A Plague Upon Your Family

by Mark Tufo

  “No I don’t think so. We all want somewhere that we don’t constantly have to feel like it could be our last moments on Earth. I love this place too, but it’s not the most easily defendable.”

  “Wow, I think you may have been around me too long. My crazy is starting to rub off.”

  “Not necessarily a bad thing Talbot, now let’s get some of that bacon. I’m starving.”

  Tommy was already sitting at the table, strips of bacon hanging out of both his hands, his broad smile dappled with the fried goodness. “Morfning Mftr. T!”

  There was one way in to the kitchen and I had been standing in the hallway that led in. I would have bet a mountain of Kit-Kats that the boy had not stepped into that hallway to get past me. “How’d you get here Tommy?”

  “I walked,” he smiled again.

  I was looking for more than the literal explanation. Tommy looked down at his hands, seemingly more concerned from which hand he was going to take his next bite than answering me.

  Travis and Carol were not going to be of any help. They were both at the stove. Carol was showing Travis how to make an omelet. Although I could tell from his posture he was more intent on eating said omelet than on learning how to make it. Maybe I would have pressed the issue, most likely not, but the rest of the family chose that time to come in. Tommy’s eyes twinkled at mine.

  “You got them up. Didn’t you, you sly dog,” I conspiringly said to him.

  “Bacon?” he said, pushing his meat-laden fists under my nose.

  “Thanks, I’ll get my own.” He seemed immensely relieved at that answer.

  Breakfast was phenomenal. Farm fresh everything. I knew processed and artificially preserved foods were a necessary evil of our society. Oh but what we had given up when we had moved off of our family farms and into the dens of depravity (that would be cities, in non-sarcasm speak). Then it all came rushing back to me why we moved away, as I cleaned out the pens and fed the animals that had so graciously allowed us to gain sustenance from them. I enviously eyed the dairy cow. She had seemed completely at ease when I had first entered the animal enclosure but each subsequent time that I stopped to stare longingly at her, she more and more sensed the predatory nature of my visits.

  Milk was grand, especially fresh milk. But a steak! Now that would be special.

  “Hope you don’t have an accident, Bessie,” I said as I patted her snout.

  She pulled away and eyed me warily.

  “I’m just saying,” I told her.

  Bessie wasn’t appeased much. She didn’t go back to chewing her cud until I was well past her stall.

  It was close on lunch by the time I had finished my chores. It wasn’t steak but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the pork tenderloin chops Carol was dishing up.

  “I would have made sandwiches, but I ran out of flour to make bread with a few weeks ago,” she said apologetically.

  “No.” Tracy told me, without a word coming out of my mouth.

  “But…” I started.

  “No Talbot, you’re not going anywhere.”

  “Fine.” I pouted as I sat down to my mounded plate of meat. “Some barbecue sauce, maybe shredded a little. Man it would make a…”

  “Talbot!” Tracy said.

  “Fine.” I dug in. I didn’t think that after smelling animal ass for the last four hours I’d be hungry. I was wrong.

  I parked my butt in the living room after lunch. The couch was inviting. The fire was warming. About the only thing that could have made this perfect was if ESPN were on. Carol had never had a television as far as I knew. Was that even possible? Wasn’t there a law against that or something? I shuddered at the thought. I think the only reason she ever got a phone was to stay in touch with her daughter.

  BT was sitting up. “Why you looking all content and shit?” he asked me.

  “I almost feel like I’ve come home,” I told him honestly.

  “Almost?” he asked. He grimaced as he shifted his position so he could look at me easier. “It’s not over then?”

  “What! Do I have a playbook on my face?”

  “Let’s just say Talbot, you have an uncanny ability to say everything without opening your mouth.” Tracy said from the entryway. She came over and kissed my face. “And that’s what I love about you.”

  “When we leaving then?” BT asked.

  “I was hoping to give you more time to recover.” I was surprised when he nodded in agreement. He must be hurting if he couldn’t even manage a small semblance of male macho bravado.

