by Mark Tufo
“Dad, up! You want to come up!” Travis urged.
I mumbled a few choice swears under my breath, having still not learned anything. What can I say? The pressure was making me freak out a bit. I pushed the stick forward. I heard hydraulics whining and the truck engine taxing itself, but I was not moving. Somehow, I figured pushing it harder would make something happen. Still nothing.
“The stick toward you, Uncle!” Jesse yelled.
I mumbled more expletives. I yanked the stick back. I was nearly propelled out like I was wearing boots made entirely of Mentos in a container full of diet coke. My knees were up above the lip before the arm caught up. I landed with a grunt. I eased up just as I got to the height of the kids.
“Someone call for a lift?” I asked, doing my best to not make my ascent look like the cluster fuck that it was.
“I’m not getting in that thing.” Meredith said, backing away. Couldn’t really blame her; the operator was not very good.
“I’m getting better,” I told her.
“When?” She backed up another step, like I was going to reach out and force her in.
“You can’t stay up here.”
“Dad.” Travis pointed down toward the truck. It was then that I noticed the arm I was riding was swaying. At first, like I was in a small breeze, and then more like I was at ground zero for a decent-sized quake. Zombies were swarming on the truck.
“Well, that certainly makes things more interesting.” My heart felt like it was fighting to get outside of my chest. It was beating against my rib cage so violently. “Come on, we’re going to have to fight our way out of this, and the sooner the better.” The fish weren’t biting at all. The roof was safe. Sure, it was a slow death, but that was preferable to the insta-death below. “Travis.”
“Yeah, Dad?” He knew what I was saying. He just wanted no part of it. He wasn’t backing up like Meredith, but the thought was crossing his mind.
“Tell me there’s a cheeseburger in the truck,” Jesse said.
“Huh?”
“The only way I’m coming down is if you tell me there’s food and preferably a cheeseburger in the truck.”
I’m not the brightest bulb on the string, and sometimes, I even flicker like I’m gonna go out, but I figured this one out quick enough. “Sure, I stopped at McDonalds before I came here. There’s a bag of quarter pounders and like nine orders of large fries.”
“The quarter pounders have cheese?”
“Sure.” I said as convincingly as I could, now that the bastard had made me hungry. In fact, the more I dwelled on it, the more I wanted it to be true. I was half-tempted to go down without them and eat in peace before they found my stash. Jesse hesitated before moving closer. I helped him get into the bucket. Not to be outdone, Travis got in next. It was crowded, but we’d make room for one more.
“I can’t leave you up here, Mer,” I pleaded.
“Sure you could. I’ll keep a watch out for the flying zombies. They’re next, you know.”
“Take it back,” I told her. With the way they were evolving, I wouldn’t doubt it as an eventuality.
I think she realized how serious I was. “Uncle, they’re not going to sprout wings; that’s crazy.”
“Yeah, well, so is living dead roaming the earth in giant hordes, eating everything that gets in their way.”
“Oh …well when you say it like that. I take it back; there will be no flying zombies.”
“Damn right. Now get your ass in here or I’m coming on that roof and tossing you head first into the bucket.”
I think she realized I was serious about that as well because she did it without any more qualms. I was pressed tight up against the front of the bucket. Good thing we were stuck in there like a cork too, because once again I had yet to find the feel of the controls, we dropped a good ten feet in a half second. My stomach hovered above my head for a bit before settling back down.
“You suck at this, Uncle.” Meredith said what the rest of the group was feeling. I turned my head to give her a little crap, but the green tinge in her face signified that I already had.
“All right, I’m going to go down another five feet then we’re going to blow some holes in these zombies. Jesse you’re closest; you go straight for the window and in, then Meredith, Travis and I’ll follow. Understood?”
I got nods from all of them. I think even some of the zombies got in on the plan, because they nodded as well. Pretty sure they were just waiting in extreme anticipation, though. I was so paranoid about dropping us right into the waiting arms of the zombies, I wasn’t even applying enough pressure to get us moving. The kids were ready to fight; apparently, I wasn’t.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, I’m working on it.” In contrast to my earlier movements, right now a snail could have outpaced us. I hoped I never got enough practice with this contraption to get the gist. When we were close enough, I gave the word. Zombie hands were halfway up the exterior of our ride, pushing against it from all angles. If we weren’t so close to our targets, it would have been more difficult to hit them. As it was, we were carving slices through them. Bodies fell away from the truck. At first, the destroyed zombies were resting atop the heads of the others that had not yet figured out how to climb aboard or could not find a place to perch. We already looked like one of those crazy over-crowded train cars from India. You’ve seen the photos, people camped out on top or hanging from windows. Can you even imagine having a mild case of claustrophobia and being the first poor son-of-a-bitch that got in that car in the morning? The press of that many bodies would be debilitating to one with a condition. There is not a call center job good enough that I would make that trek every day. Yeah let that one sink in for a sec. There you go, you got it! I dropped the bucket a little lower once we’d made some headway; that was as literal as it was figurative.
“I think I can make it!” Jesse said excitedly.
