by William Bebb
Having heard some people talk about a classified ads website he gave it a try. After he sent out dozens of email messages, he finally found a girl his age who seemed interested in him. She said her name was Amanda and she wanted to meet him at a club downtown. She apologized for not sending him a photograph and explained that she was very shy.
He sent a photograph of himself from the days when he played football.
She wrote back a note that he looked very sexy.
Josey decided to take a chance in part because she seemed very nice in her messages, but mostly because he had just felt so damn lonely. She wrote that she'd be the girl wearing the white knee high socks and plaid skirt with a green shirt.
They were to meet at a noisy dimly lit club which had an annoying sound system with speakers playing heavy bass so loud that the floor vibrated.
After paying far too much money for a can of beer, Josey leaned against a wall and tried to look cool. He waited for a few minutes sipping his drink and hoping she would show up.
Eventually, across the dance floor a girl matching Amanda's description moved toward him. She was tall, almost Josey's height.
In the back of his mind, he thought about how big and tall their children would be if things worked out. Her face wasn't beautiful, but Amanda had a deep sultry voice when she spoke. “Hi, you must be Josey,” she said, smiling shyly.
“Hi, yeah, it’s good to finally see you,” Josey said, smiling back.
After a few minutes of small talk she asked if he wanted to go somewhere quieter, where they could be alone.
Josey readily agreed and they went for a drive.
“It's hard to meet guys like you, Josey,” she said, sitting in the passenger seat.
“Well you found me now,” he said, parking his car in a deserted place he had taken girls on rare dates before. The night sky was pin pricked with countless shining stars twinkling. It seemed like everything needed for a romantic evening.
“I'm drug and disease free, you know,” she whispered then giggled.
“Well, that's always good to know,” he responded, unsure she meant what he hoped she did.
“And I go both ways too, if you like that,” she said, leaning closer while putting her hand on his muscular upper thigh.
“So you're bisexual. That's cool. Of course, after one time with me I bet you'll only be interested in guys,” Josey answered, as he covered her large soft hand with his.
Amanda cleared her throat. “You did read my description online where it said I’m a cross dresser right?” She pulled her hand away and suddenly appeared very serious.
Josey was perplexed and wondered what she meant. There was a long awkward pause that followed.
“You know I'm a man, right?” Amanda asked, dropping his falsetto voice in exchange for a deep manly voice.
“You're what!?” Josey asked, pulling away.
Amanda sighed and shook her/his head. “I guess the wording in my ad needs work. I thought my name was hint enough; A-Man-Duh.”
“Yeah, uh... you should definitely work on that,” Josey said, starting the car and driving back toward the nightclub.
The ride back only took ten minutes, but it felt like it was the longest most uncomfortable time in his life.
“Sure you wouldn't like to try it? You might like it,” Amanda asked, before getting out of the car.
“Listen, you seem like a nice girl- uh guy, but I just don't think it would-” He wasn't sure how to say it, so Amanda said it for him. “I'm just not your type. It's okay. You're a sweetie and I know you'll find a girl somewhere, someday. Probably sometime and someplace when you least expect it,” Amanda said, then got out of the car and went back into the club.
That was Josey's last date.
It had been six months since he'd spent as much time alone with a girl as he had with Maria. (Though technically and biologically, Amanda hadn't been a girl at all)
He felt like an idiot and replayed the last thing he'd said before Maria gave him the weird look and stopped talking. Oh, for crap's sake. I didn't actually tell her she smelled better than a truck full of sewage and a trash dump, did I? Why am I such an idiot?
Maria saw he was trembling and his left leg was rapidly bouncing up and down as Josey looked ahead at the road that led back to the trailer park. She realized he was nervous and wasn't sure if it was because of a valley full of zombies awaited them or because he was sitting with her. He was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel as a faint breeze blew in across the dump. “You have the strangest way of giving a compliment, Josey,” she finally said, smiling at him. “Now, may I ask you a stupid question?”
