Valley of Death & Zombies

by William Bebb

  There was no need to aim the shotgun with targets as close as the two men were. She pointed and fired at Puckett. The blast hit him in the chest hurling him back off the porch. Her chair was violently rocked and nearly knocked onto it's side when Hadden collided with it and grabbed onto her. Had she not been wearing the seat belt she would undoubtedly fallen out of the chair. She was reloading when he bit her chest, wrapped his hands around her flabby neck, and squeezed.

  Unable to breathe she managed to slide another shell into the shotgun, but Hadden was too close to fire as he bit through her shirt and the soft flabby skin underneath. Pulling the wheelchair's joystick she backed up quickly, dragging the chest biter along with her for a second before he tumbled to the porch. Gasping, she fired at the man who had not just bitten her breast but actually chewed off part of the nipple and the skin surrounding it.

  The blast sent Hadden flying back, across the porch, knocking over the TV with a crash. Not waiting another second, she drove the chair straight through the trailer's open doorway bellowing. She turned the chair and looked outside in confusion as she slammed the door shut. Both of the men were up and running toward the door. She reached for the heavy metal security bar and slid it into the metal brackets on the walls. Blood poured down her chest as she hollered for Randy again.

  “Where the fuck are you numb nuts!? We got cannibal cops all over the front yard!” She drove into the half of the trailer where he cooked the Meth, but didn't see him. Driving her chair to the first aid kit hanging on the wall, Dawn Mary screamed again as she heard the men beating on the door.

  Randy walked in looking agitated and excited asking “What is it? Who's beating on the door? And what the fuck happened to you?”

  Dawn Mary felt queasy but she managed to say “Crazy cop fuckers done bit off my titty.”

  Randy ran to the closet door and pulled out a Heckler-Koch G36 Commando assault rifle he purchased, for home defense, while visiting friends in Juarez Mexico. After confirming it had a full clip already in place he grabbed two extra clips and put them in his apron pockets. He slipped on his bullet proof vest he got out of the trunk of a deputy’s car after he blew his head off for stopping him for speeding.

  “Don't worry. I got this.” he said and went out to meet the guests. Randy smiled as he heard someone beating on the door. He cocked the gun, threw open the security bar, and pulled the door open.

  Puckett had his fists raised with a surprised look on his face when the door opened. Hadden had been bent over repeatedly ramming the door with his helmeted head.

  Randy squeezed the trigger. A loud rapid string of thirty bullets reduced Puckett's head to a fine cherry red mist of blood mixed with his shredded skull and brain in less than five seconds.

  Hadden was surprised when the door opened, and stumbled past Randy as he fired. Puckett's headless body wobbled, but didn't fall, while Randy yanked out the first clip and slammed in a new one.

  He cocked the gun, turned looking for the one who ran past him, when Puckett's body finally gave in to the forces of gravity and collapsed onto the porch with a thud. The man that ran past him had disappeared. He held the gun ready and checked the living room. Only his pipe Smaug lurked there.

  Randy heard breaking glass, shouted “Shit!” and ran back toward his Meth kitchen. He ran past the little wooden sign, hanging over the archway leading to his lab. The sign had the words No matter where I serve my guests it seems they like my kitchen best, painted on it.

  Running into the lab, he didn't know where to look first. Dawn Mary was convulsing in her chair as it spun around, colliding into the worktables, knocking over bottles of a wide variety of toxic and highly volatile chemicals. Her neon twinkle lights flashed as the chair spun around faster. She hit the arms of her chair and screamed as it went even faster.

  Randy ran for his respirator mask, sitting on the table, as a gas cloud formed from the broken bottles contents. He adjusted the seal and breathed through the mask as he looked around horror stricken at his beloved laboratory.

