Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  Her sleek blonde hair spilled across her shoulders in a ghostly-white cape, framing her heart-shaped face while hooking the undercarriage of her earlobes; the rings of wet dark mascara hugging her steel blue eyes slid down her cheeks, exposing tiny gnarled cracks slowly etching across her skin. The cold blue tint of her skin glowed in the harsh carpet of light glowing from the wall lamp above the nightstand sitting behind her as the matching blue veins creeping across her breasts twitched like worms rising from wet grass. Her cracked pink lips spread into a wide pleasing grin, sending more tiny cracks down the edge of her jawline and along the nape of her neck; her red plaid skirt fluttered around her pasty-white legs.

  This wasn’t possible, he told himself. You’re just tired, that’s all. You just need to get some sleep, and everything will be fine in the morning.

  No matter how much he wanted to tell himself that he was just imagining this, the fear still brooding inside of him said differently. She was here to finish the rest of what that guy had started and seek revenge for what he’d done to her–and her entire family.

  She tipped her head back, spraying a geyser of blood down the front of her blouse. He slipped his hand away from his mouth and gripped the edge of the bureau to keep himself steady.

  When he leapt away from the dresser and hurried across the room to retrieve the gun, something struck his left hip and flung him across the room like a rag doll. He struck the headboard above the other bed, landed on the mattress and rolled onto the floor; his chest undulating, his lungs ragged and deflated. A river of pain flooded his chest, streaked down across his hip and bubbled deep inside the pit of his stomach.

  The mirrors quivered inside of their frames, catching parcels of light along their gilded edges and then burst outward. A mist of jagged glass exploded across the room, bouncing off Marilyn’s motionless form, and struck the wall behind the beds before landing softly onto the cheap-blue bedspread. He tried to gather the courage to leap off the floor and run but his body refused to break free from the shackles of his own fear and all he could manage was another terrified gasp; a bone-deep paralysis pinned him to the floor in front of the second bed.

  As he opened his mouth to speak, Marilyn knelt beside of him, her cold calculating stare found him, glinting with a fire hotter than love and deeper than revenge. She pinched his lips together and leaned her face against his. His skin grew cold.

  When she snapped her fingers, he could hear both the scarred gold chain and the deadbolt snap into place; the curtains drew shut, obscuring the glare of the motel’s neon blue sign.

  “It’s not Acapulco or anyplace tropical but it’ll have to do.” She said in a mocking voice, a wide malevolent grin on her face.

  ME AND MY GANG

  Since my parents attended a George Romero double-feature at a local drive-in the night before I was born, I’ve been an avid fan of the zombie genre.

  Every Halloween night, once the beggars have succumbed to bed, I slide a pre-ordered pizza from the oven and drop in my DVD copy of the B&W version Night Of The Living Dead. I’ve done it every year for the past ten years and I’ve kept it going since. Now that I’ve collected the original Day Of The Dead and Dawn Of The Dead, I watch them in reverse that it coincides with the sky.

  This story was wrote at the same time I was working a part-time job at a local eatery and thought it’d be a good concept. Who wouldn’t want to be locked inside of the same place with the same people they saw on a weekly basis?

  "I bet you can't shoot her from here."

  "Do you remember what happened last time you say something like that, Rick?" Matt cautioned him, gazing out across the rear parking lot.

  "Remember what happened last time you lost a bet?"

  "There's no way I’ll lose again."

  Matt raised the bolt-action rifle, trapped the dead woman in the crosshairs of his scope and concentrated. She was a meager-looking blonde with a scrawny face, rotting-gray skin and delicate cheekbones; her left arm hung loosely down by her side, hugged by the spaghetti-thin strap of her bright-pink dress. He drew back a deep breath, exhaled and pulled the trigger; the report echoed through the back lot as the stock slammed into his shoulder.

  When he raised his head, she was still stumbling between the grease trap and the metal-green dumpster sitting fifty yards away on the far-left side of the parking lot, her milky-white eyes gazing downward; a chunk of concrete had been punched out from the wall of the building behind her.

