I was shaking with the heat of my rage. The shotgun was still pointed where the zombie had stood. Smoke rose from the barrel of the shotgun and rose into the dark evening sky. I could hear thunder rattling in the distance. Every breath I took in was followed by a sharp hiss of pain. My stomach felt like it was on fire. I looked over to where Jennings was sitting on the ground. He had his legs tucked underneath him and the shotgun was lying next to him. He was still staring at the headless body of Thompson.
I went over to him and jerked him to his feet. He looked at me, a confused, shocked, where the hell am I look on his face. I considered slapping him but instead punched him as hard as I could. He went back down in the dirt and instinct must have taken over as he went for the shotgun lying at our feet. I stepped on his hand.
“You’re a worthless piece of crap, Jennings.”
He broke down crying again. Great.
I put my shotgun down and put my hands in his armpits, dragging him back to his feet. I took a page out of Thompson’s book, “Man up, Jennings. We need to get to the House. We don’t have time for your mewling.”
A piercing shriek broke out behind us. Now what?
I turned to Barrett and Fannie Mae and saw what they saw. A veritable zombie horde was coming out of the dark toward us. They were in various states of disarray and distress. Some were missing limbs or giant hunks of skin. Some were missing pieces of their skulls. All were coming for us, moving slowly, at the pace of the damned. I don’t know how many were in the pack. Twenty? Thirty? Some I recognized as friends and neighbors. Others I didn’t recognize at all.
All were coming for us.
I screamed at Fannie Mae, “Get Thompson’s gun!” She scrambled for it as I bent over and picked up my shotgun. Jennings broke and couldn’t handle it anymore. He took off running in the direction of the House. The last I saw of him he fell to his knees and crawled a few feet before regaining his legs.
Fannie Mae struggled to turn Thompson over and grab his gun from his waistband as the horde came for us. I don’t think any of us had any brave ideas of making a stand, we just knew we needed the weapons if we were going to survive at all. I only had six shots left in the shotgun and Fannie Mae had all my shells. There was no way I had time to get the bag from her, open it, dig the box out and then load the shotgun. And no way would six shots be enough to kill the horde.
I bent over to pick up the other shotgun and my hand met Barrett’s. He’d crawled across the ground to come meet me. Our eyes locked. He saw the question in mine and nodded. “I can do it, cahuna. I can do it.”
Those were the last words I ever heard him utter.
The idiot picked up the shotgun and chambered a new round with a scream and charged into the approaching horde, gun blazing away. Shot after shot struck zombies. I have no idea if they were kill shots, but he was definitely hitting them. I made as if to charge after him but suddenly Fannie Mae was there before me. She put her hands on my arms.
“No, Duke. No!”
I paid no attention to her whatsoever, tears streaming down my face as I lost sight of my best friend in the world in the horde of zombies. They circled around him, ignoring Fannie Mae and me. She got a firm grip on my hand and tugged me away from them, pulling me the opposite direction.
I knew this was why Barrett had done what he’d done, so that we could be saved, but I couldn’t reconcile that in my head. So Fannie Mae dragged me behind her as I watched my best friend in the world being buried in the mass of zombies.
I flashed to meeting Barrett many years ago in schooclass="underline" the rich kid befriending the white trash.
Looking at porn together once when he’d stolen one of his dad’s magazines.
Smoking our first cigarette together and taking our first swig of my mom’s booze together.
Throwing up violently together moments later.
The easy grin on his face as he offered me the keys to his father’s car what seemed an eternity ago.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as he disappeared beneath the pile of zombies and the shotgun blasts finally stopped.
Fannie Mae and I ran and ran and finally came upon the last bastion of sanity in this small corner of hell.
We saw no more zombies on the way. Apparently they were all off doing other things or eating other people. Or eating my best friend Barrett.
The fuckers. All my fault. All my freaking fault.
We finally arrived at the House.
14.
The House blazed with the safety of electric light. They must have had the generator going. Once I thought about the generators all I could hear was their angry motors going off in the silent night. Smoke rose to the sky from the back of the House where the generators ran. As my gaze followed the smoke to the sky I saw the lightning flashing in the distance again. Apparently the storm was coming –soon. I had no doubt the clouds would break tonight and dump the rains on us.
It just seemed like that kind of night.
Fannie Mae was still dragging me behind her, leading me by the hand. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I couldn’t even begin to voice the horror I was feeling. Why would Barrett do such a thing? Why would he sacrifice himself for us? For his friends?
For his friends.
I guess at the end he’d found all the courage he’d ever needed.
We reached the door of the House and Fannie Mae started banging on it, yelling for them to let us in. Less than 30 seconds later the door opened a crack and a gun barrel poked out.
“Who’s there?”
We had run straight there from the shootout and Fannie had half-dragged me the whole way so she was completely out of breath. She finally managed to breathe out, “Fannie Mae Jennsen and Duke Johnson. Please let us in.”
The door opened wide enough to let us in and we stumbled quickly inside. They shut and bolted the door behind us. When I looked around I could see at least five or six different guns pointed directly at us.
Stupid Herbert Jennings sat not thirty feet away from us with a blanket over his shoulders sipping something out of a coffee cup. I got to my feet and held the shotgun threateningly in my hands.
“Stand down, Duke,” said another man from behind the group that had their guns trained on us. He stepped through them and approached me. It was Washington Jones, the manager of Rosie Acres, our trailer park.
He stopped in front of me, getting close enough to force me to point the shotgun at the floor. He put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me with his caring, brown eyes. Washington was one of the only few black (okay, African American) men in the trailer park. Hell, in most of the town if I’m being honest. He’d lived here most of his life and had faced many a tough time against the white trash in town. I’d heard tell that as a young man of 20 when he’d showed up in town that a lot of the men – my father included – had tried to show him the way right back out. He’d stood his ground and gave as much of a beating as he’d taken and somehow won their respect after many years.
He stood about 6’2” and was as thin as a rail. Many of the men had thought that’d made him weak, but he’d beaten men twice his size more than once. His head was shaved bald and shone to a high gloss. Even though he was one of the toughest men in these parts he was also one of the most gentle and there’d been many a kid who’d fallen in the trailer park and been picked up by him.