“See?” BT said, pointing towards Gary.
“Coloreds and white trash…I guess they’re close enough to be the same,” she said as she was trying to reason out this new information.
“I can’t believe that you even associate with us.” BT said to her.
“Zombies make strange bedfellows.” She laughed at her own take on the old cliche.
“Could we not mention Deneaux and beds while I’m in the back of this nasty truck cleaning up?” Gary nearly gagged.
“Let’s finish up here. I haven’t seen so much as a fly, but this place gives me the willies. I’m ready to go,” BT said, extracting himself completely from the conversation.
Deneaux made one more trip into the store. She thoroughly searched every nook and cranny lest any pack of cigarettes go unsmoked. Gary poured the remaining water in the jug onto the bed of the truck, the bigger pieces of anatomy had already been pushed to the ground. All that was left was to sluice out the remaining blood which drained down the open tailgate. The pink fluid looked more like something that would be dispensed at a Sonic restaurant than the diluted remains of life-giving blood.
“I’m ready when you are, BT,” Gary said as he tossed the red-stained broom out the back of the truck. He shut the tailgate and laid down on the hard wooden bench as BT pulled out of the station.
BT still couldn’t get over the fact that they had got just about everything they needed and hadn’t had to fight even a mad mosquito to do it. He shuddered when he finally came to the realization of why.
“Calm before the storm,” he said prophetically.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mike Journal Entry 7
“Any idea where we are?” I asked John as we sat at the end of a tree line. I was looking at a single-wide trailer not ten yards from our location. I didn’t see any signs of life, but even before zombies, walking up on a trailer unannounced was a good way to get shot or at least yelled at by a two-fist, bearded hag. Or quite possibly you could end up on
“Weren’t we just up in the air?” John asked me as he looked to the tops of the trees.
“We crashed about two miles ago,” I replied to him, not taking my eyes off the back windows.
“Why do all the houses look the same?” John asked, trying to stand. I pulled him back down.
“We’re in a trailer park. White trash capital of the world by the looks of it,” I told him as I looked at no less than five Chevys on blocks. Sixteen clotheslines, replete with wife beater t-shirts and—I kid you not—used, washed, disposable diapers. The diapers smelled and looked relatively new; well, as new as a used diaper can anyway.
“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” John said.
It was one of the few lucid things he had said since I’d met him and I would have heeded his advice if I saw anywhere else even remotely close. But it was getting dark and I didn’t want to be out any longer than I needed. Between the two of us, all we could offer in the way of defense was some marijuana. So unless our adversary stopped and smoked the majority of John’s offering, then immediately fell asleep where we could throttle him out of the picture, we were in a little bit of a pinch.
“Let me think,” I said as I sat with my back to the trailer leaning up against a relatively large oak.
“You do that, I’m going to light a fattie.”
A small bird, maybe a sparrow, was a couple of branches over me. It was looking down, his head bobbing as he kept us in his line of sight, probably curious as to what we were. Not many of us running around anymore—at least not the living kind.
“Do I smell nuggets?” a voice drifted out from the trailer, the bird looked in that direction then alit from its spot.
John got up before I could stop him. “Not only is this nugget…it is coated with a proprietary blend of hashish oils.”
I fully expected John to be blown back towards me riddled with buck shot.
“Well then come on inside,” the voice said with a distinctive Southern lilt.
I swore I could hear toe-strummed banjos playing in the background.
“My name is Luke,” a gap-toothed smiling man in his mid-thirties told us as he held his door wide open. The mullet he sported harkened back to the early ‘80s, much like his felt paintings on the walls. There was a whale, an Indian, and of course, what trailer wouldn’t be complete without a smiling tassel-laden portrait of Elvis smack dab in the center. “That there is my wife Mirabelle,” Luke said as he closed the door behind us.
Mirabelle looked the part of an older Sissy Spacek minus any good looks and make-up. But she was smiling almost as broadly as Luke and somehow that put me at ease. John seemed perfectly content with our new surroundings. A black dog roughly the size of a standard pony walked over to me, took one passing sniff, and got up on the couch.
“Hercules, we have guests now…get off the couch,” Mirabelle said to the dog.
Hercules looked over at me and growled. I’d had freight trains pass me by that produced less tremble. He did, however, get off the couch.
“Sit, sit.” Mirabelle motioned.
I kept looking over at Hercules who was mean-mugging me.
“What about him?” I asked Mirabelle.
“Hercules? Oh, he’s fine. He’s just a big old teddy bear.” She laughed.
I sat, Hercules growled again—or a fissure had opened up in the earth—I figured both would sound the same.
Luke and John were sitting at the small kitchen table, alternating hits on a Jamaica envious-sized bone.
“Wowee, that’ll make your toes curl and slap a turtle!” Luke said as he leaned back in his chair.
“That’s good stuff, right? Got it from that guy over there,” John said, pointing at me.
“Mister, you want a hit? ‘Sidering it’s yours and all,” Luke asked.
“I’m good,” I told him.
“You want some possum pie?” Mirabelle asked me from the kitchen.
I thought about taking a couple of hits from John’s weed, thinking that would be the only way I would get strong enough munchies to actually try possum pie.
“It’s not really possum,” she said when she saw my face. “We ain’t been able to find them since the zombies came.”
My stomach was roiling a bit. I tried my best to cover up its gurgling sound. I changed the subject away from food in the hopes I wouldn’t have to pretend I was on some hillbilly version of
“It’s what God-fearing people do,” Mirabelle said. “They help other God-fearing people. Are you God-fearing folk?” she asked.
“Um I don’t really fear him
She thought about it for a moment. “I s’pose that’ll do. What brings you folks around this way?”
“We’re trying to get to John’s wife in Philly, then I’m trying to get home,” I told her.
“Without weapons?” she asked astutely.
“We’ve had a few hardships along the way.”
“Fell out of the damn sky!” John shouted after taking another hit.
“Get outta here?” Luke asked incredulously.
“Unfortunately it’s the truth,” I told Mirabelle.
“What is?” John asked.
“You been dealing with him long?” she asked me.
“Long enough.”
