by Mark Tufo
Not so much him as his personality, but it was a fine line anyway. And definitely not anything he did on purpose. But the cocksucker took my misery and despair and magically transformed it into rage. Pure unadulterated rage.
“How do you like me now, Talbot?” came his derisive voice.
“How could you do this!?” Jen shouted. “You’re crazy, do you hear me, you’re crazy!”
Durgan’s laugh echoed all around us. “Those small little teeth are going to feel like puppy’s teeth when they tear into you.”
Jen sobbed even more loudly.
“BT, get her in the house.” I said coldly. BT didn’t look much better than Jen sounded.
“What are you going to do Talbot?” he asked as he grabbed at Jen to bring her into the house. He winced as he bent over to grab the discarded weapon.
“I’d like to tell you that I was going to do what I should have done a long time ago and go and kill that bastard. But that’s going to have to wait. No, I’m just going to watch your backs while you go in and then we’ll just have to start phase two of our plan, I mean idea, a little earlier than expected, is all.”
“We’ll meet again Durgan!” I shouted out into the night. He responded before I had a chance to close the door.
“There’s no room for me where you’re going, Talbot.” And he laughed some more.
Was he that far gone that he didn’t even realize what he’d just said? Are there many people that think going to hell is the epitome of a successful life? I wanted to open the door and get some clarification but that didn’t seem like a great idea. Insanity by definition is not rational and besides there was no sense in refreshing the image of hundreds upon hundreds of hungry zombie children in my head.
BT and Jen were huddled by the fire in the living room. Jen was shivering uncontrollably.
“BT, get her down into the basement, I’ll take care of what needs to be done up here.” He nodded at me and scooped her limp but not lifeless body into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face into his broad chest. The added weight was causing him some serious pain in his injured leg but besides a small grimace he never voiced concern one over it. The house was bathed in darkness. The small candles and fire in the living room could only chase so many shadows away. The diffused moonlight that filtered through the storm shutters did more to stimulate this effect than diffuse it.
It was in this setting that I splashed gasoline across every treasured belonging that Carol and her family had ever owned. The propellant washed over and around picture frames, bleeding pictures into first something that resembled something from the twisted mind of Salvador Dali and finally into unendurable blotches of indefinable color. Like so many other things in this life that were now irretrievable. I had covered the house in nearly five gallons of the volatile fluid, upstairs and down. There was more than triple that amount laid out in various containers located strategically throughout the house. This house was going to burn like the fires of hell. My only concern was the hope that it took as many of Eliza’s earth-wandering despots with it as possible.
Jen’s fits of shivering had nearly stilled by the time I got down there, but she had not let go of BT’s neck as he sat in an old chair that had been relegated to the basement before it was to become a permanent fixture at a land fill.
“She going to be alright, when the time comes?” I asked BT.
“I’ll carry her if I have to,” BT said.
Jen didn’t move from her spot. Her words were muffled. Her message was not. “I’ll be fine, when the time comes, but for now I’m staying where I’m at.” That didn’t seem to bother BT in the least. He was getting as much comfort from her as she was from him.
The smell of gasoline had begun to settle into the basement; it did wonders to mask the stench of death. Not sure if this was an angle Glade would want to use – ‘NEW Gas scented plug-ins for all your zombie stench needs. Is Grandma’s rotting corpse beginning to embarrass you? Do guests avoid coming to your house because of the decomposing children? Whisk away those horrible odors with our new GAS plug-ins, now available in Diesel and Oil fragrances!’ – Yeah, you’re probably right, not much of a market for that.
We didn’t have long to wait as the first thump of a thwarted zombie hit the front door. The sound was not as loud as it should have been in the quiet house. Mostly because the zombie that walked into the frame of the door was probably only a girl of seven. An involuntary tremor of revulsion coursed through me. It was an instinctual response. I could no more control it than the weather. The thumping began to pick up frequency and intensity as if who ever had been holding the invisible leashes had let go.
Dust from the floorboards above our heads showered down upon us as the house began to vibrate under the assault.
“You should get some Prell,” BT said. “It might help with that bad case of dandruff you’ve got going on Talbot.”
“Prell! Prell? How fucking old are you BT? They don’t even make Prell anymore.”
“Sure they do, I bought some the da...”
“Stop it you two! Don’t you realize what is going on?”
I did it, I don’t know why but I did it. “No, what?” That set her off. She went on and on about being in the midst of some sort of apocalypse or such. I kind of lost the train of her rant.
“Stop it you two, just stop it!” BT roared. Jen looked up from BT’s chest, her face looked like she had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. And not the soft, brain addled Mike Tyson but the lean mean ear biting machine.
The house was shaking on its foundation as the zombies closed in from all sides. I didn’t even want to think about the children that were pressed up against the walls. An explosion of glass tinkled to the ground in first one and then two and then a dozen different locations. This was followed almost immediately by the crashing open of what sounded like the back door, at least by the location of the many footfalls now above our heads. The front door lasted the longest but ultimately could not withstand the assault. Zombies had breached our meager defenses. The floorboards above us creaked and protested against the strain of so much weight.