  "I told you." He snickered.

  “I wasn't focused."

  "Bullshit."

  "Okay, okay." Matt said, waving him off. "What do I have to do this time?"

  "I want you to—"

  "I'm not cooking dinner in Tara's underwear again."

  "Do you mind if I continue?”

  “Go ahead.”

  A second of silence passed between them.

  "I'm not walking across the power line above the parking lot." Matt forewarned.

  "You have to hook up with Kyra."

  "That's not a dare." He snorted. "Besides, the only guy who had a shot at her—"

  "Is part of the walking dead in case you forgot." Rick reminded him. "I overheard her and Tara talking about you yesterday. I think she's got a crush on you."

  "Remember what happened last time you told me that? I made a complete fucking fool of myself."

  Wagging his finger, Rick said, "I didn't tell you to walk up to that woman and ask her out. All I said was that she was checking you out."

  "It's the same damn thing."

  Matt leaned against the wall of the supply room, sighed and shook his head. Everything had happened so fast; one day he was picking up his paycheck and then the next he was stuck inside of his own workplace in the back of the supply room shooting zombies like rubber ducks at a carnival kiosk.

  "Are you two done back here?" A sarcastic female voice shouted amongst the sound of footsteps.

  "I was just starting to pull up my pants." Rick said with a sardonic smile.

  “Don’t slap his ass like you always do when we’re done.”

  Matt's sister Jessica appeared out from behind a stack of cardboard boxes sitting on one of many tall perforated metal shelves beside the back door. Although they’d worked there for many years, they didn’t think it was necessary to wear their uniforms.

  "Too much information." Matt cringed. "What you two do in the privacy of your room isn't any of my business."

  "Whatever."

  The bickering had come with the benefits of being brother and sister. Some believed that they were twins but they were really born three years apart.

  They had their mother's jet-black hair—hers was long, his was always cut short to the nape of his neck—their father's well-built frame and their grandmother's brown eyes. Rick took Jessica in his arms and kissed her on the cheek. Although they'd been dating months before the virus first hit, they were the oddest-looking couple Matt had ever seen; he wasn't about to complain because Jessica's happiness was (and always will be) his number one concern.

  After she returned the kiss, Rick asked, "What did you want?"

  "Dinner's done."

  Matt glanced down at his wristwatch; it said 8:45. The moon beamed across the thick black sky; it soaked the treetops and spread great black shadows across the curbs. The wind stirred the treetops, blew fallen leaves and pine needles across the asphalt in thin sporadic patterns.

  A fat furry-brown spider scuttled across the macadam before a bald fat corpse scooped it up and mashed it between his rotting black teeth like it were a piece of homemade jerky. Chewing, the zombie staggered across the parking lot, oblivious to the river of brown liquid sliding down his chin.

  They didn't leap across great distances; they trotted with the apathy of a drunk the morning after, their mouths wide and black like a turkeys in a rainstorm. Some had been fresh from the grave or still in the midst of decomposition, their soft-gray skin drawn tightly around their bones. They were someone's family members, best
friends, golfing buddies, co-workers; someone they truly cared about.

  "Should I even ask what we're having?"

  "Another-All-You-Can-Eat."

  "I don't know how many of those I can take."

  "It's better than nothing." Matt said matter-of-factly.

  Shrugging their shoulders, they followed Jessica out of the supply room.

  *****

  WHEN they reached the lobby, everyone had been sitting around the family-sized booth on the far-left side of the lobby, their eyes giddy and warm. Brock and Tara were sitting on the bench seat stretched across the massive white Formica-topped table; Jessica and Rick sat across from them and Kyra sat beside them, looking across the table at no one. Matt slipped the strap of his rifle up and over his shoulder, leaned it against the doorway between the supply room and the lobby and slipped into the bench seat across from Kyra; the morose frown on her pale angular face shifted into a wide pencil-thin smirk.

