Re-Deanimator Part 11: Once Bitten... by David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Previously published at

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8899597/11/Re-Deanimator

Davey the Goliath was parked next to the Thing, and the strange trailer widely known as Eric the Half a Bug. The Thing was Carlos's personal vehicle, and Eric was his own creation, a travel trailer in the style of a teardrop where he usually slept. The scream in the morning air had scarcely died down before the iconic Beetle hood shot open. Carlos sat up with his 20-gauge at ready, then scrambled out, clad in gym shorts and a white undershirt. He reached up to close the hatch while he surveyed the camp, and then looked back inside as if he had forgotten something.

“You, Out,” he said succinctly.

The lilting voice of Lady Elayne answered, “I didn't ask to stay...” Carlos slammed the hood and stalked away, while the willowy woman made a gracefully discrete exit through a cut-down and reversed cab door on the far side of the bow.

Carlos came inside the van and rebandaged Meg's wound while Laramie recounted what Meg had told him of what happened. The one thing he mentioned observing himself was that he woke at the sound of her heavy breathing, and in the process saw her eyes open before she screamed. As they withdrew back out the door, they both mentioned “hagging” and “old hag” in their mutterings, which seemed to be jargon that needed no further explanation between them. Carlos nodded, and gave his student a stern, sad gaze. Meg's hands were trembling, but she felt more embarrassed than fearfully. The fact that so few people had gathered was, in many ways, making it all the more embarrassing. “Please, I had a bad dream, and I woke up thinking it was real,” Meg said, not believing it. “Okay? I know that, and I'm sorry I woke you.”

Lady Elayne strode nonchalantly through the midst of the bystanders. “We get a few screamers most every morning,” she said. She shrugged, and discretely pointed a finger at Carlos in the process. “Let's get you over to my place...” She led Meg, and Carlos and Laramie followed, and Indian Joe shuffled after them. They headed toward the strangest of the automotive apparitions in the fleet, a Beetle that had been massively modified into a miniature motorhome.

They entered the contraption which Carlos referred to as “the Bughaus” through an arched doorway in the side. A barrel-like vaulted roof, unusually convincing faux-wood paneling and at least one very real stained-glass window harkened to the old Gypsy wagons, and an assortment of occult sigils and paraphernalia inside and out was more Old World than New Age. There was a very cozy dinette in the rear, a postage-stamp kitchen where the shotgun seat had been, and a deployed fold-out bunk over the cab that was assuredly big enough for two. Meg tried not to jump to conclusions when she caught a glimpse of John Crapper hustling away.

“Sit down beside me, sweetheart,” Elayne said, patting the seat beside her. She was clearly addressing Laramie as he came through the curtain of beads just inside the archway. Meg was already seated across from her, looking a little apprehensively at a skull next to the stereotypical crystal ball on the table. The student took the offered seat and stretched his legs across the dinette. Meg could have sworn the temperature rose as Carlos entered and seated himself in the swiveling driver's seat. Joe stopped in the doorway, turned around and sat on the steps, where he began to rock and hum.

The redhead intently studied the crystal and the skull, one after the other. After a minute or so, she turned it toward Meg, and worked the jaw like a puppet as she said in a comical voice, “Hi Meg. Howdy, Dr. W.” She held the skull almost to Laramie's ear. “Hello handsome.” She pointed the skull almost at Laramie's ear. Then she casually stuck the clearly fake skull on a shelf overhead.

Meg found the courage to ask, “What the hell are you about?”

Elayne stretched out her lithe arms, and after a moment, Meg complied with her obvious wish and took the other woman's hands. “To start with, sweetheart, there ain't no Hell,” Elayne said with a jarring drawl. “Least not like anything they told you in Sunday school. There's a God in heaven above, an' maybe there's a Devil below, but if there's anything bad on the other side, honey, it's just more shite we do to ourselves.”

Elayne reached out and took her hands. The trembling that had not quite subsided grew strong indeed, but Elayne held tighter, pulling Meg's arms straight and leaning forward as if inspecting the wound beneath the bandage. “You are hurt, quite badly,” she said. “But it's not this wound that will kill you.” There was no question that the potential double meaning was intended.

Carlos swiveled and propped his feet up on the table. “Her legal name's Maureen O'Hallaghan, and she was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin,” he said with a grin. “Raised there, too, when she wasn't bouncin' 'round the Pacific. Her old man was a naval officer, and her ma was a nurse.”

“So what are you saying?” Meg asked.

“She's telling you the good news,” Carlos said. “From what we've seen, two out of three, three outta four people in your position would be showing symptoms that will kill them in a week: Limited healing in the wound, if any; infections that flare back up, if they got better at all, signs of similar problems in other injuries. By comparison,your responses so far put you in the top ten percent.”

“What about what I saw?” Meg asked. “Does it mean something?

“Well, that i'n't bad news, either,” Carlos said. “It wasn't real, but it wasn't exactly a dream either. We've seen it before, and we call it a haggin'. There's old legends, see, about witches that pin people in their beds and tries to smother 'em. Lore about vampire attacks is very similar. It's a real phenomenon that the shrinks and paranormal investigators have studied for years. That's what put us onto it, 'cause George studies up on that weird stuff. What really happens is, sometimes, literally, parts of a person's brain can be awake while others are asleep. You could have your eyes open, but not be able to move because your brain's still getting' in gear. An' things that start out as dreams in the parts that are on snooze mode could appear as if they were right there in your bedroom. It's happened all over the world, all through history. It may happen more often in times of war, plague and the like...”

“It happen to my people.” Joe spoke almost robotically, still staring out the door. “White men make us go on reservation with other tribes, tribes that drive us from our land before white men come. They send us away from them, to live in dead men's houses and sleep in dead men's blankets. They have many dead. Then our men see dead men, and die, and after they are seen by other men, and speak to them, and they die. This, my grandfather tell me. His one of only three families that live. They remember the old ways, speak the words to tell the dead men to go to place of the dead. They remember the taboo...” He looked over his shoulder and all but hissed, “Do no talk to dead.”

“So what,” Meg said, “I'm going to die because I saw something?”

“What did you see?” Elayne said. “Tell me exactly.” Only then did Meg describe fleeing her Greg, in the process telling more than a little about what he had put her through before that ordeal.

“...And then you saw him, because he is still with you in your mind,” Elayne said. “He is a wound upon your soul, and if it does not heal, neither will this wound on your body.”

Meg looked to Carlos. “Aye, it's true enough,” Carlos said. “Don't get me wrong, any bite can be nasty business, and with them, anybody who doesn't get penicillin, lots of it and bloody quick is a goner regardless. But there were too many people who died even after treatment to be just the bugs. Quite simply, the immune system weakens or quits entirely. It affects coagulation, too, you know, the way stuff in the blood patches leaks. Nothing could ever be identified as an agent, and finally they concluded that the only explanation was some kind of psychological effect.

“Mostly, it checked out with what people already knew. Placebo cures, psychosomatic illnesses, bloody voodoo curses, all tell the same story. If you tell people they're going to live or die, there's always going to be a statistically significant group who will make it happen. And if the old witchdoctors' results are anything to go by, it's quite a bit easier to take someone's life than save it.”

“So what you're saying is,” Meg said, “I'm going to die, and it's all in my head.”

“No,” Elayne said. “That is the wisdom of the world talking. Those who said that the mind has powers over the body admitted one truth, but denied another, that there are powers greater than both. You know better. They are the powers that do harm, made visible in the flesh. Even if you escape them, you cannot overcome them, without the aid of the powers that do men good.”

Meg glanced to Carlos. “Well, I'll tell you this much,” he said. “They aren't all in your head, and they will be coming for you every chance they get. If you can't hold it together up here, they're gonna succeed.”

After a long silence, Meg said, “How long do I have? Really.”

“Far as we know, the record's ten weeks,” Carlos said. “Least that's what you get if you go by what he told us. He was with us for six, him and his family. We put 'em in a Winnebago, back when we had two. Then one night, he up and stabbed his mother-in-law in the shower, strangled his wife in bed, and hanged himself while carbon monoxide was smothering the kids in their sleep. When I found 'em, he was the only one still movin'.”

“Sounds like you would be better off just leaving me,” Meg said.

“No way in 'ell,” Carlos said. “We're giving you our best, which is why we're talking to you up front. And I'll admit, we aren't just doing it for you. We're doing it because we're tired of losing people, and we wanna know if we ever really had a chance. But if you aren't on board with that, if you aren't gonna do your very best and trust us for the rest, then I'm telling you to go get in that Audi and drive as fast as you can in any direction we aren't goin'.”

