by Mark Tufo
Trees were snapping, the ground was shaking, footfalls as loud as thunder were approaching on the gallop. There was no need to say anything; bulkers were coming. At what point were we going to have to fight? Still didn’t know if they knew we were here or they were just bored and on an exploratory mission. I don’t know if that made what was happening better or worse. Food was scarce for them and having to find new and unique ways to attain nourishment was how brain power has developed in predators since the dawn of life. There was no reason to think this was not going to happen with the zombies as well. What clever and frightening methods would they evolve over the next few years, after the earth was basically scoured of human life?
Add to that, the problem that the evolutionary rate of the zombies was parallel to that of the virus they housed; they evolved so quickly. Not only had the shit been produced, it had been stepped in warm and then smeared across a priceless, irreplaceable Persian rug. The first shuddering impact shook the house to its very foundation. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the bulker had actually shifted the entire structure. More cry outs from the kids in the closet...or maybe it was me. Those of us that had not been sitting down were now basically on all fours trying to keep a semblance of balance as another impact shook us. When I almost teetered over from the next hit I figured getting on my ass was warranted. Dust and plaster rained down on us as the house was tortured; wood splintered and groaned as it was twisted out of shape.
Windows on the second floor imploded as the house was warped enough to force them out of shape. I had to wonder if they were destroying this place just so humans couldn’t seek shelter in it some time in the future. Other than that weak argument I couldn’t figure out their motivation. There was one final smashing by the bulkers and then all was quiet, I mean except for the house, which was trying to find a new balance with itself now that it had suffered a significant amount of structural damage. Anything that had still managed to stay on the walls up to this point finally let go; sounded like all of the kitchen cabinets with their full complement of dishes shattered across the tile floor. I didn’t think any more fear-adrenaline could have been squeezed out of me up until that point. Yeah, I was wrong.
I could only hope the zombies thought the sound was a result of their actions and not people, otherwise, they would certainly resume their activities until they had us. I blew out the gust of air I was holding when one final ping pierced my skull. I would not have been surprised in the least if I had brains leaking out of my nose. Then there was quiet again. Nobody moved, nobody coughed; even though there was enough dust floating around to clog up a coke-head’s nostrils. The silence was heavy, like a wet woolen cloak. It was not welcome in the least. The zombies were doing nothing except waiting for us to show ourselves, but fortunately we were on to them. Not sure how long we held that frozen standoff. We were the rabbit hiding in his hole while the wolf waited at the mouth of the warren. It was every bit that picture. If I thought about it hard enough, I could even imagine the long ribbons of drool dropping down and onto that poor rabbit’s face, too scared to even wipe them away.
Finally, imperceptibly at first, the weight of the hush began to lighten. It had to be an extra-sensory thing, because at no time did we hear them leave. When Travis shifted to look through the broken window, he told us they were gone.
“What the fuck?” BT asked in a hushed voice, as he stood, then reached out to help me up.
I knocked lightly on the closet door. “It’s over.” By this time the sun was beginning its journey up the eastern sky. Figuring out how the hell and where the hell we were going to go was a pretty big decision, yet everyone here looked exactly like the refugees we were, none had slept in over twenty-four hours: hungry, thirsty, uncertain. We had to move; there was no way we could stay here, but trekking an entire troop this slow and unwieldy was not going to work. Some were going to have to stay behind while we secured a new ride. We checked out the basement, something had been there but it must have gone out the same way it came in. There was no sign of it, save the slimy blood trail it had left.
“Ten miles, Mike. We didn’t make it ten miles,” BT said to me as we looked out over the landscape we needed to cover.
