by William Bebb
CHAPTER 9
Stoned Zombies & Suicide is Painful
The old lady sprawled back in the lounge chair snored as Maria poured a few drops of gasoline into the Nova's carburetor. She did it just as she'd watched her father do when she was a little girl. Fervently whispering a prayer, the tired young woman leaned into the car and turned the key.
The engine made weak cranking noises for several seconds before there was a tremendously loud backfire and it rumbled to life. Blue and white clouds of smoke billowed out of the tailpipe.
Mrs. Remlap screamed when she heard the backfire and started to reach for the shotgun propped against the lounge chair. When the old lady realized it was just Maria and the car, she forgot about the weapon as it slid down and clattered to the concrete floor. Remlap never fired it but knew it would work if she needed it. It was an old double barrel shotgun that her husband used many times to run off coyotes and scare off an occasional salesman back in the good old days.
Maria had little knowledge of firearms but inspected the weapon when she first saw it and confirmed there were shells inside the weapon. She asked a couple of times if the old woman knew where any more ammunition was.
Mrs. Remlap's elderly eyes usually appeared confused by the question then she'd shrug and ask Maria if she wanted more lemonade or ramble about something else. Maria considered searching the house for more shells but eventually decided fixing the car made more sense. The Remlap house was a huge two story building and had many rooms cluttered with enough things that Maria could have spent a week hunting for shotgun shells that might never be found or never existed in the first place. Plus, she'd hoped to stumble across the shells in the garage while repairing the car but never found any.
The engine was definitely running but it sounded unsteady and badly in need of maintenance. When Maria pressed the gas pedal gently the rumbling evened out into a loud roar. She got out of the car, coughed on the exhaust fumes quickly filling the garage, and smiled as the old lady got unsteadily to her feet while wiping sleep out of her eyes. “Want to go for a ride?” Maria asked before finishing off her glass of lemonade.
Mrs. Remlap grabbed her large ancient looking purse and a folded multicolored umbrella she used as a cane but forgot all about the shotgun laying partly under the lounge chair. She slowly tottered over and got into the driver’s seat while the eight track tape deck played Jerry Reed, singing When you're hot you're hot.
“The garage door is too sturdy to just run the car through, so I'm going to go open it. You stay inside and when I get back we'll get out of here, okay?” Maria asked, coughing on the quickly growing cloud of exhaust fumes.
The old woman coughed on the smoke, nodded, and gave her a thumbs up.
The exhaust fumes made the air a smoky bluish white fog bank. But the headlights were already switched on so Maria easily found her way to the garage door.
Looking at the padlock holding the doors shut, she was willing to bet the key was on the ring with the car keys. But afraid to turn off the car to use the key, even for as brief a time as unlocking the padlock would take, she instead used a long screwdriver and pried at the screws that the padlock was attached to on the garage doors. She feared the roughly rumbling old car might not start again. The wooden garage door was ancient, dried out, and rotten in parts, and the screws were popped out easily with the screwdriver.
As the last screw fell to the floor, she started pushing the heavy door on the left side open.
It squealed loudly on rusty hinges as she managed to open it all the way. A gust of fresh air made catching her breath a bit easier as the eight track player made a fairly loud ‘kachung’ noise and Jerry Reed started singing a song she’d once heard while watching a movie called Smokey and the Bandit.
Wish I had turned that off, she thought while pushing on the right side of the garage door.
It was stuck.
Maria turned around and pushed her back against it with all her strength, but the door wouldn't even budge. Then she caught an unpleasant whiff of decay somewhere outside in the darkness and started to kick at the big stubbornly stuck 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 in Spanish as she slammed her shoulder against the door again.
“On the floor, pull the latch!” the old lady yelled.
Maria 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 just as a man she once knew as Paco grabbed her hair and pulled.
His mouth was open wide as he snarled and screamed at her. His teeth had never met a toothbrush while he was alive and being a zombie most certainly hadn't improved his dental hygiene any.
Screaming, Maria kicked back with her left leg. Her boot 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 of the Maria's horrible friends come up, grab the girl and drag her to the ground. She's dead! Oh God, I have to get out here now! Mrs. Remlap thought in a panic then shoved the gearshift into drive and stomped down hard on the gas pedal.
With a loud roar the car sprang out of the garage, ran over Paco's body, and just barely missed squishing Maria's head with the tires.
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 rolled across the roof before finally falling into the driveway. Maria watched the rapidly receding tail lights and screamed a long, filthy, mixture of both Spanish and English profanities that Mrs. Remlap would certainly have found uncouth and less than ladylike. She ran after the car for a few seconds and quickly how futile chasing after it would be. The Nova was already down the hill and turning onto the trailer park's main road, then she spotted a group of figures chasing the car that were already much closer to it than she was.
Maria slowed to a walk and was catching her breath as she watched the car speeding into the darkness and heard it smashing noisily into several unidentifiable objects. It was a depressing situation that only grew worse when 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 damn T-shirt printed on the front and a pair of filthy denim shorts. His face was covered in dried blood and his eyes were wide and staring intently at her as he came closer. Apparently, Enrique was the one the car hit because his left leg was bent horribly at an angle that was in no way conducive to rapid mobility.
With only a moment’s hesitation she ran around the slow moving Enrique and Paco, who had also climbed back to his feet.
After slamming the right side garage door shut, she bent down to slide the metal latch bolt back into the floor. As it slid back in place she felt a hand grab her shirt and screamed while backing away.
Had this been a bad horror movie her shirt might have ripped open exposing her chest at this point, whereupon young adolescent boys would undoubtedly ooh and ah most appreciatively. But the material of her shirt (which she’d made herself) was just too tough to tear.
In pulling back she merely brought Paco along with her into the garage. He closed the distance as Maria finally 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 the screwdriver back out, but it was somehow stuck in his arm. She ran over to the workbench and looked for som
ething else to fiercely beat Paco with. While searching, she spotted the dark square hole in the ceiling above the workbench that she’d seen earlier. When she asked Mrs. Remlap about it, the old woman said it was just a crawlspace full of her late husband’s stuff. Maria glanced over her shoulder and saw Paco was no longer alone. Enrique and another undead man that she didn't recognize (most likely because nearly all the skin was missing from his body) were staggering across the garage.
Okay then, attic here I come, she thought and climbed quickly on top of the cluttered workbench. Her boots unintentionally knocked off a few mason jars filled with nails, screws, bolts, and other odds and ends that fell and crashed to the floor. She saw the crazy men were much closer and heard their feet stomping on breaking glass as they hurriedly heedlessly across the broken jars and the plethora of items that used to be in them. Maria reached up for the ceiling crawlspace entrance at the same moment she spotted the shotgun near the lounge chair. Dang it, now I see it, she thought angrily and considered leaping over to get it. There are at least three of the loco men around. I'd only have 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 stupid car. Who knows? The crazy woman might have even unloaded the damn thing for some reason. Maria shook her head and made a decision.
She jumped up and reached into the attic's crawlspace entrance.
There was a loud snap and she pulled her hand back out of the dark hole as her fingers screamed in agony. A dusty, wood and metal, spring operated, rat trap was attached to her bleeding pinky and the two adjacent fingers. Blood covered all three fingers as she started crying and felt hands pulling on her blue jeans. Almost losing her balance as they pulled, she ignored the trap and reached back into the crawlspace screaming in pain and fury while climbing into the darkness.