The Failed Coward (37 page)

*****

Baked is the term. Stoned also applies, as does blazed, toe-up, lit, and many, many more clever phrases. Zach and Ryan pulled into the parking lot of the small strip mall The Golden Palace was located in, barely able to park the truck. Zach’s best effort resulted in half the truck’s tires sitting inside the handicapped parking spot at the front of the lot. In all honesty, this wasn’t that far from what he could’ve achieved while straight up sober. 

The two young men, one twenty, one nineteen, fell out of the large SUV giggling and goofing on one another. As they started to walk from the truck, Zach’s phone “blew up” with the sounds of DMX warning those listening that he was about to “act a fool up in here.” Zach stopped and leaned on the hood of the car and attempted to clear his head to do business. The Kush he and Ryan had just smoked was the good shit, and it gave him a high that felt more like he’d taken a handful of Klonopin. Which incidentally he could procure for someone on short order if needed.

“Z-Mac here what up foo?” Zach asked the caller.

“Hi Zach, it’s Kimmy, are you busy?” Kimmy was clearly worried about something.

Zach was stoned, and an emotional moron. He did not pick up on that fact. “Yeah I’m getting food girl. You need a bag or something? Wanna get cross faded later or sumpin?” Zach leaned heavily on the front grill of the truck as Ryan rolled his eyes at him. Bitches always got in the way.

“Um, no. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You’re okay right?” Kimmy was clearly distressed.

Zach was irritated, and an asshole. “Yo bitch I’m not okay, I’m fiiiiiine.” He and Ryan burst into their stereotypical stoner laughter over one of thug history’s lamest jokes.

“Well, my family is leaving to go north to our summer home on the lake because of all the stuff that’s happening, and what the news is showing. We’re leaving now. I just wanted to see if you would come?” Kimmy’s tone could not have conveyed more worry. She was nearly crying and her voice cracked multiple times.

Zach was mentally handicapped. “What shit on the news yo? DEA up in town? MS13 running up on my shit again? Is Zachary McDonald gonna hafta bus a cap in someone AGAIN!?” His demeanor shifted from pleasantly stoned moron to posturing wannabe tough guy moron. He hiked up the front of his wife beater shirt in typical gangsta fashion, revealing where a pistol should have been, were he actually a gangsta, and not just a small town drug dealer that had a trust fund from his grampy who was a stock broker from Greenwich.

Kimmy’s voice finally cracked entirely, and she let slip a small sob. Kimmy had been dealing with a little bit of a crush on Zach since he was a senior twice. She’d always bought his weed not because it was the best in town, but because she was secretly hoping one day he’d fall in love with her. She could change him, she knew it. Now it might be too late for that.

“Oh Zach, there are people dying EVERYWHERE. Crazy people biting each other, and soldiers in the streets, and martial law in the cities and everything, it’s so scary and I just don’t want you to get hurt… My mom and dad say you can come with us north. There’s room for you and everything. Please go? Please?” She sold it with every ounce of her being.

By that point Zach had put the call on speaker and the two assholes hovered over it, listening anxiously. When she finished, the two small time crooks looked up at each other, and burst out in snorting belly laughter.

“Hah hoe! We ain’t scurred of nuffin! Bring da soldiers on! We be selling them chronic too muthafuckas!” Ryan attempted in his best possible fashion to sound as intimidating as possible. Ryan and Zach exchanged a blown up brofist in celebration. From the curb twenty feet away a middle aged lady pushing a baby cart choked down a retch at their lunacy.

“Yeah yo Kimmy, We be fine. Gonna get us some dumplings, and some Lo Mein and shit, and head back to the crib and get blazed all night you know? We got like Call of Duty and shit to do. Y’all have fun and shit at the lake and stuff baby.” That’s how Zach always did it. Sealed the deal with the baby. Sophomores always fell for the “baby.”

Kimmy choked back some tears, “Okay, be safe, don’t let them bite you.”

Zach and Ryan snorted at her idiocy.

“Yeah you too yo. See you on Friday and shit, party at my apartment yo.” Zach blew her a wet sounding kiss and hung up on her.

“Bitches yo,” Ryan said sadly.

“Yeah yo. Bitches.”

