Euphoria-Z (27 page)

He used the opportunity to drive off. The dead were dispersing, and he could rapidly get a few miles away. He stopped at a large, quiet business park. No dead were around. The roar of bikes was gone. He cut the engine, and they sat and listened for a while. All was quiet.

“What now?” Ana was in the front seat, looking around, still not trusting that they were safe.

Cooper rubbed his chin. “I think we should hole up here for the night. Rest and think about what we do next.”

The girls agreed.

“But you aren’t going to like what I want to do. It will be brutal, but I think necessary.”

28.

Abel Tugerson, Tug to everyone and anyone since he could remember, stood in the bed of a beat-to-shit pickup truck as it rolled slowly down the 101. It was covered in rotten flesh and putrid streaks of gore.

Tug wasn’t alone. His asshole cousin Jim rode in the bed with him, and an army of corpses followed them in a long line down the highway. They were going after the dude that had knocked him out. Jim kept rubbing it in his face, how the dude got the drop on him because he was fat and slow. How the only way he could have sex with any girl was to take a little Mexican girl prisoner, and on and on. Tug was sick of it.

His other cousin, Jim’s brother Mike, was driving the truck. Tug and Jim used a pool cue and a baseball bat to bash heads and drank beer from a stack of cases. Jim wanted the cue and snatched it from Tug’s hands. This was what Jim always did—he took whatever he wanted from Tug.

What really pissed Tug off was that earlier he had tried to tell Jim that the baseball bat wasn’t as good as a cue. They could both have cues right now! The cue was longer, and if you held it at the skinny end, the thick end could do some real damage. Tug knew the damage a cue could do from experience. He couldn’t wait to cut the skinny end down a little, drill a hole for a strap so the cue wouldn’t slip from his sweaty hands. Maybe even wrap some tape around the end as a handle.

Jim was standing at the rear of the truck, right up against the gate, laughing as he alternately took swigs from a beer can in his left hand and practiced his cueing skulls with his right. Tug had given up trying to have fun because the bat he was forced to use couldn’t reach and Jim was hogging the entire truck bed. He kept telling Tug to get out of the way. Tug watched as he hooted and hollered and had all the fun. Tug finally got so sick of his cousin he just shoved him with both hands, hard. He smiled as he watched Jim fly from the truck and land face-first on the rough highway.

Jim was stunned for a second but jumped right up. He looked so afraid and confused that Tug had to laugh out loud. Jim’s teeth were broken and his face gashed up. Blood ran down the front of the stupid western shirt he always wore, the one with all the gay stiches in girly patterns. He wore it all the time, like he thought he was some kind of cowboy instead of the fucking stock boy at Walmart when they would give him any hours. Jim tried to run for the truck. The dead hadn’t gotten him. Tug was scared he might make it back to the truck, but he couldn’t stop laughing. He heard Mike yelling from the truck.

“Tug? Tug, you fucking retard, what’s happening?”

“Nuthin! It’s all cool!” Tug yelled, but the truck stopped and the door popped open.

“Bullshit! Tug, you asshole, what did you do?” Mike ran back to help Jim, who had managed to find the cue on the road and was trying to hit the deadheads. Mike punched one in the face. The dead were surrounding the two.

“Tug, help us, you fuck!” Mike yelled.

Jim screamed through shattered teeth and blood.

“What? He pushed you?” Mike shrieked. “I am gonna fucking kill you, Tug, you fat shit! You fucking retard! You are dead!”

Tug watched, totally amused, as the contest between his asshole cousins and the swarm of corpses raged on. The two men were dropping them left and right. Jim and Mike were used to fighting back to back, as they were always getting into fights. They were strong and wiry and fought dirty. They were retreating to the truck and would probably make it back to Tug soon. He jumped out of the truck bed and into the cab. He put the truck in reverse and pushed down on the accelerator.

That was another thing: the cousins never let him drive, and it was his damn truck! He hit Jim hard and sent him to the ground. Mike jumped aside and then into the truck bed. Tug floored the truck and Mike held on. Cases of warm beer flew out and exploded on the tarmac.