I wasn’t too keen on “think.” But like a typical teenager he didn’t wait for my response before jumping out. Hands reached and fell short as he quickly moved for the window. I covered his progress. I blew the side of the head off of a boy that looked like he could be delivering newspapers in 1850’s London, not sure who wore knickerbockers in this day and age but I didn’t stop to think about it for very long. Another zombie was trying to come up onto the hood and cut off Jesse’s egress. Travis moved quickly to shoot a zombie coming from Jesse’s vacated spot, and his hip hit mine, which in turn knocked me into the controller. We swung a foot or so to the side. I blasted a hole in the hood of the truck. I prayed to the truck gods that I had not damaged anything important.
“Sorry,” Travis said. I don’t feel he had the appropriate inflection to express the apology with enough genuine concern. It was bad enough I’d hit the hood; it would have been much worse if I’d hit my nephew. The truck rumbled then sputtered. I was holding my breath, and then it quieted down and purred normally. So far, everything was still working.
“Meredith, you’re up.” She moved without saying a word. That might have been a first. The truck was nearly devoid of the zombies. Blood and gore caked everything. What I had not taken note of until this very moment was that there was now a small empty perimeter around the truck, I mean, except for the broken and nearly decapitated bodies of dead zombies that is.
“What the hell?” I asked the question as I fired. “Go Travis!”
“Meredith isn’t in yet,” he said, looking over his shoulder.
“We have a window here, let’s not lose it. Go! I’m right behind you!”
Much like Meredith, he went without another word. I was thankful for that. Whatever the zombies were doing, I didn’t know how long it was going to last.
“Meredith’s in, Dad!” Travis yelled from the window. I spared a quick glance. All eyes were on me, from the cab of the truck and the zombies around. There was this expectant air, like we were all waiting for what would happen next. I took three quick un-aimed shots, using them as a deterrent an
d also to maybe bolster my courage. I placed my hand on the lip of the bucket and started my jump over. That seemed to be exactly what the zombies were waiting for. As one giant, disgusting organism, they moved. My trailing foot caught the lip of the bucket as the sheer weight of zombies caused the truck to move aggressively. My rifle went flying from my bracing hand while I tried to catch myself from falling completely on my face. I smashed my knee across one of the hydraulic pistons. This sent me tumbling, luckily toward the post office, where the wall kept me from heading off the side. My knee was battered, as was the side of my face where it collided with the brick. Zombies were making a mad dash for dinner. The rifle was a lost cause; it rested neatly on the hood before a zombie stepped on it and sent it to the ground. I wasn’t going to make it. Not a chance in hell.
“Travis drive! Just drive!”
There was a slight delay while he moved into position, and then the truck started rolling forward. The grind of metal on brick was ear splitting. I scrambled back up on my feet and hurried into the bucket. It was my only chance. At least a dozen zombies were on the truck with me, and more would be joining them. Travis turned the wheel enough to get us off the curb, and we lost a couple hangers-on, but they were quickly replaced. I hoped there wasn’t a safety device on the boom arm that prevented it from moving while the truck was in gear, or I was basically a human taco in my own plastic shell. For good or bad, the bucket moved up a little with a jerk. At least five zombies had grabbed hold of the lip of it and tried to keep it in place. I went a little higher. The arm groaned in protest from the multiple forces being applied to it while Travis laid bare just how inexperienced he was behind the wheel.
When the zombies came, he had been in the midst of learning how to drive with his learner’s permit. Once the shit hit the fan, we’d seen no reason to continue teaching him. I was just now realizing how large of an error on my part that was. A vodka-logged Russian on a three-day binge could have driven straighter. I didn’t know if he was doing the wet dog routine and trying to shake the zombies off or this was really how he drove. I remember fearing for my life a few times while we were out learning, but nothing quite this bad.
“Middle of the road! Drive down the damn middle of the road!” I had no way of knowing it, but at the time, the windshield was coated in a thick layer of viscera, making it nearly impossible to see anything, and right now sticking your head out the window was not advised, as the animals in the park were hostile. He jumped another curb, came back down, and clipped the fender of a Honda. Something in the bucket linkage was not a fan of all the stress it was receiving and broke free, I now spun like the damn teacup ride at the carnival. You know the one. You tell your wife you’ll take the kids on it because it looks like the most innocent thing that the fair has to offer. Then while you’re evilly laughing on the inside, you tell the rug rats to hold on tight while you proceed to crank that inner wheel for all its worth, turning the kiddie ride into a spinning torture chamber of doom with centrifugal forces threatening to pull your eyeballs into your skull.
The funny part is that the kids are scared shitless for the first few seconds, and then they’re laughing their asses off, begging for more. Then I would get off the ride, my stomach would be junk for the next twenty-four hours, and they’d be begging to go back on while eating fried dough, French fries, corn dogs, and cotton candy. By the time I would get home, I’d be lucky if I could hold down some Alka-Seltzer. Every fucking year I would do it, thinking that this year it would be different. Pretty sure that’s the definition of insanity; good thing I barely know how to read. Got to the point where my wife would bring a couple of tabs with us so I could take them as soon as I got off the ride. Want to know what’s even funnier? Even when the kids were older and too cool to go with dad to the carnival, I would still get on that fucking ride, even though I wasn’t trying to scare a kid anymore. I’d try to spin that damn thing off its axis. Same results, too.
