Jason Jones - Trailer Park Zombies

You ever walked through someone’s yard? Stepped on the various and sundry crap they have in there? Dog toys, swings, tires, planters. Multiply that by about a hundred and you might get an idea of what people in trailer parks leave in their yard. Tiny grills that are about six inches off the ground, rusted out gardening tools, random pieces of barbed or chicken wire, old washing machines. You get the idea. Now try walking through that while you’re limping and carrying a flashlight. In the middle of the night. With the power out.

See how good you do.

Going through the Acres in the dead of night was a little frightening. It felt like Fannie Mae and I were in some sort of post-apocalyptic world and that we were the only survivors, struggling to make our way. The silence and the darkness made it the spookiest thing imaginable. I couldn’t even conceive of how bad it would have been a couple hundred years ago when there was no electricity and people had to actually survive this way. Give me my MTV any day.

Of course, the car and the jacket weighing heavily on our minds didn’t help the spookiness level at all.

Fannie Mae stayed fairly closely to me as I limped through the yards. I half-expected to see at least someone out and about, but we didn’t see a soul. I guess I’d never been up this late and moving through the Acres. No one was out this late. Except us poor saps.

We finally made it over to Tamara’s street and Fannie Mae whispered to me, “Which one is it? I can’t tell in the dark.”

I counted the number of trailers from the road silently in my head and then pointed the flashlight at the right one. “It’s that one,” I said.

She smirked at me. “You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. How many times do you think I’ve managed to casually walk by it?”

We slowed as we neared the trailer; both feeling like something was off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until Fannie Mae whispered, “Duke, the door. Is there something wrong with the door?”

I flashed the light on the door and immediately saw what she’d seen: the door stood ajar several inches. Fannie Mae gripped my arm tightly and dug in with her fingernails. A flare of pain went through me but I ignored it. Why would Tamara’s door be open?

“Did you close it when you left earlier?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Tamara’s parents were asleep – I could hear her dad snoring – and she wouldn’t let me come inside. She said she was fine. She was gonna stuff the clothes in the back of her closet until she could burn them and was going to take a very hot shower and scrub the hell out of herself. She said you didn’t deserve to get into trouble because of her so she was going to do her best to get rid of all the evidence. She even tried to laugh it off a little bit and said that she was glad she’d finally got rid of her pesky virginity.”

I looked at her in horror. I couldn’t believe that Tamara could laugh it all off like that.

Fannie Mae saw the look in my eyes. She shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong, she was still torn up about it. I could see that she was about to cry but just holding it back. What else could she do, Dukey?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Anyway, when I left she gave me a hug and closed the door behind me. I could hear her turn the lock. She’s still got my dad’s coat, actually.”

“And now it’s open,” I said, staring sadly at the door.

“But her parents were home. Like I said, I heard her dad snoring. If something had happened wouldn’t all the neighbors be outside? Someone would have called the cops.”

I shook my head. “Maybe. Depends on if anything did happen, how loud it was. The trailers on both sides of hers have been empty for a while. It would have to be fairly loud for it to reach further than that.” The lots in the Acres were actually a fairly good size, for a trailer park. Not as big as the size of a normal yard, but this was backwoods Kentucky we were talking about. There was lots of space to move around in.

I stopped moving and sighed, still shining the flashlight on the door. Fannie Mae didn’t even slow down. I grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”

She looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face, then gestured at the trailer, “I’m going to check on Tamara.”

“We have to… we have to… check the place out or something. I think.”

She gently took my hand off her arm and squeezed it tightly in her own. “Checking it out won’t tell us anything, Dukey. Just like checking out the car didn’t really tell you anything. We have to go in and see if everyone’s okay or if there’s anything we can do to help.”

I flashed my light around the trailer. There was only one car parked in front of it. “Maybe,” I said, “they’re not home. Maybe they drove off and accidently left the door open. Simple explanation.”

She shook her head. “There’s the same number of cars there now that there were when I left a couple hours ago. They didn’t go anywhere, Duke. They’re still here.”

I sighed and said, “Okay, but I’m going first. I am the man, after all.”

She snorted. “Whatever.”

We snuck up the walkway as best we could. Fannie Mae was a much better sneaker than I was. As we got to the steps leading up to the door I shone the light on it again. “Crap.”

“What now?” She whispered.

“Um, there’s a bloody handprint on the door.” I focused the light on it. It was in stark relief on the middle of the door. Right next to it was a big dent covered in blood.

“Crap,” she said.

“Exactly. It’s not too late to go back, Fannie Mae. We’ve got options. Call the cops or whatever.”

“Screw that, Dukey. She’s a friend.”

I didn’t say another word as I nudged the door open with the flashlight. If something vile had gone on in there the last thing I wanted was my fingerprints everywhere. As I’ve mentioned, I’d seen enough detective shows to know that they’d find me in a heartbeat. Plus I was majorly weirded out by the idea of touching the door covered in blood like that. For some reason it seemed different than touching the car. More intimate.

The inside of the trailer was blanketed in darkness. Of course. What light there was inside was shining through the windows from the moon, so it was just ambient spooky light. My flashlight lit the place up good, in pretty little cones of light. As flashlights do. You ever watch a horror movie where the hero has the flashlight out and pointed at a benign wall and he’s shining it around with nary a thought and thinking everything was all right with the world and you, the viewer, can see the monster just out of reach of the light by about two inches? And you’re screaming at the screen for them to run, run, run?

Well, I kind of felt like that.

I turned in a quick 360 degree circle to make sure there were no monsters creeping out of the darkness and then did it again just to make sure. I was trying to catch them by surprise but, of course, there was nothing there. There never is when you’re looking for it. Not that I was expecting monsters. Monsters weren’t real. It was just that kind of night.

Fannie Mae stood a step behind me with a couple fingers gripping my belt loop. I could feel her tugging on me and it was more a reassurance than anything else. Everything would be okay as long as she was there. She was the innocent girl who always survived the monster movies. Plus I knew that if something did come screeching out of the darkness at me that she’d yank me back out of its reach. Again with the hopefully.

There was nothing in the living room to indicate any trouble. A few muddy tracks on the floor but those could have happened at any time. There was no reason to suspect that someone had jimmied the door open and shuffled straight across the floor to the hallway leading to the bedrooms, leaving muddy tracks everywhere. No reason at all.