Trailer Park Zombies

by Jason H. Jones

  It just seemed like that kind of night.

  Fannie Mae was still dragging me behind her, leading me by the hand. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I couldn’t even begin to voice the horror I was feeling. Why would Barrett do such a thing? Why would he sacrifice himself for us? For his friends?

  For his friends.

  I guess at the end he’d found all the courage he’d ever needed.

  We reached the door of the House and Fannie Mae started banging on it, yelling for them to let us in. Less than 30 seconds later the door opened a crack and a gun barrel poked out.

  “Who’s there?”

  We had run straight there from the shootout and Fannie had half-dragged me the whole way so she was completely out of breath. She finally managed to breathe out, “Fannie Mae Jennsen and Duke Johnson. Please let us in.”

  The door opened wide enough to let us in and we stumbled quickly inside. They shut and bolted the door behind us. When I looked around I could see at least five or six different guns pointed directly at us.

  Stupid Herbert Jennings sat not thirty feet away from us with a blanket over his shoulders sipping something out of a coffee cup. I got to my feet and held the shotgun threateningly in my hands.

  “Stand down, Duke,” said another man from behind the group that had their guns trained on us. He stepped through them and approached me. It was Washington Jones, the manager of Rosie Acres, our trailer park.

  He stopped in front of me, getting close enough to force me to point the shotgun at the floor. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me with his caring, brown eyes. Washington was one of the only few black (okay, African American) men in the trailer park. Hell, in most of the town if I’m being honest. He’d lived here most of his life and had faced many a tough time against the white trash in town. I’d heard tell that as a young man of 20 when he’d showed up in town that a lot of the men – my father included – had tried to show him the way right back out. He’d stood his ground and gave as much of a beating as he’d taken and somehow won their respect after many years.

  He stood about 6’2” and was as thin as a rail. Many of the men had thought that’d made him weak, but he’d beaten men twice his size more than once. His head was shaved bald and shone to a high gloss. Even though he was one of the toughest men in these parts he was also one of the most gentle and there’d been many a kid who’d fallen in the trailer park and been picked up by him.

  It was no surprise that he’d be the one leading the men.

  “Washington?” I asked, blinking up at him rapidly.

  He took me in his arms, the shotgun smashed between us, and I wept like a baby. I felt no shame for it. None at all. I cried for my friends and for the things I couldn’t unsee and the things I’d done.

  I don’t know how long I cried or how long we stood there together, but finally my tears slowed to a trickle and I backed slowly away from him. He let me. But he had his hand out for the gun.

  I shook my head. “Sorry, Washington, but this is mine.”

  He looked at me and I could see him weighing the thoughts in his head and he finally nodded and shrugged, letting me keep the gun. Maybe he saw in my eyes that I wasn’t willing to give it up. I looked over to Fannie Mae, but she’d already hidden Thompson’s gun somewhere on her body and I don’t think any one of them had seen her do it. At least we were armed.

  “You want to tell me what happened?” He asked.

  I snorted and pointed at Jennings cowering in his little blanket. “I’ll tell you what happened. That coward over there got my best friend killed and shot Mr. Thompson.”

  Washington glared darkly at Jennings and steered me toward a couple chairs. “Why don’t you tell me from the beginning?”

  I hesitated and then glanced at Fannie Mae. The look in her eyes told me that it was my call what to tell. I skipped over most of what I’ve already told in these pages and picked up the story with the three of us sitting in my trailer this afternoon and seeing the foot-zombie attacking Donny Marsters and the subsequent issues. He nodded along with my story. I guess he’d been out in the crowd although I hadn’t seen him. Then I told him about Thompson and Jennings coming to my trailer and taking the three of us to the House and I filled him in on every single detail and laid all the blame entirely on Jennings.

  I could have shot Jennings myself right then and there with no qualms whatsoever.

  He nodded at the end of my story and looked at Jennings again, long and hard. Then he looked back at me. “I’m sorry about your friend, Duke. He sounds like a real stand-up guy.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded sourly.

  “I can’t fault Jennings for the shot he took at the zombie when it had Thompson. Any one of us would have done the same thing, although hopefully we wouldn’t have missed it. The guilt for that is on him and if we ever get out of this alive and everything goes back to normal then maybe he can face justice. Until then there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  He paused but I didn’t say anything in reply to that. What was there to say?

  “I can, however,” his voice deepened, “fault him for being a coward and abandoning three children to the zombies.” I opened my mouth to protest being called a child but he waved it away. He knew what I was going to say. “Don’t worry about him having another gun in his hands or having any kind of responsibility in here.”

  “How about you give me five minutes alone with him?” I asked Washington seriously.

  “And me, too,” Fannie Mae piped in.

  He looked at us with a grim smile on his face. “I don’t think so, Duke. I think you’d kill him and we can’t risk any more of those things.” He shuddered. “We still don’t know what caused them or where they came from.”

