BT drove the knife blade into the metal. "Dammit!" BT yelled. "Blade snapped, gimme the bucket." BT's right arm was flailing about looking to grab the gas catcher.

"You said the blade broke, what do you need the bucket for?" Gary asked, even as he began to smell gas.

"It made a pencil-sized hole and it's starting to splash around my d.a.m.n face. Give me the bucket or I'm going to drag you down here with me."

Gary pushed the bucket under.

"This is going to take forever to fill, go see if you can find anything I can use to make this hole bigger.

From BT's vantage point, he could only see the bottom of Gary's legs and when they didn't move away, BT reiterated his request.

"He can't 'cause he gots a nine on his back."

BT started to scoot out from under the car when he heard the unfamiliar voice. "Cuz, I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Another voice said off to his left. "Man ain't chu a big un." Obviously referring to BT.

"Listen," BT said, "we're just trying to get some gas.

"See that's the problem...that's our car." The first voice said.

"See I told you it was a nice car," Gary said.

BT didn't think it mattered which car they had used, any of them would have been a problem with these two men.

"You and your old lady trying to leave our part of town without paying the proper respects?" the man next to Gary said.

"Cuz, you said 'old lady'." And the other one laughed.

"What's so funny? She is an old lady," Gary said to the one holding him at gunpoint.

The man with the gun could not have been much more than twenty, but the scar that ran down the side of his face and the haunted look in his eyes gave him the appearance of someone almost double his age. His partner-who appeared older-acted the younger of the two, taking all of his queues from the man with the 9mm.

BT had a good idea who they were dealing with. He hoped they were wannabe gang bangers as opposed to the real thing, or what remained of their lives wasn't going to be worth much more than the bucket that was filling with the gas.

"You're a funny f.u.c.k!" the younger man said, sticking the barrel of the pistol right up against Gary's cheek.

"Wait, wait, he didn't mean anything by it," BT said, wriggling out enough so that he could at least see the two men.

"Who the f.u.c.k told you to move!" the scarred man said, now thrusting his pistol down towards BT. "And why is your Uncle Tom a.s.s hanging with these two crackers to begin with?"

"Crackers?" Gary asked. "Is that another term for crazy? Because Mike probably was but I'm not."

"Shut the f.u.c.k up before I bust a cap in your a.s.s!" the man yelled.

Gary was about to ask what a cap was, but was headed off at the pa.s.s by BT.

"Relax," BT said, holding his hands out.

"Yo, who the f.u.c.k you telling to relax?" Scarred said.

"My...it is so hot here." Mrs. Deneaux was fanning herself with what looked like a road map. She approached slowly as if she didn't have a care in the world.

"Shortie, I might need to hit that," the man without the gun said.

"s.h.i.t, man, are you serious?" Scarred/Shortie answered. "Wings, that b.i.t.c.h has to be pushing two hundred."

"It's still the first thing I've seen with a p.u.s.s.y in two weeks," Wings said, grabbing his crotch and moving towards Mrs. Deneaux. "Yo, sweet thing, what chu up to?" Wings said getting up close to Mrs. Deneaux.

"Well aren't you just the sweetest thing," she said as she placed the barrel of her revolver up against Wing's forehead.

"Yo, you crazy b.i.t.c.h!" Wings yelled.

"Careful," Mrs. Deneaux said calmly, "you're likely to get my heart fluttering and I haven't taken my pills today. Who knows what could happen at that point, I might just blow your pretty head right from your shoulders."

Wings didn't move except to get his hands up.

"I'll kill your little b.i.t.c.h boyfriends," Shortie said, looking back to Mrs. Deneaux.

"See if I care," Deneaux said coolly.

"Are you for real?" Shortie asked.

"Help me, Shortie," Wings said as his sweat began to come in contact with the barrel of the pistol.

"Yes, help him, Shortie," Deneaux said. "This gun is getting dreadfully heavy. Maybe if I just shot a round it would be that much lighter.

"No, no, no," Wings stuttered.

Shortie pulled the hammer back on his 9 mm. "I ain't f.u.c.king around, b.i.t.c.h, get that piece off my boy's head or I'll kill this white boy."

"I also ain't f.u.c.king around, homeboy." Mrs. Deneaux smiled, it was difficult to tell if she was making fun of Shortie or truly did not know the appropriate slang; the former seemed more in her character. "Shoot him, he's the brother of the idiot that's wanted me dead for the last month. How much do you think I'm going to miss him?"

"Yo, this b.i.t.c.h is crazy!" Shortie said to the world, Gary nodded in agreement.

"But before you do shoot him, I just want you to know, I will kill, what was your name? Wings...how quaint. Gary will not have hit the ground by the time I put one in your friends head."

"Is this b.i.t.c.h for real?" Shortie asked BT.

"Unfortunately she is," BT said. "Let us get our gas and we'll get out of here."

"I can't now," Shortie said. "You've made me look bad. Blood has to spill here."

Shortie was covered in brain matter before he heard the report. Gary pushed up on Shortie's arm and grabbed the pistol as Mrs. Deneaux leveled her revolver on Shortie.

"Oops," she said, bringing her free hand to her mouth. "I told you it was getting heavy."

