by Mark Tufo
This seemed to placate Marta somewhat, but her glare beamed back over in my general direction as if this was all my fault. I did what any hapless man would do under the circumstances: I shrugged my shoulders and walked away. Marta may have continued her relentless objection on Tommy but just at that opportune moment, her baby squealed in consternation. Tommy looked relieved and pleased with himself. I think he gave baby Vera a psychic tickle, the better to help him out of his predicament. Marta said the standard “Fine” and stomped away. Well stomping may be a little over the top, more like padded away heavily. Tommy caught me looking at him and quickly let the look of satisfaction run away from his features.
“Your secret’s safe with me, kid, come on,” I told him. As he caught up I put my arm around his shoulder.
After a brief conversation with Paul, we (and by ‘we’ I mean ‘he’) determined it would be best if he and his wife rode in the truck for a while. Yeah, big sacrifice. Heated trailer loaded with sleeping bags and plenty of leg room. I was a little pissed to say the least, maybe more envious too. I wanted to stretch out and get some sleep. After the frigid conditions of the past few nights it was going to take a lot of warmth and rest to take out the chill that had settled deep in my bones. Little did I know at the time that the chill I felt had less to do with the weather and more to do with my condition. Well time, as they say, is the great narrator. All things are laid out before her whether you want them to be or not.
CHAPTER 4 Journal Entry Four
With no general plan in my mind except to put as much distance between us and our previous home as possible, we headed North on Interstate 25 and then East on Interstate 70. We’d be relatively safe for a while, east of Denver would bring us into the plains of Colorado and then into Kansas. During the heyday of humanity this was not a densely populated area so the corollary (see I did learn something in the 6th grade that I could use later in life) was that the likelihood of coming across a great brood of zombies would be slight. That was the thought anyway. Getting out of Denver proper was a nightmare. It looked like any natural (or unnatural) disaster movie you’ve ever seen in your life. Cars and trucks, motorcycles and scooters, hell I’d seen a rickshaw a few miles back, were abandoned everywhere. It looked more like the world’s largest used car lot than a highway of any sort, that is of course if you took away the bullet casings that littered the ground like so many metallic insects or the blood splattered remains of the zombies that were merely trying to garner a meal, or hey, even the thousands of humans that had become, for lack of a better word, Spam. (Do you get the reference? Meat in a can?) I know it’s gross, but that was the only way I could think of it (of them) without blowing chunks. It looked like an all-you-can-eat buffet had opened up right next to a Fat Camp with a damaged fence, everything and everyone had been torn apart.
The battle had been savage and quick, with non-infected people clearly on the losing side. This I garnered by the sheer number of cars stuck on the roadway. If people had won they would not have hung around.
At some points I would drive ahead of the truck, scouting out potential routes, other times Alex would need to lead just to push some slag out of the way. For eight excruciating hours we navigated through the worst rush hour traffic known to man. By the time we reached a small town called Bennett, about thirty miles east of Denver, I was wiped. Tracy had volunteered on more than one occasion to take over the driving, but I couldn’t get over the sneaking suspicion that she had an ulterior motive. I could see her sideswiping a sign just for a small measure of payback for what I had done to her car. Most likely it was my deep-seated paranoia rearing its ugly head, but then again maybe not. I was paranoid, how the hell would I know. Not once on our eight hour trek did we spot a living person. Zombies though, that was a different story. There weren’t many of them that we saw, but each and every one turned and walked towards us as if drawn like a fine metal filament to a powerful magnet.
We stopped at Bennett to stretch our legs, top off our tanks and possibly try to choke down a power bar or two. My brain was completely against the idea of eating anything after witnessing the destruction a few miles back, but my stomach wasn’t listening. Travis, Tommy, and Henry for that matter had been sleeping for most of the morning. I was thankful for that small favor, although what I was shielding them from I don’t know. They had already seen everything we had passed in spades and then some. Bennett looked surprisingly untouched, as if the tidal wave of shit that had hit the rest of the state had completely missed this small oasis. At least that was how it looked. How it felt was a completely different story.
