Kevin showed up twenty minutes later. Rhonda was on the stool again, leafing through an issue of
Hellblazer
. At the table, Derek was putting the finishing touches on his new
Magic
deck. The woman’s body was still face down on the floor. They hadn’t touched it. After much deliberation, they had decided that there was only one course of action: ignore it. To be fair, Rhonda had tried calling 911, but she had kept getting a prerecorded message saying that
all circuits were busy, please try again later.
Kevin was carrying a large steaming latte from the gas station on Highway 75 when he walked in. It slipped from his hand and exploded on the worn linoleum floor. His eyes went from Derek to the spiked mace embedded in the back of the dead woman’s head.
“I
knew
it! How many times did I say it? This is exactly the fucking reason I told you not to bring weapons into the store. Because I knew one day you would end up killing someone!”
“Kevin,” Rhonda said, “
relax.
”
“Don’t tell me to relax. There’s a goddamn dead woman in my store!”
“It wasn’t his fault.
She
attacked
him
.”
“So he killed her?”
“Actually,
I
killed her,” Rhonda said. Derek looked as though he was about to chime in, but Rhonda shook her head.
Kevin snorted laughter. “Oh, I get it. You two are putting me on, right? This is some big joke? Freak out the boss? I’ve got to admit, it’s not bad.”
Kevin stepped closer to the woman’s body, careful to avoid the large puddle of blood around her head. “What did you use?” he asked, pointing at the blood. “Karo syrup with food coloring? Or hair gel?” He bent down and grabbed the handle of Derek’s mace. He pulled. It was an effort to get it to come free. “Damn, did you glue it in there?” The spikes made a slurping sound as they came free from the woman’s head.
“I tried 911, but couldn’t get through.”
“Uh huh, yeah, sure.” Kevin dipped his finger in the puddle of blood and brought it to his mouth, sticking his tongue out to taste it.
“
No!
” Derek shouted and was out of his chair in a flash, slapping Kevin’s hand away before it reached his mouth.
Kevin nodded in understanding. “Hair gel. I think it looks better, but it’s toxic.”
“Look…Kev,” Rhonda said. “There’s no easy way to say this, but that’s a real dead person. She came in all fucked up, and then she attacked Derek. So…I beat her brains in.”
Kevin said, “All right, joke’s over.” Kevin grabbed the dead woman’s shoulder and rolled her over onto her back. Then he screamed. Her eyes stared up at him, lips gone, tongue protruding between her teeth. It wasn’t just a good make-up job. “What the fuck?”
“I tried to tell you,” Rhonda said. “There was something wrong with her.”
“Call 911.”
“I told you, I already did. They aren’t answering.”
Now that the situation was real, Kevin had a hard time making eye contact with the dead body, but he couldn’t help it. “What the hell could mess a person up like that?”
Derek bent down, picked up his mace, and said, “I’ll tell you what it is. The bitch was a zombie.”
“What?”
“If you think about it,” Rhonda said, “it fits. She said the word ‘
brains’
right before she attacked Derek.”
“Only she said it more like this.
Brainsss!
” Derek said, drawing the word out in a long guttural hiss, doing his best impression of the zombie woman.
“Granted, there was something obviously not right about her, but she wasn’t a zombie.”
“Yeah, she isn’t now because Rhonda killed her.”
“It was self-defense,” Rhonda said.
“Derek,” Kevin said, “
shut it
. You think she’s a zombie because we were talking about them last night. That’s your problem. You live in make-believe world. You have to learn to separate fantasy from reality. You’d be a lot better off.”
“Then what’s your explanation?” Rhonda asked.
“I don’t know, but I
do
know she’s isn’t a damn zom –”
There was a loud crash outside. They looked through the store’s plate glass windows. A car had plowed straight through the bench and the glass enclosure which served as a bus stop at the end of the plaza. A group of kids were pulling an old woman out of the car through the driver’s side window. Kevin, Rhonda, and Derek watched in horror as the kids lowered the elderly woman to the ground and began tearing her apart. One of the kids – from a distance, Kevin thought he couldn’t be older than thirteen – picked up a shard of glass from the wreck, jammed it into the old lady’s forehead, and used it to pry the top of her head open.
“Jesus,” Rhonda said.
“We can’t help her,” Kevin said.
Derek stared at Kevin, waiting.
“Okay,” Kevin said, “it
might
be zombies.”