Meg met his stern gaze, while Elayne continued to clasp her hand gently. “All right,” she said. “I'll stay.”

Soon, she left with Laramie to get some breakfast. As Carlos got up to depart, Elayne said with a smile, “You didn't quite tell her everything. Did you?”

He shrugged. “If we made an announcement every time one of those things wandered in and out of camp, nobody'd have a good night's sleep again.”

Re-Deanimator Part 10: Hedley Kow and the Krappers by David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Previously published at

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8899597/10/Re-Deanimator

As sundown approached, the encampment spread out on both sides of the road. Meg stayed close to Goliath, and so ended up with a front-row seat as the occupants of Farther set up stage. Five stage hands set up palettes as a stage and a modest but up-to-date sound system. Meg almost spit when their full banner was unfurled: HEDLEY KOW AND THE KRAPPERS.

Meg found herself between Carlos and a willowy woman with flowing blond hair streaked with red. The woman was practicing on an instrument that looked like a fiddle with a crank and a keyboard. “Hi,” she said. “I'm Lady Elayne, with a Y, and this is a hurdygurdy.”

“Are you in the band?” Meg asked.

“I wouldn't say that, but I suppose it comes out the same,” Elayne said. “I play with Hedley, sometimes, when I have the time. I'm a liberal arts professor at Carlos's college... well, I was.”

Carlos laughed. “Try the liberal arts department. A while back, they decided to get with the times and teach the tech boys the humanities. They only ever hired two professors, and t'other quit.”

“So,” Meg said, “what's with the name

“It's from an English legend,” Elayne answered. “Hedley Kow was one of the kelpies, a kind of fairy. Tales say that he could take any shape. He could be a handsome man, or a fine horse. He could even turn into a great monster of the lochs.”

Meg looked askance, but Carlos nodded. “George is into that sort of thing- they call it cryptozoology,” he said. “Among those as take Nessie and such seriously at all, the shape-shiftin' angle is a serious 'ypothesis.”

“Okay,” Meg said, “and what about... the rest of the name?”

“Well... they spelled it wrong.”

Meg gave a perplexed frown. “What?”

Carlos pointed to two non-descript men setting up a synthesizer on stage. “Those are John and Harold. They're brothers, from England,” he said. He pointed to a blond woman who moved in position to test the keyboard. “That's Jane, John's wife. And John's great-to-the- greath grandfather was an inventor named Thomas... Crapper.”

Laramie came and served them dinner paper plates, and stuck around while Elayne flirted with him shamelessly between mouthfuls. Meg inspected the meal, which consisted of a boiled egg, baked beans and something that had been deep-fried beyond recognition. “What is this?” Meg asked, poking the mysterious meat.

“Batter,” said Carlos. Meg ventured a bite, and it turned out to be spam. “We got ourselves a fryer, way back. The way it works, most of the work an' energy just goes into firin' it up, so once it's goin', you might as well do whatever you can. Sometimes things can get a bit outta hand.”

“Would that be the fried ice cream sandwich or the fried armadillo?” Elayne queried with her mouth full.

Carlos jabbed the air with his fork. “Those were gourmet masterpieces!” he expostulated. “Now the fried catfish, that was too far.”

“How is frying a catfish going too far?” Meg asked.

“If the catfish is still moving,” Laramie said deadpan.

“I think I've had enough,” Meg said.

“Nay, you 'aven't,” Carlos said. “You eat what we bring you. Doctor's orders. Hey Lar, bring Grinner over here.” Laramie went to the Horsehauler and brought back a large cage. Inside was something that looked like a rat the size of a cat. Carlos dropped a few chunks of spam through the chickenwire of the cage, and the creature gobbled them. When Carlos waited to drop the final morsel, it hissed and bared a mouthful of many tiny pointed teeth.

“Is that a possum?” Meg asked.

“Opossum, strictly speaking,” Carlos said. “Didelphis virginiana. They range from the east coast all the way to Texas. We call 'em grinners, 'cause when one of 'em gets hit by a car, and sits in the sun a while, the muscles in their lips stretch back, and it looks like a big, happy grin...” Meg almost choked. “Aye, but this bloke, when I found I found 'im in the road, I picked 'im up, an' he says howdy.”

“Well, I think he's cute, and I'm glad you made him the class mascot,” Elayne said.

“Mascot?” Carlos said, with a grin as predatory as the possum's. “I'm saving him for a special occasion. I bet he'll fry up real good.” The possum hissed.

Elayne finished her meal and made a graceful departure. “When I first ran into her, she was a navy brat, way back when,” Carlos muttered. “She and Hedley had an act together before he joined up with the brothers. I think they had a thing, too.” The tone of his voice, and the way his muscles had rippled with tension while Elayne talked with Laramie, made Meg suspect that he had a “thing” of his own.

Then the man who could only be Hedley took the stage, playing a simple squeeze box with no particular proficiency. He looked to be in his early forties, with long dark hair that was starting to recede. He wore a plaid shirt and knee-length khaki shorts with an impressive selection of noise makers in various pockets. He pumped harder and played faster as he took the stage, and the band went wild, as if absolutely determined to drown him out. Elayne played and ululated simultaneously, Jane bobbed and weaved in place as she pummeled the keys, Dick used a foot pedal to pound the bass drum while he frenetically worked over the rest of his instruments, and John started to jump up and down like a child in a tantrum. Hedley more than matched them, flailing his arms at the bellows like Icarus trying to fly. Finally, an English terrier waddled out and started to bark, and all fell suddenly silent.

Meg glanced sidelong at Carlos. “Well, look at it this way,” he said, “if any of them are around, you can bet you're going to know it.” Sure enough, Daniel fired several bursts, and then all was quiet. The band continued to go through their motions in the silence, as if the music were still going in their minds. Then Hedley swapped the squeezebox for a banjo slung over his shoulder, and strummed along with lyrics he delivered with the sing-song quality of a nursery rhyme.

“Well one day old Lucifer called Heaven, said, `There ain't no more room in hell,' An' St. Pete says, `We need a curve to get more bodies in here.' So the dead returned to Earth, and it sure was a sight, the night they all woke up.” He blew a slide whistle.

“So the unknown soldiers came out of the tomb sayin' `Peace out, man!' Lincoln got up and said `Segregation forever!' While Jefferson sat down and said `Brown sugar's better!!' The night they all woke up.

“Lenin climbed out of the box and said, `Capitalism rocks!' Gandhi said `No more Mister Passive Resistance!' And John called Ringo an' said `Tell Paul Wings sucks!' The night they all woke up!”

“Then all the stiffs in the churchyard came in and said to the priest, `You told us when we die we'd live up in the sky in the sweet by and by. Instead we wake up in the same old muck, so Padre whatthe-!” A riff from the band and a blast of the squeeze box covered the obviously intended profanity. “The night they all woke up.” The band went through one last extended riff that cut off abruptly at the dog's bark.

The song was obviously their signature number. Meg clapped, and was moderately disturbed to see Janie doing the same. After that, they went into mostly covers, mostly mild sixties numbers that by their very benignity took on a disturbing quality. The weirdest was a muzak-like instrumental from the band that Carlos identified as “the Gonk”. “Theme from a British kids' movie,” he said. “Bloody crazy Brits...” A close second was John joining Jane at the keyboard for “Heart and Soul”. He proved to have a eerily soft pitch, while his wife sang with a jarringly deep contralto. That was followed by a spaced-out version of “Georgie Girl” with the redhead singing the vocals. The performance wrapped up with everyone singing along with “Good Morning, Starshine,” at which point Dianna carried Janie off to Moby Ralph.

As the stage came down, Carlos called to John: “Hey, I gotta talk to Hedley.”

While Carlos waited, Meg talked briefly to Jane: “So, Carlos told me about the name...”

“What about it?” she said. “A name's a name.”

“Yeah, but... Well, did you take his name?”

“Why wouldn't I?” Meg tried not to look perplexed. “What, are the hip girls against a woman taking her husband's name now?”

“No, of course not, but... you shouldn't have to.”

“I didn't.” Meg stopped trying to hide her bafflement. “Look, I thought about it, and I figured, most important inventions in human history: fire, the wheel, the flush toilet. Nobody knows who made the first two, and I didn't want to be the reason people forget who made the other one. So I took his name, and when we have a son, the world will have another John Crapper.” By then, Jane was smiling herself, and Meg finally allowed herself to laugh.

