EYEHEARTZOMBIES

Once I was thoroughly awake enough to drive, I decided not to bother with a room in Modesto. It was only a coupe of hours west until I came to San Francisco and I could drive that before getting a room. So I got back on the highway and drove for two hours, coming at last to that city of hills.

I found a small motel just inside the city limits that didn’t look like it had too good of a memory. I paid the clerk for a couple of nights, and threw in an extra day’s pay to make sure he’d forget. He looked at me and nodded and marked room twenty-five as being rented out to a Mr. John Doe. I thanked him and took the room key.

I went to my room, stashed the rifle under the bed and lay down to take a nap. I hadn’t had a real rest in a couple of days, sleeping in the car didn’t count and with the two nightmares I had had, I wasn’t feeling all the fond of closing my eyes. I did, though, and was asleep in just a few minutes.

I was back in the dream again. Scrambling, trying to hide. The door opens and it’s not Max this time. No, first it’s Simon’s face, then Lucca’s. Then the face morphs into Manny’s, then Ray’s. Finally it turns into Sonny and the Mooch. Each of them are bleeding from their eyes and ears. They all ask me “Why?” and then switch to the next face. After the Mooch, the face draws in on itself and turns into my own. That’s when I heard a click and opened my eyes.

When I opened my eyes, I was peering up the barrel of the hunting rifle I had just bought the day before. At the other end of it was the desk clerk. I thought for an insane second about trying to take the gun from him, then decided it wasn’t worth the risk. If I got caught, I got caught. No one was going to help me, but I didn’t have to make it easier on them.

“Why you got a gun under the bed?” he asked. He wasn’t from California. He had too much of a hillbilly twang to his voice. Maybe he was an Okie. There were still a lot of them around at that time.

“Uh. It’s for protection,” I answered. I knew he’d never believe me, but it was the truth. I wasn’t wrong. The gun didn’t waver. He didn’t put it down. Instead he turned his head toward the door a bit and called to the girl standing outside.

“Mabel, get your ass in here.” Mabel came in, a sweet, if stupid, looking girl of maybe sixteen. “Check his wallet.” She nodded and went to rummage in my pants, which were hanging on the dresser. She pulled out my wallet and thumbed through it, pulling out what was left of the two thousand dollars I hadn’t spent on the car. She probably pull out about fifteen hundred dollars.

“Money, Chris,” she said.

Chris looked at her and said, “No shit, Mabel. Get his keys, check the car for anything valuable.” When he said “valuable” it came out more like “valable.” Definitely some backwoods hick.

I just lay on the bed as she took the keys from the top of the dresser and left out the room door. Chris never wavered with the gun. He held it on me until she came back carrying the ammunition and the pistol. She didn’t bring anything else as there wasn’t anything else to bring in. She told Chris that and he nodded.

“Alright, you. Why you have two guns? You in trouble with the law or something?” His “something” was a “sumpin.”

“I just like guns,” I said. “And they’re good protection. I carry a lot of money. I mean, you see what your girlfriend pulled out of my wallet. I keep a gun so I don’t get robbed.”

He laughed at this. “Did you a bum fuck of a lot of good, huh?” Mabel cringed when he said “fuck,” but he didn’t notice. “Get your ass out of bed and put on your pants.” He motioned toward the pants with the barrel of the rifle slightly.

I slid over to the far edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. I half expected him to shoot me as soon as I stood up, but he didn’t. I took the three steps over to the dresser and pulled my pants down off of it. I put in the first leg, then the second, then pulled them up. After I had buttoned and zipped them, and fixed the belt, Chris said, “Alright, bucko. Now, you’re going to tell me why I shouldn’t just shoot you here and now. I could just say you pulled a gun on my Mabel here when she was cleaning your room. Or you flashed your pecker at her. I’d be alright in shooting you then, wouldn’t I? Yeah, wouldn’t nobody mind me offin’ some pervert who goes around springing his willy on innocent girls.”

He seemed like he was halfway considering doing just that, regardless of what I told him. I told him I was a salesman, though. That I had all that money because I had just come to San Francisco to attend a meeting, a sales meeting, a national sales meeting, and needed the money to smooze some of the other salesmen. I wanted them to buy from me. Some such bullshit. He didn’t buy it.

“Alright, alright,” I said, frustrated. “Just shoot me. Or call the cops. Or whatever. I don’t care anymore.” I sat down on the bed and I heard him leave the room and lock the door behind him. Mabel had left before I had answered with my salesman story. Turns out she had gone to call the cops on me. When they got there, they saw the guns, the money, the car. They managed to put two and two together most of the way, and I finally confessed the whole to them about Max. I never went into any details on how or why, just that I had done it and had a good reason. I checked into prison a week later, no trial necessary.