“It’s the only kind I ever ask, so go for it,” he said, turning to look at her.
“It’s a silly question and I will probably regret asking.” She cleared her throat and asked, “Josey are you married or in love with anyone?”
“That's not a stupid question.” He cleared his throat and rambled awkwardly onward. “A stupid question is something like Do you want fries with that? When you’re at the drive thru.”
Another awkward moment passed before he smiled at her. “The truth is I wanted to ask you the same question. The answer on my part is no. I'm just trying to make my way in the world alone.”
She smiled at him, reached over took his big hand off the steering wheel and held it gently. “I don't wear perfume and also have been alone for a long time.”
Josey had never been good at talking with women especially ones as pretty as Maria. He invariably said something stupid or had tried too hard to impress them. He scooted across the bench seat a little bit and kissed her softly as the breeze from the trash dump increased.
She kissed him back feeling if this was truly the last day of her life what better way could she spend it than with a sweet man, who thought that she smelled nicer than a sewage truck and trash dump combined. And to think, some people say romance is dead, she thought and almost giggled.
It was the nicest time either of them had ever spent with anyone. A kiss and less than a minute's embrace was all it was, but it was very nice. Sometimes it’s not the quantity of time spent with someone that truly matters, it's the quality.
When Josey scooted back to the driver’s side of the bench seat, he held the ignition key ready to turn and smiled at her. “Just remember one thing, Maria. I always keep my promises. When I said my plan would work, 100% guaranteed, I meant it. Just promise me one thing,” he said, staring at the running figures dressed in black a few dozen yards away staggering down the road toward them.
“What is it, Josey?” She asked, with slight tremble in her voice.
“When this is all over and we're safe. Promise me that-” He stammered trying to find the right words. “We... you and I that is, um... we will-” He faltered miserably and let the words die on his lips while his mind screamed, I'm such an idiot!
“Josey, when we get out of here, I promise that we will see what we have together. You seem like a good, tender, and brave man and for what it’s worth I think I might- just might, like being with you. From there, we'll see what happens.”
He started and revved the truck's engine feeling like his heart had expanded to twice its normal size. He smiled at her for a second more then slipped the transmission into gear and floored the gas pedal.
The truck left a plume of dust in its wake as it sped toward the two dirty figures stumbling along the road.
“Do you like pizza?” he asked, as the truck hit one of the men with the name Puckett written just above three large letters that said I-C-E on his shirt.
Puckett spun around and knocked over another man dressed identically except for his name, which read Hadden.
“Yes, but without onions. Watch the road, please,” she said, buckling her seat belt. Maria had been so pleasantly distracted that she'd almost forgotten the worst was yet to come. She held her small silver Crucifix and began to silently pray.
Hadden and Puckett were hurled into the piles of trash beside the dirt road.<
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Puckett looked at the trail of dust in the air that the departing truck had created and growled. He was tired and angry after following them, like a dog chasing a garbage truck, only to have it drive away at the last second. A sudden sharp pain shot up his leg. He looked down and saw Hadden gnawing at it.
He screamed and kicked Hadden in the face with his other leg. A long strip of bloody flesh tore free from his shin and Hadden quickly chewed and swallowed it.
Puckett took the opportunity to hobble away while both grunting and bleeding.
Hadden must have enjoyed the way his fellow ICE agent tasted because he chased Puckett across the dump. After a few yards he quickly caught up and sprang on his back. The fight continued for several more minutes and ranged over a large area of the dump. They fought fiercely until Hadden tackled Puckett and sat on top of him while chomping off a couple of his fingers.
Puckett screamed and rolled loose as Hadden chewed and swallowed the fingers; bones and all.
Puckett ran at Hadden with a rock held in his hand that still had all five fingers then stopped just before bashing him in the head. He tilted his head and listened.
Hadden stood up and heard the sounds too.