“That’s one way to look at it, but just imagine if we had stayed at Ron’s.” I gave him that one to think on, though I really had no idea how that place had faired. MJ’s magic box was out of commission. I don’t know if it was fate, kismet, or just bad fucking luck but we definitely needed to know if those cruise ships just washed up on their own or were they steered here by some, as of yet undisclosed, enemy. Talk about overkill. Sort of like the nuclear option. Sort of like my wife I suppose. Tracy wasn’t much into fighting. Well, back that up—she wasn’t much into losing. And I would tell her that because she would go straight for the nuclear option. Imagine coming into a fight with a knife and your opponent has a thermo-nuclear device. That’s my wife, and apparently our newest enemy. Stood to reason that she was more than likely of the female persuasion.
“Where are we going to get another bus?” he asked, breaking my reverie.
“Might have to go down to the school and get one; less comfortable and no bathroom but we certainly can’t risk another jaunt into Bangor.”
“You think this is Knox’s doing?”
“I don’t. This is something different. It smells of Payne, though I’m not even sure how she could have pulled it off. I’d say, Eliza, if I hadn’t seen her die.”
“When are we leaving?”
“I’d like to give the zombies a little more head start—I have no desire to run into any of them. Has to be soon, though. The babies and the kids are going to need supplies.”
“Yeah, I’m hungry too.”
“Sure you are. I’m sure it takes a buffet to keep you going.”
“Fuck you, Mike.”
“Can you imagine if you were a zombie? No one would be safe, you’d be like that chicken wing eating champion—what was his name?”
“Kobiashi!” Trip chimed in.
“Yeah Kobiashi. You’d be shoving people, whole people, into your mouth and stripping them clean of meat, just pulling the skeletons out intact. Sure, it would be disgustingly gross, but on the other end of the spectrum, it would be fascinating and comparatively tidy. A zombie cult would probably form around you, deifying your prowess to eat.”
“You done?”
“I’m getting there.” I’d pretty much petered out by now and BT looked like he might be ready to physically shut me up anyway, so when Riley came and barked at me, I figured that was as good a time as any to withdraw. “What are you doing, pretty girl?” I asked as I petted the side of her muzzle. I saw a concerned look on my sister’s face as I followed Riley around the corner. Lyndsey was holding Zachary, the baby Jess had brought with her.
“He seems flushed,” my sister said.
“Is he sick?” That was a concern; not only for him, but for everyone else as well. It’s one thing when an illness runs through a household. Mom and dad might miss a day or two from work, the kids miss some school but get to watch plenty of daytime television, by the end of the week it’s usually business as usual. In an apocalyptic world, being sick could get you dead much easier. “Is it a cold or a fever?”
“I don’t know, Mike. I missed my medical degree by this much.” She held her pointer just away from her thumb.
“Sucks growing up in a family that runs completely on sarcasm,” I replied.
“Keep him as far away from the others as you can. We’re so jammed up in here we have to do our best to contain it.”
“New plan,” I told BT when he came to see what was going on. “We’re heading out now.”
“I’d like to come,” my sister said.
“Are you sure, sis?” I wasn’t keen on this new development. She was untested in this shitfest and I just wanted to secure a ride and get everyone to a semblance of safety as smoothly as possible.
“If she goes, so do I.” It was Steve, her husband.
Super nice guy, but about as handy as an earthworm. That make sense? Alright, I’ll go for a practical explanation that will kind of show you how his mind may or may not work. If you are holed up in a facility with a kitchen, please go to it now. Walk over to the sink and open up the cabinet below it. That poor piece of plywood on the bottom shelf is probably exposed to more leaking water than any other place in the entire house. Now in Steve’s home, that’s more than usual because that’s what happens when you use chewing gum as plumber’s putty. Don’t ask me why; I couldn’t give you an answer. So suffice it to say that shelf got waterlogged and began to bow. It got so bad that the shelf looked more like a bowl and was resting against the sub floor.