That’s what I had going on here as well, although I don’t remember ever having to worry about smashing into telephone poles. The truck swerved hard to the left, the bucket whipped that way, just clipping the pole with a fingernail’s width of the bucket. The resultant crack sounded thunderous, like the heavens were getting ready to open up. The only thing I could think to do was raise up higher so there would be less arm to swing back and forth. There were a couple of things wrong with this. I was changing the center balance point of the truck, making it much easier for it to flip, and there was also a good chance I was going to clothesline myself on a phone line crossing the road. The way I was manipulating that control, I looked like a kid desperately trying to get a prize on those stupid claw games. Luckily, we were in the center of town, so there were no lines to be concerned with, but that good fortune was only going to last another couple of hundred yards, and we would not have lost our pursuers by then. At least, the twisting was acting like a windshield wiper, pushing the zombies off like the unwelcome bugs they were, and much like an old windshield wiper, it was leaving a heavy, sticky residue that would never come off without a sandblaster. The problem was I was doing enough revolutions to throw my equilibrium into the shitter along with achieving a hellacious gut ache.
I knew I was riding lady luck hard, bouncing up and down on her shoulders while I pulled her hair back and asked her, “Who’s my bitch!?” She was only going to take so much before tossing me off. The front of the truck was clear enough that Travis and Jesse were able to stick their heads out. Travis’s driving improved, but it still wasn’t anything that was going to get him his license anytime soon. It was already too late as far as the arm was concerned, that whole, “a body in motion will stay in motion,” and that was most certainly true for that bucket I was riding. It was turning like a ballerina in the midst of a pirouette. At least I wasn’t quite at a figure skater and a front-toe spin speed, not yet anyway. The telephone line was fast approaching. I dropped the bucket as fast as the mechanism would allow. I spun far out to the right, and I had to hold on to the bucket to keep from being pitched out by the forces. Jesse’s eyes got huge as I swept over his head, the front of the truck next, then I came back around to sweep over Travis, who I don’t even think saw me. We were down to three zombies on the truck and a horde behind. I needed off of this contraption before I ended up splattered across any number of immoveable objects.
I needed to time my jump out just right, so let’s get all the facts straight here: I needed to time my jump with the speed of the moving bucket, the speed of the truck moving forward, the inertia of drag times, the coefficient of time and space displacement calculated by the fractals … yeah I was airborne by now. I jumped out of the side that was already damaged, hoping this time I wouldn’t catch my foot. So far, so good; I made it out scot-free. Now, I just had to hope my momentum didn’t send me off the truck and onto the pavement, where the trailing zombies would make short work of me. At some point during my flight, I heard the fracturing crash of my home away from home coming to a violent end. The problem of such a destructive hit was that it had the effect of sending the arm back toward me a lot sooner than I’d anticipated. Oh, who am I kidding? I had no idea how any of this shit was going to work. I had jumped and hoped for the best. I was so low on that truck body I could have been considered a second coat of paint. I was grabbing anything that remotely resembled a handhold to slow me down. When I finally came to a stop, I dared not raise my head.
It was like I was stuck under the blades of a helicopter as that arm continuously whipped by overhead. I don’t know what Travis ran into this time, but whatever it was, it twisted the entire aperture to the point where the bucket slammed into the side of the truck with enough force to lift us onto two wheels. I was now looking down at the roadway as I held on to a hydraulic hose for all I was worth. A platoon of angels must have sat down on the far side, because somehow the truck slammed back down onto all our wheels. My jaw bounced off the truck body, and I’m pretty sure I chipped a tooth. For the briefest of seconds, I wo
ndered if there were any dentists still around. The arm was imbedded in the side of the truck—well, more like the truck body had melded around it. I pushed away from the edge and got onto my hands and knees. One determined zombie still shared the exterior with me. He wasn’t moving forward; much like me, he was holding on for the ride. The trailers were losing ground as Travis was now somewhat driving a straight course.
“Dad, you all right?” he shouted back.
“Fine! One zombie to your six!”
“Should I stop?”
“Not yet! In a couple of miles!”
The ride was somewhat enjoyable after the previous few minutes. I kept an eye on the zombie, as he did me. Neither of us moved, which was fine with me. I was still trying to get my adrenaline levels down to an acceptable level. If a cop gave me a sobriety test right now, I would look like a meth addict in the midst of a giant tweaking. That always goes over well with the cops. The truck started to slow. I took a quick glance behind me. I was happy to see that we were out of sight of our pursuers. I raised up at the same time as the zombie. I waited until we had almost stopped before I hopped off the truck. It was nice to have regular old ground under my feet. I staggered a couple of steps. Apparently, my inner ear had not yet completely stopped its spin cycle. The zombie got down as well, in a very athletic predatory jump if I had to admit it. Back when this started, it would have just walked off the edge of the truck, fallen into a heap of deadness on the roadway, then pushed himself up to a standing position before once again coming at me. Not this one though. I had a start as a rifle report rang out. The front of his head bulged out as the bullet struggled to get out of its encasing. The zombie fell forward.
