever did before the doctors removed most of her legs last year. The amputations were a result of her unchecked Diabetes. She also had lost a few fingers as a result of untreated necrosis which eventually led to gangrene. The loss of feeling in her fingers and feet at first just made her mad, but as more parts of her body had to be sliced off she sometimes thought about going on a diet. She had a stack of dusty exercise DVDs by the TV in the living room and most of them were still sealed in their plastic wrappers. Besides, the rare thought of losing weight usually melted away when she enjoyed her daily diet of candy bars and sodas.
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br /> She stared at the TV on the porch, saw Tony holding his big gun and quickly shoved the rest of a candy bar in her mouth chewing quickly. Holding the shotgun up, pointing at the sky, she shouted along with Tony as he said “Say hello to my little friend!” She fired both barrels, reached into her bright neon pink fanny pack decorated with a cartoon picture of Elmer Fudd in his hunting outfit, pulled out two more shells and quickly reloaded. Firing repeatedly, in almost perfect timing to the movie, her multiple chins shook like small earthquakes as she laughed and reloaded over and over again.
With all the noise she never even heard former ICE agents Hadden and Puckett screaming in the distance as they ran toward the Redneck Gourmet's fortress of solitude until it was too late.
Dawn Mary turned off the TV, when her hero Tony fell into the bloody fountain, and wiped at her crying eyes with a paper towel wondering what numb nuts was up to inside. She yawned hugely, pushed the joystick that controlled her wheelchair, and started for the open doorway. As the chair turned she heard, from nearby, a scream followed by another. She spun the chair all the way around, looked back at the TV and realized the screams weren't coming from it.
“Crap on a cracker!” she shouted, as she spotted the two uniformed agents running across the trash strewn yard. She yelled, over her shoulder, “Randy! Get your skinny ass out here, we got visitors!” Raising the shotgun as they ran toward her sitting on the porch, she shouted “Howdy, fuckers.” and pulled the trigger. When the gun failed to fire she screamed “Fuck!” and reached quickly for more shells. She managed to slide in one shell as they jumped and climbed over the porch's wooden railing.