A Plague Upon Your Family

by Mark Tufo

  There was some resistance and much wailing and gnashing of the teeth but in the end I stood firm and got nearly all that I demanded. BT smiled at me as if he realized he was the only fly in my ointment. For an hour Jen and I idly pretended to play cards at the kitchen table. BT had long since retired to his couch. I wondered if he would stay awake long enough to see this through. The house was unnaturally quiet, however that was more me imprinting my feelings on my surroundings. What noises should the house be making? At this point I was even beginning to miss Henry’s world-class ass attack.

  BT, much to my amazement, was first up when the alarm bell rang... once and only once.

  “Any chance that could be Bessie coming home?” Jen asked.

  “For her sake, I hope that isn’t the case, I’m starving,” I told her.

  “Me too,” BT said.

  “Men.” Jen said exasperatedly. “Is someone going to answer the call?” she asked.

  “Women first,” BT said gallantly. “I would but I can’t walk so good.”

  “I’ll get it,” I told her. The walk down the hallway was dream-like. I felt like a condemned man finally going to make atonement for his transgressions. As fucked up as it sounds, I wanted to say ‘Dead Man Walking!’ But I thought my last words should be something more noble. Like ‘Tell my wife I love her.’ I kept my stray thoughts to myself, why now though? Why all of a sudden? I might have brought the thought to fruition, but the death bell rang one more grave time.

  “Wow, someone’s hungry,” BT said.

  “Ugh,” was the loose translation from Jen.

  “Not cool, BT,” I said without ever turning back around. I might have ran and hid if I did. He laughed it off. I grabbed the handle to the door and took what I felt was going to be my last breath. I turned the knob, opened the door and stood witness to what can only be described as an ‘awake’ night terror. Hundreds, maybe thousands of zombies surrounded the house, the front line of them within a hand span of the rope alarm. The only being holding the rope was someone I knew all too well.

  “Hi roomie, did you miss me?”

  I was more pissed than anything that I had shown weakness but I could not stop it. The splash of vomit that issued forth from me was no more stoppable than the incessant tide.

  Durgan laughed at me as I slammed the door back into place. Jen turned white as a ghost when she saw my face.

  “Bad?” she asked.

  “You could say that.” The words tasted funny through all the bile.

  “What would you say?” BT asked, looking a lot more serious all of a sudden.

  “Um, fucking horrible comes to mind. Maybe really fucking shitty, that’s another set of adjectives I’d use, there’s... ”

  “Enough Mike, what’s going on?” BT asked.

  “Let’s just say that the zombie invasion has made this Ground Zero and they have a leader.”

  “Eliza’s really here?” Jen gulped.

  “Why didn’t you shoot her, this could already be over!” BT said.

  “Sorry, too busy puking,” I said as I looked out the storm shutter. “And no, it’s not Eliza, she sent one of her lackey’s. Its Durgan and he seems pissed.”

  “Oh, I can’t imagine why,” Jen said. “First you run him off from his own store. Then you kill all his buddies while simultaneously shooting his leg off at the knee. You cave-in his one remaining good knee with a leg kick and then to top it off you leave him locked in a cell surrounded by zombies.”

  “See! You know what I’m saying,” I said pointing to Jen. “He started every single one of those encounters. I just ended them. And here he is again, starting more shit. I guess it’s up to us to finish it.”

  “No sense in messin’ with tradition,” BT stated matter-of-factly.

  It started like a whispering wind over a graveyard and turned into a full blown crescendo as thousands of tortured vocal chords tried to chant what I could only surmise was a war cry.

  “What the fuck is that?” BT asked. I could tell by his expression that it was as disconcerting to him as it was to me.

