Jason Jones: Trailer Park Zombies

“No,” I said, taking her seriously.

She pointed, “That’s Mason’s jacket?”

“Yes.”

She pointed behind her, “You found the car this way? Broken into? Blood smeared everywhere? And the jacket was in the back seat?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

Fannie Mae bit her lower lip in concentration. “Then what the hell happened?”

Barrett broke in, “That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. I told you.”

She completely ignored him. “Is someone playing a prank on us, Dukey?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “It’s pretty elaborate if they are. They stripped the jacket off his body, got a bunch of blood from somewhere, smeared it everywhere, and then broke into Barrett’s car and smeared it some more. It doesn’t make sense as a joke. Or a prank.”

She nodded. “You’re right. And I know he was dead. I could tell. Should we go back and see if the body is still there?”

I looked around the Acres, noting the quietness of the night. Not even the usual troublemakers were up and about. The power was still out and I could taste the rain we’d missed on the air. We weren’t done with that storm yet if my nose had anything to say about it. A cool breeze rustled the air and swayed the swing in my neighbor’s yard. The sky was heavy with the mostly full moon that still struggled to free itself from the clouds. It was more than a mile walk each way to the graveyard but I knew they’d do it if I asked them to. Even under the best of circumstances I wouldn’t want to do it, but at three in the morning on a crazy night like this?

“No way,” I said. “It’s too far and it doesn’t add up. Regardless of if he’s still there or not, someone is still screwing with us here. We should stay together here and wait things out.”

Barrett was looking at Fannie Mae with a new look in his eye. It wasn’t often that he had a flash of intuition but I could tell by his face that he’d just thought of something. Fannie Mae could tell, too.

“What, Barrett? Don’t look at me like that.”

“Why are you here, Fannie Mae?” He pointed at her trailer where it stood several down from mine. “You should be in bed, just like us. Why are you out and about?”

She flicked her wet hair at him, “I couldn’t sleep, dumbass. After what happened tonight and with my mom out of town I couldn’t sleep in that tin can by myself. I made sure that Tamara got home okay and then I went home, too. I tried to sleep, couldn’t, then finally took a shower. I was getting ready to fix myself something to eat when the power went out. I looked out the window and saw a flashlight over here so thought I’d check it out.” She waved at the carnage, “Like I could even do something like this.

“Dumb ass.”

Barrett had the sense to look ashamed, but I had to admit it was a good thought. I was so used to Fannie Mae always being around that it hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder what she was doing out here. But wait.

“Tamara,” I said. Both of them looked at me with dumb expressions on their faces. “If someone is screwing with us they’re probably screwing with her, too. We should go make sure she’s okay.”

“It’s after three in the morning, Duke,” said Barrett. “You want to just go knocking on her door and make sure she’s okay? Her parents would kill us.”

I shone the flashlight full on his face. “You’re just afraid, Barrett. Look at what they did to your dad’s car. Look at this bloody jacket here on the ground. Do you think they’ll stop there? Mason raped her and beat the crap out of her. Judging by your car it looks like someone is pretty well pissed at us. The only one of us who’s alone is Tamara. We have to at least warn her that something is going on.”

“Fine, then” He ran over to the car, took a deep breath, and pulled his cell phone from the dash. “Why don’t you just call her then? Then we don’t need to tramp over half this trailer park in the dead of night by the light of the moon so that we can knock on her door and have her dad yell at us and wake everyone in the world up.”

I looked at him, dumbfounded. I’d never had one so it still never occurred to me to use a cell phone. “Oh, yeah.” I took the phone from him. “What’s her number?”

“How would I know?” He slammed his hands in his pockets, turning his back on us.

“Fannie Mae, do you know her number?”

She grabbed the phone out of my hand and started punching numbers into it. Barrett still had his back to us but Fannie Mae and I stared at each while she held the phone to her ear. The rings from the phone were loud in the silence of the night. We could all hear it go to voicemail. She sighed and dialed it again. Did it three more times until finally handing the phone back to Barrett and stating the obvious, “No answer.”

I looked at Barrett. “Satisfied? Can we go now?”

“What time is it?”

I shone the flashlight at my watch. “Half-past three.”

“What time’s sunrise?”

“How the heck should I know? I didn’t bother checking my almanac today.”

“How about we wait til sunrise? It can’t be more than a couple hours away. Please?” He looked sincerely, severely scared. I didn’t blame him, but still. The situation was what it was and we had to deal with it.

“You can stay here if you want,” I said, gesturing to my trailer. “Just go in there and lock the door and let us in when we come back. I don’t want to wake up my mom.”

He looked at the trailer and back at me and Fannie Mae. I could see him trying to will himself to come with us, but something in him was just broken. He had no backbone and never had. When we were kids he was always the one who wouldn’t jump into the swimming hole. Always the one who wouldn’t steal the cigarettes from old man Brody’s store. Always the one you couldn’t get to do anything bad or against the rules. He was deathly afraid of getting into trouble or getting hurt (although it still never stopped him from being a wiseass or giving me trouble). I’d seen him give bullies all the money in his wallet before with them barely asking. He was a coward and that was just the way that was, too.

I could see the knowledge enter his eyes as he looked back at me and Fannie Mae. He wasn’t a coward by choice, but the choices he’d made turned him into one. Fannie Mae looked away with a snort of disgust.

He looked at me and I looked at him. “Just be ready for us when we come back,” I said. He nodded and went silently inside.

“Ready?”

Fannie Mae gave me a nervous but resolute smile. “I was born ready.”

6.

The shadow moved through the darkness with ease. It saw things in a different way now than It had before. It didn’t know this, of course, as it was nothing but a shadow. A shadow without forethought or memory or a mind at all. All it knew was hunger and it could smell its food on the air. A smorgasbord of food to fill its empty belly. Only a basic drive pushed it forward. All else had been crushed from its mind. It didn’t know why it did the things it did, why it had gained such savage pleasure from destroying the car. It didn’t even know what a car was. Fleeting impulses drove it past other food that could fill its belly but somewhere inside it the shadow knew that other food awaited it. Better food.

“You ready?” I’d asked her. We stumbled through the dark like we’d never walked outside before. Scraping our shoes on the gravel and making enough noise to wake up everyone in the Acres. It didn’t help that the ache in my leg hadn’t abated at all. Fortunately it hadn’t started hurting any worse. Fannie Mae saw me wincing and kept trying to help but I just waved her off. If she tried to “help” me walk it’d take us twice as long to get there. Tamara lived a couple gravel streets over and several trailers down so the easiest way to get there was to cut through people’s lots.