by Mark Tufo
“I’m going to wait until those kick in and then I’m going to start.” I reached out to grab the bottle back.
“Think you’ve had enough.” He grinned savagely, the pain distorting his features. “I’d appreciate it if you got started now instead of waiting, not sure how much longer I can keep this macho shit up, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to cry in front of a woman. The last time I did that, I was six and my mom had just whopped me upside the head for writing on the walls with peanut butter. Don’t ask,” he told me, just as I was about to.
Tracy came over with three knives, one still smoldering a dull red from the heat. BT looked at the blade and then back at me. “You know what you’re doing right? Wait, don’t answer, I don’t want to know.” He finished the bottle. It clattered loudly to the ground as he threw it over the side. I placed a shirt under his head as I gently pushed his head back down.
“You want something to bite on?” I asked him seriously.
“Why, you think this is going to hurt?” He laughed. He then set his eyes hard on some distant object high above our locale. I hoped for his sake it was God. The call of a lone falcon was the only sound as I plunged the knife into the bullet hole. Tears silently streamed down BT’s face as I made the hole big enough so that I would be able to plunge my fingers in.
“You sure you don’t want to wait until those pills take effect?” Sweat froze on me as fast as it formed.
A curt shake of his head kept me going. My respite was not to happen. BT went rigid as I submerged first one and then a second finger into his bloody laceration. The sheer size of BT’s thighs meant I was going to have to go deep in my attempt to find the foreign body. Lady Luck was going to have to be on my shoulder for this. If the bullet had struck and tumbled away I’d never find it. I had gone in as far as my two fingers were going to allow and not struck home yet. There was a hollow sucking sound as I pulled my fingers out of the wound. Nobody commented, but I could hear more than one disgruntled stomach recoil at the noise.
“I’ve got to make the hole bigger, BT,” I apologized.
“Can’t get much worse,” he replied. I’m glad he didn’t realize then that he was wrong.
My hand was steadier as I made the second lengthening incision. BT didn’t flinch at all when I stuck my whole hand in up to the knuckle. A potent combination of Jack Daniel’s, Oxycodone and shock were all taking effect, those plus the minding numbing cold. I concentrated hard on the fact that I was merely feeling around in some beef. Sure it was warm bloody steak but it was steak nonetheless and that was what was going to let me keep going. If I were to dwell on the reality of the situation, BT would end up dying from infection. My hand was relatively warm compared to the rest of my body, encased as it was in the living tissue of my friend. That being the case, my fingers were not numb and were therefore able to detect when I brushed up against something that didn’t have a right to be where it was. Relief was my immediate thought. Relief to rid BT of the bullet, and relief to get my hand out of his thigh.
I oriented the foreign material as best I could so as to not damage anything more on its way out. What I removed was not a bullet, not unless they were white, about an inch long and a quarter inch wide. Tracy was the first to recognize what I had removed, I could tell by the sounds of her retching, although the others weren’t far behind. The splintered bone fragment shone brightly in the noonday sun. I hastily tossed it before BT had the chance to see it.
“Wasn’t it, was it,” BT said resignedly.
I shook my head and dove my hand back in. No sense in stalling at this point. For fifteen minutes I pulled various sized pieces of bone out, most no bigger than a toothpick. Two or maybe three fragments were taken out that were roughly the size of my pinkie. I didn’t think there was going to be any bone left to knit together when I was through. Blood coated the bottom of the truck bed. BT was drifting in and out of consciousness. My time line for success was rapidly diminishing. Either I got the bullet or the bullet got BT. It was that simple of an equation but one which I’m sure was never up on any algebra teacher’s chalk board.
“Where is the fu… got it!” I could tell by the mushroom shape this wasn’t another bone fragment. BT couldn’t share in my elation, he had passed out, I think. “Jen?”
Jen had earlier hopped up on the bed of the truck to help. “He’s still breathing,” she answered. “But it’s thready.”
“That sounds mighty ERish,” I said triumphantly as I pulled the bullet free from its human stockade.
“What can I say, I had a crush on the triage nurse Margulies on that show,” she said, a smile spreading across her face as she also saw the bullet. “Now what?”
“Well I’ll sew him up, we’ll set and splint his leg as well as possible and then we’ll get out of Dodge.”
“I meant what about internal damage.”
“From the bullet or my ministrations?”
“Well, probably both,” she said honestly.
“Shit Jen, I’m already five orders of magnitude above my pay grade. I can only sew him up and hope his body will take care of the rest. IF he’s lucky he’ll only have a pronounced limp when he can walk again.”
“Worst case scenario?”
“Are you kidding me? Do you see the blood we’re sitting in? Do you see how sterile an environment I’m working in. Or, better yet, my surgical skill level. The bullet looks fairly whole but I’m not completely sure I didn’t leave a piece of it in, plus there’s no way I got every bone fragment out, but if I don’t close him up soon he’ll bleed out. Which may still happen depending on how many blood vessels, veins and arteries were damaged. That he’s alive up to this point is near miraculous. We’re going to have to pump him full of antibiotics for the next two weeks and pray.”
“Pray?” she looked at me incredulously.
