by Mark Tufo
“I didn’t really mean it that way. They’re beginning to scare the hell out of me.”
“You mean they weren’t beforehand?”
“I had gotten used to the enemy. Now they’re rewriting the rules and I’m not a fan.
Doc, I want to tell you something, and I hope you don’t get mad.”
“I’m listening.”
“We weren’t out on some routine patrol when we came across you. We were looking for
you. We had drones in the sky for just that purpose.”
“Looking for me? How could you possibly know I was out there?” He paused. “The truckers
you captured. That makes sense. So then this wasn’t really a choice coming here?”
“Not really,” the captain said, taking a particular interest in the flooring. “You
weren’t safe out there, Doc. You’ve got to realize that, and there just aren’t many
of you guys with your expertise around. It’s you and skilled people like you that
are going to get this country…shit, the world…back on its feet. Anyone can shoot a
damn gun.”
“Not me,” the doc said.
“Okay, maybe not you. But you shouldn’t be. I brought you here hoping that the innate
curiosity I’ve seen in all doctors would take over and you’d want to stay.”
Doc turned to look directly at the captain. “And what if right now I told you I wasn’t
interested in this place and I wanted to go on my own.”
“I won’t keep you. Although, I did see your eyes light up when I told you about the
lab and patients that could use your help. You stay, Doc, and my word is my promise.
I will do all I can to bring this Tomas to justice.”
“The only justice for that animal is a bullet in the brain.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do...eventually.”
“Ever broken your word?” Doc asked.
“Once,” He answered. “I was seven and I told my mom I would stop climbing the tree
in our backyard. I climbed it anyway, fell out of it, and broke my arm in two places.
I vowed there and then I’d never break another. Karma works entirely too fast in my
case to go against it.”
“I’ll stay. I’ll see to your personnel and, God willing, I’ll find something to stop
the zombies. I was wondering why in the hell you guys were walking with a perfectly
good ride.”
“Actually, a couple of reasons on that. We figured you might hide if you heard a motor
and secondly the sound of the engine bouncing off buildings really seems to get the
zombies going. We left him sitting in a clearing so he wouldn’t attract any unwanted
attention.”
“Now that we’ve cleared the air, when have the zombies begun to exhibit this steep
learning curve?” Doc asked.
“It’s really been within the last week. The last few days, I suppose.”
“Roughly the same time Eliza was supposed to have died,” Doc was pondering.
“Coincidence.”
“Doubtful, I don’t believe in them and there’s too much history to disregard the correlation.
Eliza had control over the zombies, possibly even suppressing their natural ability
to adapt and to learn.”
“And now the yoke is off,” the captain finished.
“Quite.”
“Well…how far could they go?” Cap asked.
“They have the entire human brain at their disposal,” Doc said, letting those words
sink in for a few moments for the both of them.
“Are you saying we have the potential for super-soldiers here?” the captain asked.
“If you mean a killing machine that can move indefinitely, kill indiscriminately,
and not fear death…and even begin to avoid it, then I think we’re already there. As
a virus, it is only concerned with one thing, the perpetuation and replication of
itself.”
“Doc, the only advantage we hold against them is their single-mindedness, their oblivion
to gun fire. If they start to develop tactics and can even begin to wield weapons
then that makes your work here that much more important. We cannot survive Zombies
2.0 with the numbers stacked so greatly against us.”
“I think we’ve moved past 2.0,” Doc said. “Help me get set up and I’ll get to work.”
Neither noticed that the zombie was peering out in their direction, hands pressed
up against the glass. Its tongue flicking in and out rapidly like a snake.
Chapter 15 – Mike Journal Entry 7
Our walk back to the DPW compound was slow and quiet. Zombies were afoot and pissed
off. I hoped they’d stay at the apartment complex for a while, but I was pretty sure
that eventually they’d realize we’d departed and then they’d be on the prowl. The
sun was just beginning to rise when we got to the front gate. I know I shouldn’t have
been surprised, but I was when I saw Tracy waiting for us—for me, more specifically.
