Valley of Death, Zombie Trailer Park

by William Bebb

  *****

  Maria wrinkled her nose and coughed softly. “How can you stand the smell? Do you really drive this thing for a living?”

  Josey was in the midst of duct taping a dented rusty metal road sign over the passenger side window. Wiping sweat from his forehead, he looked at her then back at the road to the trailer park. “Everyone's got to do something. As for the smell, I don’t know... guess I just got used to it,” he said, looking lost in thought while securing the metal sign with another long strip of duct tape. A few seconds passed and he broke the silence. “Do you know when the colonel's trailer was brought here?” he asked, chewing on some nicotine gum and then pulling on the sign to see if it would stay in place. It wiggled a little but it seemed fairly secure.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, watching the dusty road and then rubbing at her eyes.

  “Well, if it was recently brought here, like within the last few years, it probably still has tires on it. They'd probably be hidden under it,” he said, carrying the other sign around to the driver side door. “I'm sure it wasn't built here so it must have been towed in sometime, right?” He asked, using the last of the duct tape to strap the sign over his window.

  “I don't understand. Even if it had wheels it hasn't got a motor. How would it move?”

  He reached into the truck smiling, patted the steering wheel, and said, “I think I have a plan. We drive in, hook his trailer up to the truck, and haul them and ourselves out of here.”

  Maria almost said something but wasn't sure what was wrong with his plan. She sipped some water and looked back down the road.

  Josey finished securing the driver side door and went back to scavenging through the dump while Maria kept an eye on the dusty deserted road. It was hard to climb over the piles of trash and he missed his old crowbar that fell in the well. He found a rusty shower curtain rod that served fairly well as a walking stick and continued hunting. What the Hell do I expect to find out here, anyway? A machine gun? He wondered while wandering through the trash.

  After another minute, he lifted his head and looked back at the truck. It was about a hundred yards away.

  It's not the truck. But that sure sounds like a motor. What's going on? Josey thought, listening to the faint chugging of a motor. It wasn’t the truck's engine and it sounded close.

  Spotting a trail that ran into some tall shrubs and trees, he whispered, “What the Hell is going on out here?”

  Walking slowly and cautiously, he passed a spray painted piece of plywood with words spray painted in both English and Spanish that read GO AWAY OR DIE.

  Charlie Farro, I think I finally found your hideaway, Josey thought, with a faint smile on his lips. A few yards further along the heavily overgrown path, he spotted a bloody severed foot inside the steel jaws of a bear trap and a decomposing body a few yards away with the remnants of its head providing a banquet to a swarm of flies and bugs.

  He didn't like the situation at all, but the motor sound was much closer. Deciding to take a chance, he walked even more slowly past the body. While advancing, he used the shower curtain rod to prod the ground before stepping forward through the tall prairie grass just in case there might be more traps around. Following a sort of semi-clear path around a gigantic boulder, he glanced back the way he’d come then looked down the path where he was certain a motor was running nearby and stood undecided.

  He listened hard and heard voices faint, yet unmistakable. “Gilligan, you lamebrain, that was for the rescue ships to see.” That was followed moments later by a different voice saying, “Sorry skipper.” Then the closing credits music to the classic TV show Gilligan’s Island could be heard.

  Josey stepped off the path, continuing toward the sounds while trying to stay under the cover of the shrubs and bushes. He'd almost forgotten to prod ahead for traps and was lucky he hadn't. Josey heard a TV commercial blaring nearby when the shower rod was jerked out of his hand as a loud clank sound came from just in front of him. The metal rod stood upright still slightly shuddering a foot away in a patch of pretty yellow wild flowers.

  Holy shit! He thought, as his heart pounded and his entire body shook. Using the sword's blade, he moved the flowers enough to see exactly what he expected; another bear trap. Looking around the edge of a large boulder, he saw a clearing with a double wide trailer sitting in the middle.

  Hanging from the roof there was a large Confederate battle flag. A huge morbidly obese woman with long blonde hair was sitting in an electric wheelchair on a wooden porch outside the trailer, holding a shotgun across her lap. She was close enough for him to see her chugging a beer while watching a small flat screen TV sitting under a dark green camouflage awning.