The plaza’s parking lot was huge, at least three hundred yards across, and the gang of adolescent zombies was on the far end of it, but one of them stood up and began doing slow circles as he sniffed the air. Suddenly, the kid stopped and he was staring in the direction of the comic shop.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Kevin said.
“He can
smell
us?”
“Not
us
,” Derek said. “Our
brains
.”
“Derek, just stop talking.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Start boarding the place up,” Kevin said.
If there was one thing Fred’s father had taught him, it was how to make money while maintaining a sedentary life style. In almost all respects, Fred Jr. was the spitting image of his late father; all the way down to the beard and the beer gut.
And Fred hadn’t really had to work for it, either. Fred Sr. had been best known for his infectious foghorn of a laugh and for growing a successful business despite what could be classified as a lackadaisical attitude. When he had suddenly slipped off the proverbial mortal coil four years ago, Fred Jr. had been an aimless man-boy residing in his parent’s basement, having never moved on after graduating high school. His daily routine had consisted of video games, movies, food, and jerking off (though not necessarily in that order).
Perhaps Fred had known, somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, that this would be how his life ended up. He had spent every summer since he was nine helping his father make house calls, and although he had never really enjoyed that line of work, no one could argue over the fact that he was good at it. Maybe it was destiny; maybe it was bad luck. Either way, the expectation that he would one day take over the family business had always been there. Fred had been determined to fight his fate, even if it meant doing
nothing
was the only alternative.
It was on his mother’s insistence that he had reluctantly taken up the helm. “Do it for your father,” she had said. “You’re the only one that can carry on his legacy.”
She almost made it sound romantic; as though he had been born into the world solely for that purpose. After the funeral, she had laid on the guilt extra thick. And when that hadn’t worked, she had threatened to throw him out of the house. “You wanna sit on your ass and be a slob all day, well then you can damn well do it someplace else.”
Esther Klemt considered it motivation by ultimatum. She had died of a stroke two years later, having lived long enough to see Fred Jr. become a carbon copy of his father; long enough to see him make something of himself by playing around in other peoples’ shit.
No one had ever accused Fred of being particularly lucky, but he had inherited a livelihood, and when his mother passed away, he had inherited the same house he had grown up in. Some might say he inherited his entire adulthood, but those that did never put it quite so delicately. The words ‘freeloadin’ sonofabitch’ had been uttered more than once behind Fred’s back.
He followed his normal routine that Saturday morning. He slept in, and around ten-thirty he opened his eyes and rubbed one out under the sheets as he imagined the cute blonde cougar from the day before. It took longer than usual because her huge black husband kept crowding the memory. Breakfast consisted of beer and cold pizza. He gazed at a framed picture of his mother and father on their wedding day that hung on the imitation wood paneling in the living room. For two years he had tried to exorcise the feeling of emptiness from the house, but the house had remained steadfast in its duty as a harbinger of loneliness. Fred, although not especially superstitious, believed that the house simply refused to move on; it was his parent’s house, and in a way, it always would be.
After that, he put on his navy coveralls and headed out for his twelve o’clock appointment.
Fred took his time driving across town. The job was over on Stilson Avenue, which was on the west side of Trudy, a few blocks from the hospital. It was only a seven minute jaunt across town, but it took fifteen because he had to wait for a train.
Quiet for a Saturday,
he thought as he pulled up in front of a ranch-style home with a cobblestone path leading to the front porch. Before exiting the truck, he flipped open his appointment book and glanced down to the twelve o’clock slot. All he had written was:
Clogged sink. Sexy voice.
After yesterday’s events, Fred told himself to be cautious.
Look for a ring
. He hadn’t remembered to do that when the cougar had answered the door. That lack of foresight had led to an embarrassing situation. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Like it matters,
he thought.
Never leads to anything except food for the mental spank bank.
He rooted around in the back of his truck, bringing out his tool belt, a fifty foot extension cord, and selected a handheld auger with drill attachment. More often than not, standing water in the sink meant the clog was nearby. Running the snake down the pipe under the sink usually did the job; no need to break out the big guns.
When Fred reached the top of the steps, he found the front door slightly ajar. He knocked anyway. No one answered. He waited. Finally, he pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside. The house was meticulously kept, which Fred took to mean the woman who lived there probably worked at home. He had seen the inside of a lot of houses, and he had gotten good at determining what kind of work the people who resided in them did for a living. The woman who lived in this house, for instance, probably either worked remotely, or was a stay-at-home mom, and if that was the case, he guessed she didn’t have more than one kid otherwise there was no way she could have managed to keep it as clean as it was.
