by Mark Tufo
“Someone is messing with us,” he scowled as he held my note up. Someone had scrawled “Death Awaits” in a suspiciously red-colored medium, with the added effects of drips and all. “Anybody hear anything?” he asked the room.
Justin and I gave each other a quick knowing glance which fortunately went wholly unnoticed. What was I going to say? “Yeah, this vampire chick who wants to kill me and everyone I know was at the door last night and wanted in. Funny thing is I almost let her.” That probably wouldn’t go over so well.
* * *
“Well that’s a cluster,” Brian said, looking through his binoculars at the furniture store from the same vantage point as the evening before.
“I think I can smell them,” Travis said disgustedly.
“Definitely looks like your friends set up camp on the roof,” Brian said as he surveyed the area.
I walked over to the truck. “You tell Ron about this and you’ll be walking home,” I told Gary.
“About what?” he asked suspiciously.
I pushed the passenger side view mirror back and forth until it snapped off.
“He is going to be pissed,” Gary said shaking his head.
“Do you do this stuff on purpose?” BT questioned me.
“I’ve got my reasons.” I lined up the mirror with the early morning sun, trying to see if I could get some reflection to the people on the roof to let them know we were here.
“Do you know Morse code?” Jack asked me.
“Just S.O.S,” I told him truthfully.
“I know a little,” Perla said sheepishly. The entire group turned to look at her. “When I was 15 my boyfriend and I learned it so that we could message to each other when it was safe to either sneak out or sneak in.” She gave Jack a weak smile.
“You never cease to surprise me,” he said as he kissed her forehead.
“Doesn’t matter though, I’m pretty sure nobody over there would know how to read what you signal,” I told her.
“So you basically just ripped the mirror off for nothing?” Tracy asked with one raised eyebrow.
“Et tu Brutus?” I asked.
“I knew it was a mistake when they took you off the Lithium,” Tracy laughed.
“She’s kidding, right?” Cindy asked with a frown.
“Mostly,” I told her.
Travis had grabbed the binoculars from Brian, “Dad, they see us I think. They’re waving their hands.” I grabbed the binoculars, “Do you think they know it’s us?” he asked me.
“I don’t know how. I can barely see their faces with the binoculars and it doesn’t look like they have a pair up there.”
* * *
“Wish we had a telescope or something,” Paul said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s them but I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
“Well, they’re signaling something,” Alex said as he shaded his eyes. “Long, short, short, short, break, long, long. Is that Morse code?”
“Hell if I know,” Paul replied. “I’ve known Mike a long time, he’s never said anything about knowing it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t. But he’s got to know that I don’t know it.”
“Maybe he’s hoping someone up here does,” Erin said.
“Wait, let’s reason this out,” MJ said coming up to the edge of the roof. “You’re pretty sure he doesn’t know Morse code and he would be fairly confident that you don’t either. Now considering that it is a pretty archaic form of communication, we’ve got to think that he doesn’t believe anybody up here would know it. But yet he keeps repeating the same signal.”
“Well, what is it brain boy?” Mrs. Deneaux sniffed disdainfully, sitting in her chaise lounge chair as if it were a throne, smoking another cigarette. Joann looked like she wanted to throttle the old lady if only to get a hold of one of those coffin nails.
“What if the long dash equates to a five and the short dashes equal a one,” MJ said, basically talking out loud as he tried to figure the logic puzzle out.
“Eight and ten?” Joann asked, “What the hell does that mean?”
“What if they represent letters in the alphabet?” Alex asked.
Erin started counting the letters off her fingers. “H and J? Still doesn’t make much sense.”
“More like old school Risk board game pieces,” Paul added, completely from left field.
“Any chance you could elaborate?” MJ asked.
“The long is a ten and the short is a one,” Paul said excitedly.
“Thirteen and twenty, so what?” Joann asked.
“M and T,” MJ said.
“Mike motherfucking Talbot!” Alex said, high-fiving Paul.
* * *
“I think your message got through, Dad,” Justin said. “Paul and Alex are both fist pumping the air.”
“‘Bout time, let’s go find a ladder truck,” I said to everyone, motioning that we should get going.
* * *
“They’re leaving!” Joann said with dejection.
“They just wanted to let us know they are here. Now we wait to see what kind of plan they’ve come up with,” Paul said.
“Well, I do hope they hurry up. I’m down to my last five or six packs,” Mrs. Deneaux said loudly, making sure Joann would catch it.
“I’d throw you over the edge, you old crow, if I thought the zombies would actually eat you. They’d probably just think that you were already one of them,” Joann said as she stalked off.
Mrs. Deneaux cackled wildly.
Eliza and Tomas - Interlude
“I told you they would come, Sister,” Tomas said from the doorway of the furniture store.
Eliza said nothing as she watched the ‘rescue party’ depart.
