spot. Barrett and I left Fannie Mae to stand guard by the front window – with the shotgun – while we ran back there. We couldn’t see anything.
The back door began to shake and I could see that the hammering was popping in dents along the edges of it. I whispered to Barrett. “Go in my mom’s room. I think she has some laundry line – some rope – in her closet. Hurry!”
He stood there staring back and forth between me and the door. The look in his eyes was one of a frightened rabbit. I was afraid that Barrett had almost reached his limit, but this day was far, far, from over.
I slapped him hard across the face. As hard of a shot as I could give him.
His head whipped to the side with a grunt and a red imprint of my hand stood out on his cheek. He looked at me, extremely pissed off, blood trickling down his nose. He stepped forward threateningly, then shook his head to clear it.
“Sorry, cahuna. I’ll go get it.”
I braced myself by the door, waiting for the zombies to find their way in. Judging by the sound of it they’d all migrated to the rear door now, apparently sensing the weakness in our tin box. Every so often one of them would get a good blow in and I could hear the metal of the exterior crimping and popping back out like the side of an aluminum can. A trailer isn’t exactly made to withstand nuclear attacks or zombie hordes. Hell, it’s barely made to withstand a rain storm.
Barrett finally came running back from my parent’s room brandishing the clothesline. He was quicker than I thought he’d be. Maybe a good slap upside the head was all he needed. I winced at the sight of my red handprint on his cheek.
“Sorry, dude,” I said, pointing to it as he handed the line to me.
He shrugged, embarrassed more than anything else. “That’s okay. I needed it, cahuna.” He gestured toward the line in my hand. “What are we going to do with that?”
I looked at the door and then at the line. “This door opens out, so we can’t really brace it like we need to and did with the front door. All I can think of is to tie this to the doorknob and then tie it to something in my bedroom,” which lay across from the backdoor, “and hope for the best.”
He eyed the flimsy backdoor and then the rope and looked at me. Gave me the raised eyebrow. I gave it back to him. For a moment a ghost of a grin crossed both of our faces. Then he said, “I guess it’s the best we can do for now, huh?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I think the windows are high enough that unless they figure out how to piggyback or build a pyramid that we’re okay there. We just need to brace the doors.”
He looked at the windows down the hall and shuddered, “Don’t give them any ideas, cahuna.”
We made short work of tying the clothesline to the doorknob and bracing it in my room. I had no doubt the zombies could still break it in and get inside but it should at least give us a little bit of time. After a quick debate we dragged the kitchen table down the hallway and jammed it against the door as well. The legs made a pretty good brace for wedging it against the other side of the wall. It would be a bitch to go down to my parent’s room if we needed to but we decided that was a small price to pay.
We went back down to the living room and watched Fannie Mae looking out the window. I don’t know about Barrett, but even though my mom was most definitely dead I was still very spooked by her corpse sitting on the couch in the room with us. Barrett watched me eying it and then suggested that we take her back down to her room and close the door.
I liked the idea, but not the execution. I didn’t like touching her when she was alive, let alone now.
Finally I sighed and nodded and went back to her room to grab the blanket off her bed. I had to scootch between the legs of the table to do it and get perilously close to the backdoor, but I managed. I could hear the fingernails scratching against the tin on the other side and for a moment when I passed it I stopped and listened. The whisper of sound it made almost sounded like a voice talking to me. I could hear the silent screams from my dreams and for a moment I was thrown back to the fireside and the cradle of the tree limbs and could see my friends as zombies standing before me. I closed my eyes to clear my head and hummed under my breath to try to drown out the sounds.
It worked – barely – and I did the same as I made the trek back through to the living room.
The scrabbling of their claws was somehow worse than seeing them eat everyone in the road. It jarred relentlessly in the brain and bounced around enough to make you think you’d go off gibbering in madness.
I came back with the blanket and Barrett and I stared at each other. We both looked sick at the thought. Neither one of us liked my mother and you’d be hard pressed to name a time when either one of us had last touched her and the thought of touching her dead body – even through the feeble protection of the blanket – made both our skins crawl. But it was better than sitting there with a dead body sharing the room with us while a bunch of other dead bodies scrambled to get inside and eat our brains.
Something about it just gave me the willies. I’m sure you can understand. And if you can’t, give it a shot yourself and see how you feel about it.
I reached out and gingerly pried the empty bottle from between her legs and set it to the side. I nodded at Barrett and he took a corner of the blanket and we both reached forward to wrap it around her. My hand brushed her cheek as I did so and a shudder went crashing through me like a wave. Every fiber of my being was on alert and that touch sent everything into a tailspin. I breathed deeply to try to calm myself, which was a mistake all on its own. The familiar smell of my mother – B.O. mixed with multiple layers of booze and cigarettes – filled my nostrils along with the new scent of decay.
It wasn’t pleasant.
So I held my breath as we gingerly lifted her and wrapped her. On the count of three and with a “heave-ho” we lifted her in her arms cradling her body between us. She was frozen with rigor mortis into a sitting position so were basically carrying her sitting up. I had an arm cradling the backs of her knees and another on her back. Barrett’s…
“Man, you owe me for this,” he said. “I’ve got my hand on your mother’s ass. Not once in the years I’ve known you has this ever occurred to me as something I wanted to do.”
“Them’s the breaks,” I said, mentally congratulating myself on maneuvering my hands into the right spot
