Trailer Park Zombies

by Jason H. Jones

  There were several people behind the unnamed man who were watching eagerly. “That’s it, get the gun, John. He’s just a kid. Make him give it to you.”

  I shoved forward with my hands, using the shotgun as a lever to push him off balance. It worked a little bit but he kept coming back like a little terrier. Fannie Mae scrambled to her feet next to me and pushed at the guy, using her fists to punch him in the chest to get him to let go. She landed a vicious punch to his gut and he grunted, making the first sound I’d heard from him. He finally let go of the gun and slapped her hard in the face.

  She let out a little cry and flew back against the wall, landing on her side. Her face was bright red and I could see tears welling up in her eyes. The next thing I knew I was on my feet and seeing red.

  John, whoever he was, turned back to me and put his grubby little hands on my shotgun again. I had a much better grip on it now that I was on my feet, with one hand holding the stock and the other in front of the trigger guard. “What the hell’s your problem, John-boy?” I yelled at him.

  The bastard finally looked at me. I could see the insanity raging in his eyes. He’d gone off somewhere to la-la land and I didn’t think he was ever coming back. The only thing on his mind was my gun. “Give it to me, boy,” he hissed. “This is our place, now, and we’re going to protect it. Give me the gun and you can stay here.”

  I laughed in his face. “The only way you’re getting this shotgun is if you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.”

  “That can be arranged, Duke,” a voice spoke out from behind him.

  I looked and couldn’t tell which one of them had spoken, but they all suddenly surged forward. For a moment I couldn’t tell the difference between them and the zombie horde outside. John got a better grip on the shotgun barrel and twisted, tugging it partly out of my hands.

  I panicked for a second, seeing the group of them coming at me. I glanced at Fannie Mae, seeing the red handprint on her face and a trickle of blood coming from her nose. She had a look of complete shock on her face, not believing how quickly the situation in here had imploded. I should have listened to Barrett. He was right when he said that the survivors banding together was nothing but a joke.

  Only the length of the shotgun barrel separated me and John. He had it gripped tightly in both hands. A pristine calmness suddenly settled over me and clarity filled my mind. It was a simple matter to shift my grip on the gun and put my finger on the trigger. Twenty pounds of pressure or so and a tight squeeze and the roar of the shotgun filled the air. I felt a wave of something pass from me to him, almost like a live wire connected us. An almost comical expression of surprise crossed John’s face and his mouth opened in an “O” of astonishment. His hands flew apart, pinwheeling in the air as he flew backwards to the ground, the group behind him spreading apart to allow him to splat to the floor.

  They all looked at me with fear and surprise on their faces. I hoped I’d taken the fight out of them.

  I looked down at John and the gaping hole he had in his chest. White bone peeked out through the gristle of the muscle and blood seeped out of the wound. He tried to speak, opening and closing his mouth several times, but the only thing to come out of his mouth was sprays of blood. Then he stopped moving.

  I stood there, breathing hard, with the gun pointed in his general direction. I didn’t think he’d get back up since he’d been shot by me rather than having been bitten by a zombie, but you can never be sure. His buddies stood arrayed several feet back from his corpse, still eying my gun hungrily. It was like the altercation with John hadn’t even happened. Fortunately, none of them were quite prepared yet to take me on. I could see Washington across the room but he didn’t even bother coming over to check on us. Bastard figured we could take care of ourselves.

  I stepped over to Fannie Mae and stood over her, both hands still on the shotgun and pointing it in the general direction of the rebels. “You okay, Fannie Mae?”

  She got to her feet and stood next to me, rubbing her jaw. “Yeah, I think so. He clocked me a good one. I’m lucky it was open-handed. If he hit me that hard with a closed fist I think I’d be dead or unconscious right now.”

  One of their group finally came forward and checked John’s pulse, long after I knew the shit was dead. He looked at me accusingly. “He’s dead. You killed him.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s what he gets for trying to take the gun away from me. Would you like a turn next?”

  He stood up and stared at me. “Yeah, I think I would, Duke. I don’t think you could kill a man in cold blood. I’m Adam, now why don’t you just give me the gun?”

  I felt that grim smile cross my face and chambered another shell, the sound of the used one falling to the ground loud in the quiet. “Who said my blood was cold?”

  Who knows how bad the situation would have gotten at that point if John hadn’t chosen that exact moment to sit up? Would I have shot all those living people to keep my gun and keep me and Fannie Mae safe? You bet I would have. But I’m not sure the swarm of them would have let me get them all and they probably could have gotten the gun away from me eventually. And then I’m sure they’d have turned it on me.

  But none of that was meant to be.

  One of the women in the group let loose a piercing shriek when John sat up. He didn’t immediately attack any of us, just sat there dumbly and swiveling at the waist to look around at us all. His eyes finally locked on me and he reached both hands in my direction. Just awesome.