Shortie was shaking with fear and rage. "You don't know who you just f.u.c.ked with!"

BT stood up. "What the f.u.c.k did you do that for, woman?" he asked.

"As much as I think Gary is a twit, I do believe he will play a pivotal role in ensuring my safety. Wings was an impediment."

"What now?" BT asked.

"We kill him," Mrs. Deneaux said evenly.

"Yo, I didn't do nothing. You can't just kill me."

"You did nothing because we did not allow you to do anything," Mrs. Deneaux said. "Otherwise, I think that you would have done just as you pleased."

"We can't just shoot him," BT said.

"Sure we can. What do you think will happen if we let him go? He will just go quietly into the night, thankful for the lesson we taught him? No...either he'll follow us and we'll have to deal with him later after maybe he gets a lucky shot off and kills one of us, or this thug has like-minded idiots that will pursue us and finish what they tried."

"She's right," Gary said.

"Don't listen to the crazy b.i.t.c.h," Shortie said. "We was just trying to bust your b.a.l.l.s, see if we could get some food or something."

"Self-defense is one thing, but this is cold-blooded murder," BT said. Although, it could be argued that Wing's death was cold-blooded also. "I won't allow you to shoot him."

"Allow? It seems that I have the gun and I can do as I please," Mrs. Deneaux said.

BT stepped in front of her barrel. "Am I just another impediment?" BT asked, looking down at the woman who appeared to be calculating her risk factors if she just planted him in the ground also. She finally withdrew her gun.

"You're almost as big a twit as Gary," she said. BT relaxed.

"Gary, keep an eye on him. We'll let him go when we get our car filled up," BT said.

Gary had Shortie sit up against the Camry as BT made a couple of trips with gas.

"Nice ride," Shortie said sarcastically. "Me and my boys are going to hunt you down for killing Wings."

Gary paled. "You left us no choice."

"I'm going to kill you with a knife," Shortie said looking up at Gary. "One stab to the guts, then I'm going to twist the blade back and forth."

Gary subconsciously placed his left hand over his stomach. Shortie smiled sickly.

"Oh this is ridiculous," Mrs. Deneaux huffed as her shot broke the silence of the day. The round caught Shortie high in the neck.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing?" BT said, dropping the gas container and coming back to Shortie who now had both hands pressed up against his spewing wound.

"Bad shot. I should get my eyes checked. You'll die soon enough," She said to Shortie. "Bleeding out is a relatively easy way to go. Don't worry the panic flows away with the blood." She smiled.

BT physically removed her from her spot. "Why?" he screamed.

"Because it was the right thing to do," she replied as he set her down.

"We've got to get out of here," BT said looking around.

"They're dead. What's the rush?" Mrs. Deneaux asked as she opened her cylinder to drop the two expended cartridges and replace them.

"They were gang bangers," BT said. "And either they'll eventually come looking for these two, or zombies will smell the meat."

"Fair enough," Mrs. Deneaux said as she headed over to the Pinto.

"Do you want to get more gas?" Gary asked, still looking as if he was trying to process all that had just transpired in the last few moments.

"No...well, yes...but not here. We need to get gone. Last time I checked, we had a good solid half a tank that should get us far away from this place," BT said, heading over to the car.

"She's a stone cold killer, BT," Gary said, looking straight into BT's eyes. "She showed absolutely no emotion when she killed Shortie. I mean, not that he wasn't an a.s.shole and probably deserved it for something he had done, but s.h.i.t...she might as well have been pulling lint from her belly b.u.t.ton."

"To have a belly b.u.t.ton would mean she was human. I'm not quite convinced of that. Let's get out of here, but we need to keep an eye on her. She wasn't lying when she said she would kill whatever threatened her existence...and that includes you and me."

"And probably, Brian and Paul," Gary added.

"Probably, the devil we know..." BT said.

"I'd rather deal with the one we don't know."

After a sluggish churning of the starter, the car caught and purred like a one-lunged kitty. The smoke hadn't cleared from the group's departure when a gang of men came upon the bodies of their two fallen comrades.

"Get the bikes," the leader said as his long, black leather jacket flapped in the light breeze.

"Cyrus, you know the noise from the bikes draws the zombies."

Cyrus merely looked over at his second in command.

"I'll be right back," he answered.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Mike Journal Entry 3 "Why would you do that?" I asked in alarm. There were times to take acid, most of them revolved around good friends, about twenty-five backwards revolutions of the earth around the sun and some great tunes. None of those things were in attendance right now. "John."

"Who? Whoa I'm seeing trails."

"John the Tripper, we're about to face zombies, man, and you gave me acid. I don't even know how to deal with this right now."

"Relax, man," John the Tripper said, putting his hand on my arm. "It'll happen on its own."

I'd had a few 'bad trips' over the years, one involved a girl and the other was just a low point in my life, felt like the world was crashing down. The key word in my last statement was 'felt' like it was crashing down. How the h.e.l.l was I going to react now that it really was? I think the years had wizened me enough that I would be able to handle the onslaught of the chemicals to a certain extent, but we were still talking about tripping on acid during the destruction of a city on fire during a zombie invasion, this oughtta be a blast. (Can you see the sarcasm dripping off of the page?) "We gotta get out of here, man, before this kicks in."