by Mark Tufo
Tommy was already busy making new friends when I came over the railing. The man who had moments earlier been about to give me some internal air conditioning grabbed a handful of my jacket and helped me over. Under normal circumstances I might have been so inclined as to shrug his arm off of me but since I was pulling energy from my stashed resources, I accepted his offer. Brendon, BT, Travis and Jen hung back by the cars in a loose semi-circle, their placement making it very difficult to be taken out quickly in an ambush. Justin had never got out of the van and Tracy and Nicole both got into the driver’s seat of their respective machines. All in all it was a very tactical maneuver, we were becoming good at the game of staying alive. We had to. The stakes were too large.
I had no sooner finished appraising our situation when the motel man spoke to me.
“Sorry about that,” he said with a quick mirthless smile. “Can’t be too careful these days.”
I nodded like a bobble head doll. I wanted to break his jaw.
When he saw I wasn’t going to give him the standard ‘It’s okay. I understand that you had to point a gun at me and threaten to shred my innards into the contour of Chipotle pulled pork. I get it, it’s cool, let’s be best friends. Do you mind if I break your jaw?’ he continued. “Right. Well then, my name is Denmark and the lady over there giving the big fella a hug is my wife Maggie.”
“Who’s the one that wanted you to shoot me?”
He leaned in conspiratorially “That’s Maggie’s sister, Greta. She’s a mean bitch, that one.”
“I gathered that.”
He laughed. I wanted to, I just wasn’t there yet.
Maggie disengaged from Tommy, her face beaming. Maggie asked Tommy one question before she came over to me. “Why the broccoli tree?”
“His mom says he should eat more greens.” I answered for him.
Maggie came over to me with her hand outstretched. I took it only out of a courtesy I didn’t feel. “Welcome, welcome!” she said, pumping my arm vigorously. Her sour faced sister looked over Maggie’s shoulder. Greta’s look still conveyed the feeling that Denmark should have taken the shot. One glance at Greta and I knew why she was such a ‘mean bitch.’ Maggie was slightly older than Greta, maybe late fifties to Greta’s mid-fifties. But that was it for similarities. At one time it was easy to see that Maggie was quite the looker, even now she bore a stately beauty that belied her years. Greta must have pissed God off something fierce because she had been whacked with the ugly stick a few dozen times. Where Maggie was tall and slender, Greta was short and rotund. Maggie’s regal features were only more sharply pointed out by Greta’s globbish ones. It must have been absolute hell growing up in that shadow.
I pulled Denmark close after Maggie’s embracing welcome and Greta’s dismissive nod. “They’re sisters?”
Denmark nodded. “That goat’s been a thorn in my side since I married her sister. But to have the one I had to accept the other. It’s been a good deal but there have been times I’ve thought of trying to fix Greta up with one of my friends. But not a one of my friends has ever crossed me enough to warrant that punishment ‘Sides, I don’t think she’d ever leave her sister and then I’d be stuck with her, her pissed off new husband and a lost friend.”
“I see your point.” I liked Denmark. The previous incident, while not completely forgotten, was beginning to be covered over with better thoughts. Thank the stars for all the weed I smoked as a kid. Having short-term memory loss could be a plus sometimes. “So what’s your status here?” I asked.
Denmark hesitated, sure I had shook his hand and his wife was completely enamored with Tommy, but we were still strangers and as he gazed down at my traveling companions he knew we were a small army unto ourselves. A sheer moment of trepidation crossed his face as he realized he may have just opened up his last hold-out of safety to us.
I watched as his emotions ran the gambit from ‘Thank God I have some help’ to ‘Oh God what have I done.’ I could only take so much pleasure in the man’s discomfort. Some small piece of me did like the fact that now he was the one to squirm but I let the pettiness pass. “You’re fine, Denmark. We’re somewhat good people just trying to make our way through.”