Mike looked back, screaming his brother’s name with such agony that Tug knew the dead got him. Then he turned his attention to the cab. He was cursing, and Tug could see his face. He was very pissed. This just made Tug giggle. He jerked the wheel back and forth, but Mike held on. Then he had an idea.

Tug stopped, put the truck in reverse, and started driving backward, right into the crowd of the dead. Mike beat on the roof of the cab. He tried kicking in the rear window, but by then the dead were reaching into the bed and grabbing his legs. He rolled onto the roof, and Tug could hear him yelling and pleading with him.

“Tug! It’s cool! Everything is cool! Drive slowly out of here and let me in! I know it was an accident. Let me in!”

Tug didn’t move and didn’t respond.

“TUG! You fucker! Please! PLEASE! Tug, please don’t do this!”

Tug remembered how he had pleaded with Mike and Jim millions of times not to do something mean to him. Ever since he could remember he was always pleading with them, and they never once were nice to him. He would beg them to let him go along on a date or a ride to the mall or a party—they never let him go. They would tell him how girls hated him and that no one would hang around with them if he were along. But the worst time had been in their teens, when the brothers promised to take him camping. With that memory, he made sure the stick was on the
R
, and he then floored the truck.

Through the windshield, he saw a tornado of dirt in the headlights and the body of his cousin fly off the roof and in front of the truck. Tug stopped. The dust was clearing away, and then he saw his cousin down the road, trying to run by hopping on one leg. He pulled the stick to
D
and gave the truck gas. Mike tried to get off the road but fell. As he struggled to stand, Tug hit him, but not too hard. He didn’t want to kill him, just fuck him up so the dead could catch up. Tug backed the truck up, and a couple of thumps on the tailgate told him they had. He stopped to watch.

Some of the dead were looking in the windows at him, but the truck was kind of high up, and he could see over their heads and had a clear view over the hood. Several kept walking toward Mike, who was struggling to get to a standing position using only one arm. He got part of the way up but collapsed. As a handful of corpses shambled into the light from Tug’s truck, Mike started screaming. His screams turned to shrieks as the dead put their cold rough hands on him and sunk their cracked and jagged teeth into his flesh. Then all was quiet.

§

After sunup, Tug held a pool cue across his shoulders. His arms were up, his wrists resting on the cue, and he looked as if he had been crucified on the slim wooden pole. He stood spread-legged on the hood of his truck, watching the army of dead following behind him. His stained T-shirt rode up, exposing a pale belly that hung over his belt by several inches. His pocked and unshaven face was a twist of odd mirth. Cruelty was behind virtually every one of Tug’s thoughts and actions, and Tug loved cruelty. Therefore he almost always had a look of odd mirth on his face.

Fuckers don’t quit
, he mused.

He wasn’t bright enough to figure out what made the dead follow. He’d figured out how they died pretty quickly, but that was only because he spent a lot of time and energy whaling away on them with the cue. Even his molasses-slow mind, dull as a lead pipe, picked up on the fact that a smashed skull made them stop trying to bite you.

He rubbed the knot on the back of his head, the dull pain reminding him how much he hated the asshole who’d stolen his bitch. He was going to rip that little Mexican apart. He smiled at the thought. Smiled at the prospect of beating that hooded prick down and making him watch when he celebrated the Day of the Dead with that spic whore. He sat-slid off the hood of the truck and walked back to the advancing horde.

He loved this part of the apocalypse. He couldn’t get enough of it. He had to stop his truck every so often and have some fun. He hadn’t been able to release all of his black hatred before now. He was used to letting little bits of the black hate seep out when no one was looking. He had to live in the shadows and come out to play at safe moments, like when he was able to clip a hitchhiker with his big truck bumper, sending them crumpled and rolling into a ditch, or when he could sideswipe a bike rider and send them into a tree or over a drop, or walk a drunk chick to his truck and drive her into the woods.

He swung hard at the first shitbag, a suit-wearing prick who probably stole money for a living. His aim was off, and his mighty cue connected with the dude’s jaw instead of the side of his head. The jaw went spinning into the air, and the guy’s tongue dropped out of his mouth hole. Tug guffawed.