  “You tell me when, Talbot. I’ll make myself ready.”

  Justin came in at that point and sat down heavily in the large chair by the fire. “We have a week.”

  Nobody doubted his source. I just doubted the message.

  “We leave in three days, BT,” I said never taking my eyes off of Justin.

  Justin smiled maliciously, realizing I had just caught him in his lie and absolutely not caring.

  “Two days,” I hastily amended. Justin’s and BT’s faces almost mirrored each other exactly in their disappointment.

  Tracy’s shoulders sagged as the weight of my words weighed on her. “My mom won’t leave, you know.”

  “I know that. You’re going to have to convince her it’s for the best.”

  “What’s for the best?” Carol asked.

  “Is it me?” I asked Tracy. “Or is the timing of people showing up at the right time uncanny.”

  “Canny,” Tommy filled in.

  “So what’s for the best?” Carol asked again.

  “That you come with us when we leave,” I said hastily, hoping that maybe the shock value of the words would be lost in their fast delivery. It wasn’t.

  “I’ll do no such thing,” Carol answered adamantly.

  “Mom.”

  “Hush, Tracy. This is my home. I’m 79 years old and I have no desire to start somewhere else. I was born in this house. God willing I’ll die in it.”

  “Mom?!” Tracy cried with more volume.

  “And what’s more I don’t see the point in any of you leaving. There’s plenty of chickens and pigs to get us through the winter. Plus there’s Bessie.”

  “Yeah, for hamburger,” I added much too quickly.

  “For milk,” Carol answered while she glared at me.

  “Right, that’s what I meant.” Even though I hadn’t.

  “Mom, the zombies are coming. We have to leave,” Tracy nearly begged.

  “Then let them come.” Carol answered defiantly.

  “Carol, this isn’t going to be in ones and twos. There’s going to be hundreds.” I added.

  Her countenance shifted subtly but she recovered quickly. “Then they come.” She answered again but with noticeably less vigor.

  “At least think about it, Carol. We’re leaving in two days.” That did shake her. I watched as all those years of hard farm work suddenly caught up with her. She gripped the couch arm much like I had earlier this morning. Tracy helped her to sit.

  There was not much said the rest of that afternoon. Mostly idle talk about ‘remember whens.’ The past had a much glossier shine now that the future was so tarnished. BT plunged himself into sleep, most likely in a desperate bid to accelerate his body's healing capabilities. Tommy stayed on the far end of the room from Justin but I would occasionally catch him staring raptly at him. If Justin knew or cared that he was sometimes Tommy’s center of attention he never let on. Tracy and Carol had left after a while to most likely discuss what they were going to do. I felt it was best not to intervene. Henry was laying by the fire, which coincidentally flared up every few minutes or so. Better that whatever noxious gases were spewing from him were consumed in the fire than disseminated out into the rest of the room.

  Jen prowled around the house like a panther, constantly looking out the windows for party crashers. Travis had the air of many a military man I had been exposed to. He was able to pull off the duality of having heightened awareness while looking casuall
y indifferent. I had envied those men and their façade of calm demeanor. Nicole had at some point come down from her room, eyes puffy from crying, and walked straight into my arms. She had almost instantly fallen asleep; mourning can be an essence draining process. And me? Besides keeping a mental note of where and what everybody else was up to, I stared at the fire. The shifting shapes, patterns and colors helped to ease my troubled mind.

  Jen was right. This was not an easily defendable location. Sure, we could see the enemy coming for a quarter of a mile in nearly every direction. Then what? They would have a 360 degree angle of attack. We were vulnerable from all sides. The two largest egresses were the front door off the hallway and the back door in the kitchen. There were at least twelve windows on the lower level that were big enough for an intruder to gain entry. This was a nightmare. I knew without asking that there was no way Carol was going to let me shore up our meager defenses. I’d never be able to pull off cutting her staircase up. Tracy would kill me. The more I thought about it the more I concluded that our best defense was to not have one. We had to get gone.