Alex hopped off the big rig, rubbing his arms for warmth, but more likely to ward off the evil that emanated from every corner of this burg. “This place doesn’t feel right, Mike.”
I wanted to agree with him and tell him this felt like we had just stepped into the door of the biggest surprise party ever given and we were still waiting for the shout of ‘SURPRISE’ to come. An expectation hung in the air, it was palpable, it was overbearing, it was just plain creepy. But even after all those emotions were churning in my head there was only one thing I wanted to know. “When the hell did you learn how to drive that truck?”
Alex stared long and hard at me, like I’d lost my marbles and now he was wondering why he had decided to hitch his cart to mine.
“Listen, I know this place feels like a tomb Alex, my nerves are taut and I can feel my spinal fluid quivering. I want to get some gas and get the hell out of here. I was just curious.”
“You’re nuts, Mike, I’ll give you that. I feel like I can barely breathe because of the weight of this place and you want to talk banalities.”
“Hey, I take offense to that, at least, I didn’t bring up the weather.”
“You would have, given enough time.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I sighed. “That still doesn’t change the fact that when I met you, you didn’t know how to drive the damn thing.”
“Fine, you crazy gringo, I’ll stand in this damn ghost town just a little longer so that I can explain to you that I had Carl give me a few lessons while I was securing the plow. I had him do that because I was afraid the wall was going to give exactly like it happened, all of a sudden and without warning, and I was afraid that Carl would be nowhere in sight and we would be stuck on this giant paperweight with nobody to drive it.”
“Now was that so hard?” I asked as I ripped the wrapper off of a granola bar. “Alex,” I started and from my tone he knew I was going in a more serious direction. “Where are you planning on going?” Alex wasn’t dumb. He caught my meaning of using ‘you’ and not ‘we’. He looked deep in thought; there was a conflict roiling within him. Sure, we were fast friends, but Alex had stronger bonds elsewhere, as did I.
“I’m thinking Florida,” he answered almost apologetically, as if I held any sway over his decision-making. “I might still have family there. Any chance you’d be going that way?”
I shook my head slowly. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t go. Florida, the Sunburn State.”
He smiled at my crappy joke. I loved him even more. “I have to go home (meaning the Northeast), if…” I swallowed hard. “If my family is still alive, I want to be with them.”
Alex nodded solemnly. “I agree,” he said softly.
“And on top of that, Tracy wants to go and get her mom.”
“Her mom? Where is she at?”
“Yeah, her 79 year old, widowed mother that lives on an old farm by herself in North Dakota.”
“Mike, come on man, why are you going to go on a fool’s errand? We both know what you’re likely to find.”
“You tell her that Alex, and I’ll give you fifty bucks and a case of beef jerky.”
“Write to me and let me know how the weather is,” Alex said as he walked away to see if he could find a switch to power on the pumps, or a hose of some sort to get gas out of the ground tanks.
“Yeah, real nice,” I shouted to him. I was halfway through my
power bar when the back of the tractor-trailer hatch opened. I almost choked on the piece in my mouth when I saw who was getting out of the back.
“How long are we staying in this little shithole?” The voice bellowed from the second largest man I had ever seen in my life, next to that crazy bastard Durgan, who was now so much Zombie Chow. SOMETHING O’Henry, aka Big Tiny, aka BT. We had picked up the guy while we were making a food run to the local Safeway store. He’d been trying to get into a pissing contest with me ever since. He was looking right at me while he asked the question. He continued in a menacing tone, “You gonna answer or what?” I did the only prudent thing I could think of, I turned and walked away.
“I’m talking to you, Talbot!” he yelled.
“Yeah, I figured as much,” I said over my shoulder. “I just don’t feel like listening.” I’m not thinking that was the right answer, I heard or more like felt the ground shake as he hopped off the back of the trailer. The train was coming; I had about ten seconds until contact. Luckily I was saved, sort of.