Hedley arrived with a set of bongos under one arm and a didgeridoo over the other shoulder. John took his wife's hand, and they hustled for the bus. “Put those down,” Carlos said sternly. Hedley complied. “We've got some new vehicles, and we need to do some recon. First light tomorrow, if not before, I'm leading a scouting party west, and I'm taking some of our new acquisitions with us to make it a shakedown. I want your bus with them as backup.” Hedley shrugged in resignation. Carlos looked to Meg. “I want you to go with them, show us where you been.”

“I can do that,” she said hesitantly, “but I don't know if I can be much help. There really isn't much to see. Just... a lot of them.” She saw that her hands were trembling.

“Then show us where you saw them,” Carlos said. “Tell us how many. You might see things that jog or memory, even notice things you didn't the first time. You can help us, and it's going to help you too.”

Meg squeezed her hand into a fist, and the trembling stopped. “I'll do it,” she said. “We can take my Audi.”

“We have enough vehicles already, and I want you in the old Jeep with Joe,” Carlos said. “But it's appreciated. Now, I need you to prepare... by getting in that van now and getting a good night's sleep.” Meg found she was more than happy to comply, and found she was especially comfortable in the upper bunk.

Not long after, Carlos looked in, with Laramie looking over his shoulder. “You haven't told her,” his student said casually.

“What good would it do if we did?” Carlos responded rhetorically. “If there's anything we know, it's that whatever happens is mostly in the head. Telling them it could happen is the surest way to make it happen.”

The fiberglass boat had a plexiglass window on the bottom, with one edge just over the bunk. Meg slept, not so much peacefully as simply without conscious thought. Thus, when she awoke, she had no notion of the passage of time, except that it was darker than when she went to bed.

She was on her side, and tried to shift, which was when she discovered she could not move. She could not even raise her head. She found she could move her eyes, though. She looked down, and saw Laramie stretched out on the couch. Then she looked up, at the skylight, and saw a face peering down. She saw only a face, as clearly as if it was illuminated by full moonlight.

It was Greg.

Re-Deanimator, Part 8: Dr. W and the Fridge of Doom by David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Phillip stared as Flipper undulated into the station, and gaped at the apparition that was Monstro. “That's the most dangerous rig I've ever seen on the road,” he said, pointing at the sky-blue Travco. “If you've been driving that thing, you've got no right to complain about that garden hose. And that- I know a Spartan when I see one, but still- what the hell is that?”

Seen close-up, the first impression of Monstro was not so much size as sheer, primordial power. By the standards of modern RVs, its 27-foot length was not unduly impressive, though its height was considerable thanks to its large wheels and an added nautical-looking superstructure amidships. But what it lacked in size, it clearly made up for in dinosaurian durability. The originally silver skin had been allowed to weather to a pearl gray, and bore an impressive collection of dents, yet there was no evidence that its integrity had been compromised. As for the underlying chassis, the wheels and a winch at the front marked it as not only a serious cross-country truck but a likely military vehicle. It looked like it was built to conquer the world, and probably had.

“Those as would know think that Monstro could be the oldest motorhome on the road,” Carlos said. “It was definitely built before 1960, probably no later'n 1956, and maybe even before 1950. There's no way to be sure. It was a one-off home-built, of course; back then, they all were, which is what makes the dates so slippery. It would have taken quite a bit of time to get it running, too, and there were continuous modifications after. But we know it started with three things: that big-arse streamline trailer, a haul-arse hot rod engine, and a bad-arse war surplus Dodge cargo truck. The way those old monsters were built, it's hard to even compare them to anything built later: Low horse power, massive torque, gas mileage that wasn't so much miles per gallon as vice versa, an' built so tough they could've bludgeoned Nazis with the parts. An' the crazy bastard who put it all together definitely knew 'ow to get the most out of what 'e 'ad.

“Long story short, Monstro's gross weight is just over six Imperial tons, give or take a few 'undred kilos depending on what's in the tanks. There's quite a few. That funny bridge thing musta been put in to make up for lost headroom putting 'em in. The engine's petrol, but in a class with a decent diesel. The tech boys rated it as 175 horsepower and 500 Newton-meters of torque. Even before they got to it, the engine was set up to burn on a range of fuels, mainly mixed in with the regular petrol. It wouldn't have taken much work; if fuel had negative octane, those old trucks could run on it. There's two generators, one propane and one petrol, an onboard garbage incinerator, and even a gray-black water tank

“Unfortunately, even the tech boys couldn't do much for fuel economy, 'bout eight miles per gallon, six if you have. But then there's the pulling power... Like I said, it's hard to properly read trucks this old, and for this rig, even getting base measurements was really tricky. The tech boys came up with ratings, but one way or another, they got way under actual performance. I couldn't give you numbers, but I can tell you this much: Once, we used it to move a bus. It was a winch-assisted pull, just far enough to get the bloody thing out of the mud. But that bus was twice as big as Monstro, with twenty people aboard that we couldn't get out, and it was stopped cold and dug in deep. It came right out and kept going till Monstro braked. If it'd been in gear, it prob-ly would've rear-ended Monstro- and I'd call it even money which'd be busted up worse.”

Using Monstro's winch, they pulled the decrepit Travco to one side, making room for Laramie to pull out in the four-wheel-drive specimen. Just as it rolled into the back lot, smoke suddenly erupted from the engine. Laramie killed the engine and hastily evacuated as smoke erupted inside and was followed by fire outside. The more athletic female student sprinted up to douse the desultory blaze with an extinguisher. Carlos turned to Dr. Carradine, grinning like a shark. “I told you so,” he said. He waved his arms as if appealing to the scattered bystanders. “Didn't I say so? It's never just one thing!”

The female student, whose name was Annabelle, drew back as the smoke intensified, “I dunno,” she said, coughing. She turned to Laramie.“What did he say?”

Annabelle's pudgy companion, who answered to Jamie, trudged in and started beating back the smoke with a blanket. Laramie watched her for a moment, with a smile as subtle as the Mona Lisa, before he looked at Annabelle and said, “He said he was ready to take it with us.” Then, while Jamie stuffed the blanket into the grill to stifle the last of the blaze, he lit yet another cigarette.

While Carradine supervised the dismantling the siren Travco, Carlos, Phil and Laramie went back into the junkyard. “We really don't have that many RVs, anymore,” Phil said. “For a while, we had more than we could deal with. Old Pete had made handling trailers and RVs a sideline, buying them cheap, or keeping broken-down ones if the owner didn't want to pay to fix it. And Pete Junior says even back then, once in a while they would find a perfectly good one that someone just parked and left. But right about when I started, it got weird. We were finding at least one every week or so, a lot of them like new. We tried to sell them, but people just weren't buying them, so we scrapped a lot of them We would have probably ended up just leaving them, but by then we weren't finding them anymore. Pete said it was because the market had gotten so bad that manufacturers were shutting down production. He thought it was because gas prices were too high.”

“He wasn't all wrong, but he didn't get it right,” Carlos said. “The suits killed Travco a few years back, and there were others. Generally Mediocre shut down their mobile home division the same year. The people in the industry were all blaming it on gas prices, like what happened in the big gas shortage. Completely missing the big picture. The shortage made a mark on the business, same as for everybody, but in a year or two, the market recovered, even got better. The big bust was different. Everybody should've been able to see that gas prices had nothin' to do with it. The whole time, people were spending more on luxury cars than they ever did on mobile homes. Not to mention personal computers, VCR's, cable TV, bloody boob jobs... That was the problem. The people who had money to burn, or thought they did, decided there were more fashionable things to waste it on.

“And what it really came down to was people's dreams. When mobile homes were big, it was because a lot of people in the cities were still sentimental about the old ways, living in the country and exploring the wilderness- not to mention, realistic enough to want a fallback if the new ways went south. Even the bloody hippies could appreciate that. But somewhere along the line, things changed. People got too caught up in the big city to think about going back into the land. And I think a lot of them, in some corner of their minds, that if things really fell apart, they would rather die in their condos surrounded by their designer clothes and home electronics than try to live another way. And when it happened, they did.”

Phil halted at a pair of RVs next to Old Pete's place, which turned out to be an especially large trailer built and decorated to look like a fifties-trendy house. “These were Old Pete's pet projects,” he said. “One's a Travco, and we don't have a clue what that other one is.” The Travco was a 29-footer painted entirely yellow. The other was at least as long, and covered up by several tarps. Enough could be seen to know that it was painted deep purple, had a tapered tail and strange humpbacked cab, six wheels, and an elliptical grill with some kind of ornament covering it.

Carlos searched the Travco first, while his companions uncovered the other RV. He came out shaking his head. “I'll take it, but only because we've got nothin' better,” he said. “Call it Mrs. Goldbrick. Now what do we have here?”