  Dawn Mary howled and coughed as her chair was swallowed up by the gas cloud which had become as thick as a London fog bank. The chair's lights continued to flash, as it spun in a tight circle, after her scream ended in a horrible gurgling noise. Randy's skin felt like it was on fire and he ran for the exhaust fan switch on the wall. Flipping the switch he tried to see through the fog of toxic gases which, even with the fan on, still seemed to be growing thicker.

  He spotted someone walking through the gas cloud, knew it wasn't his beloved cow Dawn Mary and fired. Hadden tried to scream as he turned to run at the man. He could barely see, but what came out of his mouth was little more than a phlegmatic wheeze. He collapsed more from the combination of corrosive gases than the bullets that struck his body.

  Randy kept firing at the man even after he fell to the ground. A ricochet hit one of the recessed florescent ceiling lights which exploded in a shower of sparks. The sparks were very few in number, yet more than sufficient to ignite the gas cloud. Randy tried to scream as the gases exploded, but like with most things in life there just wasn't time.

  The lair of the Redneck Gourmets exploded with a concussive blast heard for several miles around.

  “I want an Icee!” A little girl in the back seat of the van screamed through the window. Her father ignored the request and continued looking under the hood. He heard a distant sound that might be thunder but ignored it. The check engine light had lit up and the temperature gauge had been climbing steadily into the red zone, on the dashboard for the last thirty minutes, until he pulled into the parking lot of a remote and nasty looking store.

  Looking in utter bewilderment under the hood, he silently cursed his wife for suggesting this stupid cross country adventure. If this were his old 1970 El Camino, he had back in high school, he would be able to identify and fix the problem in just a few minutes but this engine looked more like it belonged in a spaceship than a car. There was no carburetor that he could see, no belts he could easily reach, and more wires than grains of sand in the desert, he thought slamming the hood down in disgust.

  “Hey grumpy bear. Be a sweetheart. Go get Amber and me a couple of Icees. And see if they have any of that fudge the Indians make, like they had at that reservation in Nevada.” His wife Mercedes called out from the front passenger seat.

  He turned and walked past the overflowing trashcan, toward the store's front door. “Ow! Son of a bitch!” he yelled, as yellow jackets attacked his skinny pale legs. He jumped back using his floppy hat to shoo them away exposing the bright pink patch of skin in the middle of his bald spot.

  “Watch your language, grumpy bear.” his wife called, as his daughter laughed loudly from the backseat.

  “Look mommy. I got daddy cussing and jumping around on my video camera. I'm gonna put it on the internet when we get home.” he heard his daughter say as he went inside the store.

  “Beer’s in the cooler.” Said a woman behind the counter, wearing a name tag that suggested her name was Daphne. The store wasn't cool, but it felt much cooler than it did outside.

  “Do you have an Icee machine?” he asked, looking around.

  “Sure do. I keep it up my ass. All I got is what you can see, crazy legs.” She said, laughing and gesturing at her roadside empire. He wandered down the aisles picking out an assortment of candy bars, considered asking about the fucking Indian fudge but felt certain she'd probably tell him it was up her ass as well and settled for some cans of cold soda.

  As he walked by the beer section he stopped and pulled out three cans of his favorite brand. Setting his selection of goodies on the counter he smiled at the cashier. “Yes ma'am, uh, do you happen to know where the closest mechanic might be?”

  Daphne began ringing up the items and asked “Closest? Or the one closest that might be able to fix your ride? That will be seventeen dollars and forty five cents.” she said, with a smirk.

  He handed her an ATM card and she handed it right back. “Sorry cash onl
y, store policy.”

  He looked in the hidey holes of his wallet until he fished out a hundred dollar bill. “Okay here.” he said, placing the cash on the counter. “And as to the mechanic, I need one that can fix it and is also closest.”

  She left the hundred dollar bill sitting on the counter and gave him a look she saved for extra special idiots. “Must be difficult going through life illiterate.” She said, gesturing at an old badly stained piece of paper taped on the wall beside a framed one dollar bill and a one peso note, with the words: No bills over 50 dollars.

