Uschi! (6 page)

Uschi gave Denny a no big deal shrug of the shoulders. “I don’t know. That’s just the way it is. I mean, why are some people born left-handed and others right? Why do Peter Fonda and Susan George have to be killed by the train at the end of
Dirty Mary Crazy Larry
? Maybe some things just need to go about their own business in their own way in this world unexplained. I say go with the flow, baby.”

There was solid logic to her words.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Maybe I’m over analyzing the situation. I shouldn’t be trying to make logic a top priority in any of this. Love and hot romance aren’t supposed to be all logical. What else can you tell me about yourself?”

“All sorts of amazing shit. Ask away.”

“Well, you got a favorite song?”

“Sure do. ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ from the Ramones.”

“Conan or Tarzan—who’s the better?”

Uschi didn’t need so much as second to have an answer for that one. “Neither. I’ll take Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane any time of the day, month or year over those two losers. The late and great Karl Edward kicked much ass with his dark and somber heroic fantasy writing.”

“Got a favorite western?”

“
McKenna’s Gold
. Ted Cassidy and Julie Newmar make damn good evil Apaches.”

“Do you like comic books?”

“Eh, some. I’m not too big on any superhero junk, truthfully.
The Tomb of Dracula
is a classic I can very much appreciate. And Garth Ennis’s
Preacher
is near perfect enough. And I prefer Steve Gerber’s
Man-Thing’s
stories over Alan Moore’s run on
Swamp Thing
.
Jonah Hex
and
Rom: Space Knight
are cool, too.”

“Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff?”

“Boris all the way, best thing. He’s a sweetie and I think one of the most underrated actors from the golden age of Hollywood.”

“Democrat or Republican?”

“Proud independent.”

“Best quote from a Russ Meyer movie?”

“’Because I’m the ballsiest cat you ever met.’”

“Your opinion on Bruce Campbell?”

“He’s okay. Maybe a bit too much overrated. Personally, I prefer Jeffrey Combs or Ian McCulloch. Ian McCulloch doesn’t get enough love in the horror community to suit me. The man was all class act in
Alien Contamination
.”

“Does it hurt being a zombie?”

“Nope, I feel perfectly fine. In fact, better than fine. I’m strong and big-tittied powerful.” And here she began to shimmy her shoulders and get her large breasts to swaying and quaking and noisily gurgling like water balloons set to bouncing on a trampoline. “I feel super potent and ready for whatever type of challenge that might get tossed my way. The fact I’m made of spoiled choice cuts of dead people meat doesn’t mean dog food fuck to me. I feel like I could get in a fistfight with Jesus Christ and kick his ass.”

Pondering what question to ask next, Denny happened to turn away and look out onto the parking lot. He chewed on the end of the drinking straw impaled through the plastic lid on his Dr Pepper and watched as a couple stepped out of the Dairy Queen and started walking to their car. He was compelled to pay attention to them.

Nothing special about them, just a man and a woman. Both pretty fairly ugly and dressed by Wal-Mart. The man was balding and fat, his belly hanging low over his belt like raw biscuit dough seeping through the split in a ruptured Pillsbury tube. He looked like the type with no education after high school and was trapped working long and hard at a job that didn’t pay well enough to keep his family afloat on his one paycheck. The woman was frizzy-haired and short and squat and had an Alfred Hitchcock double chin flabby wattle. Denny figured her for a school cafeteria lunch lady.

They behaved like a couple that had been together for a good while now. They were relaxed and enjoying one another’s company, talking and laughing and holding each other close. She had her hand behind him and tucked in snug into one of the seat pockets of his blue jeans, cupping an ass cheek.

They were in love. It was obvious to see.

Every once in a while Denny would run across something like this. People in love. He’d see it between a man and a woman when he’d go alone to the movies or was pushing a shopping cart while shopping for his groceries. Did they know how lucky they were? Really, were they ever truly aware of how blessed the pair of them was that in this entire cruel and cold world they were able to connect with an actual fellow human being who didn’t find them utterly horrible and disgusting? Did they have any idea how horse piss in your lemonade terrible it was to have to go through life always alone? Probably not, no. The fucking world was overrunning with lucky assholes. Most folks weren’t as miserable and as big a failure as Denny was.

