“Go back to Africa you spear chucking bastard!” Cleophas yelled.
The others just screamed in unison, “White Power!”
“But you’re going to die if you stay in there!” Officer Jones growled.
“White Power!” They all screamed in unison.
Officer Jones was going to give up completely when Clovis’s hand gripped his, “Get me the fuck away from these crazy fuckers.”
Officer Jones pulled Clovis out before his father could react. Once Clovis was safely out, his father started screaming, “I’ll disown you. No son of mine is gonna pick a nigger over his white brothers. You get back in this bus right now Clovis so I can beat your ass!”
Clovis and Officer Jones smelled smoke, and looked up. The cab of the eighteen-wheeler was on fire. They realized immediately they were about to run out of time. Clovis and Officer Jones scrambled off the bus and away from the vehicles. They just passed the police cruiser when the fire from the cab ignited the diesel fuel. The fuel exploded in a giant fireball. Clovis could hear his father and his father’s friends screaming as they burned alive. A fiery wave of diesel fuel poured out and became a waterfall of flames onto the boaters below. They didn’t have time to get out of the way. The flaming diesel fuel filled their boats, and burned them to melted husks that eventually sank into the water.
“Oh God.” Clovis gasped with tears running down his face. “They’re all dead.”
Officer Jones pulled the crying teen into his arms for a supportive hug, “It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.”
“Thank you.” Clovis said as he tried to ignore the smell of burning flesh.
“I’m Officer Duane Jones, but most people call me Ben. Is there someone I can call for you.”
“My mom…and thank you. You’re being really nice considering the circumstances.”
Officer Jones smiled, “I’m just a helpful kind of guy.”
“Well thank you.” Clovis said.
“No problem…man your hair smells good.”
Clovis’ eyes snapped open, “W-w-what?”
“I said man your hair smells ggglurghle.” Officer Jones’ body went limp and dragged Clovis to the ground. When Clovis looked up to look the officer’s face, it was missing. All that remained was some torn strips of flesh where the officer’s head and neck used to be. Clovis locked on the headless body and began screaming. If he’d had looked up towards the buses he might have caught a glimpse of a furry Jimbo leaping over the flames on his way to New Orleans. He might have seen Officer Jones shocked face blinking, and his mouth moving as he tried to figure out what just happened with the last few seconds of his life. Instead he just lay there holding the headless body screaming at the bloody hole where a man’s head should have been. He was screaming even as a puddle of flaming diesel edged closer and closer. He was screaming when the first flames licked at his skin, and then he wasn’t…eventually.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Well…who wants to go first?” B.J.’s voice shuddered as she stared at the piles of bodies. “We can’t drive across.”
“I’ll go, but I need to reload Michelle first.” Bobby walked back to the car. When he got next to Sarah he stopped and looked at her with sad puppy dog eyes, “I’m sorry about earlier. Sometimes my mouth gets started before my brain has a chance to catch up.”
“Bobby…” Sarah started to speak, but the man just turned and walked to the car. He opened the door and dug out more shotgun shells. He filled both tubes with buckshot, and then started walking back past everyone towards the piles of bodies.
He was ten foot away when he stopped. “Sarah…can you reload that rifle? I’d feel a lot better if I had you ready to take out anything that jumps out.”
Sarah nodded and started to say that she would when Colton said, “I’ll grab some more ammo, and I’ll shoot any of them that even so much as twitch.”
Bobby shook his head, “Colt…I’d love to have you back me in a fight, but you can’t shoot for shit. I’m more afraid of your bad aim than I am afraid of the zombies.”
“Coonass…now isn’t the time to be giving me shit. I showed her how to shoot. So why have the student when you can have the master.” Colton picked up some empty magazines and took them back to reload. As he was reloading his shotgun and pistols Bobby looked at Sarah with pleading eyes.
Sarah winked and nodded, “B.J. you and me need to reload too. We’re going to have to help out at the Nature Center when we get through all this. I’m assuming they all followed us here, but we probably shouldn’t assume.” Both women walked back and reloaded. When they were all reloaded Sarah waited until her husband took his spot to watch out for his friend when Bobby walked through the bodies. Sarah set up a little behind him so that he wouldn’t actually see her scanning the area with her rifle.