A normal, fairly competent homeowner first fixes the leak. Steve did not. Second, a normal homeowner removes the completely obliterated piece of saturated particle board and replaces it with a brand new one, after making sure that there is no accumulation of mold anywhere near the area where water has been sitting. Strike two. Now you’re sitting there trying to figure out what Steve did. Well, I’m going to tell you. He took a five-gallon bucket of drywall spackling, which he bought specifically for this task, and filled the hole in. Yup. You heard that right. He scooped out great big globs of the compound and did his best to fill in the hole. Now in some weird form of logic, this makes sense, I guess. But...and yes, there’s a but, he didn’t even smooth it out. It went from a meteor crater to what could only be described as a diorama of the Swiss Alps under there.
When an actual plumber was finally called in to fix things, he had to get a helper to remove cabinetry so they could remove the board that now weighed in excess of fifty pounds. And—oh yeah, he also had to get a mold mitigation company in there. Steve had figured if he just covered the problem up it would go away. So, let’s see. Three dollars for putty, six fifty for a piece of plywood, a buck or two for some bleach...the job wound up costing him four and a half grand (plus the money for the chewing gum and the spackle), and he still doesn’t see what he did wrong. So yeah, I was a little hesitant to bring him along. The chances he would stick gravel in the magazine well when he ran out of ammunition were pretty high. Oh, and just so we’re clear, Steve is a highly intelligent man. He’s an engineer, more book smarts than any person I know but he just skipped the common sense-issuing line; probably hit the men’s room then got a smoothie.
BT and I gave a sidelong glance at each other. This wasn’t exactly an assemblage of the A-Team. In hindsight, I wish I’d done things differently and told them to stay, but she’s still my older sister and I’d spent years suffering her telling me how things were going to happen. Old habits die hard…unfortunately, it’s not so difficult for people.
Mad Jack came to me with a very detailed hand-drawn map of the area.
“What’s this?” I asked him.
“That’s a fairly accurate representation of where we are, within a ten-mile radius.”
“You drew this?” I asked, amazed at the level of detail.
“I admit it’s not my finest—and some of the scale is off...but I am ninety-five percent confident that everything on there is where it should be.”
“Only ninety-five?” I was giving him crap, obviously his map was invaluable.
“I regret that. Another five minutes of battery life and I could have had it up to ninety-nine, because, well, no one is perfect no matter how hard they strive to be.”
“No worries, MJ I’m thinking ninety-five is going to be fine. Want a kiss?”
“I most certainly do not.”
“Just a little one, it won’t mean nothing. Just the start of a wonderful bromance. I won’t even say anything to Tracy.”
“Won’t tell Tracy any what thing?” my wife asked. “Are you making the poor man uncomfortable with your overt gestures?” she asked. “Did you know, Mad Jack that I had to marry him because he pestered me so much with his advances? I’ve seen less aggressive sharks during a feeding frenzy.”
“Or possibly a honey badger as it suffers through hundreds of bee stings for a little drop of honey,” Mad Jack said getting in on the Mike bashing, but I think it may have been his idea of a compliment to Tracy. “They are commonly known as the most aggressive animal on the planet, almost stupidly aggressive, as they will even take on a full-grown lion for a meal.”
“Wow, that flipped fast—even for you, Talbot,” BT said, taking the map out of my hands. “There’s a construction yard not more than three miles from here.”
“That beats heading to Searsport High School by five miles. Gonna suck for those that have to ride in the back of a truck, but it will only be until we can find an RV dealership or something. I’m done with buses. Let’s get this show on the road,” I said.
It was the four of us: Steve, Lyndsey, BT, and myself. We had to make it three miles—that was it. I didn’t even bother asking myself “what’s the worst that could happen?” One or more of us could die; one or more of us could be captured. The house we were leaving could be attacked, fucking Somali pirates might come ashore after raiding the valuables left on the cruise ships. Who the fuck knows these days?
We’d gone a good mile when I got the thought to ask Steve if he’d brought extra ammunition. There were just things I didn’t think I needed to ask people, not nowadays. I wouldn’t ask a mountain climber if he brought rope, or a scuba diver if she’d put oxygen in her tanks. These were things that people should already know. Our first indication of trouble was his response.
“Extra?”