“Try Fee Fi Fo Fugly,” said Laramie. The uncovered motorhome looked like a cross between an eggplant and a whale shark. The grill looked eerily like a sucking maw, and a large gold star directly over it did not improve on appearances.

“I'm callin' it Prince Chuck,” said Carlos. “I know what it is, too; saw a want ad once, and learned a little more. It's called Daystar, from about ten years back. Apparently, the people who built it were church folk, an' they got the names from legends about the star of Bethlehem, which say it was so bright the wise men could see it in the day. I don't go that way myself, but I think there could be somethin' to it, if it was the kind of light as some see an' others don't: What they'd call a vision, and we'd call either a hallucination or a UFO. At any rate, it was hugely expensive, upward of fifty G's, an' they say fewer'n a score got built. But who knows...”

They ventured inside through a door in the rear of the bulbous cab. Carlos and Phil inspected the dashboard, while Laramie hung back. After only took a few moments of casual examination, he took off his sunglasses and stared “Holy crap,” he said, rapping the frame of a doorway, “This is real wood! And not that plywood or that particle junk, either, this is solid.”

Carlos looked over his shoulder, and then stood up to take a look himself. It was a surprising find. Wood had been common in trailers well into the 1950s, though even then inferior plywood was typical, especially for interior finishing. By the 1960s, wood products being phased out, and within another decade the closest thing one was likely to see to wood paneling in the average trailer was a tacky overlay pattern on the plastic. “Solid, hell,” Carlos said. “This is teak!”

The tour was hasty but thorough, from the cab back to a sloping rear hatch. Carlos rattled off details as they went along: “Everything in here is like new, and crazy good to begin with... no wonder it was so expensive.” He took one sniff and walked faster through the kitchen. “Bad smell, but that'd be food in the fridge... Looks like we got 35 feet all told. The one I saw was shorter, and the rear was way different. Only four wheels, and it looked almost sawed-off, which put me off. I don't think it had a back door, either. This was definitely a deluxe edition... I wouldn't be surprised if it was a prototype of the line. Short as that was, who knows...” He stepped outside, and returned looking fairly satisfied. “The propane's in decent shape... Everything here looks good enough to roll. We just gotta do somethin' about that fridge...”

Carlos led the way back to the kitchen, looking more apprehensive than he had going into battle. The fridge was about four feet high, just big enough to be trouble to move. Carlos reached cautiously for the handle, and the others showed their confidence by taking several paces back. The smell was even fouler than it had seemed the first time. Carlos stepped to the other side of the fridge, where the opened door would be between him and anything that might fall out. He stretched out his arm, just reaching the handle. He took another sniff, then took another step back and took out his hammer. He reached out again, probing with the point of the hammer. On the third try, he hooked the handle perfectly. He looked up and down the handle, judging the odds of accidentally ripping it off. That was when he noticed that the others were looking down, and he followed their gaze down to the spot where a very small pool of greenish-black fluid had formed under one corner of the door.

The sounds of thumping, crashing, splintering wood, grunting, cursing and repeated applications of duct tape all resounded from behind the open rear hatch. Then Carlos came into view, holding up end of the fridge. The door was shut and sealed with enough duct tape to wrap a mummy, but he called a halt until Phil applied more. Then he bent his shoulders and hoisted it up, and with their combined efforts they managed to heave the appliance several feet. Without a glance to see where it landed and whether the duct tape held, they hurried forward to the cab, where Carlos and Phil started the vehicle and Laramie exited to start up Mrs. Goldbrick. Finally, they all raced as fast as they could away from the abominated fridge.

David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Re-Deanimator, Part 9: Exemple Pour Les Autos by David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

As sunset approached, the encampment at the turnoff was rapidly expanding as vehicles arriving from the road joined those returning from Pete's. Dianna, Janie and Meg joined Daniel atop the camper, which with the truck was designated Skybox. Meg quickly estimated the fleet to be forty vehicles strong. Cars were outnumbered by vans and pickups, and there was a high proportion of heavier vehicles, ranging from a completely incongruous ice cream truck to a 30-passenger Gillig school bus. Janie pointed and laughed at an approaching old short bus painted to look distinctly like a watermelon. “Is that Laramie's bus?” Meg asked.

“So, Dr. W told you that story? Actually, no it isn't,” Dianna said. She pointed to the Gillig. “That one is. We call it Gilligan.” Meg goggled and then guffawed. “It started as a rear engine diesel bus in the fifties, probably one of the first, then someone turned it into a big motor home, and then the college rigged it up to run on a diesel-electric generator. There's solar panels on the roof, too. Lar sold it to George and Carlos eventually, but for months, he was trying to drive that thing around town. I heard he spent a grand on parking tickets alone.”

“Then what about that one?” Meg asked as the short bus drew nearer, and momentarily answered herself, “It's a band tour bus... a weird, cheap, messed-up little tour bus.” It was a Dodge truck conversion of late-forties vintage, either an early Power Wagon or one of the wartime trucks they were directly copied from. In addition to bands of light and dark green, there was purple-pink trimming that was wavy and smudged, including a solid field at the bottom that was the backdrop for the legend “HEDLEY KOW”, presumably the band's name. Various irreverent captions in very official letters were positioned in official-looking places around the bus, such as “Gov. Wallace Academy For The Ungifted”, “School of Hard Knocks”, and the evident name of the vehicle “FÄRTHER” on a placard over the windshield.

“Hedley and his band have been with us since our second week on the road. They're nice enough, their music, not so much,” Dianna said. She raised her eyebrows mischievously. “You know what's really funny? The `H' is supposed to be silent.” Janie burst into giggles. “Oh, and look over there. Recognize it?”

Meg followed a pointing finger to a large fire department station wagon, heavily chromed and polished and patriotically painted red, white and blue. “I can tell it's an ambulance,” she said, “and it looks to be late-fifties, I think a Ford. But I've never seen a grill like that. You know, it really looks like a toilet seat, or one of those ladies' urinals.”

“Yeah, it's one of those things everybody's heard of, but hardly anybody would recognize if they saw it,” Dianna said. “What you're looking at is a 1959 Edsel. That grill was actually bigger in the 1958 model, so the the later years are a bit harder to recognize. It was the last vehicle in the fire department lot. The way I heard, they hid it behind the tanker.”

“And they thought injured people were better off in an Edsel?”

“The Edsel wasn't really that bad,” Dianna said. “It just didn't live up to its own hype. And anyway, that paint job says parade duty. I think maybe they used it for a hearse.” Meg laughed.

Dianna pointed out a rustic Power Wagon, with a meshwork variation of the “longhorn” grill that had only been used in 1961, with a stake bed that was serving as a pen for a flock of goats. A horse trailer was unhitched to let the goats out, and a couple burly ranch hand types started releasing live chickens from the trailer.

“That's Horace Horsehauler,” Dianna said. She pointed to the ice cream truck and an L600 panel truck. “Those are Frosty and Chilly Willys, our refrigerated trucks. Frosty has a walk-in refrigerated compartment, and Chilly is a retired mail carrier fitted with an industrial ice maker and a shaved-ice machine. At the start, we stocked them with perishables we found at grocery stores, but most of that stuff went south months ago. Now, we use them to store eggs, milk, leftover canned goods, and any meat we can bag. It just about makes up for the power and upkeep on the refrigeration units.”

“Say,” Meg said, “why don't you use regular semis?”

“When we started, we picked up a diesel big rig and a ten-thousand gallon tanker,” Dianna said. “We called it the Purple Diesel Eater. I'm convinced it slowed us down by at least two weeks, which I suppose is all for the best to you. We not only couldn't keep it full, we couldn't even get enough extra gas to make up for what the rig was using up from our diesel stores. On top of that, it wasn't anywhere near suitable for the kinds of roads we have to deal with. The L-series is better cross-country, and also more maneuverable.”

Suddenly, Daniel snapped off two shots. Meg looked in time to see a shuffler go down a hundred yards down the road. Daniel kept his weapon up. It seemed to Meg that he actually relaxed when he saw five more following behind. He cut them down one after the other with well-aimed double-taps to the head, and when four of them rose again, he fired even more precise shots to the neck. He glanced at Meg, and answered the unasked question: “Corporal, Army special reconnaissance. I wasn't over there, that got done while I was finishing first in my class at the academy, but I wouldn't deny being in the neighborhood.”

