by William Bebb
Mrs. Remlap took a deep breath, locked the doors and slipped her upper dentures back in her mouth. She then took a moment to shut off the stereo.
The men, or remnants of men, beat on her car as she calmly turned the ignition key.
The engineers in Detroit would have been proud of their creation as the Nova's engine roared back to life without a moment’s hesitation.
“Thank you, Sweet Jesus,” the old woman said, putting the car in reverse just as weak early morning sunlight began to filter down.
The badly deformed tricycle was dragged backward by the car for a few feet making a hideous screeching noise before it broke free. Like a twisted example of what many experts might consider a form of modern art, being displayed in avant-garde museums around the world, what remained of the tricycle rolled a few feet and stopped.
Most of the men around the car beat at it with bloodied hands that were missing large patches of skin. A few of them with some semblance of intelligence used rocks and pieces of metal to beat at the windows. The windshield cracked in an intricate spider web pattern when a piece of cinder block was thrown at it. A dead man with a massive and still growing colony of maggots infesting his skull rammed the passenger side window with his head. As he hit the glass first a few then dozens more maggots tumbled from his torn rotted scalp. On the last hit, his head shattered the glass and he started to climb through the passenger window.
Mrs. Remlap stared at the ripped and torn headed man dribbling maggots and gore on the passenger seat and instantly realized two things. Maria had been right when she said they were monsters, and the car's upholstery was going to be difficult if not impossible to clean.
The car idled roughly when she put it back in drive.
“Out of my way, you dirty fluckers!” she screamed, as her upper dentures flopped loose once more which made the last word sound a bit garbled. She stomped on the gas pedal and the rough idling engine seemed, for several agonizingly slow seconds, much too stunned to realize what was expected of it. Then the carburetor greedily drank the gasoline and the engine roared as the tires spun once more. The Nova left behind a pair of twin tracks of rubber on the dusty street.
The old Chevy surged forward crashing into and driving over several men as Remlap yelled a warrior's battle cry.
When the car hit a fat man that had been slowly waddling closer he exploded like a giant water balloon filled with grayish red paint. What was left of his body was splattered across an old swing set. The fat man's head swung back and forth from the top as it continued to open and close his mouth.
A small boy, a little younger than Billy, landed sprawled atop either the badly deformed tricycle with faded pink tassels or an ingeniously designed piece of modern art depending on one's perspective.
The maggot infested man grunted and reached across the seat for the old lady, but was unable to get further into the car as most of his body was dragged along as she drove faster. His hands fumbled and grabbed across the seat as he tried to climb in. One groping hand seized a knob on the eight track stereo and inadvertently turned it back to full volume.
As Jerry Reed started to sing again, Mrs. Remlap saw the exit was not completely blocked and turned the car in a wide circle to try and drive thru the gap between the wrecked cars. She smiled for a brief moment, but then grunted in frustration as steam billowed out from under the car’s hood.
Out of the corner of one eye, she spotted a white light flashing on and off from Colonel Lester's trailer a few hundred feet away.
“Sum ov a bitsh,” she swore with her floppy dentures making her speech somewhat awkward.
Turning reluctantly away from the exit, she drove toward the trailer as the car began to cough and buck more violently. The speedometer dropped steadily while she headed for the shining aluminum trailer with its bright metallic finish that was gleaming with the first rays of the morning sun.