Welcome Wagon

by Vivian Davenport

Copyright 2007 by Vivian Davenport

Published by Vivian Davenport at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

1973

"Look at them! Bud, just look at these…these…people! It's not fair!"

Bud Quinn had been listening to his wife Jean harp on the same subject for the past half hour, and she was draining his vast reserve of patience. All he wanted to do was sit back and enjoy the evening news stories about the Watergate scandal, gas lines caused by the oil embargo, skyrocketing unemployment, and soaring interest rates. "Why don't you get away from that window and stop spying on them? Forget about them. There's nothing we can do about it." Another thought excited him. "Unless you want to move back to the city. I mean, I'll go, if you really want us to."

He never wanted to move from the city to the cinnamon brown split-level ranch house in Nowhere Suburbia. Even his teenage daughter Jennie initially objected, but Jean had hounded him for ten years to "get the hell out of the filthy city and raise our child somewhere safe," so in 1972 he relented and they moved. They'd spent a year in their new home, and ever since the move he regretted every day.

She turned from the living room side window and grimaced. "Go back? No way in hell! We're staying here, but I'll be damned if those…those…neighbors lower the property value of our new home. We've worked too damned hard for it."

Once his wife's new Dr. Scholl sandals click-clacked off to the kitchen, he undid the top hook of his Magnastretch flared slacks, stretched his legs on the glass and chrome coffee table, and focused on the infallible Walter Cronkite's words. When the station cut to a Hai Karate After Shave commercial, he took the moment of peace to close his eyes and think back to what life was like a year earlier, when they lived in their city apartment.

His commute to the office had been a short subway ride every day. Now it was a forty-five-minute, bumper-to-bumper drive. Micky's Place, his neighborhood bar, had been a five-minute walk from home. The closest bar now was a fifteen-minute drive, but what good was a bar if you couldn't stagger home from it? And the city had Dottie, a sexy, blonde, once-a-month secret he kept from his wife. These days he only had Jean, and now that she was going through the change, whoopee had become a four-letter word. No, this suburban hellhole couldn't compare to his old life, where everything worthwhile was within reach.

The click-clacking came back in the living room. Jean chewed on her lip as she sprayed the jungle of fern plants hanging from macramé holders. Her tirade wasn't over. "You tell me, how can people like that afford such a house? I'll bet he's some whiny Vietnam vet, and the government is shelling out our tax dollars to pay for it."

He rolled his eyes. "Believe me, the government isn't doing anything for Vietnam vets."

She was back at the window, peeking across at the new neighbors. "Look at her over there! Hanging up a happy face mobile. Harrumph! Like people like that have something to be happy about."

He sighed and hoped she wouldn't talk through the eleven o'clock news later. "Don't you have a bra-burning meeting to go to tonight?"

"Don't be an idiot." She sat on the suspended white wicker egg chair and sprayed the leaves of the rubber plant she'd named Rod, after her favorite poet Rod McKuen. "It's a consciousness-raising group, and we meet on Wednesdays."

"What the hell do you women find to talk about every week that's so damn important? Or do you smoke that Mary Jane stuff at your meetings?"

She sprayed water in his face.

"Hey!"

"You're such an ostrich. Don't you know what's happening around you? We interface about Roe v. Wade and other important current issues."

"Yeah, like there's a chance in hell of you ever getting pregnant."

She sprayed him again.

"Stop that!"

"You'll be glad we talk about these things when your daughter comes home in the family way one of these days." She flipped on the large hanging rain oil lamp and click-clacked back in the kitchen.

"I thought we moved here so she wouldn't get knocked up!" He nestled in the olive-green and ochre sofa.

Jennie pulled in the driveway in her secondhand VW Beetle. For her birthday a month earlier, Bud had an eight-track deck installed in the car. Since then, it never stopped blaring the dreary vocals of Carly Simon. He didn't know if he hated her more than Jean's beloved I Am Woman anthem by Helen Reddy. Whatever happened to good old Helen O'Connell?

"Daaaad!" His daughter slammed the front door. "Why didn't you tell me we were going to have new neighbors? Why am I always the last one to know anything around here?"

He counted three, two, one…

Click-clack, click-clack. "Honey, is this yours?" Jean reached in one of the tiny pockets on her knit shirt and pulled out a ring with a large stone.

"Omigod! You found it! My mood ring! Thank you!" Jennie showed her mother how the mood ring worked. "Ma, the stone is black on you! That means something is bothering you. What's wrong? Are you terminal?"

Her mother went to the window, rolled up the rattan shade a few inches higher, and pointed next door. "That's what's wrong! Do you see them over there? Can you believe your eyes?"

Jennie pulled her long, straight hair over her right shoulder and twisted it. "I know! Isn't the son a real doll? I can't wait to meet them."

Uh-oh. The proverbial shit was just about to hit the fan and splatter all over the freshly shampooed gold shag rug, macramé wall hangings, and starburst clock. He had to sneak out before Jean went ballistic. He made it to the staircase before she yelled, "Bud! Don't you dare leave this room!"

He slunk back to the chair as ordered.

"Jennie, you will not, I repeat, will not associate with any member of that household next door! I forbid you!"