  The lobby was a twenty-five by forty-two sized room with white tiled floors occupied by spotless white tables and metal cushioned chairs that reminded customers of most nostalgic fifties drive-ins. The massive front windows (soaked in crimson neon from the signs proclaiming COME BACK on the left and AND BRING YOUR FRIENDS on the right) were covered with thick wooden slats that barred any contact from the walking dead. According to the large framed photos speckled on the oak-paneled walls, Mary's Burger Town was once a popular carhop from the days of yesteryear before it was purchased and remodeled; since then it’d been the sponsors for a number of little-league teams and catered to many college faculty members, three mayoral candidates (although only one of them won) and a few regulars.

  Munching on a chicken strip and deep-fried mushrooms, Matt glanced across the table at Kyra, lacking the urge to look away. She nibbled on a cheese stick, her long pineapple blonde hair falling across the crowns of her shoulders and framing her soft- white cheekbones. Her doe brown eyes, surrounded by thick rings of jet black mascara, winked in the downward glare of the florescent panels; she wore blue jeans, a silky velvet top with a lacy border and thin spaghetti straps.

  He noticed she was about to stare back at him and snapped his glance back down at the food placed before him. She smelled like cotton candy but she had a mouth like an angry Southern.

  "Did you hit anything today?" Her voice was like that of a child begging for another bedtime story.

  "I only hit five." He said. "Not my usual number."

  "Don't forget the one you missed a few minutes ago." Rick said between bites.

  "You missed."

  "I had the perfect shot but she wouldn't stand still."

  "Don't beat yourself up about it." Jessica arched her brows.

  "I won't."

  “You’ll get back in the hang of it.” Kyra nodded.

  “You’ll get back in the hang of it.” Tara mocked Kyra, inciting a chorus of laughter from everyone including her.

  "These things happen."

  "They call it 'the shaky gun hand'." Brock said, peering over Tara's shoulder. "It's like when a gunfighter knows he's getting too old because his hand starts to shake and he can't shoot right. I read about it in a book my cousin gave me."

  Matt nodded.

  They were halfway through dinner when Brock slipped a tiny remote from his front pocket, ignoring the curious glances from his other co-workers. The CD player from inside the kitchen kicked on; The Who filled the restaurant with "I Can't Explain." When the crowd reacted to the sound of the music, Brock gave a coy snicker.

  Jabbing her fist playfully into his thigh, Tara said, "How did you get that thing to work?"

  "Remember when we got the guns from the pawn shop down the road?" He asked. "I grabbed a bunch of batteries from the supply room while they were gathering up things.”

  "And when were you going to tell us?"

  "When the time was right."

  "Maybe we could look for an active radio station."

  "Jesus, Tara." Brock said through tightly-clenched teeth. "When are you going to realize that we're all that's left?"

  "How do you know for sure?"

  "If we weren't," He said. "then The National Guard would've been here by now.”

  Sighing, Tara dropped her hot dog into the plaid paper boat, flung his hand away from her chest, slid out of the booth and stalked across the lobby into the kitchen. Silence was now at the head of the table, save for the quick furtive glances passed between the others; the current situation halted everyone's appetites.

  Brock gave an apologetic hiss, slid out of the booth and followed her. Tara was leaning against the sandwich counter, head and shoulders slumped over in defeat with her face buried in her hands. They'd done this every few weeks but not to where the others were tempted to throw them outside if they didn't get along.

  For as long as Matt could remember, Tara and Brock had been dating long before Jessica and Rick first met. He was tall and rawboned with sandy brown hair, a wide nose, green eyes and a thin handsome smile. She was five-nine, three inches shorter than Brock with pale skin, thin red lips, hazel eyes and long black hair.

  Although they weren't married, they fought like they were.

  "They'll make up in a minute or two." Jessica said glumly.

  "They always do."

  "It's not her fault."

  The others waited for Matt to explain.

  "She's tired of being here, eating the same thing day after fucking day."

  "She goes out to the roof sometimes."