Whenever he would see love in action it would start an envious Denny to wondering what would it be like to be one of them, in love and that love reciprocated?

His hand went out and blindly found his Uschi’s leg. He began to affectionately stroke her thigh.

Actually, he didn’t have to wonder anymore. Here it was. True love with his idea of the ultimate example of femininity. There was no need any longer for jealousy or searing heartache or only hollow fantasies of going out on a date or shame that out of everyone on Earth only he was unable to find somebody. The real deal was sitting beside him. It was finally okay to put his worries and fears of being condemned to a life forever all to himself aside.

The couple had crossed the parking lot and were now arriving at their pickup truck—an old but dependable Dodge Ranger XLT with a rusted over hood and a collection of proud to be an American bumper stickers. They separated, him making his way to the driver’s side door and her remaining by the tailgate and waiting for him to climb inside the cab and unlock the passenger side door for her.

Denny couldn’t help but smile. All of a sudden the envy and anger he’d typically hold for a pair like this was washed away, and he seemed to instead develop a feeling of kinship with them. It felt nice seeing a fellow pair of lovers. He was now at last a member of the club.

Eyes keeping on the couple, he had one last question he cared to ask Uschi. “You really do love me, yes?”

Her cheeseburger and roadkill eaten, Uschi looked up from her onion rings seasoned with rancid armadillo scraps. First she used a wad of paper napkins to clean her hands as best she could manage, chewed her mouthful of food, swallowed, then ran her dead fingers through the hairs along the back of Denny’s neck. This provoked Denny to turn his face towards her. Uschi stared unblinkingly into his eyes, and her soured milk white glazed over cadaver eyes pierced his great big dull baby blues. She spoke with a clear, authoritative tone that was confident it would be understood to the very last detail.

“Forever and ever I will love you with all that I got, Denny. That’s a guaranteed promise from me to you.”

She truly meant that. Ninja killing cool. A splendidly warm, comforted sensation went through Denny, and he felt the compulsion to say something in response to such a powerful statement. He didn’t put any thought into his words, instead just made it up as he went along, allowing it all to originate straight from his heart. “When I die my soul is going to go straight to hell, where it will burn and be tormented for all of eternity. That’s concrete, a fact that can not be changed. But I don’t care. I honestly don’t. It’s a price I’m more than happy to pay for the chance to love a glorious woman like you, Uschi. Thank you. Thank you for coming into my world and making it for the first time ever worthwhile.”

They kissed. Their mouths joined together perfectly.

After Uschi returned to enjoying her onion rings, Denny was curious to check in with the parking lot lovebirds. He turned his head and looked to them again. The man was now behind the steering wheel, door still open and cab’s light on, leaning over the seat and fingers reaching for the passenger door’s lock knob. The woman continued to hold her ground back by the tailgate.

And then came the attack.

The attacker moved unnaturally fast. Fast enough to fool the naked eyeball. He was only this dark figure, an indistinct man-shape blur, coming out of the shadows between the parked cars at seemingly the speed of a bullet exiting the barrel of a .22 rifle. One second there was nothing but a frizzy-haired fat gal standing by her lonesome at the rear of a pickup, and in the very next instant there was this man who materialized from out of the night itself and was taking a mean-spirited hold of her by the shoulders.

With a whip-like fluidness to his motions, he swung a leg out and tripped her legs out from under her, dropping her with equal parts neat and brutal efficiency to her ass. Too stunned by the unexpected suddenness of it to cry out or react in any fashion in these few initial moments of the assault, the woman was wholeheartedly his to do with as he wished.

Denny’s mouth fell agape and he was jolted where he sat. What, did he just actually see that? “Fucked by a Trekkie at a
Babylon 5
convention …”

Her man in the pickup truck was on the ball. He saw what was going down and was quick to respond. In a New York minute he was unhesitatingly coming to save her. He charged the man mistreating his lady, the fatty parts on him jiggling as he was in action, the look to his pie round red face a mixed expression of worry, concern and rage, and when reaching the attacker he was assaulted with a straight-arm chop. The arm lashed out as if it was spring-loaded and the knife-edge side of the hand went under the chin and struck hard against the windpipe. Denny saw it as almost a John Saxon as Roper in
Enter the Dragon
quality karate man move.