  I did, kinda. Fannie Mae did, too. We locked eyes on each other and I realized I didn’t want to take the chance to beat Jennings to a pulp and have something like Mason Smith happen again. Maybe it was a fluke or God knows what happened, but I knew I didn’t want to chance that again.

  I nodded at Washington. “Okay, I’ll let it drop for now.”

  He got up off his chair and sighed, rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Good. Thanks, Duke.”

  I cleared my throat and sat up a little straighter. “Um, Washington?”

  “Yeah, Duke?”

  “Can you tell me what’s been going on here for the past few hours and what the plan is and everything?” I’d been in charge too long on that day to just trust handing over the mantle of leadership.

  He sat back down and rubbed his forehead again. I think the pressure of the leadership was getting to him. It’s not too often that you get to practice your leadership skills in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

  “Well, we’ve got about 65 people here in the House. At last count there were about 312 people living in Rosie Acres. There’s no way to tell how many were out of the park when this all started. Some people were just out of town and some are stuck in town now that there’s a blockage in the road.” He threw his hands up in the air. “I hope that we got everyone in that we could before it got dark. Yours was the last search party out there. We knocked on every single door in the Acres. It’s possible some people were too scared to answer their door.”

  He waved at the groups of people huddled around the meeting room. There were some people crying and some people just staring blankly in the distance. There were a few others who were on guard duty and trying to look out the windows. “At our best count we’ve got 20 people that we know were attacked. Most of them were seen getting right back up. We’ve got a few people that we know were missing before everything started; like Don Simmons and Tamara Rogers. Her body wasn’t found in the fire at her trailer. Simmons was seen this morning on his walk and then just disappeared.”

  He leaned forward and locked eyes with me. “How many people – things – were in the group that you saw? The one that attacked you?”

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, Washington. I didn’t stop and take down their
names. Probably at least 10 or 15. Maybe 20. It was dark. It was impossible to tell.”

  He sighed and sat back, rubbing his forehead some more.

  “Do we have any supplies in here?” I asked. “Food? Water? Phones?”

  “We’ve got some canned goods and bottled water here. Fortunately the place is fairly well stocked up since it doubles as our tornado shelter. None of the land lines work and no one can seem to get a cell signal.” He leaned forward and whispered, “What’s going on, Duke? Why would the road be blocked, the power be off, and none of the phones work? Are they that smart?”

  He had an insane look in his eyes.

  “I don’t know, Washington. They didn’t seem that smart from what I saw, but I wouldn’t put anything past them. Hell, I couldn’t tell you how to kill the land lines so I have no idea how a zombie could.”

  “Zombies,” he said, incredulous. “Is this the end of the world?”

  I shrugged. “I hope not. It was my birthday yesterday.”

  He wandered off and I went and sat by Fannie Mae on the floor. She had a blanket over her and offered an end to me. I sighed and accepted it and we scooted close to each other under it, sharing body heat. Regardless of the zombies and everything else going on, I certainly could not have imagined myself here 24 hours ago. Sitting next to Fannie Mae with my arm around her and not being too bothered about it? Being completely aware of her as a female and liking the idea?

  Nope. Certainly not me.

  That made me think of Barrett and his relentless teasing of me about her and a wave of sorrow passed over me. I couldn’t believe he was gone. There were so many things we were going to do together and now the best I could hope for was that the zombies had taken his head so that none of us would have to shoot him. I don’t think Barrett would make a good zombie. He’d have to eat people and he certainly wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with that.

  I sighed and was almost surprised by the tears I felt running down my cheeks. I’d never been this weepy before. Hell, I hadn’t cried when Barrett told me my mom was dead. Fannie Mae reached up and touched the wetness on my cheeks. She didn’t say anything as we looked at each other by the fading light. She leaned forward and I could tell what she wanted. A part of me wanted it, too. My heart was full of sorrow and it needed filling with something just a little happier.

  She leaned forward and tilted her head up. I kissed her. It was a chaste kiss, no moving of the head or tongues rammed down each other’s throats. It was just the pressing of our lips together. Yet. And yet, still, a tingle of electricity shot through me and every hair on my body stood on end. The electricity was coming from our lips but I could feel it like a ball of energy in the pit of my stomach.

  We finally parted and just looked at each for a moment without saying anything. Then she sighed and leaned into me, placing her head on my chest. She was asleep in moments. I squeezed her shoulder tightly where I had my arm around her and put my chin on the top of her head. I tried to close my eyes and sleep but nothing happened. I could feel the dreams and the horror just behind my eyelids, waiting for me to fall to sleep.

  So I shook it off and looked around the room.