Their recent somewhat violent disagreement forgotten, they followed the sounds coming from the nearby woods.
Randy Wallace breathed through his respirator mask as he poured out his latest batch of Methamphetamine crystals onto an aluminum cooling tray. The glass-like shards twinkled under the florescent lights like cloudy diamonds; the only the kind of diamonds that could be home grown. He turned on the exhaust fan, separated and weighed his latest creations into one pound plastic bags. Randy laid them on the growing stack of other bags awaiting the arrival of the long overdue son, Yugo.
He slipped the respirator partly off, sniffed the air experimentally, then removed it completely and left it on the counter. He took a few small shards of his new batch for quality assurance testing and looked in the mirror. “Who's the chef, baby?” He asked, staring at the dark dull nubbins that remained of his teeth. They had been worn away to just a few pieces of deeply stained yellow and blackened enamel. “Gotta get these suckers capped someday so I'll be as pretty as I feel.” He winked at himself in the mirror and took the sample crystals into the living room.
Looking over his extensive collection of glass pipes on the shelves by the big screen TV, he silently debated which one to use. There were a dozen pretty ones, that were liquid filled glass to help cool down the smoke, but he passed them by. His stepson, Yugo, gave some of them to him last Christmas. They were the nicest presents Randy had ever received. But he passed by the pipes with another brief thought where the boy had gone off to, but like most of his thoughts it was brief and ill formed.
He smiled at his favorite pipe. It was shaped from red blown glass and been specially made in Mexico at a cost of a little over a thousand dollars, which he thought was well justified. Randy paid the glass blower to make a beautiful pipe that looked like a large red dragon with green eyes.
“We meet again, Smaug,” he said, holding it gently as he sat on the dirty couch and made himself comfortable.
Randy had been a Tolkien fan since his early teens and grew up using almost every known type of drug known to modern man. Smaug, the villainous dragon from the book The Hobbit, was one of Randy's greatest literary heroes and as he stuffed crystal shards of Meth into the dragon's open mouth he giggled.
He was truly a well rounded expert on all things drug related and quickly prepared his new batch for the only true test that mattered: The taste test.
Unfortunately, Dawn Mary was ruining the mood with her damn TV blaring outside on the porch. From the sounds of swearing and gunfire he knew she had to be watching the DVD of Scarface, yet again. She must have watched that movie every damn day for the last twelve years, he thought, shaking his head. He could tell the film was closing in on the climactic scene where all the gunmen attacked Tony and ultimately bring him down.
Dawn Mary is a stupid fat cow, but she's my cow and if watching that damn movie makes her happy so be it, he thought, while shoving a small pair of foam earplugs into his ears so he wouldn't be annoyed by the noise. Using a lighter shaped like a multicolored mushroom, he lit the meth crystals while staring into Smaug's glowing red mouth and sucked the dragon's tail.
Sitting in her custom made motorized wheelchair, Dawn Mary cackled as she stared raptly at the small flat screen TV. Tony in Scarface, as played by Al Pacino, was about to say the best line in the whole movie. Dawn Mary rocked back and forth in her wheelchair that Yugo had pimped out last Christmas. It cost quite a bit of money and she loved it.
It had rhinestone and mirrored wheel covers that made her feel like a queen in a royal chariot. Plus, he installed bright neon sparkle lights under the armrests and on the back. She would sometimes flip on the lights and do her version of dancing- which consisted of spinning her chair in a circle while playing Dancing Queen on the stereo. It was her favorite song by a musical group called ABBA.
The best part of her wheelchair was something she only saw after unbuckling the seat belt and climbing into bed. It was a yellow square that looked like the annoying ones that many overanxious mothers would put in the back of their minivans years ago that read Baby on Board. She always felt tempted, whenever spotting such annoying signs, to crash into those cars on general principle. Her little yellow square was the same style and size as the original version except hers had the words Bitch on Board, instead.