Everyone was up and looked as if they had been most of the night. How could they not
be? We’d rocked a major explosion and then had some ground warfare. As soon as she
did her quick head count, she’d known the cause of it all.
I knew she was pissed, I could see it in her features, and she had a right to be.
I’d snuck out in the middle of night to dance with another. That it was Death only
made it worse. I’ll give her this, she showed restraint. She had to have seen something
in the set of my jaw or the lilt in my eyes. I was not the same man as I had been
the previous evening.
“Mike?” Tracy asked as she began to undo the chain.
I stuck my hand through the gap and grabbed hers, tears began to flow from my eyes.
“Mike, are you bit?” BT asked, coming up quickly. “Help him, Tommy!” BT said as he
physically removed Tracy from her spot so he could undo the chain quicker.
“I’m not bit, BT,” I told him as he started turning me around, looking for a wound.
“Well, you’re not bit, your family is here, and you still have your rifle, I’m stumped.
What could possibly make you cry?” he asked.
Tracy was standing next to me. “Mike?” She saw that BT’s efforts were going for naught.
“I saw Melanie,” I told her.
It didn’t take her long to put all the pieces together. If I’d seen Melanie and all
was well, the girl would be here with us. “What are you going to tell Ron and Nancy?”
“The truth, I suppose.” I took in a sobbing breath and then exhaled just as loudly.
“Although, I don’t know how I’m going to do it.”
“Should you?” BT asked. “What good will it do?”
“At least they’ll know…they’ll be able to move on,” I told him.
I know he didn’t mean his question; he was just trying to give me an out. I’d thought
about lying, not that she was dead, but maybe rather in the manner in which she had
died. Would it make the blow any easier if I said I came across her body in her car?
No, there was no good way to deal with this.
I walked into the shop where Gary was busy at work.
“Man, did you hear all the fireworks last night?” he asked when he saw me come in.
“Front row seats,” I told him.
“That was you? Are you alright?” He stopped and actually looked at me.
“Not sure if I’ll ever be alright.” I decided to let him know now before he had to
ask another ten questions. “I saw Melanie…she was a zombie,” I added quickly, making
sure his hope meter wouldn’t r
ise too high before I smashed it against a rock.
He didn’t say anything. He turned and went back to work. He didn’t want to know the
particulars, and who could blame him.
“Where’s the radio?”
He pointed with a wrench-laden hand. Tracy was at the doorway watching. She came over
to me and grabbed my hand once I picked up the microphone.
“Ron, you there?” I barely managed.
“Hey, little brother, everything alright?” my sister Lyndsey asked.
“Is Ron around?”
“What? No cracks about my cooking?” she quipped.
“Not this time.”
“Is Justin there? I’ve got someone here that would love to talk to him.”
“Sis, could you please just get Ron and Nancy?” There was a pause; I knew she had
questions. They were going to have to wait. “Now, please,” was what I said. Before I lose my courage, was what I thought.
It was an indeterminable amount of time later when he finally picked up. “You fuck
up another truck?” was the first thing he asked.
“If only. Is Nancy with you?”
He picked up on the tone even through the electronics.
“Yes,” I heard him dry gulp.
“I found Melanie.”
I could hear them both gasp, this wasn’t the ‘I FOUND MELANIE!’ let’s celebrate and
pop tops off champagne, maybe dance wildly around a small fire sound.
“And?” Ron prodded cautiously.
I was sobbing. “Ron…Nancy…I’m so sorry…I…I…” I had to stop. I couldn’t collect myself
for long moments. Tracy was alternating between squeezing my hand and stroking my
head. “She was a zombie.”
Now I could hear their cries to match my own.
“NO, MIKE, NO!” Ron shouted through the mic, the power of his loss bleeding through.
“I killed her,” I said so softly I wasn’t sure I’d even made sound.
I must have, though, because Tracy brought both of her hands to her face.
“Damn you, Mike, just fucking damn you,” Ron said through his haze of tears.
“Too late,” I said, letting the mic swing free as I stood and walked away.