The girl groaned. "But–"

"No buts! You have no idea what kind of people they are. For god's sake, they're zombies! We didn't move way out here to live next door to zombies, and we certainly don't want you dating one. Isn't that right, Bud?"

He said, "Yeah," and tried to massage away a brewing headache.

Jennie yelled, "Oh, you're such an Archie Bunker, dad! Only a bigot won't have anything to do with zombies. Why can't everyone just love one another? Why can't we live in peace and harmony?" She yanked the mood ring off her mother's finger and stomped up the stairs. "I hate you! I hate you both!" Her bedroom door slammed shut and reverberated until Carole King's wailings drowned it out.

Jean sat beside her husband and wrapped her arm around him. "You've got to go over there right now and tell that zombie family not to let their son see our daughter. I don't want any half-zombie babies around here. Besides, I don't trust any of them. I've heard things about zombies, you know."

He was so tired of his wife's orders he sometimes thought about putting a pistol to his head and ending it all. Of course, it'd be best to turn the pistol on her. She wanted to move to the suburbs, so they moved. She wanted to give up red meat, so twice a week they switched to silly bean salads with sprouts or some kind of weed crap. She wanted to toss out his imitation leather Barcalounger just because it had a few small tears, so it got trashed. Well, he'd had it up to his ears. If she wanted to keep the zombies next door away from Jennie, she could do it herself.

"Dear, now that women like you are liberated, I have complete confidence you can handle this family matter. You're more of a people person anyway." He smiled.

She turned and blushed. "You think so? Well, I am liberated. That's true." She walked to the front door. "You really think I can handle it?"

He nodded. "Sure you can. You go speak with them, and I'll make sure Jennie doesn't sneak out."

"Good thinking." She wiggled her fingers and stepped outside.

He wanted to watch the news on the big console television, but Cronkite had already signed off with, "And that's the way it is." After flipping between ABC, NBC, CBS, and the two UHF stations, he found nothing interesting on, so he went to the window as his wife approached the neighbors' house.

A zombie woman in an apron led her inside. She brought her to a sofa that faced his window. He gave Jean a wave and she winked back. The zombie woman left, and the zombie husband sat down beside Jean. The teenage zombie son entered and sat on the other side of her.

He couldn't understand what Jennie saw in the zombie boy. The kid was as dead-meat ugly as his parents. Dirty, outdated clothes, muddy hair, bloody, scarred skin with pus-filled boils, drooling mouth. The woman was missing an eyeball, and the man had only one arm. They weren't the kind of people you'd invite to a barbecue, that's for sure.

The zombie woman returned with a charred human foot on a platter and set it on the coffee table. He hadn't realized until she hobbled away she had a pronounced limp. The zombie boy grabbed the foot, tore a big bite out of it, and offered it to Jean. Bud knew she'd refuse—and she did—so the boy set the foot back on the platter. When Jean rose, the zombie man pulled her back down with his only arm. Jean shook her head no and tried to rise again, but the zombie man pulled her down again. It was then Bud had to make the biggest decision of his life.

With Jennie's bedroom eight-track blaring upstairs, Jean screamed for Bud's help. While she tried to get away from the zombie man, his son tugged at her polyester diamond-patterned bellbottoms, until he ripped them clear off her body. Her screams were chilling, but Bud didn't budge. Somehow, the whole gruesome event was more an opportunity than a crisis.

While the zombie man held Jean's waist, the zombie boy wrenched her left leg, like he was trying to tear it off. Moments later, he gnawed on it, and blood spurted all over the room. Jean fainted. The zombie woman limped back into the room, and the whole zombie family cannibalized his wife down to the bone.

It was a spiritual moment for Bud. He knew it, because Martin Luther King's famous words came to him. "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

When Carole King's It's Too Late got considerably louder, he realized his daughter had opened her bedroom door.

"Daaaad! Can I have ten dollars?" she yelled from the top of the staircase.

He rolled down the window's shade, as she bounced down the stairs. Sweat beaded on his upper lip, and he hoped his dull-witted daughter wouldn't recognize the guilt on his face. "Uh, sure, honey." He wiped the moisture with a handkerchief. "Oh, wait, you know, I gave all my money to your mother. Why don't you ask her?"

"Where is she?"

He turned aside and coughed in his hand. "Well, uh, honey, now don't get mad, but–"

"Where is she? Where is she? Why do I have to say everything twice around here?"

For a split second, he had considered sparing his daughter, but after she barked at him exactly like her mother, he knew he couldn't. "Your mother is next door with the new neighbors. She's telling the boy he can't ever date you."

She turned crimson. "I hate her!" She stormed out the front door.

He peeked through the rattan shade to watch her enter the zombies' home. There was no reason to watch any further. "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

The first thing to catch his eye was the rubber plant. He ripped it out of its pot and threw it on the shag carpeting. "Rod McKuen sucks!" After stepping over the disemboweled plant, he dialed a familiar phone number on the aquamarine Princess phone. "Hello, Dottie? Say, are you doing anything this weekend? No? Well, how about we get together and maybe take a trip to the coast? Great! Yeah, I think I'll be moving back to the city pretty soon. I miss you, too."