Jason Jones - Trailer Park Zombies

But my hand finally touched the edge of the fabric. I went forward a little more to get a better grip on it and gave it a firm tug, saying a quick prayer of thanks to God that nothing tugged back. It slid across the seat toward me and I slowly got it out of the car, keeping it at arm’s length. I stood up and took it back to Barrett, gripping it in my fist and holding it in front of me. We looked at it silently and I dropped it to the ground. My arm from my elbow to my fingers was coated in cold blood. The smell of copper filled the air and I could veritably taste the blood in the back of my throat.

Barrett turned to the side and violently threw up on the ground. I turned my head quickly. I can’t stand puke. If I watched him do it I was likely to do it, too. It was hard enough keeping my dinner down as it was. I grabbed a towel off of mom’s clothesline and cleaned my arm off as best I could. Yes, we had a clothesline in the front yard. Stuff it.

He stopped and the smell of bile now filled the air, combining with the blood to create just an awesome scent. I shuddered, breaking out into a cold sweat.

“Do you recognize it?” He asked me.

I gave him a look of disgust. “Of course I do, dumbass. Don’t tell me you don’t?”

“No,” he shook his head vehemently. Then he sighed. “I do. How’d that get here? What’s going on, Duke?”

I didn’t answer him. Lying in its own pool of blood in front of us on the ground was a letterman’s jacket from Litchville High. The Litchville Lions logo was prominent on the sleeve and on the front was a last name written in script. Even though it was a common name there was only one of them on our football team. He was the quarterback. The jacket was soaked in blood and the white lettering looked red in the light of my flashlight, but it was still very easy to read.

The name stitched on the jacket was Smith.

5.

We sat in the small yard by the trailer staring at the jacket on the ground a few feet away from us. Neither of us could take our eyes off it for very long. We sat on the patio chairs that mom had strewn haphazardly in the yard on the edge of the road. She occasionally liked to get drunk and stumble out here and throw stuff at passing kids. The neighbors had gotten tired of calling the cops on her so most days if mom was out here everyone knew not to walk by. Except for that stupid Marsters kid.

I’d been smacked from a few of her rocks myself, so I could see why we weren’t liked in the neighborhood.

Barrett kept opening his mouth to say something but nothing ever came out. I think he was trying for something witty but the well had evidently run dry. I’d turned off the flashlight and we were sitting there in near total darkness. Which was a little unnerving. Occasionally the moon would escape the cloud cover and give us a little bit of light but that almost made the darkness worse.

Finally I could stand the silence no longer. “He was dead, Barrett. No doubt about that. We all saw it.”

“Maybe he wasn’t,” he said. “We didn’t check for a pulse. He could have still been alive.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Barrett. He was dead. His neck was broken and his head was bleeding like crazy. You could tell from his eyes, he was dead.”

He waved toward the jacket. “Then how do you explain that? And my car? Someone beat the shit out of my car and wiped blood everywhere and threw a dead man’s jacket in there.”

“The only explanation I can think of is that there was someone else there and they saw what happened and they’re screwing with us.” I shook my head. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Barrett laughed bitterly. “That doesn’t make sense. If someone had seen us they’d have called the cops. Not gone to all the trouble to strip a body down, come all the way over here and do this and then throw the jacket in my back seat. Hell, one of the arms is inside out like Mason took it off himself.”

I looked at him, suddenly feeling much older than my 16 years. I could feel the vise of the trailer park closing in around me. I’d never get out of this place.

“Then what’s your suggestion, Barrett? How’d this happen?”

“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “But it’s three in the morning and any ideas I can think of are too scary to even think about.”

I scoffed. “You’ve watched too many horrors movies.”

He leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “Yeah. Exactly.”

A scraping of slow footsteps on gravel reached us. It was coming from the direction of my neighbor’s trailer. We both whipped our heads around to look, but of course couldn’t see anything. It was dark, after all. I flipped on the flashlight and shone it in the general direction of the footsteps and both Barrett and I screamed and fell out of our chairs, scrambling backward.

“Ha, ha,” said Fannie Mae. “Very funny.”

My heart beat wildly in my chest. I looked wide-eyed at Barrett and saw the same look in his eyes. I’m not sure what either one of us were expecting but it was obvious that for a moment when I’d turned the flashlight on that we’d both seen something completely different standing in front of us.

I forced myself to control my breathing, pushing the air out of my lungs. I rose shakily to my feet, leaning heavily on the lawn chair. Barrett was still on the ground looking like he was in the middle of a massive coronary.

Fannie Mae stood there about 10 feet in front of us, in the middle of the road. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a little tank top. She had a hoodie on, but it wasn’t zipped up, and a pair of flip-flops. Her hair hung in wet strings down her back. She had a shit-eating grin on her face. I’m guessing it was because she’d scared the living crap out of us.

“Dammit, Fannie Mae,” Barrett wheezed. “Was that really necessary?”

“What?” She smiled sweetly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Why are you so jumpy?”

She looked at me, a twinkle in her eye. I could tell through her white tank top that she wasn’t wearing a bra and it was either a little cold or that she was glad to see me. I rolled my eyes.

“Because of that,” I said. I flashed the light on Barrett’s car.

“Oh my God!” She ran over to me and put her hand on my arm, gripping me hard. “What happened to the car?”

“We don’t know. I woke up during the thunder and looked out the window and saw it. We came out to get a better look.”

She took a step toward it, letting go of my arm. I sighed and grabbed her hand to keep her from going closer. “Is that blood on it? Oh my God,” she gasped.

“Yeah, that’s blood,” Barrett said. He’d finally regained his feet.

I flashed the light on the jacket where it lay on the ground. I squeezed Fannie Mae’s hand. “Look.”

She let out a little scream and buried her head in my chest. “What… what is that? Where’d it come from?”

I pulled her off me. “That’s Mason Smith’s letterman’s jacket. He was wearing it tonight. We found it in the car.”

She looked back at the car, gripping my hand so hard it hurt. “Is, is he in there?”

“No. Just the jacket was. In the backseat.”

“He was dead, Dukey.”

Barrett came over to us. “Yeah, we’ve been over that part already.”

She stepped away from me, still holding my hand. Tried to look at the car and then finally sighed and let me my hand go. She had more courage than Barrett and I combined as she just walked up to the car and inspected both the front and back seat. She didn’t say anything as she looked over the car completely. Barrett and I let her have at it. She was smarter than the both of us combined and we all knew it.

She finally came back over to us and looked at me with a critical eye. “Are you guys screwing with me?”