The road aside

Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations

Chapter 1 - Driving

"Yes!" he said out loud as he flicked the wheel to the side, forcing the car into a long, tire burning, squealing slide.
"The crap I care about you, Tomias. I don't care about you or your damn car."
And to emphasize that thought he mashed down on the throttle, straightening the wheel and accelerating out of the corner, eating up more of the tires.
Jean was sick and tired of all the jeering and gesturing that he'd endured throughout his brief stay at the academy.
Now, he was going home, and Tomias, his chief bully, had supplied him the transport.
Well, okay, not willingly or knowingly given. But that was all part of the righteousness of it. That and the ticket he'd swiped.
A ticket for one at the New Orleans dance factory.
"Nice!" Jean mentally patted himself on the back for the inspiration and presence of mind in grabbing the slip of paper as he'd pocketed the keys to Tomias's prized 'vette.
Jean downshifted a gear, watching the tachometer bounce up a notch, forcing the engine to scream.
"Yeah, burn that oil, bitch!" He pumped a fist into the air, the soft top of the convertible indenting as he punched into it.
The front of the car nosed up slightly as he gave it more gas; the long blue-black hood reflected the sun and just looked cool.
The scent of oiled and treated leather from the immaculate seats just added to everything.
Taking the car was an act of universal genius.
That was when he noticed the giant pothole right in the middle of the road.
And he was already going way too fast.
"Oh sh--" the thought flashed through his head as he tried to maneuver the suddenly fishtailing sports car.
He stomped on the brakes instinctively, twisting the wheel, trying to avoid an early end to the trip. To no avail.
It was almost like the pothole wanted him to hit it. Needed it.
Because nothing he was doing was helping. At all.
And hit it he did. The car slammed into the break in the tarmac and launched up the other side, rolling as it did.
Upside down, Jean had time somehow to contemplate the humor of his situation.
Stolen the ride, to get revenge on the asses at the school and both car and road were conspiring to punish him - for the theft?
He could see them now.
Ms. Marietta the head mistress in her too tight, don't look at me dresses, just itching to put him in detention for some obscure policy infraction.
Luke his other bully laughing at his inability to do algebra - and drive.
And, of course Elois, Tomias's girlfriend. Teasing him without even looking at him.
Smiling vacantly at that bandit Tomias as she rubbed her flat cheerleader belly.
"Mom and Dad are gonna totally kill me if I don't die right now."
His thoughts zoomed in on his mother scowling at him from the corner of some room.
His father also, with pursed lips looking to see what new error he'd made.
"I'm gonna die and they are gonna be totally pissed. They don't even know. I haven't told them. This is just - "
The world went black as the car, upside down, crunched into the stony dirt scrub that ran along the winding cemetery road.
It slid, spinning like a top, balanced somehow on the metal of the roof supports, throwing up a dust cloud.
The carcass of the car slammed into a gravestone, demolishing it and hurling Jean's body out of the vehicle to land flopping into a freshly dug grave.
Disturbed by the arriving body, the mound of dirt beside the grave tumbled slowly into it, partially covering Jean's torso.

***
"And that was how great grand pappy met his fate".
Little Susie snapped her notebook shut and stood up sharply, bringing to a close her turn at show and tell.
The class facing her was quiet, they had been entirely enraptured by Susie's story telling. Most of the dozen or so students were leaned forward in their seats, elbows propped, the very picture of concentration.

Alika, sitting in the back next to the window raised her hand.
"But if Jean died, how are you here?"
Alika was one of those unreasonably sharp students who always found the crack in logic. Always willing to shine a light on it too.
"I mean, shouldn't you like, not exist... Suse?"
Suse was Susie's informal name. Not an unusual contraction, but it fully irritated Susie.
"I'm here because mom had me anyhow. That's why."
Susie said, sticking her tongue out at the same time.
"You big dummy"
Susie thought, right after her pronouncement.
"Oh, but I thought Jean was just in school."
"Wait, who was your great grandma?"
"Ohhh, was your grandma Elois!?"
"That makes total sense now."