Her son also put a bumper sticker with the words From zero to bitch in 2.5 seconds on the back of the chair. The motor even had a special toggle switch that could make the chair go almost twenty miles an hour.
It moved a lot faster than she ever did before the doctors removed most of her legs last year. The amputations were a result of her unchecked rampant Diabetes. She also lost a few fingers as a result of untreated necrosis which eventually led to gangrene. The loss of feeling in her fingers and feet at first just made her mad, but as more parts of her body had to be sliced off she sometimes briefly thought about going on a diet.
She had a stack of dusty exercise DVDs by the TV in the living room and most of them were still sealed in their plastic wrappers. Besides, the rare thought of losing weight usually melted away when she enjoyed her daily diet of candy bars and sugary sodas.
Dawn Mary stared raptly at the TV on the porch.
Tony was holding his big gun.
She quickly shoved the rest of a candy bar in her mouth and chewed. Holding the shotgun up, pointing it at the sky, she shouted along with Tony as he said her favorite line in the movie, “Say hello to my little friend!”
She fired both barrels, reached into her bright neon pink fanny pack (tastefully decorated with a cartoon picture of Elmer Fudd in his hunting outfit) pulled out two more shells and quickly reloaded. Firing repeatedly in almost perfect tandem with the movie, her multiple chins shook like small earthquakes as she laughed and reloaded over and over.
With all the noise, she never even heard former ICE agents Hadden and Puckett screaming in the distance as they ran toward the Redneck Gourmet's 'fortress of solitude' until it was much too late.
Dawn Mary turned off the TV when her hero Tony fell into the bloody fountain and wiped at her crying eyes with the hem of her shirt while wondering what 'numb nuts' was up to inside. She yawned hugely, pushed the joystick that controlled her wheelchair and started for the open doorway of the trailer.
But as the chair turned, she heard a scream followed by another echoing from somewhere nearby. She spun the chair all the way around, paused to look back at the TV, and realized the screams weren't coming from it.
“Crap on a cracker!” she shouted, after spotting the two uniformed agents running across the trailer's trash strewn yard. She yelled over her shoulder, “Randy! Get your skinny ass out here! We got visitors!”
Raising the shotgun as the uniformed strangers ran toward her, she shouted, “Howdy, fuckers!” and pull
ed the trigger.
When the gun failed to fire, she screamed, “Fudge puppies!” and reached quickly for more shells. She managed to slide in one shell as they jumped and climbed over the porch's wooden railing.
There was no need to aim the shotgun with targets as close as the two men were.
She pointed and fired at Puckett. The blast hit him in the chest, hurled him off his feet, through the air and back off the porch.
Her chair was violently rocked and nearly knocked over onto its side when Hadden collided with it and grabbed onto her. Had she not been wearing the seat belt, Dawn Mary would undoubtedly have fallen out of the chair. She was reloading when he bit her chest while wrapping his hands tightly around her thick flabby neck and squeezed.
Unable to breathe, she managed to slide another shell into the shotgun. But Hadden was too close to fire at as he bit through her shirt and gnawed at the soft flabby skin underneath. Pulling the wheelchair's joystick she backed up quickly, dragging along the chest biter with her for a second before he tumbled to the porch.
Gasping for air, she fired at the man who had not just bitten her breast but actually chewed off part of the nipple and the skin surrounding it.
The blast sent Hadden flying back across the porch, knocking over the TV with a crash.
Not waiting another second, she drove the chair straight through the trailer's open doorway bellowing. She turned the chair and looked outside in confusion as she slammed the door shut. Both of the men were up and running toward the door. She reached for the heavy metal security bar and slid it into the metal brackets mounted on the walls.
Blood poured down her chest as she hollered for Randy again. “Where the fuck are you, numb nuts!? We got bug-shit-crazy, bulletproof, cannibal, cops all over the front yard!” She drove into the half of the trailer where he cooked the Meth but didn't see him. Driving her chair to the first aid kit hanging on the wall, Dawn Mary shrieked again as she heard the men beating on the door.