He shot a shuffler again, and continued, “We came up from the south and east. About a month back, our scouts ran across a big group out in the desert. We slowed down to stay behind them. We wouldn't be as close as we are now, but we really needed what we're looking for here. Those, and the ones you ran into, are just the ones that wandered off from their stragglers.”

“Wait a minute,” Meg said, “I came here from the other way, and I didn't see anything like what you're talking about.”

“You wouldn't have,” Daniel said. “At the start, there were films of bunches of Jonny Revs stumbling around, bumping together and tripping over each other like it was a vaudeville act. They showed it to us as training footage, and I heard they released it to the public. All BS from the brass. They staged it with captured specimens that were already in bad shape. I'm sure at least some were deliberately mutilated to make them slow and off-balance, the way they cripple a bull before they let it in the ring with the matador. I don't know what all they did, but I can tell you, no revenant in the field ever runs into another rev. It's an instinct, it has to be, and however it works, it gets stronger when they're together in greater numbers. The more there are, the more they spread out. With the biggest groups, you could walk right through and only see a few- until and unless they come after you.”

“How often do they do that?” Meg asked.

Daniel shrugged. “All we know is, if they come after you once, they'll do it again. Always.”

Meg looked about for some other topic of conversation, and her eyes lit on a returning GMC van, which she recognized as both the same van that had driven into the station behind the Goliath and the same model she had seen on the flatbed. “Hey,” she said, “are those the same Vanduras that Carlos's Dodge got sold for?”

“The very same,” Dianna said. “I swear he took them with us just to keep trashing GMC. That one on the flat bed hasn't run in months, and we stripped anything worth saving weeks ago. It's almost like he's saving it for some kind of revenge.”

Back at Pete's, the last of the vehicles were pulling out. Carlos smiled were he stood tall in the front seat of his Thing as Flipper drove away with Teutonic poise on a set of new shocks. Then he looked to the new acquisitions as they lined up before him. There were the two RVs, the Subaru 360, the VW pickup, the Jeep van and the Power Wagon. He stepped forward and started tapping each vehicle with the side of his hammer.

“I confirm your titles as Lady Maude, Duchess of Goldbrick and Chuck, Prince of Daystar,” he said for the RVs, and continued down the line. “I dub you Princess Ladybug, Baron Van Flatbed, Lord Redbrick, and you shall henceforth be known as Dodgzilla. You have been found worthy of the fleet. Perform your duties well, and we will take good care of you. If you do not...” He slapped the hammer in the palm of his hand and then glanced expectantly in the direction of the Vandura.

“Is he nuts?” Phil said over the hiss of an acetylene torch.

“It's his aboriginal heritage,” George said, then hedged, “I think. I understand he spent most of his childhood with his parents and their tribe, before he was adopted by a white family. He doesn't talk about it much. Native Australian culture is based on animistic religion: Animals, plants and even the inanimate can be seen as having spirits with broadly anthropomorphic qualities. There are also many aspects that are a matter of symbolism and tradition, as much as literal belief...”

“I believe what the Prof's getting to,” Laramie said, “is yeah, of course he's nuts.” He lowered a mask and started a heavy buzz saw.

David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Re-Deanimator Part 7: Dianna By David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Meg drifted back into awareness at the feeling of motion. She stirred at a dry chuckle, and came fully aware at the giggle of a little girl. She raised her head and saw the Indian in the corner dinette seat, reading a paperback. Or, rather, looking, as she saw it was a collection of MAD magazine's wordless Spy Vs. Spy comics. He chuckled again as he turned another page. She turned her head and saw a girl of perhaps five years old, perched in the the lap of a woman with vividly deep red hair, who in turn had turned herself sideways in the longer seat of the dinette.

“Hi, I'm Dianna, and this little thing is Janie,” the redhead said. The girl giggled. “I hear your name is Meg.”

“Yeah,” Meg said. She started to sit up, but then sank back. “I think Dr.- Carlos mentioned you- you and Ted?” Dianna nodded, and Meg knew immediately that Ted was not in the picture. She changed the subject: “Where are we going?”

“For now, back to the main road,” Dianna answered. “Dr. Wrzniewski sent some of us back to meet the rest of our group.”

“Rest... how many of you are there?”

“I can't say, myself,” Dianna said. “About a hundred. People come and go all the time... Oh, don't misunderstand. We've lost people, but mostly, they just go. Carlos and George take people with us if they really need help, like you, but they never make anyone stay. Some do, some don't, it's about half and half. Mostly, the ones that go head for someplace... or people... they wanted to get to all along.”

“So where are you headed for?” Meg said.

The girl chimed in, “Where are we going, Mommy?”

“Nowhere in particular, I suppose,” Dianna said with a slightly wistful smile. “As far as we know, there really aren't any places left to go. We just stay on the move; we stop to pick up food and gas as we go along, and go places if we have a lead on something big...”

“And get away from them,” Meg added.

“Yeah,” Dianna said sadly. “Them.”

“You know... I heard something,” Meg said. Dianna looked a little more serious, and Meg guessed, correctly, that she already knew the story. “I heard that the government was setting up safe places. First it was shelters in the cities, run by the police. Then the army came in and started moving people out to places in the country side, deserts and mountains, like... reservations.” She glanced at the Indian, but saw no reaction. “That's what I heard. Well, my boyfriend told me he heard it.”

Dianna drew an arm a little tighter around her daughter. “No, they tried that, but it never worked out,” she said. “We don't waste time looking for anything like that.” The Bus followed behind them, and as they made a turn Meg saw Moby Ralph behind it. By the time they reached the turn-off from the main road, they passed three more vehicles, a 27-foot Travco that could only be Flipper, a World War 2-vintage Jeep, and a towering silver-skinned vehicle that was not so much a motorhome as a self-propelled trailer. “Monstro, I presume?” Meg said.

“Yup,” Dianna said. “One and only.”

“What is it, anyway?” Meg said, craning her neck. “It looks like somebody just went, like, Frankenstein and put an old Airstream trailer on a big truck.”

“It was a Spartan, actually,” Dianna said. “The trailer, I mean. You can recognize them by that front window, like a wrap-around windshield that sticks forward, especially on the early models. That one's 1947; we checked the nameplate. There was a big boom in streamlined aluminum trailers right after the war, and Spartans were at the high end. A lot of them got used a little, and sold off or just abandoned. Then, somewhere along the line, someone thought of turning them into what we'd call motorhomes.”

“Why di'n't they just take the trailer, Mommy?” Janie said.

“Well, Janie,” Dianna said mischievously, “sometimes even big boys do really silly things... .”

Meg sat up as a pickup truck went by. Its boxy but streamlined cab, painted red and white with a siren on top, gave her a sense of deja vu. “That's Little Red, our A100 pickup, and here's Red and Big Red Jr, our A-series vans,” Dianna said. Two vans, clearly variants of the same model as the pickup and also clearly former fire department vehicles, followed behind, and Meg recognized it as one her family had owned when she was in grade school. One was longer than the other, and lacked windows. “Red's an eight-door passenger van, and Big Red has an expanded hundred-and-eight inch wheel base; they called it the A108. They all have the 318 engine upgrade, the same they used in the B-series and even some of the L-series trucks. Speaking of, here's our big boys...”

Two more fire department vehicles, a flatbed carrying a GMC Vandura and an even bigger tank truck. They bore about as much mutual resemblance to the pickup and van as the “Before” and “After” guys in a marginally convincing mail- order miracle fitness ad. “Those are Red Wagon and Gunga Dodge, two of our L-series trucks. Gunga Dodge is an L700 two-thousand gallon water carrier. It's the biggest vehicle we have, about 25 tons full.. if we can keep it full. The Wagon is an L600, and we think started as a ladder truck. It was stripped down to the cab when we got it, and a mechanic bought it and turned it into a flatbed car carrier. That's a funny story...

“Back when Carlos was starting at his school, he talked his department into buying a 108 new for his department's field trips, but about ten years later, they sold it to help pay for two new fifteen-passenger GMC Vanduras. Several vehicles got sold, and the faculty bought up most of them, like that Type 2 Bus at the station. Professor Harrington turned that one into a camper, and George bought a Dodge twelve-passenger that ended up back in the field trip roster. But the 108 was snapped up before anyone even knew about the sale. Carlos was furious, and he was seriously obsessed with getting another 108. Then a few years later, he got a lead on one that was being sold off at a municipal fire department auction. He went with Ted... this was a few years ago... and found the van in a lot with the other vehicles. Ted told me, after, that it was no reserve, but Carlos put down everything they had in the first bid. And then it turned out it was the only bid!” She smiled, but pressed a hand to her eye.

Meg asked, not quite sputtering, “Did- he...?”

