Zombie Bitches From Hell by Zoot Campbell Page B

will remember to bury me with my
knife in case I’m not really dead but in some sort of coma and I
can dig my way out, get back on the road and try to continue to do
right. Is that asking too much? And do I deserve to be stuck up
here with you and…”
    A shot rang out and hit Rick right between
the eyes. It made a little hole like those Hindu ladies have only
theirs is make-up, not a real hole at all. Rick’s eyes focus for a
millisecond on Tim who was not sleeping at all but had stealthily
aimed his rifle right at Rick while he was blabbing his sick
confession. Rick toppled to the floor like a way full laundry bag;
collapsed more than fell.
    “Fuck me,” I yell. “Holy shit! Why’d you
shoot him? Holy shit.”
    “Holy has nothing to do with it,” says Tim.
“That motherfucker is a serial killer who just confessed to you.
Did you want to be next?”
    “Well, shit, Tim…”

CHAPTER 9
     
    “Hey, chief, check it out,” says Tim pointing
out and down.
    “What is it?” I ask.
    “Check it out.”
    I get up from where I’m sitting, every joint
in my body feeling like someone super-glued them while I was
resting. Stiff as pipe. I get up slowly, like an old dude. The sun
is glinting off the balloon coloring it a morning orange. I look
out over the brim of the gondola and as far as I can see is green,
billowing waving, stippled green—yellow spots like a million
stars.
    “It’s corn, man, more corn than I think I
could ever see. Fucking look at it,” says Tim.
    I am speechless. What’s to say? It’s an ocean
of corn spreading to the horizon. We’re down to about a hundred
feet.
    “Why so low?” I ask. “Is it safe?”
    “Safe? Fuck no, it’s not safe but we need to
scout out some grub.”
    “You’re not thinking corn on the cob for the
next twenty meals are you?” I ask.
    “No. But look yonder,” he says, pointing
eastward into the rising sun. The clouds have all run away, like
thieves in the night.
    A half mile directly in front of us is the
white steeple of a church, the sun catching the glint off of its
honest to God bell, not one of those megaphone pre-recorded jobbers
like you see nowadays. It’s a real bell in a real steeple.
Something out of Norman Rockwell. And don’t ask me who that is. All
I know, he paints cheese-ball paintings of happy people doing happy
American shit like from the thirties and forties. You know, happy
shit like eating dinner and talking at a town meeting and praying
at a church that looks just like the one we’re homing in on.
    “Fuck, Tim. We’re going to clear it,
right?
    “Yepper, Cap’n. Hard to up,” he says as he
fires the burner with a loud blast and sends us up another hundred
feet. “I think we need to land near here. See that outbuilding near
the church. It’s the parson’s house or some such thing. Might be
good people holed up there. Look around. There’s nothing for
miles.”
    He’s right. There is not a town anywhere as
far as I can see and this flat field must go a good fifty miles in
any direction. Could be the town is in a river valley and the low
sun and waving corn is playing tricks with our eyes. The GPS says
that Iowa state road 142 runs north and south about a mile ahead.
So there is some civilization somewhere.
    “Let’s bring her down a few hundred yards
past the church,” I say, noticing at the same time that there is a
full plank fence all the way around, making the church the center
of a compound. I can make out what looks like a well house and, as
the sun is no longer in our eyes, the skeleton frame of a windmill,
spinning slowly in the morning breeze, the same breeze following
us.
    Tim steers the balloon like he’s at the state
fair, swinging wide around the steeple and dropping low, a sort of
swoop that he has a way of doing that brings the gondola up and
over and then down in a sort of hover outside the church, away from
the yard where some asshole can’t easily jump in it. Just before we
land we see a sign, ST. TERESA OF