Bobby popped his neck to relieve tension. “Daddy…be careful.” B.J. begged.
Her father walked over to her and gave her a long fatherly hug before laughing, “I haven’t gotten this far in life by being careful…no sense in starting now.” The man smiled and started walking towards the carnage. He stayed near the edge of the bridge so that the zombies could only really come at him from one side just in case one of the undead was particularly sneaky.
Bobby stepped over a grandmother, then tiptoed his way through what looked like a family of four. He was careful to take slow, careful steps between bodies. With each move, Bobby was careful to poke the body before stepping over it, and then he kept Michelle pointed at the head as he stepped over. It took him two minutes to walk twenty feet, but he kept moving.
He was three-quarters of the way across the bridge when he heard something scuff the pavement. Bobby’s throat tightened and he froze. His panicked blue eyes scanned across the bodies, but they were in such tangled piles that he couldn’t tell if any of them actually moved, or if it was just his mind playing tricks on him. He took another step, and heard a shoe sliding along the pavement. Bobby’s whole body locked up. Something was definitely moving.
“Sarah…do you see anything?” Bobby asked nervously.
“No.” Sarah responded as she swept back and forth across the bridge with her eyes.
Bobby swallowed hard, “Something’s moving, but I can’t see it. Colton? B.J.? Either of you see anything?”
The short redhead, and the beautiful young woman frantically scanned the piles of bodies before both shaking their heads. Bobby could still hear something scraping and clawing to get closer, but he didn’t see a hand move, or even a leg shift. Bobby raised Michelle up and waited.
A fat old man jerked and slipped down one of the mounds of people. Bobby, Colton, and Sarah all fired at once. Sarah’s bullet took the top of the man’s head off, Bobby’s buckshot made the man look like ground hamburger, and Colton’s bullet buried into the hip of a slightly hefty woman wearing a sun dress. Colton’s shot was so badly off target that everyone turned to the short redhead in disbelief. Colton turned red with embarrassment and snapped, “What? A man can’t miss once? Does every shot have to be perfect?”
They were all so distracted by the short man that no one noticed the young woman jerk to her feet and break into a run at Bobby. Bobby saw her in the corner of his eye and screamed, “Oh shit!” He wasn’t going to be able to turn around fast enough to shoot the girl. None of them were going to be able to shoot her before she reached him and Bobby new it. Even Sarah had lowered her rifle while she’d been listening to her husband, and now it was too late to aim and shoot with any real accuracy. Bobby was as good as dead and he knew it.
Then the girl’s lower intestine snapped tight like a dog’s leash. She lunged and clawed at the air, but most of her innards were pinned down under other bodies. She was ten feet away, and couldn’t get any closer. Bobby had to sit down on the bridge’s guardrail to regain his composure, “Oh fuck…I nearly shit myself.” He could feel his heart pounding in his throat, and his hands were shaking so badly that he had to set Michelle down.
“I’ve got this one.” Colton took careful aim, and jerked the trigger back. He was aiming for the girl’s left temple. He missed and hit a tree far off in the distance. His second shot hit the girl in the shoulder and knocked her down.
“You big meanie!” The little girl screamed as she rose back to her feet. “I wasn’t doing anything to you!”
Colton fired three more shots. One hit the girl in the leg, and earned Colton a mean look from the kid. The other two completely missed and went off into the distance. “Fuck!” Colton screamed. He jerked the trigger two more times. One knocked off one of the girl’s pigtails, and the other just missed everything.
Bobby groaned and looked at his friend, “Come on…just give it up. Let Sarah shoot the kid, or I will. Know when it’s time to cut your losses.”
Colton growled and yanked the trigger back three more times. Now it was a matter of pride, but instead of calming down and taking a careful shot, Colton was firing wildly in frustration. The first two actually hit the girl. One bullet hit her in the leg, and the other bullet severed the lower intestine. Sarah started taking aim as Colton’s third bullet ricocheted off the guardrail and bounced back. The bullet struck Bobby’s other earlobe. Bobby yelped in pain and jerked away. Unfortunately he had nowhere to go, and Bobby ended up falling over the bridge guardrail screaming, “OH SHIT!”
