by William Bebb
*****
Josey walked slowly following a trail he hoped was Billy's. After skirting around an obvious undead man stuck upside down in a ditch with ripped and torn skinless legs that still twitched slightly in the air, he stepped through a gap in a brick retaining wall and stopped in the shade of a trailer to wipe away the sweat from his face.
He saw a large pile of beer cans and stepped carefully through their midst trying to be as quiet as possible. Looking into the distance then checking the way he'd just come, Josey saw no one. But a splashing sound made him scratch his head in confusion.
Spotting the uncovered well, he carefully stepped over a rusty chain that surrounded it. Josey bent over and peered past the few remaining small pieces of splintered boards and into the darkness below. He decided to take a chance and leaned down lower, whispering, “Billy, hey Billy, are you down there?”
A series of splashes came from below and some sounds that could possibly be a dog in trouble.
“Boris, is that you down there?” He asked while reaching into a pocket for his mini flashlight. The beam of light exposed two men about twenty feet below standing in muddy water mixed up with bits of broken wood. They snarled up at him and scratched at the smooth sides of the well trying to climb up.
Still bent over, Josey spit into the well and started to stand upright when he heard a scream and running feet. He tried to turn around but was slammed from behind and knocked off balance. The heavy crowbar fell from his hand, rattled against the lip of the well, and fell with a splash accompanied by more grunts from below and a shout that sounded somewhat close to the word, “OW!”
With no time to think, Josey stepped across the mouth of the well with his left leg to keep from falling in. Badly off balance, someone climbed up on his back and he ended up straddling the hole. His legs were spread wide across the open well while a man he couldn't see clawed at his back.
Josey's attacker was a tall, slender, long haired, man with a ponytail. The tall man wore the bloody remnants of a restaurant uniform with a name tag that had the name Rafael printed on it.
Rafael held a sharp sixteen inch long meat fork normally used for grilling clutched in one hand and wrapped both his legs around Josey's waist from behind in an odd looking variation of the classic piggy back ride position.
Unlike many of the other screamers, he'd somehow retained a sizable portion of his reasoning ability and had been silently stalking Josey since he crossed the ditch- waiting for the best moment to attack. Deciding the time for silence was over, he screamed and stabbed at Josey with the meat fork while clawing at his coat with his other hand.
The man on his back made keeping his balance nearly impossible and Josey felt his bad knee throbbing as he tried to think. He felt something sharp stab him in his shoulder and joined the screamer as he howled in pain.
Their screams were joined by a loud series of grunts echoing up from the bottom of the well.
Unable to think of anything better to do, he fell backward and felt the sharp thing being pulled back out of his shoulder.
Because Rafael had his legs clenched around Josey's waist he couldn't let go and grunted loudly as the bigger and heavier man landed on top of him.
Having been in many bar fights before, Josey trusted to experience and used his elbows to gut punch the man under him a few times then rolled off and got up quickly.
Rafael still clutched the bloody meat fork, but between having been crushed under Josey’s two hundred and eighty pound body and the series of gut punches he was stunned and moved considerably slower.
Josey felt his knee aching and wished he hadn't dropped the crowbar, as he shuffled painfully forward intent on slicing the madman's head from his shoulders. Lifting the sword over his head he felt his wounded shoulder throb in pain, ignored it, and swung down doing his best imitation of a Samurai warrior.
If Rafael had stayed still a moment longer the fight would have been over, but he had caught his breath and jumped as the blade was on its down stroke. Instead of decapitating him, Josey merely sliced off the majority of his long ponytail which fell to the dirt.
Unlike most customers of a barber that did a bad job cutting their hair, Rafael stabbed Josey while jumping into a crouching position. The sharp metal prongs pierced Josey's knee length coat and stabbed painfully into his upper thigh.
“Cuntpissmotherfuckingshitforbrains!” Josey yelled and swung the sword even before the fork was removed from his leg.
The sword sliced Rafael across the neck but the swing wasn't nearly forceful enough or well aimed to sever the head from his body.
Josey felt the fork still embedded in his trembling leg.
Bright red blood flowed in a torrent from Rafael's neck as he uttered a gurgling scream and again staggered forward.
Josey swung the sword again, but Rafael raised his arm in a somewhat successful attempt at self defense. At the cost of having his left arm severed, he managed to get close enough to grab the meat fork and tried to knock Josey down. Had he not been weakened from his severe wounds, it might have worked.
However, as Josey saw him grab the fork in his leg, he took the opportunity to slice off Rafael's other arm at the shoulder. Josey yanked the meat fork out of his leg and tossed it into the well.
Rafael was both effectively and quite literally disarmed with his shirt now soaked in blood from the neck wound. He fell to his knees and continued to growl weakly as he glared up at Josey with his mouth open and a savage glint in his crimson eyes.
Remembering a scene from one of his favorite Monty Python movies, Josey couldn't resist smiling down on the armless fast food worker and said, “You are indeed brave sir knight, but the fight is mine.”
Rafael growled weakly and inched closer to Josey.
“Look! You stupid bastard, you've got no arms left.”
Apparently tired of running lines from the black knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Rafael fell face down in the dirt and laid still.
“And take this, before you get a chance to come back from the dead and try to bite my legs off,” Josey said, while smoothly slicing through Raphael's neck.
After wiping the blade off on the headless body's pants to remove as much blood as he could, Josey saw the eyes in Rafael’s head pop open and stare up at him. Josey picked up a stick and knocked the head into the well. If this were a wishing well, I'd wish to find Billy and Boris unhurt, he thought, cautiously looking around for any signs of them. The sun had already cleared the rim of the valley and he felt time was moving much too fast. “Damn it Billy, where are you?” he whispered.
A few moments later, he found a small plastic bag with cookie crumbs and an empty water bottle, and was sure they belonged to the kid. After looking around for a few more minutes, he spotted some tall prairie grass that seemed to have been recently walked through heading north. Josey grunted before limping onward.