“No,” Dianna said. “He- It was before any of this. A few months after the auction, actually.” She gently nuzzled Janie, and Meg said no more.

“Ah, and there's the Yellow Submarine.” Another L700 passed, a semi with the yellow and black colors and orange lights of municipal maintenance vehicle and a similarly-painted tank trailer in tow. “Carlos got the truck and trailer at a municipal auction, same as the fire department vehicles. It was probably used to deliver fuel to road construction crews and remote construction sites. The big trailer's 5000 gallons with two compartments, split about 60-40. We fill the big one with diesel, and the other with regular gas... or, again, we would if we could keep it full. And this is Yellow Cab, from the same lot.”

They pulled to a halt alongside a Jeep FC crew cab tow truck, painted with a jaunty checkered pattern. She knew enough about trucks to know that the A-frame tow rig was improvised and fairly light, but it had obviously been strong enough to go the distance with Greg's Audi hitched behind it “Hey, that's mine,” she said. She pulled out the keys.

“I'm sure Professor Wrzniewski will give it back,” Dianna said.

Meg stood up and looked out the door. In addition to the tow truck, there was another yellow FC fitted out as a light tank truck and towing a second tank on a trailer, a Jeep Gladiator with an unusually large slide-in truck camper and a 3-door Rabbit hitched to a fiberglass trailer. Meg took a closer look at the trailer, whose rounded shape and orange color called Cinderella's pumpkin carriage to mind. It was small, with a body only about ten feet long, and presumably light-weight, but still looked a bit big for such a small car to be towing.

She took an even more careful look at the camper on the truck. Part of the roof was moving. As she watched, the cab-over front of the roof, already much taller than the usual upper bunk, expanded into an upper room that opened onto the rest of the roof like a balcony. A man emerged, waved in the direction of the Goliath, and then unfolded a chair.

Meg was surprised when someone called back from the cab, “That's Daniel. He's my husband. I'm Becky.” She looked belatedly at the driver. It took a moment to convince herself that the woman at the wheel was old enough to be driving the car.

“Wait,” Meg said aloud, running through Carlos's story. “Becky... the grad student?”

“That would be me,” the woman said. “I'm into my doctoral work now, or I was.”

“That would make you...” Meg frowned. “Older than I am.”

“I don't know,” Becky said. “How old are you?” Janie giggled.

“Well, might as well go meet people and see what shape my car's in,” Meg said. She stepped down, and Janie scampered after her. She looked over her shoulder, expecting the young mother to be following right behind her child. Instead, Dianna was slowly stretching one leg and then the other, before stretching out her arms and raising herself in a slow and steady motion. When she was on her feet, she reached over her shoulder and snatched up a cane. Meg tried not to stare as the woman who had already impressed her as a dynamic and vibrant beauty came hobbling out. She stopped trying when she saw the pervasive scars beneath the other woman's tank top.

“It was a single car accident” Dianna said, gripping Meg's shoulder for support as she made the descent to the ground. “I was driving, with Ted, and Janie... and her big brother and baby sister. I don't know what happened. Nobody does. They know Ted got Janie out. They think he had a chance to get Jack, too. Instead... They said they found him with his arms around me. They said that's why the the burns are on my back. Mostly.” Then she hobbled a little faster after her daughter.

David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Re-Deanimator, Part 6: They Shoot GMC's, Don't They?? By David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Previously published at
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8899597/6/Meg-And-Greg

Carlos strode into the garage. George walked alongside him, while Laramie and Phil followed at a few paces. The professor stooped to pick up the .45 handgun and a loose clip that had belonged to the flattened former police officer, stowing it in a loop in his belt, and inspected the vehicle on the lift. A quick appraisal confirmed that it was a Dodge one-ton 4WD Power Wagon, with the oversized wheels and beefed-up suspension of a custom off-road rig and a crew cab that was not standard for the model. The grill marked it as a '61, having an iconic early-sixties shape vaguely like the face of a longhorn bull and a mesh pattern throughout that was retired after a single year. The stakebed rear and a railroad tie bumper added a touch of redneck engineering. "It's one of a kind, far as we can tell," Phil said. "The engine under the hood is a diesel. The guy gave it to us to have an electric transmission installed, like yours. I heard he was a regular customer back in old Pete's days, maybe a friend. Except, I got the feeling old Pete didn't like him... maybe got scared of him, by the end."

"One of a kind," Carlos said. "...We'll take it anyway."
He strode out the back, into the rear lot. There were a dozen cars in view. The lot ended at a line of outbuildings and a wooden fence that clearly enclosed a much larger junk yard. At least a score of trailers and motor homes poked above the fence right at the front, in addition to the edge of a gabled roof that was presumably Pete's place. Ranks and files of many more tall trailers and vehicles receded into the distance, and who knew what entirely out of view.

Carlos looked over the cars first, twirling his hammer thoughtfully. His eyes lit on a VW Bus crewcab pickup, which had the V-shaped front and split windshield of the original line. "We want that," he said. His eyes turned next to a van of similar vintage which was fairly generic except for the grill that marked it as a Jeep. "Damn. The FC passenger van variant. We spent years lookin' for one of these."

"Ah... we got it running well enough, but the engine's a bit off," Phil said. "Rattles, squeals, you know..."
Carlos ignored him, sizing up a tiny Subaru that looked more like a golf cart. "We'll take that one, too."
"But, ah, that's the 360, ah, sir. It received one of the worst ratings ever for safety in a collision..." Carlos gave him a cool glance, and he fell silent. Carlos went down the line, and stopped at a GMC pickup, slapping the hammer against the palm of his hands. "Well, sit, now that is a fine vehicle. I notice you already have a GMC van, so I'm sure you already know, they're among the best..." Only then did he see the coldness ell, the engines can be a bit labor intensive. And they can get rusty, though it's not a problem in this climate. But rest assured, nothing on the road is more durable than a GMC, especially the..."

Carlos took several long paces back and drew the .45 from his belt. Four out of seven shots perforated the hood, with the others hitting the windshield, an unsuspecting trailer and the sky. He loaded the other clip and and an extra cartridge, pointed the gun sideways at a headlamp and fired eight shots in rabid succession before the gun clicked empty. The bullets fell in a wide but level grouping that took out the right blinker, the left headlamp, and the "M" in GMC. He put the pistol back, took a few more paces, and drew the 20-gauge. The first two blasts sprang the latch of the hood and made a geyser out of the radiator. He unfolded the stock and blew out the front tires, and then shot off the driver's side mirror for good measure. Then he stowed his weapon and closed in with the hammer.

The first swing put the blunt end of the head straight through the windshield. Carlos yanked it back out and struck again with the point, gouging sideways through the fractured safety glass. After three more blows, the windshield was as broken and crumpled as a peeled egg shell. He smashed the remaining windows, and turned his attention to the remaining headlamp. One phenomenal blow drove the point of the hammer all the way through the reflector. A wrenching, crunching twist and a hard tug wrenched the entire headlamp out like a gouged eyeball, complete with wires that held it dangling at the level of the bumper. Two more blows did not so much knock the headlamp loose as completely pulverize it. Finally, Carlos wrenched a hubcap off one of the front wheels and heaved it skyward. At the peak of its trajectory, he drew his 12-gauge and let fly with both barrels, missing completely.

"Looks like you're losing your touch," Laramie said.
"Start runnin', and we'll test the hypothesis," Carlos answered with a grin. He turned to Phil. "For the record... I love a good Jeep, and I'd stake my life on a four-by-four Dodge. VW's pretty good, and Ford isn't bad. I'll even give a Chevy a chance. But I hate GMC's."

Sure enough, there were two Dodge Travco motor homes just inside the gate, both definitely late-'60s vintage. Though it was Winnebago that had put the RV on the map of commerce and popular consciousness in the late 1960s, mass-produced Travco motorhomes had hit the market about five years earlier, and the line had remained successful until higher powers at Chrysler shut the division down. Early in the history of the enterprise, Travco had introduced a major innovation that set their product apart from the motley and costly one-off truck conversions that had been available before that time, and still made them instantly recognizable: The resources of the automotive giant had been put to work to produce purpose-built, ovoid fiberglass bodies, in lengths ranging from 21 to a tremendous 32 feet, almost always white and usually with a broad, straight stripe from the headlamps to the tail lights. Many compared it to a "Silly Putty" container; Carlos would have compared it to a submarine. The red-striped 32-footer before him, however, called to mind a beached whale. "Ah, bloody 'ell," he said, his shoulders sagging, "even a GMC deserves better'n that..."