Bobby dropped twenty feet into the water below. He belly-flopped into the water, and every bit of air was knocked out of him. The undead girl ran and swan dived off the side after him. Sarah pulled the trigger just before the girl disappeared over the guardrail. “Bobby!” Colton screamed.
B.J. scrambled to the edge of the guardrail and looked down. The little girl was floating face down on top of the water. Bobby was nowhere to be seen. “Daddy!” She screamed. Tears ran down her face. Colton ran up beside her and screamed for the man as well.
“I’ll run around and try and pull him out. You stay up here and try to find him.” Colton said. B.J. nodded, and they were just about to carry out the little redhead’s plan, when Sarah leapt over the guardrail and dove into the water. Colton’s eyes were the size of dinner plates as he watched his wife leap fearlessly between himself and B.J. A blur of blonde hair fluttered as Sarah splashed into the water.
Seconds later Sarah pulled an unconscious Bobby up out of the water and dragged him to the water’s edge. “Colton? B.J.? I need some help…Bobby’s heavier than he looks.” Colton and B.J. ran around the bridge and helped Sarah pull the man up to safety. Sarah turned the man onto his back and began CPR. Eventually Bobby started coughing up water, and Sarah turned him onto his side. “He’s going to be okay.”
Colton wrapped his arms around his wife, “Baby that was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen…but don’t ever do that again!” Colton kissed his wife and hugged her.
B.J. had her arms around her father, and was hugging him so hard that he could barely breathe. “Daddy, you had us so scared.”
Bobby gasped and kept spitting up water for another few minutes before he was finally able to hug his daughter back. “I’m like a cockroach. You just can’t kill me.”
“Thank God for that.” B.J. laughed and gave her father a kiss on the cheek.
Bobby sat up, and then had to get his daughter and Sarah to help him back to his feet. “Yeah, like I said. You just can’t kill me.” Then Bobby looked at his friend and teased, “But my best friend can apparently shoot off one of my ears!”
Colton smiled back at his friend. “Oh don’t be a baby…it’s just an earlobe.”
“You know I should be pissed.” Bobby grinned.
“Yeah…you probably should.” Colton grinned back.
Bobby stretched, “Well…I don’t know about the rest of you, but if I remember correctly there are some people that need our help on the other side of that bridge.”
Sarah leaned over to give Bobby a hug, “You’re half-crazy…you know that right?”
“Only half?” Bobby laughed as he started back towards the bridge, “I must be slipping then.”
Colton followed up after him, “You know when this started I thought you were full of shit about the werewolf thing.”
“And now?” Bobby asked.
Colton laughed, “I’m still hoping that you’re full of shit, but after everything that’s happened…I’m not ruling out the possibility.”
Bobby laughed, “For the record…I’m kind of hoping I was wrong about the whole werewolf thing myself. I keep trying to convince myself that I just panicked. I keep trying to say it was one of these zombies.”
Colton shook his head, “You keep trying, but it isn’t working is it.”
“Not even a little.” Bobby sighed, “So far...none of these zombies started sprouting fur and regrowing a head. To be honest…I’ll be real happy if I never see another one of those furry bastards. As messed up as these zombies are…at least I can kill them. I’m not so sure that there’s anything we could do to stop a werewolf.”
“What about the silver?” Colton asked.
“That’s just a wild guess. It might work, or it might just piss them off.” Bobby kept walking. When they reached the bridge he stopped and laughed, “Déjà vu.”
“No…this time we’re all going over together.” Colton said as he scooped up he holstered his pistol and scooped up his shotgun. “I’ll take the lead. My aim is shitty, but I’m also a small target.”
“With that fat ginger ass…you’re not really a small target. You’re more of a short round target.” Bobby grinned.
Colton looked back to his wife, “Honeypie?”
“Yes Sweetie?” Sarah answered.
