There’s no way the cops wouldn’t zero in immediately on the trailer park and Tamara; and I had no faith that she’d be able to not say anything. I didn’t blame her at all, of course. She’d do whatever she needed to protect herself. There was a small chance that the cops would believe he’d raped her and she’d fought him off and knocked him into the monument and killed him. If they did that’d be the end of it, but there really wasn’t much chance of that happening. I’d watched enough CSI and Law and Order.
I picked a shirt up off the floor and put my shoes on. Hopefully no one in the park had messed with Barrett’s car. It was too nice of a car to park in a shithole like this and that was more likely than not to have attracted a few vandals. If there were scratches on it or dog crap thrown on the windshield at least I’d know who to go to: Donny Marsters across the way. He was 14, a freshman like Fannie Mae, and the resident leader of the pack of hoodlums. If someone’s car was broken into or something was missing from your trailer he was the one to go to. His mom almost always made him give the stuff back but it never seemed to stop him.
I grabbed my flashlight off my dresser. I kept one there for emergencies and for bathroom runs in the middle of the night. If mom or dad happened to be home and sleeping and I managed to wake them up there would invariably be a lot of screaming and yelling and general dismay. It was best to just avoid the problem. I never flushed either, but mom always blamed it on dad and dad never remembered if he’d flushed or not.
It always gave me the giggles when mom sat in the pee because I forgot to put the seat up and screamed at dad to come in there. I’d seen her get up and make dad sit on the wet toilet seat to see how he liked it. That one never got old.
Regardless, I slipped out the front door to the trailer (yes, trailers have back doors, too) and flicked the light on. I cocked my head at the total silence. Usually at least one dog or two was always barking. Hell, the Marsters had their own little pack of yipping mutts. And not one dog was making a sound. I shrugged and turned to Barrett’s car, letting the light play on the side of the car I’d seen from my bedroom window.
I froze, the light shaking in my hand.
Holy crap. Who would do this? Not even Donny Marsters would have done something like this. Deep gouges ran down the length of the soft top. It hung in tatters around its metal frame. It was caked in filth that looked like mud. All of the windows were coated in filth as well. I thought it was mud until I took several steps closer to the car and played the light on it fully.
Dark, red blood coated all the windows. Streaked as if someone had dragged their hands through it completely. It looked like someone had tried to wash the windows in blood. Or like something bloody had tried to get in the car from all angles and finally decided to tear through the top to get in.
I felt my heart rising in my chest again and tried to swallow it back down. My throat was suddenly as dry as an AA meeting. Maybe I should go back inside and check this out in the morning.
I backed away from the car. Took two whole steps and then collided into something that felt as solid as a tree. Something that hadn’t been there 30 seconds before when I’d walked through that space.
Oh shit.
4.
I drew in my breath to scream and that was when the thing reached out and put its hand over my mouth. It whispered my name, “Duke. Duke.”
I struggled to free myself and that was when it registered that the voice speaking my name was Barrett’s. I slumped back against him.
“Bastard,” I said. “You scared the crap out of me.” I turned to him and he had that usual grin on his face, spreading his arms in a shrug as if to ask me what I expected. He was right. It was Barrett, what else should I expect?
He obviously hadn’t seen his car yet.
“You looked like you were already spooked,” he said. “I figured if I called out your name or tried to grab you or anything you’d freak out and wake up the whole trailer park. Last thing we need is a trailer park posse out here at 3 A.M. What had you spooked, anyway?”
Wordlessly I pointed the flashlight at his car. I think the shock got to him because he didn’t react for a few seconds. Then with a cry he launched himself toward the car. It was my turn to hold him back. I grabbed his arm and wouldn’t let go. He fought to get free, putting pressure on my weak leg, but I wouldn’t let go.
Finally he stopped struggling and looked at me. “What? Let me go. I have to see what they did to my dad’s car. He’ll kill me.”
I shook my head at him. “Barrett, look. That’s blood all over the car.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous, Duke.” He looked at the car as if to point out to me how it wasn’t blood but his voice just trailed off as I raked the flashlight over the car, lingering over some of the worst spots. It was very apparent that it was blood in the light of the flashlight.
“It looks like someone was trying to get into the car,” I whispered. “When they couldn’t get through the windows they went through the top.”
“But why? There’s nothing in there they’d want. And why would they be all bloody?” He whirled to face me. “Stupid trailer park. I should have known better than to come here. First you ki-,” he stopped, stuttered, then went on, “and now this. My dad will freaking kill me, Duke.”
I ignored his outburst, still staring at the car. “Barrett, we can worry about all that later.”
“Later? Seriously, Duke.”
“Seriously,” I said. “Maybe we should make sure there’s no one and nothing inside the car. Obviously someone was trying to get in and they managed to get in. Why? Are they in the car? Did they put something in the car?”
“Put something?” He looked at me, confused. This his face cleared. “Do you think someone saw? And they put him in the car?”
“I doubt that, Barrett. But we need to go look.”