“Mistress please, allow me to go now and finish him off,” Durgan said from Eliza’s left.
“I do not believe that you possess what is necessary to defeat him,” Eliza replied, never turning to address Durgan personally.
Durgan’s body shook with rage and impotence. “Yes Mistress,” he said mildly, nearly choking on his hatred of Talbot. Tomas turned and smiled at him which enraged him more. He knew Tomas was kin to Eliza but his allegiance was in question. He would keep an eye on the demon, but the power the boy exuded rivaled that of his sister and therefore he needed to proceed with caution.
“Please, at least allow me to go onto the roof and dispatch of them. They mean nothing to you,” Durgan pleaded
“Do not presume to know what is and what is not of consequence to me,” Eliza said coldly.
“Yes, Mistress,” Durgan, said bowing his head.
“Although it could be an entertaining distraction,” Eliza mused coquettishly.
Durgan’s head shot up, a glimmer of anticipation on his face, partly because he might get to kill someone but mostly because he loved to please his master. Durgan had always been a leader but he found himself relishing the role of follower, although slave was closer to his title. To be this near to her and her power was intoxicating. Why she wasted so much time and energy on the pissant Talbot he could not begin to fathom. In this world she was without limits, she had command of vast armies, countries would bow to her and he would be by her side. Now that Tommy’s blood had cured her she was once again immortal. Talbot would fall eventually, if only to the greatest enemy of mankind: Time. ‘FUCK HIM!’ he screamed in his head, his missing leg still aching.
“There is the chance, Sister, that Michael will not come to the rescue if no one is left alive,” Tomas counseled her.
‘I’m going to kill you the first chance I get,’ Durgan thought to himself. He froze when Tomas looked directly at him as if in response to his thought.
“You wouldn’t be trying to protect your friends now, would you Brother?” Eliza asked as she caressed his face.
“I have no friends,” he answered in an even tone.
“And what of me, Brother?” Eliza asked smiling.
“Least of all you, Sister.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN – Talbot J
ournal Entry 13
It was Perla who came up with the idea to break into a Best Buy and grab a Garmin. Within a few minutes it had located a satellite and after a query for Fire Stations we soon had five pulled up within a twenty mile radius. The closest was devoid of all equipment, they had definitely been out on a call when their fate befell them.
“I think we’re going to have problems,” Brian said dejectedly as he kicked a helmet across the empty fire station floor.
“First responders were doing what they were supposed to be doing,” I said.
“Hey!” BT yelled from the truck. “This shows which stations are volunteer based.”
“So what?” Jack said a little perturbed, this roadblock souring his mood.
“Real bright,” I said as an aside to Jack. “You’ve seen how big he is right? You always go around poking bears, dumb ass?”
“I’ll ‘so what’ right upside your head you dumb cracker,” BT said, struggling to get his bulk out of the truck.
“He knows not what he says my friend,” I said coming over to keep BT from ripping Jack in half. “Although this is kind of cool. It’s much better that he’s the object of your hostility as opposed to me.”
BT barely even heard me as he kept trying to get by me. I danced around him, trying to block his path, “Talbot, I swear if you get in my way again, I will beat him to death with your body!” he thundered at me.
I wisely stepped aside. “On your own, Jack.”
“Wait, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Jack said, putting his hands up.
“That’s kind of the same pose you use with BT,” Tracy said as she came up beside me.
“Am I that pathetic?” I asked as I watched the drama.
“Oh even worse I think,” she smiled.
“I used to have dignity,” I told her.
She put her hand up and rocked it back and forth. “Debatable.”
“BT, could you please not kill him, he knows how to operate the ladder truck,” I asked BT’s back.
BT had Jack backed all the way up against a wall, “Listen, you little twit!” BT said, pressing his finger on the top of Jack’s head. “A volunteer fire department means that they weren’t necessarily at the station when the end went down and more than likely never had the chance to get there.”
“I get it!” Jack said. Although I think he would have said that even if BT was teaching him quantum physics and he didn’t have a clue.
“You wouldn’t have thought God would have been able to squeeze a brain in around all that muscle,” I said with a smirk.
“Holy shit Dad! He’s going to kill you!” Travis said.
“No swearing!” Tracy and I echoed each other.
“Did he hear me?” I asked Travis softly.
“I heard you Talbot!” BT shouted from across the room. “So many crackers, so little time,” BT said to the heavens.
The Cherryfield Station Fire House was a disaster. I don’t know what happened but the LEAST unsettling thing was the Dalmatian pinned to the wall with a hatchet. What could have possibly necessitated that? Perla waited outside after her third volley of puke left her virtually empty. Dried blood coated the floor. It was at least a quarter inch thick, we kept cracking through the top hardened layer into the thicker still wet and sticky portion. I pretended it was the top surface of frozen snow. The illusion was difficult to hold onto because it was close to fifty out and this snow was a red, black hybrid, oh yeah, that and the metallic smell that human blood tends to give off.