  John’s hand brushed against Adam’s leg. When he did that his eyes swiveled to Adam and I swear I saw some kind of feral, animal intelligence in them. It was like he was completely empty until he saw the food. His fingers tightened and he got a full grip of the jeans that Adam was wearing and pulled him backwards until John was eclipsed from view underneath him.

  Adam’s shriek filled the air as John’s teeth finally found purchase in him. From the crunch I’d say it was somewhere near the spine. That and the fact that his legs and arms had been twitching madly in a desperate attempt to get away and now suddenly they were still. Zombie-John rolled them over until he was on top and I could see that Adam was still alive, but completely paralyzed. Which begged the question of what would happen if you had a paralyzed zombie? If the person couldn’t move when they were alive would they be able to move when they were a zombie?

  I didn’t give us the chance to find out.

  Stepping forward I put the end of the barrel square against the side of John’s head. He must have felt the iron against his flesh but he was too busy trying to eat. I pulled the trigger and his brains and blood flew all over the paralyzed man below him. Adam shook his head violently at me and mouthed the word no several times. I shrugged at him apologetically and shot him in the head.

  The two dead men lay on top of each other in a weird parody of love, both their heads completely missing from the proximity of the blasts. I swept my gaze over the rest of the group. “Does anyone else want any?”

  They honestly looked like they did. They were nuts. But that was when Washington and his men came forward, brandishing their guns. “Break it up,” Wash said.

  They looked at each other warily. I could see them testing the idea of whether they could fight us all. One of the men stepped forward, midway between me and Washington. “We want guns, Washington. We want to get out of here.”

  Wash pointed to the door. “No one’s keeping you here, Tanner. You and your people can go if you want.”

  I stepped forward and opened my mouth but Washington looked at me pointedly and I stepped back. If this was how he wanted to handle this then fine.

  Tanner said, “You’d send us out there without weapons? Send us out to be killed? Should have known you were a yellow-belly. Your kind always is.”

  A dangerous light gleamed in Washington’s eye. “My kind?”

  A woman who could only be Tanner’s wife spoke up from behind him. “Yeah, nigger.”

  Rage at the word bristled in Washi
ngton’s face. I could feel the wave of hatred that word had caused ripple throughout the room. People stepped forward eagerly to see what would happen next.

  Washington’s hand tightened where he held his gun and I saw him bring up a couple inches from where it pointed at the floor. It quivered there for a moment before going back down. He sighed wearily, “If you want to leave, Tanner, then leave. I don’t give a crap if you live or die, but you’re not putting the rest of us in danger.”

  “And you’re not getting any weapons,” I piped in. Fannie Mae’s hand tightened on my arm. Tanner and the rest turned to me and I gave them my most winning grin, shotgun held easily in my grip.

  He took a step in my direction and I grinned even wider. That seemed to stop him. He eyed me critically. He looked like your typical trailer trash: white, grimy and stupid. Not an ounce of shame in him.

  Fannie Mae spoke up. “Careful, Tanner. Your white trash is showing.”

  He actually snarled and took another step toward us. I raised the shotgun easily to my shoulder and pointed it directly at him. “Don’t worry, Tanner. I’ll make sure to hit your head with the first shot. Wouldn’t want you to come back.”

  There’s no way the standoff would have ended well. They were too frightened and too stupid to have it go any other way. They were the kind of people who would run a lame horse into the ground and then beat it for not moving.

  It started with a rattle on the front door. It was the loudest sound in the whole House. All 40 or so pairs of eyes slowly turned to face the door. The knob was rattling loosely in the frame. After several seconds several pairs of hands started beating methodically on the wood. I saw the door moving rhythmically in its frame. Sawdust fell from the boards holding it in place on the inside.

  That was when I realized that Washington had brought all the guards with him to try and break up the ruckus. All the doors and windows were left completely unguarded. It was as if something was waiting for me to come to that realization cause that’s when two of the windows on the far side of the hall flew inward with a crash, glass flying everywhere and cutting some of the closer refugees. Hands flailed around outside the windows and reached in, searching for some kind of purchase.

  Washington and I slowly turned to face each other across the ten feet or so separating us. I think I saw the same look of horror on his face that was in mine. Although I hope that my eyes didn’t look as crazed as his, all white and shiny.

  I remember the rest only in flashes of memory.

  Tanner suddenly rushing toward me, reaching for my gun, a snarl on his face. Me instinctively pulling the trigger of the shotgun where I had it already resting on my shoulder. His brains splattering on his wife behind him. Her cries of rage, or sorrow, or whatever they were, as she launched herself at me with her white trash fingernails reaching to claw my eyes out. I did not have the time to chamber another round so I held the gun by the barrel and instead swung it like a club. It connected with her jaw with a sickening crunch and her falling to the floor in a heap.