He released the building tension within himself with a heavy sigh. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to let my guard down.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s just been me and the girls the last couple of weeks. We had a few guests at the time.” He looked at me with doleful eyes. “Well, you know.” I nodded in acknowledgement, I knew all too well. “Well, they left to go back to wherever they had come from. I can’t imagine they got to where they were going though. It was a lot more chaotic back then. For the most part now, we only see the, the…” he groped for the right word.
How can anybody be alive in the 21st century and not know the name for the living dead? I was soon to learn that he was a fan of all novels, if they were of the western variety. Not many zombies traversing down the Rio Grande back in those days.
“Zombies,” I assisted him.
“Yeah right, those things. We had a hell of a time those first few days. Didn’t sleep much, shot my way out of more jams than I care to remember.” He shuddered as he thought back. “Maggie and Greta never so much as fired a gun. ‘Sides, I didn’t want her to be weighed down with those pictures in her head. Maggie that is, I thought Greta might be good at it, seeing as how mean she is. The only thing she was good at was pointing out what else needed to be shot, I suppose that had its own benefits.”
“And minuses,” I added.
“And minuses,” he said, looking at me. “We tried to make a go of it from the lobby. Our place is downstairs and there’s a full kitchen with food and amenities. But they kept breaking through whatever defenses we put up.”
I sympathized, how many seemingly unbreechable defenses had they circumvented at Little Turtle. A pang of homesickness coursed through me like bad chili.
“After the fourth night of no sleep, we moved to the second floor. Seemed hardly worth it at the time, it just meant those things were going to be a little more tired before they ate us. Was Maggie had the idea to get rid of the steps. First we threw some dressers and beds, mattresses, whatever it took to keep them from getting up here. Then I grabbed a toolbox that I have in the utility room up here and smashed through the concrete step. The hardest part was sawing through the metal support each step had. Figured two steps would be enough, I did four on each stairwell.”
“Great minds think alike.” I recounted to him my whole stair removal and carnival ride installation. He got a good laugh when I told him how pissed off my wife had been.
“We lived on crappy candy bars, Mountain Dew and old donuts for five days while those things hovered around looking for food. And then they just sort of up and left. I killed whatever stragglers came by, but the worst of it seemed over. I nearly broke my leg when I tried to jump over the missing steps. I went back to our apartment and grabbed boxes of food to bring back up and then I realized I’d never be able to jump that gap going up. Not nearly as spry as I used to be, I used to play football when I was in high school, outside tackle.”
He seemed to need to tell me all this; I didn’t see any reason to stop him. Figuring I might be ensnared in his story for a bit, I took a moment as he sorted through his old memories to let everyone know below that it was A-OK up here and that they should park and bring ALL the ammo. If we were going to be in a firefight, I was going to make it as one sided as possible.
He continued as if I had never turned away. “But that was a long time ago and I would have played college ball ‘cept for a knee injury my senior year. Last damn game of the season and we was winning 42 to 14. I was laughing and joking and actually making eyes with this pretty little cheerleader.”
“Maggie?”
“How’d you know?”
“Just a guess, you two look like you’ve been together for a long while.”
“I’m really glad I didn’t shoot you.”<
br />
“You and me both Denmark.”
“So there I am making an ass out of myself and the play goes off and I’m not paying any attention. My own teammate blindsided me. Not his fault at all, I never moved. Saw nothing but red as I fell in pain. Maggie was the first one to me. Not sure if she felt guilty about the whole thing but if it got her to say ‘yes’ when I asked her to marry me than it all worked out for the best.” His look was still of that far away dreamy quality, in a much happier time and place. “Where was I?” He looked like a coma victim suddenly come back to awareness after a prolonged sleep.
“Mountain Dew and a bunch of food,” I prodded.
“Oh that Mountain Dew, that’s the devil’s brew that is. Never so much as sniffed the stuff before they came. Now I’m addicted to it. Damn near cost me my life.”
I laughed to myself. He talked about good old Mountain Dew like it was crack and you would have to go down to the seedier parts of towns and find a dealer. Did they pour it into little baggies? Would you buy it by the ounce? I let my inner thread stop as Denmark continued with his story.