"And we thought Flipper was bad," Carradine added. Though the rear of the body extended well past the rear wheels, the front sagged so low that, if the bumper was not touching the ground, then the distance was indiscernible to the naked eye. The hull listed visibly to starboard as well. Clearly, the suspension was not simply overloaded, but in a state of collapse. The rest did not look much better. Despite the dry climate, rust was rampant on the exposed metal parts, and even the plasticized body had conspicuous yellow and orange stains. The tires were bald, the windshield broken, but Carlos took an especially hard look at the fine cracks in the rubber lining of the window. He also sniffed at a distinctly foul smell.

"This is what I've been telling you about," he said to Carradine. "Check the window gaskets first. If they're in bad shape, chances are the hoses inside will be worse. You know what happens if they go bad: Water damage at least, maybe sewage contamination, and worst case scenario, propane or even petrol spills. I don't like that smell, neither. Normally, I could put it down to an overfull black water tank, but these things are supposed to burn fecal matter. Best guess, either the Destroilet backed up, or else there've been animals nesting in there... This thing's not just a wreck, we're lookin' at fire an' flat-out biohazard. We don't even go in there if we don't have to."

The other specimen certainly looked more promising. It was only 21 feet, but in every other respect it would have presented itself as a superior specimen even if both had been like new. The wheels and suspension were not only in good condition but better than factory standard. The body was all but Teutonic in its straight and level pose, with just enough wear and weathering to confirm that the vehicle had spent the better part of its years in regular use rather than taking up space with other trophies of someone's midlife crisis. Carlos took an especially long look at the wheels. "I wouldn't swear to it," he said, "but this sure looks like a four-wheel-drive rig."

A quick examination of the cab, with assistance from Phil, confirmed it. Laramie came forward from the rear with a smile. "Doc, you wouldn't believe how sweet this is," he said. "They got a full-size fridge, heating and AC, and what we're pretty sure is a filtration system."
"Perfect," said Carlos. "The only thing left to check is the propane tank..." He hurried outside, leaving the others to continue admiring the interior. After a few minutes, Dr. Carradine came out to investigate the long silence.
Carlos had opened an access panel that covered a propane tank. He was still standing, staring as if in horror that battled sheer incredulity. Carradine looked over his shoulder with definite concern. Laramie and Phil followed to see what was the matter. They saw a propane tank, in good condition, hooked in to the RV's systems with a hose... a garden hose. Not to mention generous applications of duct tape, some of which had been applied to the middle of the hose. "Well," Laramie said, "at least they patched the hose."

"Twice," Phil added. "Ah... at least."
They turned aside, grimly. "All right, we have a great rig, with one flaw," Carradine said. "We can fix it. Put in a new hose, hell, a whole new tank. We've done it with worse."

"Sure we've done it," Carlos said. "Enough to know it's never `just one thing'. By now, we might as well do a chart, like the kids did for the stupid things the stupid people do in those stupid old monster movies. We find a rig that looks great, except one thing that somebody let by with a subpar patch. So we fix it, and drive off. Only after a few weeks, or days, or hours on the road, something else turns up, the kind of thing even a good crew could miss it. So we fix that, only it's more work, we have to tear things up a bit, and while we're at it we find something else and fix that. And then, if it didn't happen already, the first fix we did goes wrong, and when we redo it we figure out it was worse than we thought, and like as not we actually made it worse. And we can repeat with variations until something finally gets bad enough that we have to tear down to the chassis just to get at it, which is right about the time we find the big problem that makes everything else look like termites on a sinking ship. O' course, then there was the time we actually had termites..."

Even as he spoke, he was clearly trying to convince himself as much as the others. "C'mon, we've seen the same thing with rigs that looked better'n this! For cryin' out loud, the last owner thought it was a good idea to replace a propane line with a garden hose and duck tape!"
"All right, what's the alternative?" Carradine asked, not quite rhetorically. "Nothing's perfect. What else can we do, besides leaving it here to rust?"

"Easy," said Laramie. "We tear it apart. We put those shocks in Flipper, and the water filter wherever we can fit it, use anything else we can, and if there's any left over we're sure will work, we take it for later."
Carlos shook his head. "We've tried that, too. Swapped-out parts never work as well. And putting those shocks in Flipper is like headlining Richard Kiley in the Podunk Community Theater production o' Oklahoma. The real problem with Flipper is that we put it together without a clue what we were doing, and we got too invested in it to admit it was time to give up. Sure, the suspension was junk, but we all know, even shocks as good as those would go just as bad, an' sooner than later. No matter what we do, assumin' nothing else goes first, it's gonna end up..." He jerked a thumb at the 32-foot write-off.

"Yeah, but as long as we keep it going, we save on gas," Laramie said. "Or we would if we didn't keep Monstro around."
"If we could get that running," Carradine said, pointing to the four-wheel RV, "it wouldn't use any more gas than Monstro."

"A bonfire wouldn't use up gas much faster'n Monstro," Carlos snapped back. He pondered. "All right... We give this thing a shot, after we take out this whole atrocity and patch a new tank in proper. An' if this rig even starts to give us trouble, then we take it apart and use whatever we can for Flipper."
"Okay," Laramie said indifferently. Carlos couldn't hide a flinch at the sound as his student lit another cigarette.

Re-Deanimator Part 5: Davey the Goliath by David N. Brown Mesa Arizona

Previously published at
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8899597/5/Meg-And-Greg

“Roighta,” Carlos said as the new arrivals fanned out, “time to get you what you need. Laramie, get me a first aid kit!” The shirtless young man strode over, while Carlos sat Meg down on the hood of the police car. Laramie stood by, looking non-chalantly masculine as he lit up a cigarette. Meg noticed that the brand was “Laramie”.

Phil looked over his shoulder. “Hey... Hey, she's bit! She's gonna turn into one of them!”

“Don't be stupid,” Carlos said, firmly enough for the mechanic to fall silent. “I won't pretend it ain't bad, but we can take care of it, an' it's not too late...”

“You mean they found a cure?” Phil said anxiously. “What is it?”

“Penicillin! What'd'ya think?” He pulled out a bottle from the kit and poured it on, then a little more after further cleansing. Soon, he had Meg bandaged up. “George, this place is secure as it gets. Send the signal for the others to come forward. Give 'er a spare bottle.” The bald man handed over one of two refillable water bottles at his waist before returning to the van.

“Drink up, and come with me, long as you can,” Carlos told Meg. “You too, Phil. What'd you do here, anyway?”

“I was junior assistant, pretty much,” Phil said as they walked back to the garage. “Pete was in charge, but he left most of it to Art, and he left most of the real work to Dwayne, so he took it out on Dwayne and Jonny took it out on me. Right before, they were all riding me about was busy about this crazy back order... Somebody wanted a part for this completely obscure European thing...”

“Cry me a river,” said Carlos. “I had an order that was supposed to be in. Think you'd know if it's in?”

Phil shrugged. “Shipping and receiving's Art's job, mostly,” he said. “That's what I kept telling Jonny, he's the one who should be looking for that part...”

“Screw it,” Carlos growled. “Where's the records?”

Meg's memory was jogged. “There was a clipboard... Over there!” She pointed where it had fallen off the wall.

“So anyway, let me tell you about this order,” Phil said to Meg. “It's a transmission part, basically, 'cept it was kinda part of the steering too, 'cause the vehicle had front wheel drive. I didn't completely understand it myself, and they told me don't worry about it, just find the part. Only, the vehicle's, like, 30 years old, an' it turns out, the whole company went under more than 20 years ago. Obviously, whatever this piece o' crap is, it should have been junked years ago, but Jonny tells me, it's not our job to tell the customers what to do. So anyway, what we finally find out is that the only place in a thousand miles that has this part is in...”

“Moab??” Carlos roared explosively. He advanced on Phil, thrusting the clipboard in his face. “The part's in Moab??!!”

“Oh my god,” Phil said. “That's- it's- you're the guy with the Goliath?”

“Borgward Goliath Express 1100,” Carlos said. “And you're gonna get real familiar with it!”

The front parking lot was filling up. The strange van had pulled up behind the Beetle, and the police car was being driven off to one side to make room for more. A VW Thing pulled in, drawing a distinctly ghoulish trailer made from the front of a Beetle, followed by a Bus, a Rabbit pickup and a gray GMC van. Styling indicated that the Bus was at least five years older than the GMC, but the former was clearly in better shape by far. Pulling up the rear were a yellow Jeep Wagoneer with a geometric Indian-blanket pattern for trim and a vaguely whale-like white camper van.