“Figure of speech,” I said as I turned away. Seemed like the wrong time to spurn God, but I wasn’t feeling very pious at the moment.
Within a half an hour I had closed the wound. Jen and Tommy got him cleaned up and put new clothes that weren’t blood soaked on him. And then after getting him placed in the back of Brendon’s minivan, I set his leg in a close approximation of the position I felt it should be in. Two ax handles and a roll of duct tape completed my handiwork. It wasn’t pretty. He was going to be eating oxys like Pez for the next month and we had about a week’s worth. Great, another stop on the journey. Those always go so well.
Another set of clothes down the drain, so to speak. The only thing salvageable on me was my shirt. The jacket had caught the brunt of arterial spray. I shivered on the side of the road as I stripped out of the stiff clothing.
Tracy had come up to me with the box of baby wipes to clean up with. I couldn’t have been more grateful if she had showed up with a cheeseburger right now.
She started laughing at me. There I was, nearly naked in the dead of winter on the side of a highway.
“Hey that’s not cool!” I yelled. “It’s because of the cold, it causes shrinkage you know. It’s like when you go swimming!” I was now yelling to her laughing retreating back. “Not cool,” I said angrily to myself as I washed up. I was still muttering angrily when I rejoined the rest of the caravan.
“What do you think, Mike?” Brendon asked.
“Most people don’t have the nerve to ask that question Brendon. At least not open ended like that.”
“You really are nuts aren’t you?” he smiled
I left the question dangling. There really isn’t a way to answer it legitimately anyway. See Catch-22.
“Well Carol’s is still our ultimate goal, for now. But we’re going to need more antibiotics and more pain killers, which means another effen stop.”
He rolled his eyes.
“My sentiments exactly. I want to pack up the pick-up truck that isn’t all bloody because we’re taking it and then I want to completely disable the other. I don’t think Redneck number one and his dipshit driver are going to come back and claim
it but I see no reason to tempt the fates. And most of all, I want to get the hell out of here.”
“What do you think about BT’s chances?”
“Well a normal person would probably be dead already so he’s got that going for him. Plus he’s too mean for heaven and hell doesn’t want the competition.” I didn’t get the expected laugh from my flippant remark. I guess he wanted an actual answer. Doesn’t he know I try to avoid those? “Fifty fifty. I just don’t know how much damage he suffered.” I left it at that.
“Mike, one more thing.”
Those statements are never good. When someone waits until the very end of a conversation to bring something up, it’s usually because it has taken this long to build up the nerve to say it. “If you tell me my daughter is pregnant, I’m going to be pissed.”
“What?” His eyebrows knit together. “No, wait? Huh? No, that’s not it. It’s Justin.”
“I know.”
“About the fever dreams, and Eliza?”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked me.
“No clue.” I started to walk away.
“That’s it?” he yelled. “Seems to me that Justin has an open line with the enemy and you’re not going to do anything?” he said heatedly.
I stopped and turned. “Got any ideas? I’m all ears.” I meant what I said but my words were infused with malice. Brendon could feel the taint of vileness emanate from them but youth does not always pay heed to wisdom.
“Oh I think you know what needs to be done, Mike! Aren’t you always the one that preaches the sacrifice of the one for the many?”
I didn’t hesitate one second from his words, though they struck me deep. “Take the other truck then,” I said. He physically stepped back, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t expecting that. I had basically told him he was welcome to leave, without Nicole. I had painted him into a corner; for that I felt a measure of guilt. He was as close to family as you can be without actually being family, a fine distinction, but a distinction nonetheless. I would choose family over others 100% of the time. It was as simple as that. By now we had drawn a crowd. This was starting to become commonplace. He shook with rage. If he came at me now I would have only one or two chances to take him down before his size, youth and speed overwhelmed me.
Travis breeched a round into his shotgun, Brendon turned towards him. Fear, hurt and betrayal flitted across his features in less than the span of a second. His shoulders drooped as he walked towards the bloody Ford. The passenger side tire was blown and Tracy had made sure when she scraped down the side of it that it would never win ‘Best in Show,’ but other than that, it was mechanically sound.
“We’ll wait until you get the tire changed,” I told him.
“Dad?” Nicole questioned. “What are you talking about?” I didn’t answer her. “Brendon, what are you doing?”
He didn’t answer her as he reached into the cab and got the jack and tire iron. She started tugging on his arm as he began to break the lug nuts on the tire.
“Brendon, you can’t leave us, me!” she cried. “Dad, fix this.”
“He’s a big boy,” I said with an ice-cold edge.
“Talbot!” Tracy chimed in.
“What!” I yelled right back. I hadn’t even got to the ‘h’ in ‘What’ when I knew that was the wrong answer.
She didn’t even have to say ‘Really?’ Her arched eyebrow let me know how screwed I was.
Already down for a nickel, might as well increase the Talbot national debt. “You know what Tracy, if he wants to stay with us fine! But I’m not going over there and begging him to come. He doesn’t like the way things are shaking out right now. Why don’t you go see what his plans are. I’m sure you’ll be just as thrilled as I was. I’m going to pack the truck.” And with that I walked away.