  As he read the sign he heard his wife honking the van's horn. He stood up straight, closed his eyes, and counted to ten. He was about to open his eyes when he heard the horn blaring outside again. Deciding twenty might be better he continued to count. Breathing deep with his eyes shut he couldn’t see Daphne’s initial look of confusion melt into an ear splitting grin as she sat on her stool and watched. This is the most fun I’ve had in more than a month. She thought.

  Opening his eyes, he smiled with considerable effort and said, “Look Daphne, how about we make a deal? You call the closest qualified mechanic. Have him come out here as fast as possible, and you can just keep the change.”

  Daphne quickly bagged up his items, grinned at him, and made the hundred dollar bill disappear as if by magic. “I'll have my cousin Brandon down here in two shakes of a rattlesnake’s ass. He used to work as a mechanic at a dealership in town till it went out of business. Go enjoy your snacks. I'll have him here in no time.” she said, reaching for the phone.

  He carried out the bag of groceries and handed out the various goodies after proudly announcing that a mechanic was on the way.

  “This isn't an Icee. Yuck.” his darling daughter complained, from the back seat, as he sipped his beer.

  “Did you get the Indian fudge? I bet you didn't even look.” Mercedes said, opening the door and climbing out. “Fine! Go ahead, sit there swilling beer while I go into that wretched little store and do your job for you.” she said, marching across the pavement to the door and screamed as a couple yellow jackets attacked her.

  He smirked as she went inside, sipped some more beer and looked thoughtfully at the blue sky. Is it really my job to find and deliver fudge- scratch that- Fucking Indian made fudge and Icees to my ungrateful family? Is this what I went to medical school for? He smiled and thought about having new business cards made up. Doctor Pedro Alvarez, part time surgeon, full time procurer of Indian fudge. Chuckling quietly, he finished the first beer and popped open the second can.

  “Daddy, it's hot.” his daughter whined from the backseat.

  “You truly have a gift for understatement, puddin head.” he said, taking a small sip and looking around at the miles of desert in all directions. Something caught his eye and he called back to his daughter “If you think you're hot how do you think that idiot over there feels?”

  “What idiot, daddy?”

  “That nut over there.” he said, pointing to a man wearing black pants and a white shirt with a tie trudging slowly across the shimmering sand toward the store.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Did you guys hear that?” Billy asked, looking up from the floor, next to the dog and the house he was building out of playing cards. Colonel William Lester and Mrs. Phyliss Remlap had been sipping coffee at the dinette table talking softly. They both fell silent and listened intently. Boris lifted an ear and cocked his head. His tail started twitching slowly at first, but then faster as they all listened.

  “I don't hear-” Remlap began.

  “Shush”, the old man said as he went to the window and listened. Off in the distance he heard a horn.

  Billy jumped up off the floor, nearly knocking down the playing card house he'd been building for the last couple of hours, and ran to the kitchen window. It was a challenge to take a deck of playing cards and create a building by leaning them against each other. But his grandpa wanted him to do something quiet so he built and rebuilt. The structure he had nearly completed would never have been approved by any architectural firm, yet it reached up almost four levels of cards and was the best he'd managed to construct all afternoon.

  “It is a horn and I think it's getting louder.” Billy said, as he joined them at the kitchen window. Boris jumped up, with his front paws on the window sill as they all stared and listened.

  “Boy, don't let that dog leave paw prints on the window sill. Just look at how dirty his paws are.” Mrs. Remlap said, and then looked out the window.

  The old man finished off his tepid cup of coffee. He picked up his binoculars and peered through them as he adjusted the focus knob.

  They all heard the horn growing undeniably louder. As he stared across the park he saw several wandering figures pause and look toward the east. A large plume of dust was visible coming from the dump, fast.