  Parts of my brain were happy and confused. Confused, but happy. I decided now wasn’t really the right time to think about me and Fannie Mae. The next thing to intrude was to see all the suffering and fear and crying in the room and to flash on the at least 20-ish zombies roaming around outside and to think about how that was all my fault, but I pushed all that away, too.

  Then thoughts of Barrett intruded in, but I wouldn’t even allow myself to go there, so I threw that aside, too. Not much was left at that point.

  I looked around the room at the 65 people there. Most looked like they were in shock and couldn’t believe what was going on. I didn’t blame them as I still had trouble with it myself. This wasn’t what it was like in the movies. On film the survivors always banded together and had a virtual arsenal they could use to mow down the zombies. There was usually one or two like Jennings – I sneered in his direction – but usually all the others were true survivor-types.

  That certainly wasn’t the case this night.

  I counted maybe eight guns in the room, not counting what Fannie Mae and I had on us. I’d say half of them were shotguns. A couple looked like they were .22’s. I’m not sure what they intended to do with those little rifles. You’d have to be a crack-shot to kill a zombie with one of those. I’d rather have a pointy stick. And the rest were an assortment of handguns. They’d probably work all right but I’m thinking the shotguns would be the best bet. Who knows exactly where in the brain you’d have to shoot a zombie to kill it? I certainly didn’t and I was probably the only one in this room who’d actually faced one down.

  I’d much rather go with the wide spray of a shotgun shell.

  No wonder Washington had wanted to take the gun away from me. He had men stationed at every window but I’d say less than half of them had weapons. If we were attacked the best they’d be able to do would be to yell really loud and run like hell, but there was no way he was getting this weapon from me. The three of us had gone through way too much to get it.

  Thoughts of that made me think of Tamara. It seemed like forever since she’d crossed my brain, which was odd in and of itself since she used to be all I could think of in my hormone-laced teenager dreams. It’s amazing what a difference 24 hours can make in your priorities. Survival becomes the top issue, depending on the type of person you are. I know rape isn’t the girl’s fault but in this instance I felt like she had at least an even amount of responsibility for our current predicament. I wouldn’t want rape to happen to anybody and I definitely didn’t want anyone to become a zombie, but if she hadn’t been in the middle of a graveyard at midnight with a thug like Mason Smith than none of this would have happened and I’d be whistling away none the wiser at what the real world really held.

  Real world? Was that what this was now?

  I wish Barrett was still here. I’m sure he’d have all kinds of lore and good information we could use for the final group of survivors holing up in the last bastion of safety. He’d know good things we’d need to watch for and holes we’d need to fill to make sure the zombies didn’t get inside. But Barrett was gone.

  I shoved that thought aside again.

  I knew I should take the rest while I could but after a half hour or so of Fannie Mae snoring softly on my chest I knew there was no point in even trying anymore so I slowly extricated myself from underneath her. It wasn’t easy doing it without waking her up but I finally managed it. I laid her down on her side on the floor and let her use my jacket for a pillow.

  I stood and stretched, hearing my back crack like an old man. A skittering part of me wanted to run and find a bolt hole and hide but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I didn’t feel safe here at all. There were too many personalities and moods and minds involved for this to be that safe of a place. They all took the idea of the zombies seriously because they’d seen what had happened out in the road with Donny but I don’t think they truly took it seriously. The zombies hadn’t attacked the House yet.

  Yet.

  But I’m sure they would. The lights shining through all the windows would surely appeal to them when they were ready. My guess was that there were still a few people out there huddled in their trailers with the lights off trying to hide from the zombies but I could easily see them in my mind’s eye being attacked and overwhelmed. It would only take one or two zombies to really get the job done. One would make two, those two would make four, then eight and on up to infinity. There was no defense against that kind of madness and the zombies seemed to go for the easy pickings first.

  I wanted to go for a walk and check the windows and doors myself but I wasn’t sure how Washington and the other men would really feel about that. The only other guys there my age were cowering under blankets with their families. They weren’t men, but I felt that my responsibility and my deeds this past day surely qualif
ied me for that job and I think Washington sensed that when he let me keep the shotgun. So screw it. My safety depended on it as much as anyone else’s and I didn’t trust any one person here to keep me safe, except for Fannie Mae, and I wanted to make sure I could keep her safe, too.

  I felt almost naked without the gun now, so I bent over and picked up the shotgun and cradled it in the crook of my elbow like I’d seen men do on Western movies since time immemorial. It felt weird there resting against my arm, but it actually was fairly comfortable holding it that way. I almost went out on my little circuit until I realized I hadn’t reloaded the shotgun since I’d fired those shots at the zombie attacking Thompson. Fannie Mae had the pack sitting on the floor next to her so I bent over again and took out one of the boxes of shells. I squatted down next to it as I thought for a minute. I hid the box with my body because I didn’t want any of the other men to see it. My guess was they’d take the shells as community property and want to add it to the arsenal.