(Set moments before the end of the movie. Wichita panics when she realizes how much she cares for Columbus. Can she find him and Tallahassee and make things right?)
(Columbus)
I think I knew it even before she did. One moment Wichita was smiling back at me from the car window. I saw the smile fade. I saw the confusion spread over her face followed immediately by panic, sheer wild panic. Then the vehicle was screeching out of the parking lot, heading for the entrance to Pacific Playland.
I could hear Little Rock screaming "What are you doing?" as she, fortunately, toppled back inside the car window she had been propped in rather than out on the ground. Maybe that would have been better. It might have stopped Wichita and let her get control of herself. Little Rock had started to toss something to Tallahassee. It wobbled through the air. Instead of reaching him the Twinkie fell on the ground in front of us. The tail lights faded and they were gone.
I made a mental note that she must really be moving to get out of sight that fast. I heaved a sigh and picked up my shotgun.
"What the hell just happened?" Tallahassee demanded not only of me but the world at large.
I wanted to yell, scream, and throw things, anything at all to do something to release my frustration. Then everything let out of me like a balloon that had been popped and I felt nothing but empty. I should have known this was going to happen. I should have known that in this fucked-up world of Zombieland that nothing as good as Wichita was ever going to be mine.
"I guess her trust issues got the better of her."
He cocked an eye at me. "You're taking this pretty calmly considering how hell bent you were to come here and rescue her."
I picked up my shotgun and shrugged. "I guess even I learn when someone's not that into me. Let's go."
He bent over and picked up the Twinkie that Little Rock had thrown him. He studied it, jammed it unopened in a pocket and looked around.
"Might as well."
(Little Rock)
The zombies were all dead for good, we were safely off that tower and back into the familiar environment of a car and I was just winding up to throw the Twinkie I had found to Tallahassee when the engine roared, the tires smoked and we were accelerating as though there was a mob of the infected right behind us.
Where the Twinkie went I have no idea as I let go of it just in time to grab the car window frame and drop back into the passenger seat. By the light of the park I could see my sister's face and the look there scared me.
"What are you doing?" I yelled at her. "Stop!" But I knew that she wasn't going to pay me any mind. In fact I was pretty sure she wasn't hearing me at all. Her face was frozen and she stared straight ahead without blinking. Her knuckles were so tight on the steering wheel that they were white. She drove as though she was barely seeing the road in front of us. I know she didn't see the pair of zombies that she flattened as we pulled back up onto the interstate.
She started talking. I thought that must be a good thing until I realized that she wasn't talking to me. She was talking to herself and she was repeating our major rule over and over in a sing-song voice as though it were some kind of chant.
"Trust no one, just you and me. Trust no one, just you and me."
She scraped other cars abandoned on the road even when there was room to go around them. She just kept going, going as though the devil was behind us. I knew the devil wasn't but I thought that a certain former University of Texas boy from Columbus, Ohio had a lot to do with things. I was more than a little confused though. I had seen them hug; I had seen them kiss. Maybe that was it. Krista finally began to slow down a little as daylight began and the frozen look began to ease her face just a little. At last she stopped her recitation and fell silent. When that happened I went ahead and asked.
"Was his kiss that bad?"
(Wichita)
"Was his kiss that bad?"
I blinked. What did she say? In fact, as my mind began to take in the rising sun and the unfamiliar scenery around us that thought changed to "What the hell is going on? I looked around and added both "Where the hell are we?" and then "Where are Columbus and Tallahassee?"
My head was pounding and my hands hurt. Why did my hands hurt? I was clenching the steering wheel so hard I though I might have left fingerprints in the plastic. I tried to relax them. Then I realized my entire body was stiff from tenseness, every muscle in it seemed knotted up.
What was so strange was that I couldn't seem to remember anything from... from where? "Think Krista," I told myself even as I finally managed to ease off the gas petal and pull over to the side of the interstate. The interstate? What the hell were we doing here? And why did I have to keep asking myself questions that I should already know the answers to?
I looked over at my little sister, who was looking back at me like I was a two-headed monster. She had been yelling at me earlier, I could recall that although I wasn't sure what it was she had been yelling or why. Why did my head hurt so badly? I desperately scanned the back seat as though I could find a certain someone under the seat cushions or something like that.
And then I remembered.
"Oh SHIT! Columbus!"
(To be continued)
(By the way, the title is taken from the song of the same name first released by The Four Seasons in 1966 and then again in 1979 by The Spinners in a medley with "Forgive Me Girl" with a Motown sound. You can find both at youtube.)