Billy sighed. “That’s fine. We don’t need flames on the sides.” His one true love, his pickup truck, with over-sized tires, raised suspension, and a ‘The Beast’ decal on the back window had gotten him laid more times than he could count in the past couple of years. Jenny was among the hottest he could remember, but easily the most stupid, and that was saying a lot. She was the kind of drama magnet you kept around to let everyone know who you were. Nothing too long term, just fun, but she happened to be the chick he was nailing when the dead started rising from the grave.
“But it doesn’t look cool!” Jenny sulked.
Billy and all his friends were truck guys who worked dead-end day jobs so they could pour every dime they earned into their beloved vehicles. They spent their nights trolling the streets, picking up girls who wanted a ride in a monster truck. Billy would have traded anything to be stuck in this undead hell with any one of his buddies instead of this simpleton, but they were all dead now. She had been nothing but a burden, a food-eating, water-drinking chatterbox, who simply could not stay quiet for more than thirty seconds at a time. As he hatched his survival plan, he had been obligated to include her, choosing bad company over no company in this endless nightmare. He often wondered if he had made the right choice.
“Speed bumps don’t care about cool, sweetheart.” Billy began piling pillows on top of Jenny. The term ‘speed bump’ had risen from his friend’s first encounter with the undead. It was something of a sick rush to run the undead down, and they had delighted in gruesome demolition derbies on the streets of San Diego. He had heard lots of terms for the undead in the last year, but he preferred ‘speed bump’ because it reminded him that, behind the wheel of The Beast, he was the powerful one. Outside that steel monstrosity, he was just as weak and pathetic as all the people he had seen get torn to shreds.
“But what if someone sees us?” Jenny replied. Even with the apocalypse swallowing the entire globe, Jenny simply lacked the capacity to think outside her very small world. She still read trashy celebrity gossip magazines that were months old, and flipped through style magazines commenting on how fat the stick-thin models were, and how awful their hair or makeup was. Normally accustomed to holding a dozen or more conversations on her cellular phone via text message and social networking, she had arrived at the conclusion that her friends were not talking to her out of jealousy. She was oblivious to the fact that digital communications had diminished and then stopped before the cellular networks went completely offline. Billy wondered if she could even comprehend that most of the people she knew were now dead and wandering about as animated corpses.
Billy stuffed the last pillow on top of Jenny, and slammed the passenger side door in her face a bit harder than he had intended. The unfinished flame she had painted with acrylic matte paint on the side of his truck stared back at him. While he designed and built a steel battering ram from an old snow plow that had been sitting in his garage, he needed to keep Jenny occupied long enough for him to zone out and focus on his work. She mentioned that she enjoyed art, so he had tasked her with the very important job of painting flames on this side of his vehicle. It killed him to watch her deface his gorgeous blue chrome paintjob with her crude painting skills, but it had worked. He had hatched and executed the first step in his master plan superbly without her disruption. A large ram now sat mounted on the front of his vehicle.
Without Jenny’s constant chattering, the moans and wails of the dead outside pierced the garage walls. For months, he and Jenny had slept on a grease-stained mattress in the corner, their personal effects scattered about haphazardly. There had been more than enough gasoline to power the generator during that time, but it had still been important to ration. Food was scarce, but he had gathered what he could before barricading himself within his workshop.
About two months ago, he had come to the conclusion that self-reliance was no longer an option. It was time to move to one of the Defensive Detention Centers that the government had set up. Supplies were running low, so he drove his monster truck through the ghoul-infested streets of San Diego to the nearest center.
That is where he met Queen Bitch. He glanced over to his workbench where the pamphlets she had given him lay. “Your Home is Your Castle” — a how-to on constructing barricades and obstacles to the undead, and “Meals for a King” — essentially a guide on rationing and water purification. At first glance, they contained the basic information anyone would need to survive on their own. In reality, their language and content had been carefully crafted to appeal to anyone with an independent streak. They did their intended job well, and placated an irate public turned away by the DDC doctors. His blood boiled. Billy knew when he had been played.
He remembered sitting in a waiting room after he had been inspected for bites, Dr. Kelly Damico across from him. She wore that smug superior look every smart bitch did when they saw a chance to screw over a guy like Billy.
“Your skills as a mechanic would be extremely valuable…” She had said raising his hopes for DDC access before dropping the hammer “but your background check indicates you have some sexual assault charges and… a couple DUIs… and drugs?”
“That’s bullshit!” he had screamed. It enraged him that he should be condemned to die outside a DDC for some pot, some beer, and some dumb bitches who didn’t know the price of a ride in his Beast.
Things escalated from there and armed guards had to escort him out. Jenny was already waiting for him, sucking on a lollipop that doctors would normally have given a child.
“Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do?” Billy had screamed in anger as they left.
As they drove away, he had made a point to drive down every ghoul that he could. That was when his plan was born — if the DDC wouldn’t open its doors, he’d just drive them down.
He climbed into the driver’s side of his truck and began layering pillows on top of himself in a way that balanced safety against his ability to drive. Smashing through a brick wall at forty miles an hour would be no picnic, but—with a little luck—the staff would be too preoccupied with the huge hole in the wall and hungry ghouls to notice he and Jenny simply blending away into the crowd of refugees. Every plan required a little luck to work, but—other than that—it was perfect.
“I’m hot!” Jenny whined.
“Here,” Billy handed her a small purple stuffed dog filled with beans.
“Yay!” She hugged the animal.
Billy looked over and a laugh burst from his lungs. Next to him sat a twenty-something woman, makeup caked on with an airbrush, press-on nails like purple sabers, covered in pillows with her face and arms peeking out, playing with a stuffed dog. The absurdity was too much.
“Don’t laugh at me!” Jenny scowled.
“You look so fucking stupid.” Billy continued laughing.
“Fuck you! Don’t call me stupid. See if you get any later.” Jenny threw the stuffed dog back at Billy and her arms disappeared into the mass of pillows.
Although he couldn’t see her, he knew she had her arms and legs crossed in anger. He had seen this look a number of times, particularly when she wanted to flaunt her most powerful weapon over him — denial of sex. The thought of her glowering made him laugh harder.
“I mean it! Your boy, Eddie, never laughed at me or called me stupid. Maybe I’ll go see what he’s up to,” Jenny threatened.