  Josey stared at the gun and was thinking hard until a man’s voice came from inside the trailer, through the open doorway. “Dawn Mary, turn that shit off and come help me with the next batch!”

  Her voice was loud, deep, and amazingly masculine when she yelled back, “I’m on guard duty, you stupid faggot! There might be more of them damned fucked up wet backs prowling around!” She reached for a package of cookies on the table next to her and continued. “I thought I heard something a while back!”

  “Bitch, you couldn’t hear shit with that stupid TV on! Turn it off, yer wasting electricity. The propane won’t last forever. Especially since that shit for brains son of yours still ain't back with the replacement tanks,” the man said, walking outside naked except for his dirty red apron that had the words Kiss the Cook printed across the front. The man was skinny, almost emaciated looking, in Josey’s opinion, and yet he instantly recognized him.

  Oh my God, it’s the Redneck Gourmets. Jesus, what's next today? He thought, nearly panicking as he eased back into the foliage. He knew of them from reputation and none of it was good.

  Josey's friend, Patrick, had become a Meth addict a few years ago and it was just a few months after he started selling for the Redneck Gourmets that the cops found his body in the alley behind his parent’s house.

  Patrick had been such a great guy in high school and his goofiness was legendary. Some kids did mean or dangerous things, but Patrick always came up with the funniest ideas anyone ever heard of. Once, he had a five thousand word essay to do on the long term effects of global warming. He submitted a manila folder that contained five, close up, large, color, pictures he'd taken with a digital camera. The pictures showed teenage girls wearing micro bikinis while they were putting on sunscreen at a pool.

  When Mr. Baker, the Science teacher, asked what it was supposed to mean, Patrick just smiled and said, “A picture is worth a thousand words, right? So, those five pictures should be just enough for a five thousand word report.”

  Mr. Baker told him right in front of the class that it was “disgraceful,” and announced he would receive an F for the assignment. But Patrick later confided to Josey that the dirty old man worked out a deal to give him an A if he’d secretly take more pictures of girls for him. Mr. Baker was eventually sent to jail for showing up at a promiscuous twelve year old girl's house that he'd met online and been chatting with about sex. Of course, it had been a police ruse used to catch pedophiles.

  The last time Josey had seen Patrick was two years earlier at Christmas. He was driving around town in a brand new Corvette. He told his friends how he was going to be the richest bastard in all of Albuquerque. Patrick just laughed when asked what would happen if he were arrested. He bragged about working for a couple of rednecks that he was scamming money from. He would pick up twenty thousand dollars worth of Meth from their kid, named Yugo, and would give the kid two or three thousand dollars and they never seemed to catch on. “It’s their pictures the cops have because they’ve been busted a million times. Me? I’m mister squeaky clean, suburban, all American, sex machine. No one needs to worry about me. The Redneck Gourmets are a couple of inbred morons, they’ll never catch on.” Were the last words Josey heard him say.

  Josey shuddered, thinking about how Patrick's body was foun
d. He'd apparently been forced to swallow pennies and then when he couldn’t swallow anymore they must have shoved more down his throat until he died.

  There were rumors that the gurney used by the paramedics broke because the penny filled Patrick corpse was too heavy. Also, he heard when the body fell off the gurney it burst open like a piñata spilling coins and his guts all over the alley. The police were sure it was the Redneck Gourmets that were responsible, but they and their kid hadn't been seen in months.

  At least not until Josey stumbled across their hidden lair.

  Josey heard them continue to argue while trying to quietly follow his trail back the way he’d come.

  This is just great! I've got homicidal, cannibal, crazy, zombies on one side and homicidal, devious, merciless, Meth cookers on the other, Josey thought miserably, as he carefully walked back. Every few steps he stopped and looked over his shoulder until he reached the truck.

  “Find anything?” Maria asked, yawning and looking tired from the truck’s passenger seat.

  “Nothing good,” he answered, then glanced over his shoulder nervously. “Listen, there’s some things I need to do to the back of the truck. You just keep watching. Two things though. Don’t honk the horn if you see them coming, just yell. And keep an eye on the way I just came from, too.”