  The house vibrated under the assault of the low bass range the collective moan put out. Zombies were one thing. This deadly lament was wholly something else. There was a bizarre feel to it as the oscillation passed through my body threatening to liquefy the contents in my bowels. Was this planned? Did they know the effect this would have on us? I peeked through one of the shutters, hoping maybe to get a shot off at Durgan. He must have assumed this too because he was no longer in sight, choosing to lead his troops from the rear instead of the front, I suppose. Well one good outcome from the moaning was that the zombies weren’t moving.

  “Seems like we’ve got a bunch of blonde zombies,” I said, pulling my face away from the glass.

  “Huh? What are you talking about Mike?” Jen asked, clearly upset.

  “They can’t moan and move at the same time,” I finished.

  Jen rolled her eyes. BT shook his head.

  “Hey, they can’t ALL be gems,” I defended myself.

  “Yeah, but at least one or two would be nice!” BT yelled over the cacophony.

  And as quickly as it had started, it stopped. How could the moaning have been better? Because when the zombies were moaning they weren’t moving. The alarm bell crashed to the floor in a tumble of forewarning.

  “This is it!” I yelled, louder than the situation dictated, nerves getting the better of me. “Might as well have a front row seat to the apocalypse.” I opened the front door, pulling the trigger on my rifle as I did, not even waiting to acquire a target, that would have been superfluous. It amazed me that they could even move forward being wedged that tightly together. Maneuverability was out of the question for them. I could only hope that as they closed in around the house they would grind each other into oblivion as the space between them became less than non-existent. Some would surely die this way, crushed in a sea of zombianity. Good.

  I was halfway through my first magazine when Jen stepped out beside me. She had moved on from her original pistol and was now touting her own assault weapon, an HK-17. I’ve got to admit even in the crappy predicament we were in I was a little jealous of her gun. It was a bigger caliber than my AR’s 5.56 mm round. It toted a much toothier 7.72 round, which had the added benefit of going in and out of one target and sometimes in and out of another. It was a pleasure to watch multiple heads snap back from the impact of her bullet. She was shredding through rows of zombies.

  She looked over at me from the corner of her eye and through clenched teeth and a strained voice she said to me, “It might be better if you started shooting and stopped watching me.”

  “Oh yeah, sorry. It’s just that if I had known how cool that gun was going to be I would have grabbed another one.”

  “Grabbed another what?” BT asked as he shouldered his way onto the porch.

  “HK.” I told him. “Look what that thing is doing.”

  “Holy shit.” BT said after a few seconds.

  “Guys! Come on!” Jen shouted.

  “Right.”

  “Sorry.”

  Although it didn’t really matter, our shots were more of a morale booster on our side. No amount of firepower we could muster was going to stop them. My barrel would melt before I so much as made any sort of noticeable difference. No, this was a show of defiance under insurmountable odds. We would not go like sheep to the slaughter. I scanned the zombies for any sign of Durgan. Just one shot, I just wanted one shot at his ass. Okay, so not really his ass, but you get the point. I wanted to kill him now so that I’d also have the opportunity to kick his ass as we made our ways to our respective resting places. No such luck though, he was out of sight.

  “Mike,” Jen said, pulling up from her sights.

  BT was still happily triggering away, his semi-automatic 30-06 making short work of whatever got in its way. “I hope Hell’s got some extra people working at the reception desk today!” he yelled.

  “Hey, that’s pretty good.�
�� I told him.

  “You liked that?” he yelled, still firing.

  “One of your better, I’ve got to admit.”

  “GUYS!” Jen yelled. “You two are worse than seven year olds.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I told her. BT laughed.

  “I figured you would. BT, stop firing, they’ve stopped.”

  And they had. The zombies had paid a dear price for the ten feet of real estate they had captured. If lives were money, they were a very rich opponent.

  “What are they doing Mike?” BT asked me.

  “Well seeing as I am the imminent zombie zoologist expert, I would assume that they… ”

  “Fuck you, I get it, you don’t know either,” he said plainly. “This plan looked a lot better on paper.”

  “Yeah, smelled better too,” I said, pulling one of my sweaters over my nose. “You tend to forget how much they stink.”