Meg paused for a closer look at the van's smiley face, which bore the name “GOLIATH” in metal letters between the headlights and a semicircular plate with the legend “Express 1100” in a forlornly exciting lightning-bolt font. The lower body bulged outward, while the upper part tapered rather precipitously beneath the overhanging shell. The upper body was painted a peachy hue like desert sand, a middle section between the windshield and a line of trim over the headlights and grill was an earthy shade of yellow, and the lower part was a deep mustard gold.

“That's one weird roof extension,” Phil said, examining the orange shell that protruded over the upper body. “It almost looks like an upside-down boat.”

“Yeah, that is weird,” Carlos said. “It's a boat. Ah, and it's backwards, too.” Meg took a closer look, openly incredulous, but there could be no mistake. Even the oddities of its shape made sudden sense. It was a tub-like affair, with a scalloped bow and boxy stern that were not unlike a popsicle. The stepped sides that handily held tools and gear were gunwales and oarlocks, and a shelf-like projection that shaded the windshield was just right for a place to mount an engine.

“So what, somebody built a boat to fit on the roof?” Meg asked.

“Nay, the boat was probably built first, leastways the shell,” Carlos said as he stepped inside. “And it's not on the roof. F'r all intents and purposes, it is the roof.” It was easy to see what he meant. The inside had been reconfigured like a camper, with a counter and cabinets behind the cab and a three-seat dinette and couch set against the walls to the rear. The arrangement left an open passage where most of the original ceiling had been turned into an oversized sunroof. Benches on either side of the inverted boat were being used for overhead shelving and a bunk. Carlos opened a cabinet in the right rear corner and took out a well-worn and moderately stuffed binder. He sat down at a dinette seat whose back abutted the cabinet, and Phil sat across from him in a wider seat which faced sideways directly across from the left passenger door. Meg sat down at the far end of the couch, which was shaped to fill the space between the side doors and the left corner.

“I'm going to tell you a bit about myself, and the people with me,” Carlos said. “Then I'm going to tell you a story. As you might guess, I'm a geologist, and I'm from Australia. I also served two tours in your last war, an' you know how that turned out. After that, I got my doctorate, came over here, and got a job as a professor. When all this started, Dr. Carradine- that's George- and I were taking twenty-some students out on a field trip. I heard about it sooner than most, an' I knew quite a bit already. So, we rounded up some extra people and a bit more gear, quiet-like, an' made it a long trip.”

Meg curled up on the couch, idly listening as Carlos continued, “Our school's middlin', size-ways, but we make up for it a bit in reputation. We do mining and engineering, an' we do good work in applied research. Enough of the right people know it that sometimes, we get funding for a project that normally would be corporate or gov'ment. About ten years ago, we got one that was bigger than most. Not my department, literally, but the way I hear, it was major money, at least for a uni grant, and nobody really knew where it was coming from. The assignment was to test new automotive technologies in existing vehicles... technologies that could reduce the need for petroleum.

“However much money there was, wherever it came from, it sure didn't go into quality vehicles. Some were donated by students and faculty. The rest were all straight from the junkyards. There were four vehicles, that I know about, that succeeded and survived. There's Moby Ralph out there: It's an Ultra Van, a line of campers based on the Corvair. Good for 20 mpg, most fuel-efficient motorhome on the road till the bloody hippies killed it. The designers tried using the rear engine to heat the cabin, and the tech boys did one better and set it up for thermoelectric power generation. That pickup, we call it Thumper, came later, but it has the same modifications the team performed to make a 3-door diesel hatchback run off biofuel, which is kitchen grease. The original was Peter Rabbit; you'll see it, and others later.

“And, of course, we have this: Davey the Goliath. The mark was pretty big in Australia when it was a going concern; I buy one, and take it over here, right hand drive an' all. It's good for walkabouts, and I take it on field trips now an' then, till the engine gives out. Right about then the call goes out, and when I talk to the tech boys about my troubles, they get real interested. Something about troubles fitting their engine in vehicles of the right power an' weight class, whereas the Goliath's built for an engine that's wider than most. Problem solved. I give them my van, and they agree that if it takes, they'll give it back to me. 'Bout a year and a half goes by, suddenly there's a big uproar over the project, something to do with where the money came from, or the results, or both. Everything's shut down, sudden, an' more'n a few people get canned. I get a call from one of them, sayin' to come and pick up my van, an' bring a few friends.

“I come, with Dr. Carradine, my grad student named Becky, a pipsqueak freshman who goes by Laramie, an' a friend of mine named Ted, who brings his lady friend Dianna. She's got 'is ring, but they don't really talk about where they're at, and quite a few people are keeping an eye on her waistline. We come out to a spot in the boonies that turns out to be a wrecking yard. There's at least fifty cars there, done out all kinds of ways. A lot of them look wrecked for real, but at least a dozen look more'n fit to run. The guy's waiting beside the Goliath, done up like this, and gives me the keys. Then he tells everyone else that they can take any car they like, and he will sign the title.

“Long story short, Dianna and Ted take Moby for a honeymoon lodge, Becky takes Peter, George picks a giant home-built motor home we call Monstro, and Laramie makes off with an old bus some crazy 'ippie turned into an RV. The next day, the guy's gone for good, completely drops off the map, and within a week, every vehicle in that yard is so much scrap. Within a year, more'n half the faculty involved aren't just out of the university, but no longer doing any significant work in their fields. We know that a few ended up dead. But there's a few left who give us help later.”

“Most of the stuff the guys did was conceptually advanced, but off-the-shelf as far as technology and materials. That's probably how they got away with handing so much of their stuff over to us; nothing the sponsors could claim as proprietary. It also allowed us to replicate a lot of their work with other vehicles, like Thumper. In fact, we built ourselves a little fleet of Rabbits, and customized a couple RVs. We couldn't always do it as well, though. Peter, for example, can burn propane. We junked a Rabbit trying to replicate it, but we did it with the diesel on a Dodge Travco we call Flipper. We put in an hybrid electric transmission, copy of something the tech boys put in Monstro. Only there were some problems we couldn't fix in the suspension, there when we got it from what we know now, but our hot rod job prob'ly made things worse. So, long story short, when it's rollin', the 'ole bloody thing goes up an' down like Flipper... But this, this is a whole other can o' worms.” He led Phil outside to the cab. Meg stretched out on the couch. At a firm push, an arm rest swung down, giving her room to stretch her legs.

The driver and passenger seats were a single piece, though the seat cushion was divided in two unequal parts. Carlos yanked back the larger cushion that covered the passenger seat and a central hump that split the cab. Beneath it was a cover for the engine compartment, clearly newer than the rest, with a hinge for convenient raising. Carlos opened it. Where the various parts of the engine would have been, there was something like an oversized film can, completely sealed against tampering or inspection.

Phil nodded. “I think I heard about something like this... It was supposed to be strictly theoretical. A rotary engine without moving parts, able to run on a range of fuels...”

Carlos nodded and chuckled. “Try anything remotely resemblin' fuel. Most of that binder is a record of testing what crazy crap this thing couldn't burn. Which wasn't much. Mileage isn't great, horsepower's downright weak... but it will run on most anything. Petrol. Diesel. Propane. Ethanol. Bloody alcoholic beverages.”

He slammed the hatch and jammed the cushion into place. “You call this thing a piecea crap, I won't argue. It means something to me, but I'd junk it in a second. But this engine is priceless. As long as it keeps running, I can make it anywhere. As long as the bloody transmission don't tear itself apart before we replace the one gear that's wearing out. And you're gonna do your bloody best to keep it from happenin'. Not because I'm gonna bust your arse if ya don't, but because there's things behind us that aren't gonna stay where we been. An' you don't wanna be there when it all catches up.”

“Hey doc!” Laramie called. “We searched the station, and we're ready to check out back. It looks like some nice stuff. I saw a couple Travcos...”

“We want 'em,” Carlos said. “At least one. We want it if we have to tow it away.”

Laramie smiled. “Can't resist two of something...”

Carlos grinned back. “If it's up to me, I get two of everything. Go check out the back. Take this guy with you. Stay business-like. Anyone who isn't part of the search is on duty for pumping gas. Check out that Dodge, too. If it can roll, it goes with us. And if people start running out of things to do, it's time to get ready to move on.”

Laramie turned aside, swung open the doors, and paused. The extended couch was blocking half the doorway. It was filled quite comfortably by Meg, who was sound asleep.

David N. Brown, David N. Brown Mesa, David N. Brown Arizona, David N. Brown Mesa Arizona, Mesa, Arizona, Mesa Arizona