*****

“Ho Kim muthafuckah!” Zach threw up some random mishmash of fingers at the Asian man behind the counter in an attempt at forming some strange east coast/west coast gang sign. The middle aged man shook his head in disgust.

“My name is Alan, thanks. What can I get for you two gentlemen today?” Alan grabbed the small order pad and a pen off the glass countertop. He perked an eyebrow in anticipation of the two idiots’ order.

Zach and Ryan leaned in close to one another, nearly smacking their temples into one another. In hushed tones they pointed at the menu mounted on the wall above Alan’s head. After nearly five minutes of heated debate, Zach stepped forward to place the order. “Alright yo, I need two orders of dumplings, two house style Lo Meins, one Szechhuan chicken, an order of crab rangoons, an orange chicken, two egg rolls, a pork fried rice, and some of that stuff I used to eat all the time back in the day… you know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout right son?” Zach winked at the man taking his order as he handed him the cash for the food.

“Lead paint chips?” Alan said flatly back to him as he took the cash.

“Naw man, pussy! Ain’t you seen that movie?” Zach and Ryan busted out laughing yet again. Another epic brofist signaled the importance of the joke.

Alan stared at them. After a long moment of awkward silence, he ripped the order off, handed Zach his change, and walked away to the kitchen to give it to the cooks.

“How about a scorpion bowl while we wait!?” Ryan hollered out to him.

“Nope,” Alan said, not missing a beat. He walked through the swinging double doors and into the kitchen.

“It’s assholes like him that made us invade Toshiba. My grandfather died there putting that famous flag up. He died for our freedom man.” Zach shook his head in disgust.

Ryan nodded solemnly in agreement, and the two men sat down alone in the restaurant to watch the news on the television mounted on the wall.

*****

Fifteen minutes of blank, drug inhibited stares at the news channel led to the two men not realizing that the world was crumbling outside. 

Zach did manage to point out that the news woman had “fly tits” three times, which does indicate that he was capable of noticing some things. Ryan was only able to point out how “sick” the special effects were on that movie trailer.

The movie trailer he was referring to was actually the live footage from Athens Greece earlier that day. A security camera mounted on a building near the Greek capital caught video of a few dozen men running at top speed through traffic in the congested city. The small European cars darted to and fro, trying to miss the panicked men as they ran for their life from an unseen menace.

Moments into the grainy, black and white footage more shambling figures came into the frame, reaching out blindly, staggering directly into the path of the frantic vehicles. The camera caught a vaguely feral expression on their darkly stained faces. Ryan pointed out that they looked like; “those old school zombies from that movie yo.” 

One small car couldn’t make a swerve in time, and took one of the shambling zombies out at the knees, sending it up and over the hood, then straight through the windshield. The tiny car veered directly into the door of another car, smashing it sideways and into a row of parked vehicles.

The newswoman with “fly tits” informed the watchers capable of paying attention that they were fast forwarding the video a minute or so, where the camera caught unnatural motion inside the crashed vehicles. One of the drivers climbed out of the smashed door and dragged their shattered body slowly back out into the traffic that was attempting to give the crash a wide berth. Another car sped through the accident scene, and with a silent thump, sped over the body of the crawling driver.

After stopping its dreadful crawling for a moment, impossibly it began to move further, heading directly at the camera, in the direction the men had been running moments earlier.

Had Ryan and Zach been able to clear the haze of the Kush out of their fried brains, they would’ve heard Ms. Fly Tits going over how the dead were returning to life, and how they only seemed interested in destroying the living.

By then the two cooks and Alan the counter man had assembled in the restaurant with the two stoned gangsta wannabes. They watched with their mouths agape as the footage rolled on and on, revealing nothing but horror across the globe. Before the network cut to commercial, they were rolling gory and deadly hand shot video from the east coast, not too far away. Just a few scant hours’ drive away. 

In unison the two cooks exchanged worried glances, and untied their food stained aprons. They balled them up and tossed them over their shoulder. Alan nodded in agreement at his coworkers and went to the counter where he popped the register open, dug out all the cash, and retrieved a small automatic handgun from under the counter.

The cooks grabbed their small collection of personal items from a locker just inside the kitchen doors, and they walked directly past the two idiots who were still discussing the overall quality of the movie trailer they were watching.