There was a chicken’s neck getting wrung crunchy-crack of a report that reverberated throughout the DQ parking lot. This was a larynx crusher of a hit that made oxygen to the lungs a luxury never more to be indulged in and dropped the man down ass over tits. He clutched at his throat and fought a loosing battle for breath, feeble, convulsing and helpless. He died in agony.

That’s the way to do it. An orderly, clean, hassle-free murder.

That business accomplished, the attacker returned his attention full on once again to her. He wanted something to do with her throat. He forced her head back, leaving the neck exposed and vulnerable, and bent at the knees to put his face in close to her throat. His movements carried the same lethal smooth characteristics of a born predator readying to deliver the killing stroke to its defenseless prey.

Denny watched on in wide-eyed astonishment. Holy Zontar shit. Those were people in love. How dare that quick on the move dickhead think he could spoil their happiness. Those two out there, they were Denny’s people. People just like him and Uschi. Don’t fuck with his people.

Adrenaline kicked in high gear and adopted a plan to take no prisoners. Denny’s eyes narrowed to a hateful squint as he could feel the rushing blood fill his face. He commenced to snorting through his nostrils like an aggravated bull. The muscles through his chest, shoulders and neck swelled and bunched to the best of their puny limits. Denny’s natural instinct for cowardice was forgotten in the face of such an atrocity to romance.

A decision was made.

A hero was needed.

He was about to get his ass in gear and do what he thought he would never do.

“Son of a bitch must pay!”

Get a weapon.

He reached between his legs and under the seat and got hold of the tire iron kept down there. Its touch was cold and unfamiliar on his soft and uncallused palm.

Get over there and teach that cum stain on the bedsheets of life that love and romance don’t have to tolerate any shitty behavior like that. Hurry! Hustle! Move like the motherfucking wind!

He shoved his door open and bolted at his top speed, breaking into a run when clear of the El Camino. The tire iron was a reassuring heft in his fist. The attack was taking place more or less at the center of the lot, a few more than a dozen parking spaces down form where his El Camino was parked. This was the greatest distance Denny had run since sixth grade PE. He was laboring for air and sweating like a whore in church before he was even halfway to his destination.

The attacker remained ignorant of Denny’s approach. Still hunched far over the woman, paying attention only to her throat. Strange since the noise of Denny’s Converse All Stars pounding the asphalt and his huffing and puffing for the sake of his burning lungs was as loud as firecrackers going off in a tin soup can. Something about that throat must really be the end all interesting.

Thought was now absent from Denny Gleeth’s head. A blinding neon red rage was all that was going on behind his eyes. He felt macho and testosterone-fueled powerful. A true man.

He came in from behind, raising his arm back across his chest and the tire iron going over his shoulder, and then swinging at the attacker in a backhanded motion. Tire iron loving connected full on across the rear half of the skull, directly behind an ear. The sound of the hit was satisfying and dense, like a hammer coming down hard on a big slab of granite. The impact vibration that passed through the tire iron and traveled up his arm left Denny grinning from ear to ear and feeling like he was The Man for once in his existence.

Hot damn, he did something good.

The attacker made this brief grunt of a cry at the moment he was struck—more like reluctantly acknowledging a mild annoyance rather than a legitimate reaction to any severe head trauma. He wobbled there for a second, all hunched forward over the woman, putting a little effort and repositioning of his weight to work to keep his balance. Then he lazily stood up straight and tall, turned to confront Denny.

“Well, hello to you, too, sunshine,” he said matter-of-I-shit-you-not-factly. He had the type of slow and drawling cadence to his voice that made a person think of an unhealthy appreciation for that fine American John Wayne, a love for music with a shitload too much steel guitar twang to it, tattoos of the Confederate flag on his hairy and farmer’s tanned hide, shotgun shells rolling free on the floorboard of a pickup truck, yelling out “Whoa, bitch!” each time he went down on the brake pedal to his truck when coming to a red light or stop sign, and one of the more vocal Texans demanding Ozzy Osbourne be strung up by his nuts and let the birds peck out his eyes after learning he had gone and taken a big ol’ steaming piss on the side of the Alamo. Outlaw peckerwood country boy bubba and proud as fuck about it.