  “It's got to be Josey.” he said, watching the trail of dust heading closer. He caught a brief glimpse of shiny metal flashing through the trees and underbrush. Then from behind a trailer that had partially collapsed years ago the truck burst out of the dump road and turned right. It ran over a slowly walking figure, but it was too far away to make out any other details.

  “What do you see?” Billy asked impatiently, looking where his grandpa stared.

  “It's Josey and I see someone else in the truck. I think it may be Maria. What the Hell is he doing?” He asked, watching the truck swerve and miss a few men who had been running toward it. The truck rolled into an open space near where the Remlap house was now just a smoldering pile of ashes, and started going in a sharp circle as he kept sounding the horn.

  Only a few of the undead seemed not to notice the sound. The rest ran toward the truck as it continued to drive in a sharp circle.

  “Is he going in circles? What’s wrong with him, is he crazy?” Remlap asked, staring out the window.

  “I have no idea why, but you're right he's just circling over and over.” he said, shaking his head. “Maybe the steering is stuck or he's got some problem.”

  “Looks like he's trying to get them to chase his truck. Maybe he'll run them all over.” Billy suggested, as he and Boris looked out the window. “Sort of like how dogs will chase cars, I bet he's just going to just smash them all flat.”

  “Why don't you just run them all over?” Maria asked, as the group of undead began assembling and chasing after the truck. It ran over a few of them, yet he seemed to be trying to miss them for the most part. She started to feel dizzy as the truck continued to circle.

  “Two reasons,” he said, as he steered around an old trailer. “First off, running over people dead, alive or undead is rough on an old truck like this and I don't want to break down out here, do you?”

  “No, what’s the other reason?” She asked, holding her stomach and feeling like she might be sick. “And how long do you plan on doing this?”

  “Just a few more seconds, I want to get as many of them away from the colonel's trailer as possible. Besides, we can't afford to do it much longer anyway look at the gas gauge.”

  The needle was below E and the little amber light next to it was quickly blinking off and on.

  “But what makes you think there's enough gas to do all of this?” she asked, nervously.

  “Just hoping actually. Matter of fact, since I saw you praying a few minutes ago a little more couldn't hurt.” he said, shifting into the next gear and driving hard for the colonel's trailer.

  He shook his head trying to regain his sense of balance. The big truck was hard to steer as he felt the world spinning like he had just gotten off a carnival ride.

  “The idiot’s leading them this way. What's wrong with him?” Remlap asked, her voice cracking. “Has he gone crazy?”

  “That's the second time you've asked that. Hopefully he going to just ram his way up and out and go get help, because there's no way we'd all fit inside his truck.” The colonel said, nervously.

  Boris barked and wagged his tail excitedly as the truck started ma
king a beeping noise while backing up toward the trailer. The septic tanks contents could be heard sloshing around, as the truck stopped near the front of the trailer.

  “Maybe he's going to squirt them with the poop in the truck.” Billy suggested excitedly with a big smile.

  “I'll be right back.” Mrs. Remlap said. She grabbed the heavy rolling pin and ran out the door before anyone could say anything. She walked quickly across the small fenced yard and went through the gate.

  The colonel thought about telling Billy to go get in the truck. However, without knowing what Josey had in mind he wasn't sure if it would be a good idea. He hugged his grandson around the shoulders and cleared his throat.

  “Billy. You know I love you right?”

  Billy looked away from the truck and stared up at his grandpa. “Of course, I know that. You're the greatest grandpa in the world.”

  “I was really worried about you when you ran off earlier, but I was also more than a little proud of you.” Colonel Lester said looking into his grandson’s eyes.

  “But I didn't get help and almost got Boris and Josey killed. I'm sorry I screwed up grandpa. I won't do anything that stupid again, don't worry about that.”

  “You don't hear too well do you, Billy. You got potatoes growing in your ears? I said I was proud of you. You did a selfless and heroic thing when you went for help. It doesn't matter if you didn't succeed, you tried. A lot of people live their entire lives without ever trying. The very act of trying is always more important than whether you're successful.”