If you’ve only ever given yourself a paper cut then you most likely have never experienced this phenomenon. I learned of the smell in a much more difficult manner. My unit was on a two hour alert, which basically meant that we could not be anywhere further than two hours away from base should we need to muster. I was boogie boarding on a private Marine Corps beach at the Marine Corps Air Station in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii when the base siren went off.
I was a lance corporal, pretty wet behind the ears and had no real clue what the hell the siren meant. I saw a few Marines on the beach waving at everybody to come ashore. Now I was concerned, sharks were always a present danger in the warm tropical waters. I grabbed my gear and hightailed it. The idea of being food scared the hell out of me. Who knew that was going to be the state of the world in a few more years?
“Sharks?” I asked the Sergeant as I turned to look at the few remaining folks in the water making their way ashore.
“Have you always been a dumb ass, Marine?” the sergeant asked me.
“Nope, saved it especially for you, Sergeant,” I told him.
Two hundred and twenty five push-ups later he kindly informed me that the siren was the muster call. The North Koreans were threatening our allies to the South and we were heading there as a show of force and solidarity.
It was well known in the Corps that the Koreans were fierce determined warriors that might be a suit or two shy of a full deck. I did not look forward to the deployment. Two and a half hours later, I and ninety other Marines were flying across the Pacific Ocean in a C-130 Hercules. It was a quiet flight. No one spoke, more so because it was damn near impossible to hear anything else over the noise in the uninsulated body of the aircraft.
The monster plane landed some five or six hours later. I’m not sure, I slept the majority of the ride, there wasn’t a whole bunch else to do. We waited on the tarmac as at least another twenty to twenty-five planes touched down, and there were already a bunch of jarheads on the ground when we arrived. A convoy of troop trucks, ‘deuces’ we called them, picked us up. We were shoved in like cattle. I felt like I had paid my 500 pesos and was now trying to sneak across the border with the other forty slobs I was packed in with. It was so tight we couldn’t even sit. Where were the cops when you really needed them?
We were generally doing what all Marines do, grousing and complaining. That was, of course, until we began to hear the chatter of small arms fire. The heavy staccato bursts of the AK’s were unmistakable. This was no drill, the North Koreans were firing. The trucks came to an abrupt halt and the tail gate was slammed down by the corporal that was at the rear of the truck.
“OUT!” came the cry from Sergeant who had moments before been in the shotgun seat. “Keep your heads down or I’ll write your mothers and tell them you died a coward!”
“Nice guy,” the Marine behind me said.
I laughed if only to still the screaming terrified kid in my head.
The exodus was semi-organized right up until rounds began to ping off the front of the truck, then it became a free-for-all. I almost met my demise as I was pushed from behind just as I approached the exit, almost landing on my head. The only thing that saved my ass was the Marine that had spoken up earlier.
“Thanks man,” I told him in earnest.
“You’d do the same.” Those were the last words Corporal Meera said as his chest puffed out. The high velocity 7.62 round broke through his back and out his sternum, passing between my arm and my chest. I was able to catch and break his fall as I twisted out of the truck, landing on the soft dirt below.
“Medic!” I shouted as a blossom of blood spread and soaked his entire torso. Blood spewed from his mouth as his ruptured lungs drowned in the viscous fluid. A haunted look came over his eyes as he looked at me. He tried to say something, but between the lack of air in his lungs and the blood in his throat, it wasn’t going to happen. It was the smell that stuck with me all these years. It was a rich earthy smell, the iron of his blood burned into my olfactory senses. I will forever associate that smell with death, the wounded do not bleed like that. The medic came just as Meera took his final tortured breath. Thankfully he closed those eyes that I thought might have held a hint of an accusatory stare. Was my stumble enough to delay him? I would dwell upon it at times, but I have come to learn that there is no great manifest destiny, there is no universal order. Chaos will always reign supreme. There is no more order to the world than the falling of a leaf in a stiff fall breeze. That it will
fall eventually is a truth, but which route it will take and where it will fall are the great mysteries that evade us all.
This almost forgotten buried memory broke free from the shackled recess it had hidden in for many a years as the earthy smell once again assailed my nostrils.
“You alright Talbot? You’re looking a little frothy,” BT asked, coming up beside me.
“Old memory my friend that I really wish had stayed where it was hidden.”
“There’s nothing here to worry about Mike. Why don’t you go see how Perla is doing?” he said, placing his hand on my back.
I found Perla in the back seat of Tracy’s car. She had Henry on her lap and tears were streaming down her face.
“Who would do that?” she asked me. Well actually she never did look up at me as I approached. She could have just as easily been asking Henry.
“Hey Perla,” I said.
She looked up and stared for a moment. “I think you look as bad as I do,” she smiled softly.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m pretty sure I look way worse,” I told her.