Alika had just connected every single dot and arrived correctly at the conclusion.
"So that's why Jean was so angry right?"
"Cause his girlfriend ditched him!!"
Alika was unrelenting in her logic, and it struck home exactly like a guided missile.

"That's not a great line of questioning Alika."
"We talked about this with you and your parents last semester."

The classroom was run by Mrs. Sakalov, a delightfully rotund woman.
The glasses, perched cheerfully on her face, were at odds slightly with her hair, which was pinned back in a severe bun.
She smiled grimly as she knocked Alika down a peg.
"Niceness is as niceness does."
She was fond of little sayings, using them as a reinforcement to whatever commandment she issued.

Susie was pleased of course by the allegiance shown by Mrs. Sakalov and demonstrated it by thumbing her nose at Alika.
"Yeah, so there!"
Susie flounced back to her seat.

"Can I go next please Mrs. Sakalov?"
Alika raised her hand as she asked to tell her story.
"Absolutely Alika, what is your essay about again?"
Mrs. Sakalov narrowed her eyes and tilted her head as she spoke. The glasses slid off her nose at the move and she raised one portly hand to push them back into place.
"Oh god, what is Alika going to present this time - probably some damned zombie adventure"

Willa, which was Mrs. Sakalov's given name couldn't help the sudden sharp spike of acid as the thought wedged itself in her mind.

"It is about that time my daddy survived the zombie apocalypse, Mrs. Sakalov".
Alika looked entirely serious as she spoke, beginning to stand from her seat.
Willa pursed her lips as she looked at Alika.
"Just like I thought."
Willa almost said the words out loud but restrained herself instead gesturing Alika forward to the podium.

Chapter 2 - Zombies

Alika walked up to the podium gripping her notebook in both hands tightly as if something wild was bound in its pages.
She pivoted at the stage with precision, turning to face the students, her back to Mrs. Sakalov.

"Let's hurry up with the story now, Alika."
Alika couldn't see the brief scowl that crossed Willa's face as she urged her student on, but she could feel it.
"You of little faith," Alika intoned.

She slowly opened her notebook, pretending to flick away some mote of dirt or dust as she said the words head tilted sideways slightly addressing her teacher just as much as she was the class.