“Whoa! Ha, ha. You bastard, get over here!” He swung again. The head caved in, and the guy dropped.

He took a few steps over to some old bitch shuffling along in her bathrobe. Her long nasty titties made Tug shudder. She looked like his granny when he used to watch her bathe from the bathroom closet. Oh, how he got beat when she found him. She didn’t even get dressed, just pulled Tug’s pants down and pushed him over her knee. He remembered how aroused he was, his little Tug pressed on granny’s short and curlies as she beat his ass to a pulp.

Then there was a black woman, a big welfare hog. He hoped his cue could get through her thick skull. He always hit the black ones a little harder, scared his cue might not crack their heads. His grandpa used to tell him stories of how thick the darkies’ skulls were.

There were several brown ones, Mexicans who took any job Tug could do, women who rebuffed his advances even though they were only spics, and drug dealers, and thieves.

There were Asians; he hated them too. He didn’t have his list of reasons as fleshed out as he did for the blacks and browns, but he enjoyed cue-hammering their heads just as much.

There were lots of white folks too, men in suits who thought they were better than him, fancy women who wouldn’t even look at Tug on the street.

“Look at me now, bitch!” Tug yelled as he came straight down on the head of a woman in a dress that looked like a man’s suit. Her skull caved in; she dropped. A few teeth clicked on the pavement. That was hard to do, get the teeth to leave the skull and click on the ground.

Sometimes, when he had a second, he would step down on their heads to feel the bones snap and pop under his foot.

And on and on. He must have taken down almost a hundred before his arms got tired. For a minute, he tried to have fun with his feet. He kicked a fat lady in the gut and watched as she fell and tried to get back up. God he loved the apocalypse! Then he saw a kid! A little skinny brown kid. He had enough for one more swing.

“Go home!” he yelled with a sneer and a chuckle as he brought the cue down on top of the kid’s head. He was tired of the skull game and walked back to his truck. The dead fuckers were getting too thick to deal with. Oh well, he also loved backing over them, running them down—there were a million toys in the world and a million things he could do with them.

He started his truck and took a long swig of warm beer from a can. He had several cases stacked in the passenger seat. He belched and drove on. He wanted to find that prick. He had to keep going. The old man had told him his name was Cooper and he was heading to San Jose, right before Tug blew his head clean off his shoulders. Well, not clean. There was about half of it left, the bottom half.

His truck seemed to eat gas. He found himself stopping at stations often. He had to drive across fields of dirt and golf courses sometimes, just to get to them. The nighttime was the worst. He had to drive across rough terrain in the dark to get to another road. But he kept on moving. It was only a matter of time before he caught the dude, and when he did, he would beat his arms and legs till the bones were shattered like glass.

He drove on and on, stopping to play when he felt like it. He was starting to feel like he wanted to stop looking for the guy who’d hit him and do something else. But then a short time later he spotted the guy as he was walking into a neighborhood right off the highway. Tug would have missed him if he’d come even a few seconds later.

He couldn’t see where he went, but the dude was on foot, so Tug drove farther down the highway and hid his truck behind the brick wall that surrounded the houses. He went into the development at the far end, planning to either head him off or find where he was holed up for the night. He thought he caught the prick when he saw someone walk past a window in one of the houses. He opened the door and snuck in after him but was confronted by three dead fucks. He used the cue and took them out. He went to the door, and there were a ton of the bastards coming for him. He closed the door and went upstairs. He looked around; there was nothing to steal so he looked out the windows. Shitbags everywhere, and it was dark. He was tired, so he lay on a bed and fell asleep.

The sound of glass shattering woke Tug. As slow as molasses his mind turned on, coming back from the dark place he went when he slept. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, and then remembered he’d heard glass breaking and rolled off the bed. He shuffled to the window.

There were hundreds of the dead bastards out there surrounding him. More than last night and even more walking toward him! As he looked around, wondering how he was going to get out of the house, he saw the dude walking down the highway, on his way. It must have been him that shattered that glass to draw all the dead and trap him. Tug hated people who outsmarted him, which was why he hated most people. He had to wait for the dead to leave, and they just wouldn’t.