Zombies rushed in to fill every void within the house looking for tasty treats. Furniture splintered and knick-knacks were ground to dust under so many feet. I waited as long as I could to allow as many as the enemy as I could into the house. It wouldn’t be a fraction of the number it needed to be but my options were rapidly becoming diminished. Someone had smelled our hiding spot and zombies began to bump up against the cellar door. It was reinforced with two by fours that I had nailed across it but they wouldn’t hold forever, although I was more concerned at this point with the ceiling over our heads giving out first. There was a noticeable bow to it.
“You two ready?” I asked as I stood up, grabbing the road flare from the cabinet next to me.
Jen extracted herself from BT and did her best to gingerly help BT to stand. I noticed as he shifted his weight around, he was being especially careful not to put any weight on his injured leg. He half hopped over to where I was and leaned against the cabinet. Jen had walked over to the bottom of the staircase, nervously looking up at the basement door as if expecting it to open.
BT leaned in to make sure Jen couldn’t hear but unless she had a bionic ear, that wasn’t going to be a problem. The general melee free-for-all upstairs made the simple act of thinking a difficult proposition.
“I can’t run, Mike.”
I knew he was serious. He had called me by my first name. “Figured as much, what’s your idea?”
He looked candidly at me.
“Come on man, you wouldn’t have shuffled over here and tried to be all sneaky if you didn’t have some shitty idea.”
Jen involuntarily jumped when the door took a particularly savage blow.
BT looked nervously over at Jen before he began to speak. “I was thinking I’d stay behind and watch your backs.”
I took my pointer finger and thumb and grabbed my chin like I
was really contemplating something deep. “Can’t do it, BT.”
He looked incredulously at me. “What do you mean, Mike? You gonna carry me? Maybe buck ten Jen over there could heft me on her shoulders?”
Jen looked over. “What’s going on?” she asked as she crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her arms, possibly to wipe the chill of death from herself.
“Oh, BT thinks we should leave him behind when we leave.”
“What? Is he fucking nuts?” Jen yelled.
“That’s what I thought. So I basically told him no.”
“Guys, I’m right here.” BT said lamentedly.
“And what did he say when you told him that?” Jen asked.
“Oh, well he got all indignant. And then he was berating me about being able to carry his extra large ass, and that maybe you’d be able to.”
“Mike, I’m right here!” BT shouted.
“So you told him that there was no way in hell that we were leaving him behind?” she asked.
“Well we hadn’t got that far, but those would have been my next words. And then he would have replied with something heroic like ‘You guys could save yourselves. If you try to help me then we’ll all die.’ And I would have came back with something equally heroic like ‘Either we all get out of here alive or none of us do.'”
“I get it, guys,” BT said. “We knew this was a one way trip anyway.”
Jen gripped herself tighter. “Wow, just got a chill. Someone must have just walked over my grave.”
I laughed my ass off. We all did. “That’s hilarious because well, because…” And I pointed to the ceiling with the shuffling of hundreds of feet was going on.
“You must be psychic,” BT added. And we started laughing all over again, like the crazed doomed souls that we were.
Jen’s tears of joy, slowly but inevitably turned to real tears. BT went over to comfort her.
“Now seems as good a time as any.” I lit the flare and walked over to the far corner of the basement where I had previously drilled a silver dollar sized hole through the kitchen floor and into the basement. I had drilled the hole through a cabinet in the kitchen thus avoiding any chance the hole would be plugged by someone standing on it or by knocking over the large container of gas that was next to it. I looked at the flare for a few seconds more, letting the brilliant fire burn its final images into my memories.
This fire represented the end of so many things, and hopefully the beginning of a new safer life for my family. “I wish you were here to enjoy this with me Eliza,” I muttered as I thrust the flare up and through the hole. The flame flashed brilliantly as it came in contact with the gaseous vapors. I crinkled my nose as the smell of burnt arm hair wafted up. If I found this smell offensive, it was a vale of roses on a warm spring day after a brief rain shower compared to what assaulted my olfactory senses next. The smell of zombies can be topped by only one other smell, that of burning zombies. Roasting on an open pit was preferable to the cloying stink of melting decayed flesh that ran rampant through the farmhouse.
There were no screams of mercy coming from upstairs, no shrieks of terror or pain, only the mindless hunt for food. There was no mass exodus from the premises. We knew this by the unrelenting assailment on the basement door. Would the door give before the floor? Or would we succumb to smoke inhalation, death by breathing in the dead. Oh, just fucking gross.
“You guys ready?” I asked again.
“Let’s give this a shot,” BT said, making sure his rifle was fully loaded.
Jen didn’t say anything but thankfully she picked up her HK, popped in a new magazine and nodded to me. We three stood for a moment side by side looking at the door that led to the bulkhead. Long moments passed. Realizing your death is imminent is one thing. Rushing headlong into it is completely another matter. The basement door cracked or it may have been a floor joist.
“Well that’s decided,” I said as I opened the basement door that led outside and to freedom, in theory anyway.
