Mad Moonlit Musings of a Zombie Huntress

Aunt LuLu was in fine form this particular afternoon. It was the second day of Earl Taggart’s three-day wake. Earl had been considerate enough to get called home to Jesus a mere hundred yards from where Aunt LuLu had been standing. The practical result of this was that Aunt LuLu was now retelling the tale of his passing for what seemed to Jessie the fiftieth time.

Trapped between Mama Taggart and Aunt LuLu, Jessie was completely at a loss as to how to flee gracefully. She found herself forced to listen to each new embellishment, wondering if she were actually going to tell Joe about this when she got back to New York. He already thought she was descended from the Eastern version of the Hills Have Eyes clan. If he knew how cousin Earl had died, he’d probably downgrade her family to somewhere below homicidal radioactive mutant status.

"So anyway," Aunt LuLu was saying, "Earl was discharged from the service and sent home after six months in Iraq." Her audience at this moment consisted of Mama Taggart, Aunts Earline, Pearline, and Shearline, and poor trapped Jessie.

"Earl wanted to fly helicopters in the Service," Aunt LuLu went on. "But of course you know how things are there. Unless you come from money, or you’re one of them my-nor-eye-tees and can get the Affirmative Action, you aint never going to get into any of the good training," Aunt LuLu’s voice trembled with the sheer injustice of how the Army had, it turned out, directly caused Earl’s death by ruining his life and career.

Jessie thought, "Chances are, you probably aren’t going to get the good training if they figure you have the IQ of pocket lint." She didn’t say this aloud, of course. She just pretended to listen raptly to Aunt LuLu’s recounting of the tragedy, and kept her errant thoughts to herself.

"When Earl got to the end of his service, he decided not to re-enlist," Aunt LuLu was saying. "He tole me, he said, ‘Aunt Lulu, they’re just a bunch of liars. They’re just gonna keep me out there in a tent in 200 degree weather getting shot at by the sand monkeys.’ They tole him the only job he had app-tee-tood for was infantry. It was how they got out of all the training they promised him when he jined up. He come out with three years of his life gone and no training towards anything. Can’t make a living back home shooting sand monkeys, now can you?"

"More’s the pity on that," Uncle Bubba, who had joined the group, glowered. "It’s got so you can’t even go into town and go to a store anymore unless you speak Aye Rab or some such nonsense. They’re more like sand fleas, if you ask me. Swat one, and a hundred more pop out of nowhere to make you itch like Hell."

There was a chorus of agreement. Aunt LuLu glowered at Uncle Bubba, who had almost succeeded in stealing her audience. Uncle Bubba beat a hasty retreat to the smoking room, lest he get sucked into LuLu’s tale and held captive like the rest of them.

Aunt Lulu, triumphant, continued speaking. "Earl still wanted to fly a chopper. And he wasn’t going to let a bunch of Big Government Scum tell him that he wasn’t never gonna live his dream."

"Nope," Aunt LuLu went on with a shake of her head, "Earl decided to build his self a better chopper than any of them old Army choppers. His idea was to build a protie - type, learn to do lots of tricks and such with it, and get a name for his self with it. You know, in the air shows down to the county fairgrounds and such. Let the word of mouth do his pub lickity for him."

Aunt LuLu paused and took a small sip of iced tea. Jessie thought longingly of the Valium in her purse and wished there was a way she could sacrifice a couple for the cause. Just slip them into Aunt LuLu’s glass and enjoy. She was reasonably certain that the rest of this group would cheer her and carry her around the room on their shoulders like the game-winning quarterback once the pills had hammered Aunt LuLu into blessed silence. Alas, like escape from her chair, which was placed cozily next to Aunt LuLu’s, there was just no graceful way to do it.

"Earl salvaged the blades from one of those big grain harvester machines that Uncle Euwell had left over when he sold off his farm and moved into town. He used an old bucket seat from a Corvette, and got the gear shift from the same place. The engine was from an old Harley Davidson," here Aunt LuLu grinned a hard and humorless grin. "No riceburner parts was going into Cousin Earl’s flying machine."

"Earl’s helicopter was a one-seater - like in that Road Warrior movie - but real quiet running. Earl tole me this was because the blades from the harvester was so wide and sharp. Earl said it would be the ideal spy chopper - perfect for one-man missions behind enemy lines," Aunt LuLu sighed. Jessie thought longingly of the Valium in her purse.

"Anyway," Aunt LuLu said sadly, "Earl was very careful. He wanted to be able to parachute out if he got into trouble while flying his helicopter. ‘Better to walk away and be able to build it again than go down with the ship, Aunt LuLu’ is what he said to me. So he put an ejector button in his chopper seat."

"Three days ago, Earl came in and tole me to come to the window and watch. He wanted me to see him take his first flight," Aunt LuLu continued. "Natcherlly, the first thing he checked was the safety systems. He put on his parachute and helmet - oh yes Earl was a cautious one for sure - and strapped himself in to the seat. Then he started the engine."

"It worked perfect. Them big harvester blades cut the air - ‘whoosh, whoosh, whoosh’ - and you could see the thing wanting to just leap into the sky like a bird. Earl, though, he was very careful and by-the-book Before he’d fly, he was going to check every system. So he reached up and he hit that ‘Eject’ button."

Aunt LuLu sighed. "And there was Earl’s one mistake. He had made that seat to eject, and it worked perfect. Straight up, into that big sharp blade that was spinning so fast you couldn’t even see it. There was a most peculiar noise, like a ‘fwupp’ or some such, then this red spray just coated everything. The house, the car, the front yard, even the can of Iron that Earl had just been drinking. It looked like somebody went through with a paint sprayer. And it happened so fast! I was watching out the window, and all of a sudden I couldn’t see nothing, the window was coated with red! I threw the window open and there was Earl’s chopper, sitting running by itself in the middle of this red-painted yard and Earl was just gone. A second or two later, though it seemed longer than that, the chopper stalled and the engine died and everything was still, except for the blood still dripping here or there. It was so quiet you could hear that."

Jessie glanced into the other room. There was a small metal box, perhaps a foot square, resting on an ornate pedestal. Next to it was a felt board on an easel. The board was covered with pictures of Cousin Earl, held in place by incongruously bright push pins. Most of the photographs were on the blurry side. In just about all of them, even the ones depicting him as a small boy, Cousin Earl was holding a can of Iron City Beer.