  Washington yelling something to me over the sudden screams of the refugees. Me making the conscious decision to turn my back on him and try to save Fannie Mae and myself.

  The lights starting to flicker off and on and someone realized he hadn’t refueled the generator in several hours.

  More windows breaking on all sides as the zombies finally figured out where all the food was.

  In the flashes of light I could see the zombies beginning to crawl in through the windows. The screams, if it were possible, got louder.

  I reloaded the spent shells into the shotgun and stared around me wildly. My brain was shutting down. We were dead. All dead. There were more zombies in the room now than there were people and more were streaming into the window with every second. I could feel my breath coming from a million miles away and my hands were shaking so erratically that I couldn’t have hit a zombie if it were inches away from me.

  Fannie Mae rested her hand on my arm calmly, assuredly. I turned my head to look at her. Her face changed from one flash of the light to the next from zombie to sweet Fannie Mae. From Fannie Mae to rotting zombie. Back and forth again and again. She moved forward into my arms and pressed her lips to mine. It was cold and sweet and warm and wet and suddenly…

  Everything solidified. The world came rushing back in.

  19.

  We parted. She looked at me calmly, trusting in me to save us. Her trust in me gave me the confidence in myself to do something about it.

  “You have the bag?”I asked.

  She nodded and patted it where it lay across her shoulders in reply.

  “Stay close,” I said.

  I looked around the room. It was a slaughter. The zombies couldn’t have planned it better if they’d tried. (And I truly hoped they hadn’t had the ability to plan it; that would change the dynamic completely.) Most of the survivors had been in the center of the room watching the little confrontation between me and Wash and his men and Tanner and his. No one had been watching the windows or doors. When the zombies had come rushing in from all sides the people had been completely surrounded.

  Some tried to fight with their bare hands and were immediately eaten and turned. Others tried to attack with the baseball bats and pieces of wood that had worked so well earlier. They at least lasted a little longer against the horde. Washington’s men with their weapons stood around in a little cluster, not shooting, hoping to come up with a plan to get out of here. There was zero chance that they had enough rounds to completely kill the horde.

  There was absolutely zero chance that I had enough rounds to kill them all. That meant saving shells and making every shot count while we tried to find our way out of here.

  Washington and his mean hadn’t moved from their position a dozen feet from us. Fannie Mae and I were still pressed up against the wall and there were zombies and people on all sides. I looked over to Wash and saw him eying me. He gestured me in his direction. I sighed and nodded. Getting out of here as a group was really our only option.

  We started running for him. I sensed more than heard or saw the zombie coming at us from the left and pivoted to face it, shooting it in the legs. At this point killing the zombies mattered less than slowing them down. His legs were ripped from under him and he could only crawl in our direction. I looked back at Wash and saw him eyeballing something behind us and raising his gun. I tugged on Fannie Mae and skidded to my knees. She immediately sensed what I was doing and followed after me.

  I felt the shot pass over my head and ruffle my hair as it whizzed past, thunking into the zombie that was behind us.

  I quickly got back to my feet and pointed the gun back in the direction we’d come from. There were no more zombies heading directly for us.

  Washington yelled in my ear as I helped Fannie Mae back up. “We’ve got to get out of here! There’s no way we can get out up here. We have to go for the back door. They’re coming, Duke. They’re coming!”

  I nodded as the bullets started flying around us. A dozen of the zombies were plodding in our direction. It seemed like all the bullets were whizzing harmlessly at the sky. I yelled at the men, “Aim for the legs! Slow them down if you can’t do anything else!”

  No one acknowledged me, but it did seem like a lot more bullets were suddenly finding their marks.

  As a group we started moving en masse for the hallway leading to the backdoor. The screams and cacophony in the House were starting to wind down as the few remaining survivors began to be eaten. I don’t know the name of Washington’s man who took point as we headed down that hallway but every time I think about him I say a quick prayer to God blessing that guys’ soul.

  We entered the hallway with the zombies at our backs, slowly heading in our direction. A lot of them hadn’t noticed us yet as they were too busy eating and shoving blood and guts down their throats. Somehow they knew the exact moment that their food became a zombie because they would stop in midmotion and get up looking more food as if it spoiled
as they ate.

  The point man reached the hallway ahead of the rest of us and took off running for the kitchen. I choose to think that he was going ahead to scout it rather than believing that he was going to run away and ditch us. It makes his death that much more noble. Cause die he did.

  He reached the kitchen and suddenly his gun started firing erratically. He emptied his clip in seconds and started to run back toward us. A look of sheer desperation was on his face. “It’s full of zombies!” He screamed at us. Then a hand snaked around the corner and grabbed his ankle. He tripped and fell face-forward onto the hard floor of the hallway and the sound of his neck breaking was loud even in the midst of all the gunshots and shrieks and screaming and shuffling of the zombies as they came for us.