Valley of Death, Zombie Trailer Park
Page 51
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Boris' first impulse was to turn tail and run. He knew snakes were dangerous and had always run away from them before. Watching it coming out of the bushes the dog involuntarily backed up a step. Boris realized the boy still hadn't seen the snake and was in fact looking back impatiently calling for him.
Venom coated the snake's fangs as it shot from its burrow. It was rushing straight for the little boy's exposed ankles while Billy looked over his shoulder at the scared dog. It moved with incredible speed (just a long brown blur in the early morning dust) when something slammed down on its head.
Dazed and pissed off, the snake, all seven feet of him now completely out the burrow shook its rattle and began swirling back coiling itself up.
Billy was still looking at the dog in contempt. “What is your problem? Do you want to take a break?” He asked in a disgusted tone of voice. Taking off his backpack he slammed it down without looking. The bag wasn't extremely heavy but it still weighed enough to confuse and frighten the snake when it landed on its head.
Boris came up and stood next to the boy. His whole furry body trembled as he barked at the snake.
Billy heard the rattle and had seen enough cowboy movies with his grandpa to know it was a bad situation, maybe even worse than a pack of hungry zombies.
He remembered during his last visit, when no monsters roamed the Albuquerque Springs Trailer Park, how he and grandpa watched a movie starring John Wayne- the undisputed king of the cowboys. Why people called him The Duke when he was obviously the king had always confused him.
He'd loved almost every minute of the movie except for the part where a pretty girl was thrown into a pit full of snakes by a bad guy. At that point, Billy ran out of the living room into his bedroom and grabbed his stuffed plush toy raccoon named Ricky.
Eventually, he came back in the living room and watched the end of the movie. It was very cool, but under the current circumstances he was barely able to remember how to breathe let alone the name of the movie.
The snake coiled up only a few feet away bobbing and weaving its head uncertain which one to strike. Its eyes flicked back and forth as it watched the boy and dog.
Feeling a warm stream of urine leaking down his leg inside his pants, Billy again realized coming out here looking for help was probably the dumbest thing he'd ever done in his entire brief life. He tried to be brave remembering what his grandpa told him the previous summer after he told him about having gotten beat up at school. “Bullies only get braver when you look or act afraid. You've got to act brave if nothing else. Act brave and before you know it, you are brave, and then no bully on Earth can get the best of you.”
Hoping the advice applied to snakes as well as bullies, he kept his eyes closed and tried to imagine that he was John Wayne. In his mind he was a short much younger John Wayne to be sure, but he felt braver nonetheless.
Lifting his BB rifle as he opened his eyes he was no longer a little boy who just peed his pants, he was the King of the cowboys- THE DUKE!