"This is the true tale of my own father's twin that got him arrested during the zombie apocalypse."
The class sat back at that. The thoughts going through their heads written neatly on their little faces.
"This is gonna be boring," They were clearly thinking.
Alika looked back at them, raising her chin slightly and flaring her nostrils.
"He got arrested because he killed his twin."
She paused, scrutinizing her audience for disbelief.
"Well, didn't kill him, more like re-killed him."
Mrs. Sakalov sighed to herself resignedly, looking at the clock mounted on the back wall of the classroom, just above the door.
"Oh god, I'm gonna need serious therapy one of these days," She thought.
She stared at the door longingly wishing she could just run through it wild and free.
With a jerk of her head, she brought herself back to the moment, just in time to hear Alika's theatrical opening line.
"BOOM!"
Alika stamped her foot as she said it.
"BOOM BOOM!!"
"It had grabbed papa by the waist, but papa was strong back then and just punched it really good a couple of times straight to the head."
"Down it went, but as it went down it clawed papa's shirt halfway off."
Alika curled her fingers and pawed her hand through the air as she read the story.
"It was papa's favorite shirt that his mom had just washed the day before!"
Alika opened her eyes wide, in a convincing mimicry of shock.
"You dirty ba..!"
James looked down at his shirt, shredded from one pocket all the way down to the hem.
He'd been walking to his new job as head janitor at the motorcycle assembly plant across from the old church when some nut had stumbled up from the side of the road and attacked him.
He'd only gotten back into town a week ago, and nobody but his new boss knew he was here.
So, who the hell would want to attack him.
That crap was not going to fly at all.
Destroying his shirt, that his mama had washed for him?
No sir.
He stamped hard on the fallen body, squishing his foot right into its chest.
Whoever it was did not gasp or react, just started pawing up at James's leg.
Its face turned up as it pawed and James was finally able to see his adversary's face.
The eyes were missing entirely, replaced by dry, crinkled hollows.
One of the ears was gone and the mouth, open was a horror of broken and blackened teeth.
James could see right through that open mouth and the dusty tarmac beneath the head.
No way anyone with these kinds of injuries was walking around.
Much less attacking anyone else.
Despite the ruin of its face, James felt a twinge of recognition.
He recoiled from the body, his anger momentarily replaced by astonishment.
"Michael?"
"Is that you Michael?"
"What the hell happened to you?"
The downed body ceased its pawing and sprang back up, the clothing on its torso sloughing off and dropping to the ground behind it.
It charged.
And James spun around and executed a perfect axe kick directly into the things head snapping it back and stumbling it to the ground.
The dry, wooden crack as the body landed awkwardly on its head suggested something critical had given way.
The feeble movement of its legs and then slow stillness made it clear that the thing was done.
"It is you Michael, I'd know that face anywhere."
"What the hell?"
James rolled the corpse over to look again at the face.
The smell that wafted up was awful, reminding James of that time the toilet overflowed at the train station.
No doubt about it.
It was Michael.
Because that was his own face he could see, only utterly ruined.
And only Michael his twin brother shared his face.
Just then, the winking lights of a police cruiser, accompanied by its wailing siren, assaulted James's senses.
"Stop right there!"
"Hands on your head!"
Trooper Van, who had been called by dispatch less than an hour ago about some hoodlums assaulting grave sites at the town cemetery arrived just in time to see a guy in jeans and a starched red, checkered shirt duking it out with another, half clothed similar sized dude.
"The drug problem in this town is getting out of control!" he thought to himself with swelling annoyance.
Trooper Van stepped out of his vehicle with his gun up and mouth to the megaphone.
With the super reflective Ray Be Gones hiding his eyes, Van thought he looked just like the super cop he was sure he was.
Or could be.
The pencil mustache added to the super cop feel and Van knew he was going to dominate just like his movie star idol from Mad Madness Cop 3.
"Get down on the ground. NOW!"
Trooper Van screamed it through the megaphone and waved the gun for emphasis.
Waving the gun may not have been a great move because it bumped into his cruiser's door and discharged.
The round spanked off the ground at James' feet, slicing through the unmoving corpse as it did.
"Dammit, not again!" Van thought as he fumbled the gun back into its holster.
"I said get on the ground!"
Van pointed his gloved hand at James and threw the megaphone back into his cruiser.
James knew better than to argue with trigger happy lawmen and was already lying prone on the tarmac, hands placed atop his head.
Trooper Van slowly approached, stopping at the corpse as he readied his hand cuffs.
The corpse looked just like the perp, but missing its eyes and an ear.
Plus it stank.
The stench reminded Van of that epic toilet overflow last summer at the train station.
"You fightin' your bro here kid?"
Trooper Van squatted heavily onto his haunches, balancing himself with one hand on the corpse as he addressed James.
Van tipped his Ray Be Gones down slightly to look at James over the mirrored lenses.
His eyes, just visible above the glasses, looked the question at James.
The squat and question were just like Tinhorn, the main character in Mad Madness Cop 3 would have done.
The glasses tip was a pure Van addition.
The squat, though a cool move, also exposed his shockingly untanned ass crack as his shirt escaped the confines of the too-tight-pants.
That spoiled the scene, and Van hooked his pants back up gripping his belt tightly as he did.
The maneuver was a bit awkward, but he'd had plenty of practice at it in the handful of years after his fortieth birthday.
"I'm saving the world here."
Van thought as he started to slip the cuffs onto James' wrists.