“The next time Bobby goes for a swim…could you let him soak a little bit longer?” Colton gave a bit toothy grin as he started leading them across. Colton moved carefully, but quickly, and it wasn’t long before they reached Bobby’s shotgun Michelle.
Bobby lifted Michelle up and gave the barrel a kiss, “Oh baby I missed you. Did you miss me? Yes you did…yes you did.”
Colton rolled his eyes, “Would you like to step behind some trees for a little bit of private time with that shotgun?”
Bobby glared at his friend and said, “I’m sorry, but did you say something. I can’t couldn’t hear you because some fat assed ginger midget shot me in the ear.”
Sarah sighed, “Boys…focus.”
B.J. laughed and then whispered into Sarah’s ear, “Are they always like this when I’m not around?”
“No…usually they’re worse.” Sarah giggled.
Colton led them over the bridge, and then they weaved in and out through the bodies all the way back to the parking lot. When they got there the door was broken in. “Oh shit…we’re too late.”
“I don’t accept that.” Colton growled as he waddled towards the walkway that led to the front door. Bobby followed him through the entrance. Colton moved carefully, “Is everyone okay?”
“Help! We’re back here!” A woman screamed.
Colton shuffled through the nature center towards the woman’s voice. They moved through a room that had a podium facing a bunch of plastic blue chairs with metal legs. The front of the room was designed to look like a cabin porch. It had fish nets, a rocking chair, a jug, and the top half of a fifty year old woman.
“Jesus.” Bobby shook his head. “They must have torn her apart using their retard strength.”
Colton snapped, “You’re not gonna start that up again are you?”
“So you’re saying they don’t have retard strength?” Bobby asked.
“Coonass…being strong doesn’t make you retarded, and being retarded doesn’t make you strong. Now will you drop this?” Colton said through gritted teeth.
“Is it irritating you?” Bobby asked.
“It’s irritating the shit out of me.” Colton snapped.
Bobby grinned, “I’ll take it under advisement then. Now be careful Colt…wouldn’t want those retarded zombies to get ahold of you with their retard strength and retar
d ways. I mean you’re already a fat midget ginger. You don’t want to add retarded to that.”
Colton growled and plodded towards the screams. They found bodies torn open and gutted. Some of them were pinned onto the walls. One was imbedded into the wall. Blood splattered on the walls, and covered the floor so deeply that every step splashed. They were almost back to the aquarium room. “Help me! Someone help me please!”
Colton reached the entrance to the aquarium room. He put his back to the wall and held up three fingers, then two, and finally one finger before spinning around to face whatever was inside the room. “Alright get your ass on the ground!” Colton screamed.
“Oh help me! Won’t someone help me!” The young woman said. She had black hair, cold gray eyes, and full pouty lips covered in blood. The woman was standing over the mostly eaten body of Roger Cobb. She was standing in the center of the room with a wicked smile on her face surrounded by twenty of her fellow zombies.
“Trap!” Colton screamed as he turned and ran.
“Thank you Captain Obvious!” Bobby bellowed as he followed Sarah and B.J. on a mad scramble towards the front door of the Nature Center.
Colton waddled as quickly as he could after Bobby and the girls. He couldn’t take aim, and so he just pointed the barrel behind him and fired wildly. Luckily for him it was cramped quarters, so most of his shots hit something. The buckshot hit arms, legs, and pretty much everything else. Colton fired until he didn’t have any shells left. Three of the zombies were took buckshot to the head and fell lifeless to the ground. Most of the zombies were crippled up by the shotgun blasts. It didn’t stop them, but it slowed them down enough for Colton to stay ahead of the onrushing horde.
“Run faster!” Bobby screamed back to his redheaded friend.
“Fuck you Coonass! I’m going as fast as my legs will take me.” Colton panted. He already knew that he wouldn’t be able to run all the way back to the car. He wouldn’t be able to run the length of the parking lot. He’d be lucky if he was still running through the wooden walkway that led out to the parking lot. The more he thought about it the slower he ran.
Uncle Gary's Campfire Stories: Bayou Zombie Werewolves Page 41