Randy walked into his lab, looking agitated and excited, asking, “What is it? Who's beating on the door? And what the fuck happened to you?”
Dawn Mary felt queasy but managed to say, “Crazy cop fuckers done bit off my titty,” before groaning in a way that reminded Randy of how a sick cow sounded.
“I'll be right back and fix you up. But first, I need to answer the door,” he said then paused to kiss his wife on the forehead before running from the lab.
Randy went straight the closet, flung open the door, and pulled out a Heckler-Koch G36 Commando Assault Rifle he purchased for home defense while visiting friends in Juarez Mexico. After confirming it had a full clip already in place, he grabbed two extra clips and put them in his apron pockets.
He quickly slipped on his bullet proof vest, he got out of the trunk of a deputy’s car after he blew his head off for stopping him for speeding. “Don't worry, sugar tits. I got this,” he confidently called into the lab and hurried out to meet the guests.
Randy smiled as he heard someone beating on the door.
He slid back the weapon's firing bolt, placed his finger over the trigger, threw open the security bar, and yanked open the door.
Puckett had his fists raised with a surprised look on his face when the door opened. Hadden had been bent over repeatedly ramming the door with his helmeted head.
Randy squeezed the trigger. A loud, rapid firing, string of thirty bullets nearly instantaneously reduced Puckett's head to a fine cherry red mist of blood mixed with his shredded skull and brain in less than three seconds.
Hadden was surprised when the door opened and stumbled past Randy as he was firing.
Puckett's headless body wobbled, but didn't fall, while Randy yanked out the empty clip and slammed in a fresh one.
He slid back the bolt again and turned around looking for the one who ran past him when Puckett's body finally gave in to the forces of gravity and collapsed onto the porch with a thud.
The man that ran past him had disappeared.
Randy held the gun ready and checked the living room.
Only his pipe Smaug lurked there.
Randy heard breaking glass from behind him, shouted, “Shit!” and ran back toward his Meth kitchen. He ran past the little wooden sign hanging over the archway leading to his lab. The sign had the words No matter where I serve my guests it seems they like my kitchen best, painted on it.
Running into the lab, he didn't know where to look first.
Dawn Mary was convulsing in her chair as it spun around colliding into the worktables and knocking over bottles of a wide variety of toxic and highly volatile chemicals. Her neon twinkle lights flashed as the chair spun around faster. She furiously hit the arms of her chair and screamed as it went even faster.
Randy ran for his respirator mask sitting on the table as a gas cloud quickly formed from the broken bottles contents. He adjusted the seal and breathed through the mask, staring in wide-eyed shock at the senseless devastation wrought upon his beloved laboratory.
Dawn Mary howled and coughed as her chair was swallowed up by the gas cloud, which became as thick as a London fog bank.
The chair's lights continued to flash as it spun in a tight circle even after her scream ended in a horrible wet gurgling noise.
Randy's skin felt like it was on fire and he ran for the exhaust fan switch on the wall. Flipping the switch, he tried to see through the fog of toxic gases which even with the fan on still seemed to be growing thicker.
He spotted someone walking through the gas cloud, knew it wasn't his beloved cow Dawn Mary, and fired.
Hadden tried to scream as he turned to run at the man. The caustic chemical gases left him nearly blind as they burned his eyes, but what came out of his mouth was little more than a phlegmatic wheeze rather than a scream. He collapsed more from the combination of corrosive gases that destroyed his lungs than the bullets that struck his body.
Randy kept firing at the man even after he fell to the floor.
A ricochet hit one of the recessed florescent ceiling lights which exploded in a shower of sparks. The sparks were very few in number yet more than sufficient to ignite the highly flammable gas cloud. Randy tried to scream as the gases exploded but as with most things in life there just wasn't time.
The lair of the Redneck Gourmets exploded with a concussive blast heard for several miles around.