  Jen added her own refuse to my cooled bile pile. “Eww, fucking gross,” she said as she spit to get out the last remaining bits of ort. “I’ll never be able to eat again.”

  “Might not be a lasting situation,” I told her.

  She shrugged. We had known the odds were for shit. See, this is exactly why I never liked to gamble.

  “Talbot!” came an artificially enhanced voice. “You ready to give up yet?” The bullhorn infused voice shouted again.

  Shouting was not necessary over the shuffling zombies, but I was looking more for dramatic effect. “Durgan, come out from whatever hidey-hole you’re in and I’ll give you my answer face to face! Man to man, if I thought you were one!” His laughing cut off short.

  “I’m going to kill you for that Talbot!” he shouted, this time without the aid of the bullhorn.

  “Just for that?” I questioned Jen. “There’s so many other things he could have hung that card up on.”

  “Come on, big man!” BT yelled disparagingly. “I‘ll take you on without my gun!”

  “What makes you think I would sully my purity by tangling with the likes of you!” Durgan shouted.

  “Wow, I honestly didn’t think he could become any bigger of an ass than he already is (was) but then he goes and surprises me and adds racism to the mix. He’s really almost sort of amazing. That’s a lot of hate for one person,” I said to Jen and BT, making sure it was loud enough to be heard by all that were willing to listen.

  That must have struck a chord in Durgan somewhere. He didn’t say anything else, at least not anything we heard, but the zombies started their relentless march up to the house.

  Jen took a controlling breath like I had taught her and brought her rifle up. “Fuck, my shoulder’s going to hurt tonight,” she said before she started pulling the trigger.

  “Let’s hope so,” I mumbled as I brought my rifle to bear.

  BT had not taken the opportunity to reload during the break in action and was struggling to catch up now. “Why doesn’t he just send them all out, Talbot? Why this fucking game?” BT asked as he nearly shoved his bullets through the bottom of his magazine well.

  “He’s like a little kid that just got a lollipop and he has no idea when he might get his next one.” BT looked over at me trying to figure out my bad analogy. “Savoring BT, he’s savoring this. He wants to be able to replay this whole thing over and over again in his pathetic twisted little fucking... ”

  “Racist mind,” BT finished.

  The snow turned a rusty red as drums of blood were spilled. This ground was going to be the most fertile it had ever been next season and there would be no one here to tend the fallow fields. I shouldered my weapon, careful not to touch the dimly glowing barrel. I reached out and grabbed BT’s and Jen’s shoulder.

  “Stop for a second!” I shouted. "You’re going to want to see this.” The echoing from BT’s last shot had just completed its airwave rippling when the first of my surprises struck. The loud metallic clanking was muffled by the foot of snow it was under, but the effect was not. The lead zombie crumbled face first into the snow, in what I could only imagine was extreme pain, although stoically he didn’t show it.

  “What the hell happened?” Jen asked as another and then another zombie fell in succession.

  “Bear traps,” I said triumphantly. With 1,250 pounds per square inch of pressure, the device designed to incapacitate a bear would sheer right through the comparatively fragile leg of a man. This tactic would normally have a demoralizing affect on the enemy but for that you had to have a conscience… and be conscious. The following rows of zombies merely stepped onto and over their ground-wriggling brethren.

  “Well, not exactly what I was looking for, but entertaining nonetheless.”

  “Good one,” BT said with a smile on his face.

  “Men! And people wonder why I’m a lesbian,” Jen said as she brought her HK back up.

  Fun time was over. I went into the house and grabbed my Dick’s sporting Goods pilfered 30-30; the AR was going to need a few minutes to come down to a serviceable temperature. I had a good ten seconds to think, which was nine more than I wanted. I wished that Tracy had left while the opportunity was available. I knew she wouldn’t, but still, it would suck to go ahead and sacrifice ourselves for nothing. It would be cramped in the van and the truck with the fourteen of them, but cramped beats dead every time. And we still come back to the original problem. IF Jen, BT and I somehow survived, how the hell would we all fit? Sure we could sit in the back of the truck for a mile or two before we froze completely solid.