“So first when’d... ”
‘When’d?’ Is that a word? I’d have to ask Tracy later.
“… I realized I couldn’t get back up the stairs I grabbed this here ladder.”
Which was vibrating slightly from Brendon’s third trip up with ammo. “You sure about all this ammo, Mike?” he asked pleadingly.
I nodded, not interrupting Denmark’s story. I heard Brendon mumbling something about how ‘just because you’re my girlfriend’s dad (mumble mumble) go fu…(grumble)…self.’ The rest was lost as he moved further away and Jen came up with some food. I smiled. Sometimes command had its perks.
Denmark continued his narrative. “And that’s how we’ve been getting stuff up here. That Mountain Dew though, I couldn’t get enough. Emptied the soda machine up here within a couple of days and then the one downstairs a few days after that.”
I thought that might be where his life had been endangered, but I was wrong.
“I went for about forty-eight hours without the stuff, I was sucking down Pepsi's in hopes that they would ease the craving. It didn’t work, I thought Sprite might do the trick, didn’t even come close. Maggie thought I had lost my mind when I told her I had to go down to the Piggly Wiggly to get me some more. She told me I was going to do no such thing. Greta just gave me a list of things she wanted. Maggie got so upset I figured she was finally going to give her sister the old heave ho for that. Well you can see that didn’t happen.”
I lamented with him at the appropriate time.
“So’s I grabbed Ole Bessie here,” he said holding up his rifle.
It looked nothing like its namesake. It was a tricked out AK-47 with a sighting laser (obviously) and a 150 round ammunition drum attached. I had no idea where he would have come across such a monstrously wonderful weapon but I was going to ask.
“And as I climbed down the ladder, the missus told me that if I didn’t come home safe and sound to not bother coming home at all. She was so upset I don’t think she knew that she made absolutely no sense. I figured if I got in enough trouble that I couldn’t get home, then I was pretty much dead.”
I nodded with him in agreement.
“So then she tells me that if I’m going anyway I might as well get… well, you get the point, ended up she had a list too. Felt like a damn fool heading to the Piggly Wiggly with a rifle strapped to my back. Drove my old pickup truck.”
Which was actually a 2009 GMC Jimmy, the thing was pristine. I looked longingly at it and then back at the Terrible Teal Machine a few times during our stay there.
“Got to the mart and it was quiet, quiet like the world was holding its breath, wondering what was going to happen next. There was nothing on those two shopping lists I felt was worth my life, damn near turned around the second my boot crunched down on the pavement. I was gonna go back and tell Maggie my knee was acting up and I couldn’t walk right, much less run iffen I had too. Maggie and Greta would have known I had chickened out, but Greta would have told me so to my face, that dour faced… is she around? No? Bitch. I had one foot on the ground and one still in the truck. That damn Dew made me do it. I had to have it. Seemed about the only thing in this world ‘sides my Maggie worth living for.”
I loved beer, and I couldn’t even begin to explain how I longed to chug that nectar of the gods but would I risk my life for it? And then I really, I mean really pondered the question. Fuck, I think I would. Stupid, sure but there’s more than one person, starting with my wife, that’ll tell you I’m not a rocket scientist.
“I used my tire iron to pry the doors open, no ‘lectricity and all.” He looked at me as he said this to see if I was judging him for his lapse in moral character.
It took me a second to understand what he was asking me. My understanding? My forgiveness? “We are all doing what we need to do, Denmark.” Why he cared about my thoughts on the matter, I didn’t know. I didn’t then and I don’t now, have the power of absolution.
“Smell. The smell was what hit me first. I don’t like to think of it much. I can still recall it. When I was 15 had a Coon dog that got sprayed by a skunk, that was Chanel No. 5 in comparison.”
Oh I knew that smell all too well, the zombies, not the Chanel No. 5. An SOS pad on a stick, shoved up my nose, and thoroughly whisked around would not eradicate the perpetual olfactory odor that had been burned into that unfortunate organ.
