How I Became an Ice Cream Man: Part 2 (427 hits)
Category: GeneralLabels: Ice_Cream
Rating: 1.5 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by SoSomething (View user info) at 2006-05-03 07:21:36 EDT
Black. Black and now silent, except for the sound of Rolly's shallow panting like that of a man in the full swing of the adrenaline rush brought on by terror. I was surprised to realize that I had joined him; my heart was an industrial press trying to pound through my chest, and not from the strain of being hurled into a wall by an estranged friend who was obviously in the throes of a traumatic episode. No, for as we stood there motionless in the darkened corner of the old warehouse the initial rush of panic dissipated, the ringing in my ears faded out, and it became potently obvious that were we not alone.
Moist, scraping sounds overlapped each other in the dark, seeming to come from everywhere at once. The acoustic response of the room, vast, tin-roofed, and sporadically isled with empty wooden crates, made it impossible to determine what direction the sounds were coming from, but two things were certain: There was more than one source, and they were getting closer.
Rolly had started making a strangled sound in his throat. It began as a high, wavering rasp but was quickly escalating into a wordless wail that seemed to incite a sense of urgency in whomever or whatever was closing in on us. I could now hear small, crackled grunts of effort as the scraping sounds intensified and drew closer. How far away were they now? Ten feet? Five? There was no point in trying to stay hidden where we were - our position had been given away before we even knew we had company.
Just then, Rolly's wailing was cut short by the piercing squeal of worn car brakes, and for a brief moment the room was panned left-to-right by piercing light as a driver outside realized he had missed his road and used the corner of the warehouse lot to turn around. My ability to see my surroundings lasted only a few seconds, but what I saw would be forever imprinted on my brain.
There was a... a child... a little boy who couldn't have been older than six or seven, lurching towards us on the floor, perhaps ten feet away from around an isle made of stacked crates. His legs were gone below the knees, and he was using the stumps to propel him across the room; his hands, now within reach of the floor, helping to pull him on. They boy's face was horribly bruised. His lips peeled back, blackened and withered from lack of use, to expose a mouthful of ruined teeth from which poured a steady stream of dark, coagulated blood that spilled down and added to the glistening trail he was smearing across the floor as he moved.
My eyes followed the light as it moved from the boy, across the room, and came momentarily to rest on Rolly. Directly behind him, partially hidden by his shadow but standing perfectly erect was a little girl of roughly the same age as the boy. Her eyes were the palest blue I had ever seen - one pointed impossibly outward while the other was focused directly on Rolly without any hint of emotion save for base, reptilian hunger. Her entire lower jaw was completely gone, and her tongue hung down, dripping mucous and diluted blood that had soaked the front of her pale blue dress.
Rolly's eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped against me, pinning me to the wall with dead weight. With that, the car was gone and we were plunged once again into darkness.
From out of the black came a voice like chains being drug across rotting leaves...
"Feed."
Acting more out of instinct than anything else, I grabbed Rolly around the shoulders and threw us both sideways to the ground, still against the wall. From there I climbed frantically over him without care of bruising him as I did. He'd have much bigger problems if we had stayed put. We needed out of that room; out of the dark. Grabbing him from under his arms and buckling my hands across his chest, I kept one shoulder against the wall as I dragged Rolly across the room. I couldn't see, but I'd been in that place before and knew where the closest door was that would take us outside. The loading dock couldn't have been more than twenty feet from where we had been standing.
"Feed."
I didn't expect to make it. With Rolly unconscious in my arms I doubted whether I could move any faster than those... things, and I knew the metal door out to the loading dock would be locked. It was always locked when the dock was not in use, even when this place was in operation. When we got to the door and I turned around to reach for the knob with one hand, only because I didn't know what else to do, it was to my amazement that it opened at my touch. Rolly must have been using this entrance to come and go as the padlock that normally secured it was gone. The security light on the other side of the door bathed our immediate surroundings in harsh, yellow light.
I thanked my lucky fucking stars.
One step from being outside, I was quickly reminded that the little girl still had full use of both her legs as she came screaming out of the pitch, running with arms outstretched and spewing bile from her ruined face. At that moment Rolly came to and, without missing a beat, raised his leg and kicked the girl square in the sternum, sending her hurtling back into the dark. The splintering of rotted wood and plate glass overtook her toneless screams and I slammed the door so hard that it vibrated in the jamb from the force.
"WHAT THE FUCK!? WHAT! THE! FUCK!!" I was beside myself. The steady grasp on reality that had served to get us out of the building had left me. Without the buffer of urgency, the full impact of what had just happened made its way into my brain like a shot of polysaccharide with a Drain-O chaser. "Those fucking things, oh Jesus God! What the fuck are those fucking things?!"