The only thing out of place was a set of muddy tracks in the white carpet. There was a continuous trail of footprints running from where the carpet started in the living room and leading up the stairs. He called out again. “Anybody home?” No reply, but he thought he heard movement from above.
If Trudy had been a big city, he would have turned around and left. But it was a small town, and since people mostly trusted each other, he wiped his boots on the mat and headed into the kitchen.
The sink was half-f with cloudy water. Whoever lived there had done a lot of the work, because the cabinet doors under the sink were open and all of the cleaning supplies had been cleared out and arranged on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, leaving Fred an uncluttered work area.
There was a shallow bucket on the floor. Fred got down on his knees and positioned the bucket under the pipe. He used a wrench to unscrew the fitting. The water in the sink drained into the bucket. Fred unraveled the extension cord and plugged it into an outlet on the wall next to the window. He plugged his drill into the other end and tightened his auger onto the drill. He pulled the drill’s trigger and the thick cable shot out of the auger several inches like a snake flicking out its tongue. He fed the cable into the open pipe, running it in by hand until he encountered resistance. He ran the drill, feeding the cable, finally managing to break through the obstruction.
He fitted the pipe back together and turned on the tap, letting the water run for a minute to make sure it didn’t back up. All in all, it was an easy five minutes of work.
Before grabbing his tools, he wrote out an invoice by hand and left it on the kitchen counter where whoever lived there was sure to find it.
Fred was getting ready to unplug the extension cord when he heard the creak of someone coming down the stairs. “Got her all fixed up for ya,” he said.
He turned around just in time to see the man coming at him. The charging man was slow and stiff-legged, but Fred didn’t have time to react. The man tackled him to the ground, jaws snapping open and closed like a rabid dog, spittle flying from his mouth. Cleaning supplies flew everywhere as Fred crashed to the floor, the wind knocked out of him. He kicked out with his legs, catching the man in the side of the head with his boot. The man was momentarily dazed. Fred used the opportunity to slide back and get to his feet. The man hissed at him. “
Brainsss!”
“No fucking way!” Fred said.
The man raised himself up. Fred noticed that the man’s t-shirt was torn and bloody. There was a large chunk of flesh missing from his right forearm and two of his fingers were also missing.
The man shambled over to the counter and snatched a carving knife from the rack.
“Look, if this is about your wife…
nothing happened
. I swear. All I did was talk to her on the phone, man.”
The man lunged forward, slicing outward with the knife. Fred jumped back, tripped over his tool belt, and landed on his ass.
“
Brainsss!”
“What the fuck are you?” Fred scooted backward until his back hit the wall. A wood cutout that spelled
Home Is Where the Heart Is
fell off the wall and clattered to the floor. Fred picked it up, bringing it up just in time to block another downward swing of the carving knife. He kicked out again. The man’s knee buckled and he collapsed. The carving knife came down with enough force that the tip of the blade sank an inch into the floor.
Fred saw the drill, the auger still attached, a few feet away. He leaned over, grabbed it, and brought it up. The man slithered toward him, grabbing Fred’s boot. Fred took hold of the cable at the end of the auger, stuffed it into the man’s mouth, and pulled the drill’s trigger. “Suck on this!” he shouted as the cable snaked its way down the man’s throat. Fred tried to keep it steady, despite the blood that flew from the man’s mouth. The man made gargling noises in his throat; his body spasmed as the cable shredded his insides.
Fred let go of the trigger. The man –
monster
was more like it, Fred thought – remained still. Fred’s heart was racing and there was a sharp pain in his chest. For a moment, he was certain he was having a heart attack; that it would explode any second now and he would die on the kitchen floor next to the monster he had slain.
Suddenly, the man raised his head, the cable protruding from his mouth. He started to crawl forward. Fred’s eyes widened, and for a second he forgot all about the pain in his chest. He leaned forward, grabbed the handle of the carving knife which was still embedded upright in the floor, and jabbed the blade into the top of the man’s head. More blood spurted from monster man’s mouth, and then he lowered his head. Fred waited. This time the man didn’t get up.
Fred stayed on the floor, working to catch his breath. He waited for his heart to decide what it wanted to do. After a couple of minutes, the pain in his chest subsided.
The house call from hell,
he thought as he picked himself up. He needed a beer.