I was about as close to railing on him as I could be, especially since the sink fiasco was fresh in my memory. Was going to use the whole “This ain’t the fucking movies, dumbshit! You do not have an unlimited supply of rounds in that one magazine.” But what was the point? It was too damned late now.
“You want to turn around?” BT asked.
“No. We’re too far in now; let’s keep going.” I’d been presented with another open door to walk through. Instead, I closed it.
Besides walking all that way with clenched butt cheeks, it was a fairly enjoyable walk. At least we were out of that dark house. I was that close to being able to take a full breath when the first ill breeze rankled across our noses.
“How far you think we are?” I asked BT, doing a quick scan of our immediate area.
“According to MJ’s map it should be right around that small hill, so, half a mile at the most.”
“Time to pick up the pace,” I said.
“Mike, I have bad knees.” Steve took this exact moment to refresh my memory.
I wanted to punch him in the head, I really did. That was the first and strongest impulse I had. It’s not that he had bad knees, those things happen. But why in fuck’s name would you volunteer for a foot mission with a high degree of probability that you’re going to have to run? My sister must have seen my less than poker face.
“We’ll bring up the rear,” she said.
“BT help me. We’ll support him so we can get moving. They’re close.”
Steve made a modicum of protest. “I can do it, I can,” he said when we were just about to get into position.
“Let us help you, Steve. This isn’t a man-pride thing is it?” I asked.
“Like you’re one to give anyone shit about that,” BT snorted.
“I’m fine, Mike. I’m fine.” He had his hand up as if to ward us off.
I wanted to ask why the hell he’d brought up his knee problems if he was “fine.” I kept a close eye on him as we headed off. He had a bit of a gimp in his stride, but there was no telltale wincing with his steps and more importantly, he kept pace. It wasn’t five minutes later that we were staring at a huge, rock quarry pit. A front-end loader and a dump truck were sitting at the very bottom.
“Not a fan Mike,” BT said as he reacted to what I was thinking.
There was one way down; the walls weren’t quite sheer, but close, and the loose shale made climbing down, and certainly back up, out of the question.
“What if th
ey don’t work?” Steve asked.
“Yeah, that would suck too,” I told him. I seemed to be stuck in this continuous loop of looking at the truck, back to the scree-lined walls, around the surrounding area, repeat. It was my brilliant sister that was actually walking the perimeter of the pit to find the trail leading down.
“I don’t think we should all go down,” BT said as we stood at the top.
I looked over to Steve who was bent over rubbing his knee. Lyndsey had stopped to see how he was doing. Climbing at that pitch, down, back up—the exertion would be extreme on everyone’s knees. If we were unsuccessful landing a ride, it would make the five miles back excruciating for him. It was up to BT or myself; one of us had to stay to watch over them and the other had to check the truck.
“I got this,” BT said when he saw me struggling with what to do.
“We’ve got your back.”
“Well you do, and that’s all that’s ever mattered,” he said quietly.
Everything was going fairly well as I watched BT wind his way down. I’d randomly catch whiffs of zombie but as of yet, none of us had spotted any. Steve seemed to have worked out whatever kink was ailing him. I was noticing that my sister was looking relatively fierce. She’d always been sort of a girlie girl. With three older brothers to look out for her, she’d very rarely had to worry about outside threats and she’d grown up a bit sheltered. Nothing wrong with it; she’d always worked hard for the things she had in life. She liked shoes, purses, all that stuff, she always looked like she was getting ready for a gala—again nothing wrong with that. But right now she looked like she could have been a guerrilla fighter; a rebel kicking ass in the jungles of Cuba. She had on a green military jacket, hair in a messy bun tucked underneath a Cardinals baseball cap, I would have to ask her about that at some point. She was wearing camouflage cargo pants cinched with a web belt and boots. I don’t think they were military standard issue, and they had ragged pink laces, but they were perfectly acceptable for fighting. I hoped it wasn’t all for show.