  I now regretted my decision to tell Justin about my amended plans. Whatever Eliza had originally planned she was surely making her own adjustments. I could only hope that she wasn’t in a position to move too quickly. I would have left that same evening if BT had been in better shape. I could leave him with Carol. That stray thought came out of left field and was quickly denounced. I shuddered to think of both Eliza and BT hunting us down.

  My thoughts alternated constantly that day about the silence in the house. On one side it felt like the calm before the storm. On the other was the peace and harmony with the world that living on a farm can bring to one’s soul, although I knew the falsity of that fantasy. I guess I was in a sort of self-induced trance as I watched that fire, so much so that my eyes began to itch from lack of blinking.

  “Miss me?” I heard a male voice say, almost as if we were using cans and string and he was about a mile away. It was that indistinct.

  I didn’t ‘speak’ these words but for ease of following the conversation I will make it appear that way.

  “Who are you?” I asked. I tried my best to hide the tide of unease that was rising within me.

  “Oh, me and you go way back.” And the disembodied voice began to laugh.

  I had finally cracked up. I mean, I always knew this was an eventuality. Years of upbringing from a narcissistic mother, the intake of multiple drugs (including every hallucinogen known to man), Marine Corps boot camp and a subsequent tour of duty in Afghanistan had left me vulnerable. Throw a zombie apocalypse on top of that and what do you have? Aberration Apple Pie. I had finally succumbed. I had slipped over the edge. The question now was how far was I going to fall? Was this to be a free fall into a bottomless pit or was it going to be a slow steady descent into insanity? If it was the slow descent, I could watch and take notes of each agonizingly hideous step down the path into Crazy Town. I was not strong enough to handle a duality within me. Hell, Tracy could barely handle one of me, what was she going to think of this new development?

  “You still there, shithead?” my other half asked.

  Oh great, not only am I delusional but my other half is a rude prick. Wonderful.

  “I’m talking to you!” it shouted. The voice was gaining clarity, as if the person on the other end was getting stronger or closer, or both.

  “Dad!”

  “Oh no! It thinks I’m its father!”

  “Dad! You’re pulling my hair!”

  And like that, the hold over me was gone. Now if I could just untangle the grip of Nicole’s hair I had in my fist, I’d be all set.

  “Sorry honey, sorry.” I said as I inadvertently pulled some of her hair out. “Sorry.”

  “It’s alright Dad,” she said as she sat up and rubbed her head. “Were you dreaming?”

  “God, I hope so.” I said earnestly.

  Tommy was looking over at me.

  “Was I dreaming?” I asked him. He shrugged in return. Justin was no longer in the room. The fire flared a violent purple and then went back to its normal hues of orange and yellow. What the hell could Henry have aired out that would do that? Whatever it was, it must have been rancid. Even he couldn’t take it as he stood up and walked a few feet away from the offending zone and plopped back down contentedly.

  BT managed to eat some dinner before he returned back into his self-induced coma. Jen could barely contain herself at the table, if I hadn’t known better I might have thought she had a serious case of crabs. She was more like an animal that could feel the change in the air, way before their ‘superior’ human masters could. A storm was brewing and not of the atmospheric kind either.

  I was feeling loosely detached tonight, whether from my earlier encounter with my bad half or else I was picking up on whatever wavelength Jen was. Carol, however, was whistling in merriment as she placed dish upon dish of good old country cooking on the table.

  I was going to say something about last meals and all but that seemed in very poor taste. Even if it was to be, what was the point in pointing it out? Tracy barely picked at her food. Apparently her mother had made it abundantly clear on what she was doing, and that involved not going with us. If we got out of here soon enough, that was the best decision she could have made. Being on the run is hard on the young and the hale, something even I wasn’t feeling much of these past few days as I absently rubbed my knee.

  “I’m thinking of growing some jalapeno peppers this year,” Carol said as she dropped off a tray of what looked like mashed sweet potatoes. “I’ve never grown those before, they’ve got so much more flavor than the bell peppers I usually grow.”