***

"Daddy got arrested right then and there and put in jail."
"He spent the whole week in jail and that's how come he lived through the zombie apocalypse."
"The end."
Alika closed her notebook gently at that and started to make her way back to her seat.
Willa sighed softly to herself, her earlier thought slowly unwedging from her mind.
"Not quite as bad as last time."
"At least the zombies weren't eating the cats and goldfish."
The thought of the last presentation made Willa shudder slightly.
"Thank you Alika," Mrs. Sakalov said.
"Now class, we don't have enough time for any more stories, so we will pick up again tomorrow."
Some of the kids looked glum.
"But, Mrs. Sakalov, i wanted to tell my story too!"
One of the boys thrust up his hand as he spoke.
"My story would've been way better than that zombie story!"
"Way waay better!"
He nodded quickly, agreeing with himself.
His desk buddy nodded vigorously too.
"Yeah way better, cause it was about our Dad who is a fire fighter on Mars."
The first boy kicked the second, his brother, in the shin.
"What? It's about Dad and he would want everyone to know and like it's a cool story!"

Bang!

Willa slapped her hand on her desk and stared down the kids, her smile slipping about her face.
"Ok kids, we are done for the day and it is pickup time, so please get your things and get in the bus line!"
The room erupted into a whirlwind of kids grabbing backpacks and stuffing pencils and papers into them.
"That was a pretty cool story Alika!"
Charles, one of the Mars boys, had sidled up to Alika and was offering his opinion to her.
He secretly thought that Alika was partially alien, and he had decided that he better pay fealty early and often.
Alika just ignored him, shouldered her backpack and exited the room headed to the bus line.
The rest of the class poured out of the room following Alika's lead.

Watching the classroom empty, Willa felt a bit of relief and she patted the bun on her head as if to reward herself for her perseverance.
She sat momentarily at her desk and then got up and started wiping down the blackboard.
Her back turned to the door, she did not notice when the headmaster, Mr. Jeffrey Jeffries walked in.
He coughed briskly to let her know he was in the room, and Willa spun around, hand to the frame of her glasses as they threatened to depart her face.
"Oh, I didn't notice you come in sir, did one of the kids leave something behind?"
Willa felt a sharp spike of irritation.
What she truly wanted to say was more like "Did one of those *unholy terrors* leave something behind?"
"No no, Willa, nothing like that - listen, a whole bunch of us are going to the bar in a few minutes - you in?"
Jeffrey examined the handprints on the wall as he asked.
Willa for her part could not think of anything worse than going to a bar with her coworkers.
What she wanted to do was get herself home, draw a hot bath and throw back a good mixed drink.
A vodka tonic. Hold the tonic. Add more vodka. Maybe just gimme the bottle.
"No, I have a bit of work to do at home."
Willa demurred.
"You know, Tony's going too."
Jeffries glanced at her as he said it.
"Tony?"
Willa asked, a bit too loudly.
"Yes, actually I think he and Ms. Lagrange already took off."
"Hmm." Willa thought. "Hmm - Tony will probably buy us all drinks, he's got those deep pockets after all."
"Umm, yeah sure, I'll go - let me finish wiping the board down and meet in the carpool in about five minutes?"
"Good call there Willa!"
Jeffries turned to walk out the door.
"Vampire Alley Bar, right Mr. Jeffries?"
"Come on Willa, you know that's the only bar still open in town since the incident!"
Jeffrey Jeffries thrust his hands into his pockets and walked out the door, his suit jacket flapping slightly behind him as he did.
Willa turned back to the board and finished wiping it down with a bit more energy than she'd felt a moment ago.
She had to stand on tip toe to get to the top of the board and wipe it down.
As she stretched up, she noticed the words at the top of the board.
They were etched in somehow and no matter how much she rubbed, they would not clean off.
After a few moments of scrubbing at the words, she gave up and threw the cloth that she had been using into one of the drawers in her desk.
Hurrying down the short flight of steps at the side of the school building, Willa spotted the rest of the teachers already seated in Jeffries min van.
The burble of voices coming from the open sliding doors sounded impatient.
"Come on Willa, we're gonna be late."
One of the other teachers, a short statured, short haired and over muscled woman said.
She had a husky voice, and she was usually last to say anything.
This had always bothered Willa as the woman reminded her of her own sister, whom she thoroughly despised.
The fact that both Jeanette and her sister Bella were librarians probably played a role in her general distaste.
Willa secretly hated books.
She found the smell of paper somewhat nauseating.
"Oh, I'm so sorry I'm late, I had to clean the board and one of the kids must have used a sharpie!"
Willa's offered excuse seemed to have worked, because Jeanette moved aside a bit and offered Willa a seat in the middle row of the van.
Doors closing, Mr. Jeffries put the vehicle in gear and started the van down the road to the bar.