“Michael, I pretended it was the meat gone bad. I guess it kind of was.” He laughed. “Just the wrong kind.” His smile disappeared as rapidly as it had come on. “The regular lights were out. There were still a couple of red auxiliary lights hanging on to some small trickle of power. It did little to make the store seem more shoppable. If some little five year old had come from behind a register and said ‘boogey-de-boo’ I would have pissed myself.”
I laughed. Denmark didn’t share in my view. I get that a lot. Either my base of reference is highly skewed or everyone else’s is. I figured it was everyone else, why shine that light on myself.
“I propped the door open to get some light and to let some breathable air in. It helped some, but only if I stayed within fifteen feet of the door. Figured my odds of everything on my lists being that close was slim to none.” He laughed. I didn’t. We’d synch up sooner or later.
“Good story, Mike?” Brendon said crabbily as he made his fourth? No, maybe seventh trip up the ladder.
I wanted to respond and tell him ‘Yeah, not bad.’ But I needed to remember that in the post-apocalyptical world virtually everyone was armed.
Denmark wiped his face with rough hands, long exposed to the ardor of hard work and cold weather. If he had cried, I pretended not to notice. “And then they started to come, Mike, those… those things. They were my friends and my neighbors, I blew the head off my kids’ Sunday School teacher. Perts, the postman, nearly got me, I’d never seen him move so fast when he was delivering the mail.”
I so wanted to laugh now, again, not appropriate.
“I put twenty rounds in him ‘fore I had the good sense the Lord gave me to let go of the trigger.”
I harkened back to my magazine emptying encounter with the double-fat twins. It felt like twenty years ago.
“And still they came Mike, had to have been a couple dozen iffen there was one. My ammo drum came up empty just as I killed the last one. If there had been just one more, I probably would have just stood there while it did its thing. I think I was in shock.”
“That’s understandable Denmark. Not many a man has had to go through what you’ve gone through.” I almost thought of adding ‘at least that’s how it used to be, anybody alive now has had to.’
“I didn’t even go back to the truck and get the extra ammo. I grabbed a cart and a sanitary wipe.”
A man after my own heart.
“And shopped, I walked around the bodies like it was the most natural thing in the world. I did grab three of ever
ything just because I never wanted to have to go back to that store again.” He wiped his face again, attempting to remove the invisible stain that the encounter had placed on him.
I assured him that was the way of the world now. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect but he had done nothing shameful or worthy of his guilt. He appreciated the words but I don’t know how effective they were.
CHAPTER 18 Journal Entry Sixteen
Within the hour we were all sitting in Unit 203. Denmark had salvaged an old potbelly stove that kept the room a balmy two degrees below the temperature on the surface of the sun. Occasionally I had to go outside to keep my lungs from cooking because of the super-heated air. If it bothered Denmark, Maggie or Greta in the least, they didn’t let anyone know. The mood was convivial, even Greta smiled a few times which I think really caught Denmark by surprise. I was fairly convinced he didn’t think she had the muscle memory to do such an action.
Everyone had let their guard down somewhat. Maggie couldn’t stop fussing over the boys. She said they reminded her of her own boys. They had not heard from Larry or Jim since the start of it all. For moments she would get lost in her thoughts and grief and then come back around full circle beginning with wiping Tommy’s Kit-Kat swathed face. Travis squirmed from her ministrations, torn between acting like the man he was rapidly and forcibly becoming and the boy who still looked to adults for all the answers and protection. Justin feigned sleep to be left alone. In my twisted brain I feared that it was the contact with goodness that so repelled him from her.
Denmark was a great storyteller and had the entire room enthralled in some story involving a canoe, a tree that ate people and a cat that saved the world. Between the length of the day, the heat from the stove and a now sated belly I found myself dozing off. I was startled awake to some raucous laughter, something about the cat falling out of the canoe and into the water. I stumbled out of the room. I had the uncomfortable feeling that my liver was beginning to cook from the inside out. This must be what that poodle felt like when its master tried to dry him off in the microwave. I opened the door and the bracing cold in my face as well as the fire behind was an invigorating sensation.