“Dad!” Travis yelled, and this wasn’t a warning about BT coming up behind me. Travis was on my right side behind the gas pumps. From his vantage point he couldn’t see the little melodrama that was playing out. When I turned to go and see what was causing that distressed tone in my son’s voice, BT sheared off too, whether to intercept my current course or to sate his own curiosity I wasn’t sure. I trotted up to Trav’s side a couple of seconds before BT. The big man gave me the once over before following Travis’ pointing finger. About two hundred yards away was a man and he was coming at full sprint.
“You think it’s a survivor?” BT asked. I could tell there was a little more than a tremor of fear in his voice. Well, it was good to know the guy was afraid of something. A hundred and fifty yards and the runner’s pace hadn’t slowed down. What was more worrisome was that he didn’t wave or try to gain our attention in any sort of fashion. The skeevies I was feeling were felt by all of us, something wasn’t quite right but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Man, his clothes look like shit,” BT said in hushed tones. I nodded in agreement. But that wasn’t enough to convince me something was amiss. Washing clothes was on the low end of the survival spectrum. BT continued his muttered comments to me. “That ain’t no zombie, is it Talbot? It’s running way too fast.”
A hundred yards away and it was clearly fixated on us, still no friendly wave, no gesture of peace, nothing but determination were etched in his/its ashen features. My mind was made up.
“BT, tell everyone to get back to the truck and ready to leave.” He didn’t move so I stomped on his foot. I thought he was going to punch me on the top of the head. “BT!” I yelled. “Get everyone back in the truck.” I could tell he was still debating about the punch.
“NOW, FUCKER!” I gave it my best Marine bellow.
He jumped. I was most likely going to pay for this later but it still felt like the right thing to do. BT kept looking over his shoulder as he ran back towards the tractor-trailer. Most of the survivors were outside the truck lounging, smoking cigarettes, getting some fresh air, eating, and even some of the baser necessities, pissing and crapping in the nearest bushes. But when a giant black man is screaming at the top of his lungs in a post-apocalyptic world that you need to get your skinny asses back on the truck to save yourselves, you tend to listen.
Twenty-five feet away... I waited until I was one hundred percent sure and still I wasn’t. It didn’t seem like a zombie, but if he was human once, he no longer suffered from that affliction, not anymore.
“Now, Dad?” Travis asked with a note of trepidation in his voice.
“Aw shit!” I just wasn’t convinced. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around this new development. The guy was within spitting distance, sure Olympic class spitting distance, but you get the point, when it became clear that Travis had made up his mind. The Mossberg bellowed a triumphant roar. The 12 gauge slug caught the man square in the chest. The effect was devastating. I watched in fascinated slow motion as his chest cavity became fully exposed and blood rained rampant as his full speed sprint was halted in mid stride; the 1500 feet per second slug struck with enough force to blow the man back four feet. I hoped for both mine and Travis’ sanity that when we checked the body there would be some tell tale sign of humanity lost. The smoke from the shotgun barrel had barely begun to dissipate when we obtained our definitive answer. Mr. Speedy Sneakers (the name seemed appropriate at the time) started to arise without so much as a grunt or a groan or a ‘Dude, why the hell did you shoot me?’ At this point you really didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the rules to our deadly game had just been altered drastically, and we hadn’t received the revisions. Travis looked over at me, apprehension contorting his features. I understood his fear, this guy just looked too normal. Sure his clothes looked like shit, but we don’t go around shooting people because they wear crappy clothes. If that was the case, we would have eradicated bums and high fashion models years ago. His countenance was pale but more in a sickly way than a deathly one. Hell, Justin, who was still suffering the ill effects of his zombie scratch, had worse color than this guy. As I was lost in thought, my enigma sat up. Ignoring the silver dollar-sized hole in his chest, he was trying in vain to get his feet up under him. The brain is a powerful tool but apparently it has its limitations, this poor bastard’s spinal column was shattered into at least a half dozen pieces. No amount of function rerouting was going to get him back up on his feet. Travis and I watched in horror as our mystery guest rolled himself over and began to military crawl his way over towards us. A few more seconds of our indecision and Speedy Sneakers was going to make it to his final destination, our tasty flesh.