Chapter 16 – Stephanie and Trip
“Do you have any change?” Trip asked, taking his hands off the oversized steering
wheel to check his pockets. The bus started to veer off the highway. “There’s a toll
booth coming up.”
“I’ll find some!” Stephanie said, her nerves fairly frazzled.
Life with John was an adventure, something she’d always considered a positive. His
free spirit and kind nature attracted some of the nicest people she’d ever had the
pleasure to meet. However, in the midst of an extinction event, she found the constant
monitoring of his erratic, eclectic, idiosyncratic behavior to be exhausting. It appeared
to her that he looked for ways to get them into trouble only to somehow through divine
intervention find his way out again.
She’d had her suspicions since before they got married that Trip had an army of Guardian
Angels that watched out for him. Why he had garnered such a legion she wasn’t sure,
but she was intrigued enough to stay and find out. Her only fear was that at some
point they would go on a group vacation and leave Trip to his own devices. For God’s
sake, the man had somehow parlayed selling water at the tailgating parties for his
beloved Grateful Dead into millions. This from the same man that sometimes forgot
how to flush a toilet. She’d once caught him with the tank to the toilet off and a
plastic cup; he had been getting ready to scoop the waste water out of the bowl and
into said tank.
Just this morning he’d pulled into a gas station after he told Stephanie that they’d
been on 0.0 gallons for a little past fifty miles. She hadn’t known. He’d found a
hand pump, something she was certain he’d never used before in his life, and then
proceeded to top off the bus. All the while waving away her concerns as he sparked
up a joint.
“Good for the soul,” he’d told her between inhalations.
“Not if you’re on fire,” she’d told him.
“It’s a small joint; I’m not going to catch fire from this.” He stopped to take a
look at the cherry at the end of the homemade cigarette. “Now, back in ‘76, Pinty
made a huge one.” Trip extended his hands. “Now that one caught my hair on fire. Almost joined the army because of that.”
“What?” Steph asked. Looking around for zombies she knew had to be around. Trip couldn’t
have cared less about his surroundings as he would take a drag and then make a few
pumps to keep the liquid flowing.
“Yeah, I burned a patch of my hair down so low that Pinty said I was starting to look
like an army man. I guess they give you these short haircuts.” Trip loosed an involuntary
shiver thinking about it. “At the time, I figured I’d join and they could even my
hair out to match the burnt part.”
“Wait,” Steph said. “You were going to join the Army for the haircut?”
“I didn’t have any money for a barber,” Trip said as if that explained everything
perfectly.
“What stopped you?”
“From what?” he asked, looking at her blankly.
“Joining the Army.” She smiled, thinking of a drill instructor trying to get Trip
to do anything military-like. Although, knowing him, she figured he’d be an officer
before boot camp was over, some sort of promoting from within the enlisted ranks test.
“The Army was closed.”
“They were closed?”
“Yeah, it was Sunday. Even Army guys get to take a day off and partake of some Mother
Earth.” He grinned once again, holding up his rapidly depleting joint.
“Why the Army and not the Marines?” Stephanie asked, trying to distract herself from
everything else, if she was being completely honest.
“I wanted a little off the top,” Trip told her. “I’m not crazy.”
“Give me some of that,” she said, reaching. She didn’t normally smoke weed, but he
seemed to be enjoying himself, and if she could take in just a small measure of that,
then it would be worth it. She took two puffs, on the second she began to feel the
effects. Only, instead of it relaxing her, it made her even more paranoid than she
had been. “We should get back in the bus.”
“I’d like to see if they have any munchies. I could really go for a tuna fish and
bacon sandwich.”
She’d never heard of the combination before, but it did have its merits.
“I’ll be right back,” Trip said as he finished gassing up. He put the hand pump in
the luggage carrier under the bus.
Stephanie was frozen in a haze. She couldn’t decide if she should wait right there,
go in with her husband or get in the bus and start it up. She didn’t know if it was
messages from her own drug befuddled mind or one of Trip’s invisible entourage, but
she thought starting the bus seemed the wisest course to take.
Trip came out a few moments later, his hands full of items he had picked up inside.
