Tamara’s eyes were locked hungrily on the three of us where we stood in our little group. The lower half of her face and the whole front of her body was coated in blood. I pulled the equipment bag off the ground and stuffed the shotgun into it, pulling it back in close to my body. I tugged gently at both Barrett and Fannie Mae.
“Let’s go,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
Barrett couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was one thing to see a zombie in the dead of night in a darkened hallway or inside of a trailer at close space. It was a completely different thing to see one under overcast sunlight. It made it more real somehow.
“Shouldn’t we do something about her?” He asked.
“If we shoot her in the head right now it will cause people to come running. They’ll see her dead body, a trailer on fire with bodies inside of it, and the three of us standing here. That won’t turn out well for us.” Screw the police. My sense of self-preservation was coming back.
“All right,” he said.
We took off running. As we rounded the corner I turned my head back to look at Tamara. She was still moving toward us slowly but there was no way she could ever catch up to us at that pace. I knew we’d have to deal with her later, but I sincerely hoped not. No one had yet noticed the fire but I could see smoke floating lazily toward the sky over the trailer. Someone would notice soon and I wanted us to be back in my trailer before that happened.
10.
We made it, barely, before we heard the sirens coming from town. I dumped the equipment bag on the floor next to the door and quickly turned around and locked it, moving the couch to block the door again. I looked at Barrett and he nodded at my unasked question and quickly did a check of the trailer. He came back several minutes later and said that everything looked okay. No broken windows or zombies lying in wait.
We hoped. It was hard to tell with the zombies since we had no idea where Tamara’s dad had come from. It was like he appeared out of nowhere. Which was a disturbing thought all on its own.
Fannie Mae opened the bag and took out the shotgun and boxes of shells we’d found. It wasn’t much, but the 100 or so shells we had might make the difference. Again with the hope. I never knew I was this much of an optimist.
Of course in the back of my head I could feel the death knell tolling for us all. We had no transportation and no options. No one would believe us until it was too late. How many people would have to die before the rest of them would be able to accept alternative options? And by then I was guessing that it would be way too late for us to still have any good alternatives left. The outlook was bleak.
“Does anyone know how to work this?” She asked.
Barrett shook his head silently and resumed his position by the window. I went over to the bag and broke open the shotgun to make sure it was in good working order. I loaded eight shells into it and then rapidly ejected all eight out of it to make sure the gun didn’t get jammed. None of them stuck and they all flew out of the chamber. Fannie Mae watched all this with a little awe on her face.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?”
I grinned. “Barrett may have his horror movies, but I have my action ones. I’ve seen more than enough shooters in my day that I could tell you how to fire almost any gun.”
I slipped another half dozen shells in my pockets and stuffed myself as full as I could get. I’d never actually fired a shotgun before but I had heard of the “shotgun effect” so my hope was that I would be able to deal a few death blows before I got eaten. Although reloading in the middle of a zombie horde wasn’t my idea of a good time.
“The fire engine’s here,” Barrett said from his perch by the window. “A bunch of cops, too.”
“What’s going to happen next, Barrett?”
He looked at me. “What do you mean?”
I sighed. “We just got attacked by a couple zombies. Somehow managed to kill them. Barely. We saw Tamara out and about and she looked spry enough as she attacked old man Simmons. In your horror movie buff experience, what’s next? What can we expect to happen?”
He chuckled. “Well, we’ll probably put up the good fight since we are prepared. Might take out a few dozen, if we’re lucky. In the end, we’ll die. There aren’t that many options, cahuna. At some point we’ll run out of bullets or get overwhelmed or both and we’ll die. They’ll either pick us off one by one or got us in one massive chomp, but it’ll happen.”
Tears streamed down Fannie Mae’s cheeks as she asked, “Are there no other options, Barrett? No hope?”
“We could always go steal a car and try to get the hell out of here before all hell breaks loose. That’s my favorite option. The other options we have all revolve around how long it takes us to die.” He eyed us both critically. “If this were a movie at least one of us would already be infected and hiding it. Then at some point in the story when the drama and tension are high we’d turn and attack the others.”
He smiled grimly. “Fortunately this isn’t a movie, right?”
I nodded and then looked at him and Fannie Mae. I could see the same look on both their faces. “Okay, then, Barrett, how could we tell if one of us were infected?”
“The easiest way would be if we stripped down and looked at each other for bites or scratches, but,” he waved at Fannie Mae, “we’d have to do that nude and I don’t see us….” He stopped as Fannie Mae shrugged and started stripping down.
I stepped forward, holding my hand out to stop her.
She waved me off. “It’s okay, Dukey. He’s got a point. We have to know so that we’re not wasting time watching each other when we don’t have to. Let’s just get it over with.” And with that she pulled the rest of her clothes off and stood naked before us. Barrett looked away, blushing furiously. He couldn’t handle it.
I sighed and stepped forward so that I could inspect her. She had no shame and just stood there in front of me holding her arms out to the side. Her breasts were small and perky and a thin layer of hair ran down between her legs. My face was as red as Barrett’s as I knelt before her and inspected her body. As I knelt there she put one hand on the wall and lifted one leg up in the air after the other so that I could see her inner thighs. I nodded quickly at her so that we could get this over with. She turned around to show me her back and then I inspected her arms and this was finally over with.
Parts of me were stirring in response to her that I’d never thought would stir when looking at Fannie Mae. I could see her in a whole different light now. I stood up.
“You can, uh, get dressed now,” I said as I turned my back on her. I looked at Barrett out of the corner of my eye. He had a strained smirk on his face.
“I’m dressed,” she said sweetly from behind us. “Who’s next?”
“There is no way I’m getting undressed in front of her,” Barrett said to me.
“It’s only fair,” I said, turning around to face Fannie Mae. “She did it for us.”
Fannie Mae looked at both of us innocently, with a little smile on her face. She must have seen something when she looked at me as her smile got even bigger and she settled back with her arms crossed on her chest.