Tracy now knew the root of the problem as she looked over to Justin, still sitting in the minivan. She shuddered as she saw the ghost of a smile play across his features. I had taken my time moving our stuff from the minivan to the truck in the hope that cooler heads would prevail, mainly Brendon’s. But for as slow as I was moving, Brendon was moving that fast, maybe he didn’t want to think about what he was doing because he’d realize just how fucking stupid he was being, dumb ass. I almost went over to him to start round 2, but I didn’t want to burden Travis with the guilt of having to shoot him.
Brendon kissed Nicole and then gently pushed her trembling body away from his as he stepped into the cab of the truck.
“No Brendon!” she wept. “You can’t leave me!”
My heart was breaking for my daughter.
“I’m sorry!” I heard him yell through the closed windows.
I thought Nicole might try to get in the cab and go with him. I would have physically restrained her if it got to that point. I was thankful it didn’t. She stood stock-still and sobbed as Brendon started the truck, did an illegal u-turn and drove off. That was it, he left. We watched for a minute until he was a dot on the horizon. Tracy actually slid an arm across my waist and wept silently on my shoulder.
I put Nicole in the truck with me. She didn’t react at all as I put her seat belt on. Her head slumped against the cool glass.
“Jen, you up for driving?” I asked her. Of us all she looked the most prepared. The Talbots as a whole had just suffered a crushing loss. This wasn’t the movies. We weren’t going to be all joking around in the next scene, one of our own was gone. Whether literally or figuratively didn’t really matter. We weren’t ever going to see him again. If he somehow survived on his own, which was doubtful, he would never know how to find us again. I was going to turn around and get him. I had made up my mind. BT changed it back.
His screams pierced the day. I ran over to him, shook out a couple of oxys and handed them to him. He swallowed them without water, the tears that leaked from his eyes causing enough lubricant to get the large pills down. Within minutes he had passed out again, not from the pills but from the pain.
“Let’s go, we’ve got to find a pharmacy.” There was no more milling about. We had a mission to complete now. We would have enough time later to mourn.
Tommy was nearly as catatonic as Nicole. He had really ratcheted up the empathy button. Tommy had a serious crush on Nicole. Everyone knew it, though somehow Tommy didn’t know we knew. That was the funny part about it. He would get so flustered around her that he would call her everything but her real name, and Brendon was ALWAYS, ‘that other guy’ or ‘him.’ So of all of us, the big kid had the most to, ‘in theory,’ gain, though not in a millennium would he have ever conspired for this sort of outcome. He had taken on Nicole’s pain, not to ease, but to share.
CHAPTER 21 Journal Entry Nineteen
I don’t want to gloss over it. It was what it was though. We smashed into a pristine Rite Aid. We startled the zombiefied pharmacist and two techs even more than ourselves. We dispatched of them in the most humane way possible. It was a quick, precise, antiseptic kill. They were of the slow variety and maybe even a little slower since they probably hadn’t fed in weeks. That would be something to file and look back on later. I’ve always considered myself a glass half full type of guy but the fact that this store was relatively untouched disturbed me. Don’t get me wrong, I was absolutely ecstatic that we were getting the meds BT and Justin were going to need along with everything from toe nail fungus inhibitor to Viagra (I figured if we ever got to the point where Tracy wanted to have sex, I was going to make up for lost time). The problem was that this store being virgin territory to looters meant that there weren’t enough people of the living variety around to do any looting. And to top that off, Brendon’s leaving had had a crushing affect on us all. He had died to us, pure and simple, no matter what happened to him physically.
Nicole was inconsolable. I picked up every anti-depressant known to man. How I was going to administer them was beyond my scope though, maybe one of each. I knew things were at an all time low when I actually had to point
out the Pop-Tart boxes to Tommy as he walked right on by them. Jen stayed with BT while we ransacked the store. She wasn’t nearly as devastated as the Talbots but it affected her too. We were already counting the number of us on two hands. Removing just one finger had a profound impact. As a viable fighting force we were in dire straits. We were down to Travis, Jen and me. Any opponent bigger and meaner than a girl scout troop and we were going to get our asses kicked, and by asses kicked, I meant killed.
I was sick of reflecting. The image coming back was horrible, so when the horn sounded it was a welcome if at the same time ominous sound. If the world ever got back to some semblance of normality, I would never be able to drive again. The mere sound of someone beeping at me would send me into panic attacks. We all looked up like meerkats waiting for the hawk to descend. Travis was first to the door, shotgun at the ready. No matter how many zombies he killed or how long we survived, I was never going to get over the bounce in adrenaline my heart took every time he was exposed to danger. I couldn’t get the picture of him as a seven year old out of my head. Although I knew he was capable if not more so to get us out of any sticky situation. I could almost watch him harden to the world by the hour, whereas I felt I was heading the other way. Stop pondering! I ran to the door.
Jen had stepped out of the car, she didn’t seem too particularly out of sorts. She pointed to her left, somewhat out of our view. I walked past the shopping carts and looked. Zombies were coming.
Travis came up beside me. “No speeders, that’s good.”
He had ascertained a fact that took me another few long moments to realize. “Nope,” I drawled out, making it look like I had known all along.