Chapter 3 - The bar

Mr. Jeffries' minivan pulled up to the bar, rattling into the parking lot through the arched gateway as the sun began to dip behind Mt Darvin to the west.
The trees planted all about cast various long shadows, a few of them lapping at the two-story building occupying the center of the lot.
The lights flickering above the building, amongst the riot of metal antennae and satellite dishes spelled out the name of the place.
Val Ampyr Alley.
The owner of the bar, Valiya Ampyr, was a powerful Iranian woman who owned several consulting companies.
Her husband had purchased the bar for his wife several years ago as a token of his affection.
She never visited the place and rumor said that she never visited him, either.
Sliding the door open, Willa was first out of the minivan.
She paused to look up at the setting sun as its mini death colored over the sky in amazing hues of reds and blues.
"God, I can't wait for that drink," she thought to herself as she admired the scene, spotting Tony's pickup truck parked diagonally across two parking spots.
Meanwhile, the crowd of teachers debarked the minivan and were all trooping into the bar.
Willa followed them, pushing through the saloon doors and stepping onto the sawdust floor.
"Ahoy mates!"
Tony's voice trumpeted over the rumbling din in the bar.
Willa and her group all looked over at the source of the cry, a large balding man of African descent waving at them from his seat in a large booth.
The woman in the booth with him scowled up at the group as Tony waved.
She flipped back her hair, ostentatiously long red fingernails reflecting the dim light in the place.
"Ahoy Willa, my dear!"
Tony singled Willa out of the group with the greeting.
As he did so, he slid out of the booth and navigated his way to the bar, weaving between the patrons who were standing about the place.
"Barkeepa!"
Tony had a distinct Nigerian accent that he took great pride in deploying to get attention.
"Can we have beers at that booth there?" Tony gestured back towards the booth with the red-nailed woman.
Each word came out as a capitalization.
Over emphasized, as if he was not entirely sure of the language.
"How many?" The barkeep's voice was easily audible despite the din.
"Umm, six. No five!"
"I beg, make am quick now!"
Tony turned from the bar to watch the group gather at the booth and arrange themselves into seats.
The red-nailed woman, initially unhappy to see the group, was now deeply engrossed in conversation with the librarian and Mr. Jeffries.
"Drink'll be right over in a moment, sir."
Again, the barkeep's voice sliced through the din, and Tony hurried back to the group.
He arrived just as Willa was squeezing herself into the booth, primly crossing her ankles as she sat.
The booth's capacity, exceeded by the five seated adults, Tony dragged over a chair and set himself up at the end of the booth.
"I am so glad you all could make it, drinks are on me!"
Tony made the pronouncement as he looked directly at Willa, whose mouth was suddenly agape in shocked appreciation.
Her shriek alerted Tony to the possibility that it was not gratitude that she was expressing.
Her upraised hand, fingers pointed behind him made Tony spin about in his chair.
Just in time to catch a beer bottle over his pate.
The moment froze and Tony slowly subsided to the floor.
And then, as if time restarted, the whole bar exploded into violent, chaotic action.