Travis flinched as I put my hand out to his shoulder. “Go back to the Jeep,” I said to him. He didn’t need any persuading. Travis had no sooner turned the corner than I put a well-aimed shot through Speedy’s forehead. He slumped over to the left in an assemblage of monster parts that uncannily resembled a human. I walked slowly back to the big rig doing my best to reincorporate the bile that was threatening to make its grand exit. I fully expected to see nobody, by that I meant nobody outside the truck. However, Alex was by the back door of the truck looking around.
“What are you doing, man?” I asked, maybe with a little more harshness than I meant but I hadn’t fully recovered from my zombie/human hybrid encounter yet.
“We’re light four,” he answered gruffly. He hadn’t even witnessed the event and he was in more of a mood to leave than I was. I looked longingly over towards the Jeep and the Explorer, where Travis was getting a much needed hug from his mother, Paul and Brendon were securing some stuff on top of the Ford, and Erin was getting some water for Justin who was shakily smoking a cigarette. Tommy was not visible, at least not at first and then I saw him in the back seat of the Jeep. Even from this distance I could tell he was in a rush to get going. He didn’t say anything. Words would have been superfluous.
“Shit,” I answered as I turned back towards Alex. “Who’s missing?”
CHAPTER 5 Journal Entry Five
As April and Cash walked into the abandoned house, the smell of dust and Old Spice filled the air. The only sound to break the silence was the squeaking of the not so oiled hinges and the hitched breathing of Cash. Cash was asthmatic and high stress environments like the one he found himself in now tended to exacerbate the problem.
“Come on April, we should get back to the truck,” Cash semi-begged, trying his best not to sound desperate.
“What’s your rush, Cash, can’t wait to huddle up with BT?” she retorted snidely.
Cash’s cheeks burned from the jibe. He couldn’t understand why he had left the relative safety of the truck. It was when he looked back towards the curvaceous brunette, two years his senior, that he divined the answer. “Traitorous penis,” he muttered.
“What did you say?” April asked as she entered the defunct kitchen. At twenty-one April knew
enough to know that she had an effect on men and could generally get what she wanted just by batting her lashes or using her patented pouty lips. Normally she went for guys that could help her actualize her higher standard of living. Cash however, was dirt poor, acne riddled and wheezed entirely too much. In short, he was someone she wouldn’t date if he was the last man on earth. But since that was rapidly becoming the case she thought she might have to rethink her strategy, she had physical needs too.
When the door had finally rolled up on that stuffy trailer, she made up some lame excuse to go and stretch her legs. With just two words, ‘Come on,’ she had gotten Cash to follow her. She loved the power her looks granted her. Loud crashes emanated from the kitchen as April ransacked the place looking for something good to eat. Cabinets clattered, bottles smashed, each loud jolt made Cash’s heart skip a beat.
“May... Maybe you shouldn’t be so loud, April,” Cash said cautiously, not sure whether he was more afraid of zombies hearing them or pissing April off. After all, they hadn’t seen any zombies yet, and he had a feeling he was this close to getting laid.
“God! All these people have is Cheerios and popcorn!” April shouted. “You should find me something I CAN eat!”
Cash looked longingly back at the front door before he turned and went into the kitchen. In a week, a family of rabid raccoons couldn’t have done the damage April had accomplished in five minutes. Cash numbly stared at the destruction of the small kitchen. April, catching his gaping stare, responded in her usual vulgar style. She was so self- assured of her beauty that she knew it didn’t matter how she acted. “What? It’s not like the people that used to live here are going to give a shit.” She laughed as she smashed a pickle jar against the far side wall. The sour smell of vinegar permeated everything. April’s laugh became a little shriller. Cash was petrified. Cash was mesmerized. Cash was standing at attention, or at least part of him was.
