Neither of us noticed the drumbeat in Tamara’s room as her fingers began twitching and rapping a staccato rhythm on the floor.
7.
It felt like we ran across the Acres for an eternity or two. Every shadow looked like Mason reaching out to grab us. Every sound or brittle crunch of the gravel sounded like the shambling footstep of the dead. What’s the shambling footstep of the dead sound like, you ask?
Scary as all hell.
I wanted to beat on the door like hell had broken loose to get Barrett to let us in but my guess was that if he heard someone beating on the door like that that he’d go hide under the bed or something. There was a deep itch between my shoulder blades and I could just feel the darkness looking at me.
So I calmly knocked on the door and whispered to Barrett to let us in. The back of my trailer was on the edge of the park and beyond the border lay a few acres or so of deep woods filled with wild Roses (“Rosie Acres,” get it?). They were spooky at the best of times and this wasn’t really the best of times.
He opened the door an inch or so to make sure we were alone and then I yanked the door the rest of the way open and ran into the trailer, pushing him out of the way and dragging Fannie Mae behind me. The look on his face was grim in the flickering light of the candles strewn throughout the front room. Apparently he’d been digging in the kitchen. Too bad he hadn’t gone back into the bedroom for the lantern we kept back there.
He began to speak but I waved him off, turning around and locking the door. I threw the dead bolt and still didn’t feel safe. If mom wasn’t still passed out on the couch I would have dragged it over to barricade the door. I was still considering it with a critical eye when Barrett finally put his hand on my shoulder and whipped me around.
“What happened? What’s going on?”
Fannie Mae collapsed to the floor, leaning her back against the couch. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around them, burying her face in them. Her shoulders shook with sobs. I ignored Barrett and went into the kitchen, slamming drawers open and closed as I looked for anything that could be used as a weapon.
Barrett followed me, asking repeatedly what had happened. I finally stopped with my hand in the silverware drawer, cupping a butcher knife in my palm.
“They’re all dead,” I said. “Tamara and her family. All dead.”
“What?” Barrett asked, confused. “How can they be dead?”
Fannie Mae’s voice carried to us from the front room. She spoke in a quiet voice but every word was crystal clear. “Butchered. Eaten. They were torn apart, Barrett.”
He looked at me, “Torn apart?”
I nodded. “Yeah. By Mason Smith.”
The confusion on his face was almost comical. If it wasn’t for the whole, “Tamara’s family is dead” part I’m sure he’d have been laughing in the aisles.
“Mason Smith? Mason fucking Smith? Are you guys putting me on? He’s dead. Are you saying he’s alive?”
I shook my head sadly. “Unfortunately, I’m not saying that at all. We saw him there, Barrett. Just standing in the doorway to her parent’s room. He was very definitely, very definitively, dead. With a capital D. But still, he was standing there. And then he turned away and jumped through a window. It’s like he was playing with us.”
Barrett looked like he was about to collapse. He gripped the counter like his knees were weak. Undoubtedly they were. He looked at the couch behind us, glancing at Fannie Mae and then flicking his eyes to where my mom lay in the shadows.
“Are you saying he’s dead, but not dead? What? Do you expect me to believe that he’s what – a zombie?” His voice was rising toward the end, like he was about to crack.
“Yeah, I guess I’m saying that,” I said. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead on it. To actually put a label on it, but yeah, I guess I’m saying he’s a zombie. It’s about the only word that really applies. He’d eaten whole hunks of their bodies, Barrett. You should have seen -,” I shook my head. “No, be glad you didn’t see it. Tamara and her parents are all dead.”
“Are they really dead?”
“What?” I pulled my hand from the drawer, gripping the butcher knife tightly.
“Are they dead? Or undead like him? Zombies?” He gripped his hair tightly, yanking on it. When he was done his hair stood up in wild clumps. “Zombies in the trailer park? God, am I in a horror movie?”
I put my hands on his shoulders, shaking him gently, the knife still in my hands. “Why would they be anything but dead, Barrett? Barrett!” I almost slapped him full on the face, but his eyes finally focused on mine.
“Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? Paid any attention to them, at least?” He searched my eyes and I could see the wild, crazed look in his. “Why do you think the world always gets overrun in zombie movies? A zombie’s bite is infectious. One touch from them and you’re damned. Even if you survive the initial bite and get away it’s already done. The virus, or whatever animates them, starts working in you and some amount of time later you’ll be dead, but not dead, and hungering for flesh.” He shrugged. “That’s the way it works.”
“They were most definitely dead,” I said. But were they? God, I hoped so.
He sighed. “We have another problem.”
“Great, what’s that?” I rubbed my forehead. I could feel a headache coming on. I was majorly dehydrated.
“Um,” he said. His eyes flicked over to the dark recesses of the couch, where my mom was still passed out. She was blithely unconscious during all this, thank God. “It’s your mom,” he finally blurted out.
“What about her?” I started pouring myself a glass of water. I really needed a drink.
“Well, um, I wanted to see if she had any booze left in her bottle. I couldn’t find her cache and I’d left mine outside. And I wasn’t going back out there.” He stopped.
I sighed and drank half my water at one gulp. God did that taste good. “Just spit it out, Barrett. We’re kind of in the middle of a crisis over here.”
“She’s dead.”
I dropped the glass in the sink. Thankfully it was a plastic glass or I’m sure it would have shattered all over the place and cut my eye or something. It was just one of those nights. “What?”
“She was stiff when I went to grab the bottle. I felt for a pulse and there was nothing. She’s dead, Duke. I’m so sorry. She must’ve had a heart attack or something after she passed out. The booze finally got to her.”
I barely heard him as I dropped the knife and raced over to the couch. I grabbed the flashlight as I went by the edge of the couch and flashed it on her. I dropped to my knees, not even feeling the pain throbbing from my leg. I gripped her hands, noting the coldness of her clammy flesh. I felt for a pulse on her wrist but couldn’t find one. There wasn’t one on her neck either. She’d been dead for hours. I shone the light on her eyes but they were closed. Barrett was right; she must have died in her sleep.
I felt a wave of something through my body. Fannie Mae’s hand dropped on my shoulder and it was then that I began to laugh. The wave that had threatened to turn to grief broke and all I felt was relief. She was dead. My mom was dead.