  “Mom, are you sure?” Tracy asked.

  “Of course Tracy, I bought the seeds last year for just that purpose.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  Carol smiled and dropped off a plate stacked with sweet half ears of corn. I smiled too as I grabbed an ear and smeared two liberal pats of butter on it. Okay, so Bessie had her pluses besides being a walking t-bone. Two days on a farm on a steady diet of meat and cream and I could already start to feel my body filling out. In three months I’d be one of those monstrosities they used to show on TruTv, 500 pounds and expanding.

  “Carol, sit down and eat,” I told her as I took another bite of wonderful fulfillment.

  Henry had fallen asleep under the table waiting for something to find its way onto his domain, the floor. For some reason he had decided to use my feet as a headrest and his drool had soaked through my socks. When he finally picked his head up, I was relieved. When he barked I was concerned. No one moved except for Carol who laid another plate of what looked like cranberries on the table. It was difficult for me to tell though, all the cranberries I had ever bought were of the cylindrically shaped kind and usually had to be sliced with a knife. It went deathly quiet awfully quick. My glass of water as I put it down and it struck the top of the salt shaker was the loudest thing in the room. Nothing and nobody else moved. Henry stood up. I could almost feel him bristling as he growled.

  “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him growl,” Jen said as she pushed her chair back stood up and took out her .45 Desert Eagle from her shoulder holster.

  We all stood when the bell rang, but not the zombie alarm, the actual doorbell.

  “Well I’ll be,” Carol said. “Who could that be?” she asked as she began to head out of the kitchen.

  I quickly stood and got past her. “I’ll check.” I grabbed my AR that was propped against the kitchen wall. Travis stood, grabbed his shotgun, and without any prompting from me stood watch over the back door. Jen was half an inch from me as I took the safety off my gun. I slowly approached the door figuring that at any moment it was about to crash violently inward followed by every unfathomable, unimaginable, inexplicable horror known to man and womankind. I wished I had thought to put my shoes on before I opened the door. Scrambling for my life in traction-less socks on a highly polishe
d wooden floor was not an optimum way of meeting my maker. I would have taken the extra thirty or so seconds to grab my shoes but the doorbell ringing had progressed to violent door knocking. Alright, so much for the theory of a wayward Robin flying straight into the doorbell mechanism.

  “Well hurry up now,” Carol called out from the kitchen. “Whoever’s out there is probably freezing to death.”

  “That’s just fine with me,” I said softly.

  Jen agreed.

  BT about made me piss my pants as he appeared on my right side at the opening to the living room.

  “Why you creeping around all stealth like?” BT asked. The door shuddered. “Oh.” BT hobbled back into the living room and grabbed his new gun of a choice, a semi automatic Browning 30.06 with a banana clip. I wouldn’t have even thought they made such a thing if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I couldn’t even begin to imagine repeatedly pulling the trigger on such a powerful weapon. In my present state of footwear the recoil would send me shooting across the floor ala Risky Business.

  BT was all seriousness when he asked me, “What the hell are you smiling about?”

  “You’re no Rebecca DeMornay.”

  “Yeah and you don’t much look like Halle Berry,” he retorted. “If anything happens, Talbot, you and Jen get the hell out of there; I’ll cover your retreat.”

  “Dad!” Travis yelled. “I’ve got movement back here!”

  “Shit.” I was stuck in indecision. The opaque glass on the front door rattled under the newest assault. I could barely make out a figure standing on the other side. Would Carol be pissed if I shot first and then opened the door? Jen’s Desert Eagle hung precariously over my shoulder, the breach inches from my ear. “Umm, any chance you could move that away a little?”

  “Sorry.”

  The gun went from two inches away to four inches. Somehow I didn’t think that was going to make much difference except give the drum splitting noise a little more time to gain momentum as it slammed into my ear canal. Great, maybe the force of the explosion by my head would drive out the evil spirit that lurked within.

  “Carol?” The muffled voice said from the other side of the doorway. “You in there?”