He shook his head at me. I just stared at him. He’d already pulled the wussy card on me once tonight and look at what it cost us. I didn’t need to say anything, just continued staring. It wasn’t exactly a staring contest, but more of one of those silent communication things friends can do when they’ve known each for a while. I told him he owed me and that this was his car and his trouble and we needed to go see the damn thing and see what we were dealing with. He told me a big fat no and I told him to stop being a coward.
This went on for what seemed like eternity but was likely no more than a few seconds. Finally he just said, “Whatever,” and I knew that was good enough.
We skulked forward slowly to the car.
Lightning still flashed on and off in the distance, giving us that last creepy little bit of ambience that we needed to make the night feel just right. Blood on a car? Check. Power out? Check. Freakish storm? Check. Two idiots creeping forward to look at said bloody car with the power out and lightning breaking the sky? Check. If I was watching this in a movie I’d be the first one to scream at the idiots to not go check out the car and to run back inside.
And I knew that while I was going forward to the car. Reality is a big suck-ass sometimes.
Barrett hung a foot or so back and let me take the lead of course. If nothing else came of tonight it was nice to know that he was a big coward. I didn’t realize that, as my friend, when he told me he had my back he meant it literally. At least his girly screams would help if we got attacked.
The gravel crunched softly under our feet as we approached. I played the flashlight around the car but everything looked like it had from far away: filthy and torn and bloody. I shone the light in a wide radius around to see if there was anybody or anything weird around us, but I couldn’t make out anything that I hadn’t already expected to be there.
The rag top on the car was cut to ribbons. I couldn’t tell what tool had been used on it. Hell, it almost looked like someone had done it with their bare hands, which was just silly. It had been torn in such a way that you couldn’t see through the windows. All the torn flaps were dangling on the inside and were all you could see thr
ough the bloody smears.
There were only two ways to see inside the car. One was to stand on tiptoes and lean far over the top of the car and peek inside. I shivered at the sudden image of giant, bloody hands suddenly coming out through the hole and yanking me inside headfirst. And I could hear the splash of my blood hitting the leather seats and windows. Barrett would have a hell of a time cleaning the seats if that happened.
I decided that was maybe not the best idea.
The other option was to open the door, yank it as hard as we could and run back 20 steps and shine the flashlight through. That seemed like the puss way to do it but it certainly had its merits.
I told Barrett that’s what we were doing.
He was all for the puss/coward option. To no one’s surprise, least of all his own.
He started protesting when I told him that he was going to be the one to go open the door while I stood back with the flashlight. A hurried, whispered argument ensued where I told him he was going to do it because it was his car, he had the keys and I had the flashlight. His offer of the car for my 16 birthday present didn’t really make that big of an impression on me at that point. I told him if he didn’t do it that I was going back inside and going to bed and he could just drive home.
That pretty much put an end to it.
I had the flashlight trained on the front passenger door while he slowly leaned over as far as he could to open it. He was standing by the front tire so that nothing could come out and eat him. His hand shook in the light of the flashlight but I’ll give him credit for actually doing it. He put his hand on the door and looked at me. I nodded and he nodded back. Then he pulled the handle and yanked the door back as fast as he could and ran back to me in about a half second flat.
There was nothing in the front seat.
I muttered some choice profanity.
“Now what?” He looked at me blankly as he asked it.
I looked at him, “What do you think? Now you do the back door.”
“Crap.”
He scuttled back to the car, taking a wide path from where we were standing so that he could approach the car from the front. He closed the front door with a satisfying thud and then reached for the back door. With his hand on the release he looked at me again to make sure I was ready. I nodded and he yanked this one open as well, pulling it wide and doing the run back to me.
The hanging soft top was in the way.
“I can’t see anything, Barrett,” I said.
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
I looked at him in disgust. It was obvious he’d about reached the limits of what little courage he had. I strode forward purposefully and pulled the top out of the way so that I could see. A stench rolled out of the car at me and I jumped back so fast that I landed on my ass. The pain in my leg woke up and let it be known that it wasn’t happy about it.
“What happened, Duke? What’d you see?” Barrett called from ten feet back. He didn’t move an inch closer to help me.
I didn’t answer him. Didn’t even hear him, honestly. I got back to my knees, barely, wincing at the pain in my thigh. I had eyes only for what I’d seen in the car. I was still on my knees as I reached in, using the hand holding the flashlight to pull aside the flaps and the other to reach inside the darkness. I could hear Barrett behind me whimpering and whispering my name. It was like a small buzz at the back of my head.
My reaching hand slid across the wet seat, grasping for what I’d seen. It was getting wet and covered with the slime that was on the seat. Reaching inside that car, that maw of darkness, was like putting a hand into Hell itself. I kept expecting something to grab my hand and pull me in. I’d fight heroically but in the end it would get me and I’d disappear into the car and never be seen again. My fate would be whispered around the Acres in spooky little campfire tales.
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 thin
k 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.
Trailer Park Zombies Page 4