The aluminum bulkhead doors were heavily dented from the sheer number of zombies standing on them trying to get into the house.
“I guess the fire didn’t scare them away so much,” BT noted.
“Yeah, didn’t work in Little Turtle. Was expecting sort of the same result here.” I said. “Seems like the fire and heat might actually attract them instead of repel them.”
“Talbot, I figured we wouldn’t get out of this, but why did you volunteer? You have so much more to lose than either of us,” BT asked pointing to himself and Jen.
“I thought this was going to be a chance to give my family a fresh start. I didn’t think Eliza was going to pull a no-show on me. I wanted to be there personally when she took her last… whatever she takes.”
It was definitively the cellar door that had shown signs of weakness previously. Zombies literally began to tumble down the stairs and onto the basement floor. BT unloaded a clip of 30 aught 6 rounds up and through the aluminum doors. Heavy, congealed bluish tainted blood ran in rivulets through the holes. I wanted to jump out of my skin as the, what I believed to be, caustic liquid ran down my head and neck and pooled in the small of my back as we all pushed up on the doors. A couple of zombies still on the doors had the actual benefit of a small carnival ride as they slid off and into a snowdrift.
Zombies were within touching distance before we opened up a large can of ass whooping. Those unlucky few that were closest to us quickly became nourishment for next year’s crops. But this was more futile than trying to bale water out of an already sunken ship. A veritable sea of healthy flesh-challenged people awaited our embrace. Jen ran back down the stairs. I figured she had panicked when in actuality she may have saved a few extra precious seconds of our time remaining.
I heard the basement door slam shut below us. Jen had closed it to protect our backs. Zombies in front, zombies behind, the crackling heat of the fire to our backs was becoming increasingly difficult to tolerate.
“Any ideas?” BT asked me. “You know, because if you do, now is not the time to keep them to yourself.”
“Only one at this point.”
BT didn’t look at me as I spoke, too intent on firing his rifle. “Yeah, what is it?”
“Keep firing until you have one round left.” The implied meaning in that sentence was clear.
He looked over briefly at me and lifted his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “Makes sense to me.” And he kept on firing.
Jen had shut the bulkhead doors and was standing on them looking out over the Dead Sea. “I can see them!” she said excitedly.
“Why haven’t they left yet?” I yelled back to her.
“I don’t know, but at least they’re safe.”
That was a heavy burden I could release from myself. At least they were safe. That part of the plan had worked perfectly. Carol’s homestead had two tornado shelters which were used more for pickling and canning jam than anything else. One was located near the animal barn. The other was out in the field at least a good half-mile from the house, put there so that if someone was caught unawares of an impending storm they would still be able to seek shelter. It was a well known family secret that during Prohibition, that shelter had served as a lucrative still.
The plan was with Justin knocked unconscious we would move him to the shelter and blindfold him so that he would not have any idea that he was anywhere but where he thought he was, the basement. Eliza and her horde of smelly citizens would then converge on the house where we would allow them to come in, en masse, and then lay waste to Carol’s house. Once the zombies had passed the shelter on by, Tracy was supposed to get them all out of here, and we would (theoretically) meet up a mile or so down the road. That way if Eliza somehow survived this holocaust she would not know that we had also survived.
The problems with the plan were numerous. First off, Eliza hadn’t come to the dance. Secondly, we had way more party crashers than we had intended and thirdly, Tracy hadn’t fucken left before we died!!
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“She sees us! She’s waving!” Jen yelled.
“If she tries to rescue us, I’m going to shoot her myself!” I cursed under my breath.
Jen jumped down off the doors as the heat from the melting house began to blister us all.
We couldn’t see anything except the nearest wave of zombies, which thankfully weren’t children. Most of them had become roasting marshmallows in the house behind us. But we all heard what came next.
BT looked up from his sights. “Is that a horn?”
CHAPTER 26 Journal Entry Twenty-Four
“Oh fucking Tracy, what are you doing woman?” I moaned. “Don’t make me die for nothing.”
We were all down to the dregs of our ammo, and I had been completely serious about holding one bullet for myself, when the cannon fire erupted and I saw the familiar front grill of the white Ford pickup bracketed by two military vehicles. Trailing was your standard issue Marine Corps Humvee, in front was a six wheeled lightly armored troop transport. There were waves of joy and waves of despair, was the violence of existence worth it? Joy because help was coming, despair because it was too far away. The .50 caliber machinegun mounted on the turret of the troop transport was shredding through zombies, head shots weren’t warranted when bodies were literally being torn in two. There’s a reason why the Geneva Convention had expressly forbidden the act of shooting personnel with this type of gun. It made identifying the deceased a nearly impossible task.
I was gauging the number of rounds I had with how long it was going to take the trucks to get here. It was looking like a typical Vegas wager, the house was the favorite and we were the mark.
Maybe the sight of us, or my thoughts actually held sway over the caravan, because they began to speed up.
“That’s not Tracy,” BT said from his higher vantage point.
“Nicole? Travis? Please tell me no.” I begged.
“Brendon.”