  "Sometimes that's not enough." Matt said. "Paranoia starts to set in after a while. The walls start closing in around you and you think that if you don't get out soon enough you'll go stark raving mad and that's the last thing anybody needs."

  "Is everything okay?" Rick bellowed across the lobby.

  "We're fine, man."

  "I wonder what they're talking about." Kyra asked, nibbling on her second cheese stick.

  "Whatever it is I just hope she doesn't—"

  Something crashed from inside the supply room. Wasting no time, Matt and Rick leapt from their seats, grabbed their rifles from the floor and headed back the way they’d come. Kyra and Jessica backed away from the table, their faces twisted with terror.

  "I'm taking out the first mother fucker I see." Rick said.

  "Just don't shoot me, blockhead."

  The door jostled forward as if it were being pushed from the other side. The door gave a low whistling groan as the hinges grinded against the door emitting the shriek of wood against metal; small splinters spilled onto the floor like dandruff.

  "You may want to get in here, Brock.” Rick said, glancing at them from the corner of his eye.

  "What the hell is going on?"

  "What does it look like?"

  The door swung open with such force that it rammed the doorknob into the wall beside the doorway. When they stepped into the small foyer between the bathrooms, Matt glanced over their shoulders and saw the back door standing wide open; it was clear how they'd gotten in. He was so sure that he'd locked it yesterday after they came back from getting supplies, but so much had happened that day and he’d just simply forgot.

  The zombie staring back at Matt wore ratty blue jeans and a red plaid shirt torn along the lower left side to reveal an exposed rib cage; the left side of his face had been peeled away along with his lips, revealing blackened teeth and rotting gums. The fiend on Rick's side was a squat heavyset woman with thick pale arms, a three-layer chin and big black eyes; she wore a flowing floral-print muumuu and a giant strand of pearls around her thick puffy neck. Behind them, Kyra clenched Jessica's hand and cowered back toward the trash receptacle on the far-right corner; they knew the drill if they were ever outnumbered.

  Throw the bolt thrown across the nearest door, hop into the Explorer and run for your life. They had no problem agreeing to all of the other rules, but that was the only one they had trouble with.

  Rick jammed the barrel of his rifle against the woman's head and pulled th
e trigger; the bullet had punched through her skull, spraying streams of soft red pulp across the wall. Before the skinny one could react, Matt spun the rifle back around and shot her three times, ignoring the rifle’s thunderous recoil pounding against his shoulder, ringing in his ears. As Brock and Tara hurried into the room, he cursed under his breath, spun the rifle back around in a two-handed grip and began to clubbing her across the head.

  "Hey, killer." Brock said, throwing his arms across Matt’s chest. "She's dead, man. She's dead."

  "Of course she's dead, Brock." Rick said, his face warped with distaste. "Her brains are all over the fucking wall."

  Matt took a few steps back, strolled into the lobby and glanced down at the floor to avoid Jessica’s prying gaze. Lumps of soft red flesh clung to the stock of the rifle, turning its once sleek walnut finish to a cherry red.

  "Are you alright?" He asked her and Kyra.

  "We're good." Jessica nodded.

  "We need to drag this bitch outside.” Rick said, waving his hand in front of his face to ward off the smell.

  Not only were they old-fashioned “staggers” (as their boss liked to coin them before he left them high and dry), they stunk more after they were killed the second time.

  "You just need—"

  "I need to go see how the back door got open."

  "I'm sure it's nothing."

  "Keep telling yourself that when they finally get in here and have us for fucking brunch.”

  They stepped over the dead guy and into the supply room. Once Jessica got on a roll, nothing could shut her up. He closed the back door, turned the lock into place and slid the four-inch wooden slat into the U-shaped brackets fixed onto the wall on both sides of the door and slammed it in place until it felt secure.

  The wind whipped at his clothes and tousled his hair. If he set the slat back into place across the door like he should’ve, none of this would’ve happened.

  ""I know that look on your face.” She said, tugging his left sleeve. "Something's bothering you, isn’t it?"