The cooks left the front door with a ding of the bell as Alan stopped to evaluate his moron customers. Neither of the men had realized the entire restaurant staff had exited right in front of their eyes. He heard one of them compare the video of a woman getting attacked in Krakow Poland to a moment in the video game Left 4 Dead. 

Alan sighed softly, let himself out of the store, and locked the door behind him.

Fifteen minutes later, when their conversation regarding whether or not they’d fuck the newswoman with “fly tits” in the mouth or ass first ended, Zach stopped suddenly, and stood up. He looked slowly left to the kitchen, then slowly right to the counter before looking down at Ryan, sitting in the chair beside him.

“Yo where the fuck is our food?” He asked loudly enough to offend anyone still working or eating in The Golden Palace.

No one replied.

Ryan stood up beside him and adjusted his cockeyed Falcons hat rapidly, surely indicating to anyone observing that shit was “about to get real.”

“Shit yo, they left us.” Zach hit Ryan in the chest, obviously excited at being left alone in a Chinese restaurant.

“Awwwww yeeaaaaaahhh son!” Ryan bounced up and down excitedly, and the two men took off running through the double doors into the kitchen, where their food was just about to start burning.

*****

“Holy shit yo, this is dank chink food homie.” Ryan exclaimed around a mouthful of greasy Lo Mein. 

“Shhh nigga. They have cameras here, don’t be racist and shit.” Zach glared at Ryan. Ryan’s response was to slowly chew the noodles like a confused cow working a cud. He carefully lifted his homemade scorpion bowl and after finding the red straw with his searching, wagging tongue, took a long drag from the alcoholic tub.

The two young men were “fat as fuck.” Once they realized Alan and the two cooks were not coming back, they turned the sign in the door of The Golden Palace to closed, and they dug out the cook books to make more food.

About ten minutes into the cooking process they realized all the cookbooks were in some form of “gook sign language” that looked a lot like Zach’s chest tattoo. Unfortunately, neither of them knew sign language, and they resorted to mixing various items in a wok once they’d eaten all the food the cooks had prepared for them earlier.

The news channel was obviously glitched up when it started to get dark outside. Zach and Ryan were sick and tired of seeing the zombie movie trailer over and over again, so they changed the channel to MTV and absorbed some real entertainment; The Jersey Shore.

They ate every ounce of the food the cooks made plus their wok concoction before the cable went out. Sitting in the neon lights of the empty and still restaurant with the last rays of the fading sun peeking through the large panes of glass the two men were at a loss of what to do next.

They were full. In fact, both men reported to one in another in great detail that they were indeed “full as fuck.” Cooking more food didn’t seem like a solution for their boredom.

“You got more Kush?” Ryan asked Zach, spread eagled on the floor.

Zach sat up on top of the table that he had been lying on just a moment before. “No man, but I got sour diesel like a motherfucka.”

“Go get that shit! Let’s smoke it in here man, they ain’t coming back. How fat would it be to say we got toe up in The Golden Palace?!” Ryan’s enthusiasm for the idea was only contained by the bowling ball sized lump in his belly. He looked about five months pregnant, perhaps six.

“Yeah yeah boi!” With extreme effort Zach slid off the table and shuffled to the door. He searched his enormous jean pockets for the keys, and once he was satisfied that he did indeed have the keys, he pushed the plunger bar and walked out into the warm summer evening.

Zach rubbed his belly and felt slightly remorseful over eating all the food. He knew tomorrow he’d be pissed because leftover Chinese was his favorite, and there was nothing leftover. He laughed at his and Ryan’s good fortune over the Chinese people leaving. He still couldn’t figure out why they’d just leave them behind in the restaurant. 

Zach dropped his keys on the ground in front of him. His liquor addled brain swam back and forth as he assessed the depth of a bend required to pick up the exceedingly important item. Once he was satisfied with the distance, he abruptly doubled over to grab the keys, and face planted into blackness in the middle of the empty parking lot.

*****

“Mothafucka wake up!” Ryan poked his head out of the restaurant’s large glass door. He couldn’t leave. He knew the door would lock behind them, and shut them out for good. One of Ryan’s few lucid moments.