  But making this stand was not completely about escape. It was about creating a chance to end this thing once and for all. Eliza not showing had thrown a serious wrench into my plans. I needed to kill the bitch. Without her death, her inexplicable link to Justin would remain and through him she had us. No, there was another way around that problem. I could sever the connection on my side. I banged my head against the wall. No, that was not an option.

  “You coming back to the party?” BT shouted from the porch.

  “Just getting a sandwich,” I told him as I collected my wits which were nearing their ends, and headed out to join the fray.

  Again the zombies stopped; they were no more than twenty-five yards away from us.

  “Aw, this shit is getting old Durgan!” I yelled.

  “Any chance our boy is pulling an end around?” BT asked.

  “What?”

  “You know, while we’re all out here going to town out front he sends all of his boys in the back.”

  “Oh shit, that would really not work out to our advantage.”

  “I’ll check!” Jen yelled, already half way down the hallway.

  “She’s fast,” BT noted.

  “Who would have thought a lesbian would have that kind of speed?”

  “You get into a lot of trouble with that mouth of yours, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question from BT, it was a statement.

  “Now that you say it, more than you’d figure.”

  “Oh I doubt it,” he said.

  “They’re about the same distance away back here as they are out there,” Jen shouted from the kitchen.

  “Do you think lesbians are more spatially aware than your normal female?” I asked BT. “I mean, they have to put their own furniture together and shit. Use a tape measure to hang shelves, that kind of thing.”

  “Do you ever think before you start spewing from the mouth?” BT asked me.

  “What? It’s an honest question,” I pleaded.

  “What are you two children talking about?” Jen asked as she rejoined our small fire team.

  “I was just wondering... ”

  “Nothing,” BT said as he thumped my chest with his forearm.

  “I don’t even want to know. If it came from you two it must have to do with farting or something equally juvenile.”

  “Hey, don’t lump me in with Talbot.”

  They might have continued on for a few more seconds if I hadn’t intervened. “Wait, something’s happening.”

&nb
sp; Zombies were shifting their positions, turning completely sideways when possible.

  “What now?” Jen asked.

  “It almost looks like they’re moving to get out of the way,” I answered her.

  “Getting out of the way for what?” BT asked. “They can’t have cave trolls can they?”

  “Holy shit BT, are you a Lord of the Rings fan?” I asked him.

  “Must have seen it ten times.”

  “I didn’t figure you for a fantasy movie type,” I told him.

  “Yeah, that war at Isengard…”

  “Oh God, no!” Jen wailed.

  I turned from her terrified face to the yard beyond. I wished I had shoved a bayonet into my eyes instead of looking out there. BT added his own pool to the up chuck muck.

  “I can’t Talbot! I can’t deal with this!” Jen screamed.

  Children from the earliest stages of walking to somewhere around ten years of age began to spill out into the front ranks of the invading horde. Jen’s gun clattered to the deck as she turned around, placing both hands over her eyes, trying in vain to suppress the image forever burned in her retinas. They were five feet thick before they stopped coming. Some were in pajamas. Some just in diapers and nothing else. Some completely naked and still others that looked as if they had changed into zombies mid snow ball fight.

  So many of them! My heart was crushing in on itself. Breathing was becoming more difficult than it was worth. My instinct was to go out and comfort each and every one of them. Their flat black eyes belied no need for alleviation of their hurts. Never again would any of them need a boo-boo healing kiss on a scraped knee. Never again would they need a kind word after a tough loss in pee-wee baseball. Never again would they need an ice cream cone after Susie called them a doo-doo head. I dropped onto my knees from the pressure of the heartache. I just wanted to roll over and watch the stars travel on by in my last moments on earth. Of all things, Durgan saved me.