Somehow, amazingly, it was Rolly's turn to be rational and calm. Getting up without bothering to dust himself off, he said,
"Those fucking things are them zombie kids, Jake. I was tellin' you. Must have been hangin' on underneath the truck the whole way here. There was more of 'em, before."
Taking a lot of effort to steady myself, and I do mean a lot of effort, I managed to resist the urge to strip down, run naked into the woods like a madman, and spend the rest of my days living in a cave, surviving on squirrels and berries. Just barely. In retrospect that is probably exactly what I should have done, but even knowing the day's events, I had no idea how bad things were going to become in the very near future.
"We're not done here," Rolly said. "There are other ways out of this place an' we can't keep 'em in here forever. I think they got some kinda radar or some shit cause they know how to find each other, even from far away."
I didn't ask how he knew this. I didn't ask a single thing, but:
"What do we do?"
"We burn this place, Jake. We burn it and them fuckin' things with it."
I was amazed at his lucidity, but said nothing and let him go on. He seemed to want to talk as we jogged quickly to his ice cream truck parked a short distance from the back of the abandoned building.
"I got the stuff we need. I was gonna use it on the group of 'em I found, but it got... tricky. I had to go quick, so I figured, hey, I'll go to the old warehouse and wait 'em out. I had the girl one locked in the freezer so the group could follow after and I could burn 'em all."
"You had one locked in the freezer in your truck??"
"Yeah, well, she got inside, y'know inside the truck, so I went across her head with a shovel I had. That's when things got... well they got real bad, so I had to go but y'know, she's really fallin' around the truck cause of what I did to her, so I said, hey, I'll go to the old warehouse and..."
"...Wait them out, I know. You said that."
"Did I? Here, take this gas. Get them rags back there too, would'ya?"
I did as he said. Dawn would be upon us soon, and the first bits of light were already soaking into the bottom of the sky. If we were going to burn this place down we didn't have much time. The road that ran north and south along the front lot of the old Good Humor warehouse would become busy soon, as the people living on the outskirts surrounding the city would be heading in for work. I couldn't think of a good way to explain to the police why we were burning down a building with two horribly mutilated children locked inside.
"Fucking Christ, Rolly! Half that girl's face is still back here!" The whole back of the truck reeked of blood and rotting biomass, too. It was a mess. Blood and unidentifiable fluids were sprayed and caked over almost every surface, pooled thick and sticky on the floor. It looked like beef stock had been slaughtered inside Rolly's ice cream truck. I didn't bother bringing it up.
"Oh. Yeah. You can throw that out. Don't touch it though - use a stick or somethin'."
"I'll use the shovel."
Neither of us said another word as we went about the business of prepping the building to burn. Twenty-some gallons of gasoline were poured all around the perimeter of the building, much of which was wooden, especially on the first floor where tonight's events had taken place. The final four one-gallon containers of gas were stuffed with rags, lit, and thrown through the windows into the large, open rooms inside. It did not take long before the whole building was completely ablaze - the heat from which drove us all the way back to Rolly's truck. When the metal roof started glowing red in places, we decided it was time to go.
We drove in silence for a time, headed out of the city proper. The plan was to get out to one of the small nearby towns on the highway, clean up the truck, and get some sleep before coming back and dealing with... Everything. I had a lot on my mind. Was any of this really happening? I had to figure out what the hell to do, and I still had the distinct feeling that Rolly wasn't telling me everything. How had he gotten into this? I knew I would be in no shape to drive back until I got some sleep, but I couldn't stop thinking about Jeanette.
End of Part 2
User Reviews
Submitted by sosomething (user info) at 2006-05-04 08:06:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I enjoy it. The first one was better. It's harder to keep a series going and have everyone interested though.
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I'm realizing that. I think now after the initial shock of what the story is about, some of the charm has worn off. Another big twist would be cheesy, though. That's OK though, I'm not done yet.
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-05-04 07:38:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I enjoy it. The first one was better. It's harder to keep a series going and have everyone interested though.
Submitted by DCWoody (user info) at 2006-05-04 04:57:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Decent. The +2 yesterday, was mainly for the clash of the title and the content. Could get good though.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-04 01:34:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I wouldn't count on it.
Submitted by sosomething (user info) at 2006-05-03 15:51:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm surprised that some folks from yesterday's installment haven't commented. Maybe they'll come later in the day, hm?
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-05-03 09:25:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jake is the coolest name ever.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-03 08:36:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I like it.
Submitted by sosomething (user info) at 2006-05-03 07:23:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
For any that missed Part 1:
http://www.ubersite.com/m/87418
Sorry for not putting this at the top of the post.