by Mark Tufo
“Who you talking to?” BT had come in.
“What’s left of my brain, I guess.”
“So just a memo then?”
“Basically.”
“You ready to go upstairs?”
“No,” I told him truthfully.
“What if she doesn’t have a gun, Mike?”
“I don’t know, BT. I just don’t fucking know. Tracy will lose her shit and I’m already treading water right now by siding with Deneaux.”
“It’s not just that, Mike. She could have murdered those people if they had been perfectly cordial. Have you seen her? She’s leaning against that car, smoking up a storm like nothing out of line happened. She’s the coldest person I’ve ever met, period. I knew serial killers, hit men even, that showed more emotion for their victims. If she killed them in cold blood, we can’t have her in our group. I don’t trust her Mike. Shit, even if she did save us like she says, I still don’t trust her.”
“I don’t either but, look, that hammer was pulled back. In one second I might have been permanently air-conditioned, man. Those people were total strangers. Maybe we should see how little we should actually trust her before we kick her out. You cool with that?”
“You realize, like, less than a month ago you said, and I quote: ‘if I ever see that demented crazy bitch again I am going to put a bullet in her brain casing,’ unquote.”
“I’d appreciate if you didn’t use my own words against me. My wife does that all the time.”
“She has a right to; it’s because you say crazy shit.”
“Can we get this done?” I was showing him the door.
“Why do I have to go first?”
“Well, I’m figuring if they have a Claymore mine you can shield me from it.”
“I’ll shield it with your face.” He quite literally picked me up by the scruff of the neck and opened the door, holding me in front of him like a medieval shield.
“You’re an asshole,” I told him when nothing exploded and we were looking up a steep staircase absolutely coated with potato chip and other snack bags.
He put me down. “You ever stop to think that maybe if you kept that trap of yours shut every so often, that those around you wouldn’t feel the need to harness their inner asshole?”
“Nope. Never crossed my mind.” I went up the stairs. “Holy fucking potato chip bags, this must be their early warning alarm system.”
“Or they were just fucking slobs.”
“There’s that.” I could barely hear myself as I crunched down on all manner of cellophane material. “Fuck me,” I said when I got upstairs. The place was absolutely choked with food. The only piece of furniture I could see was a twin bed and even that was partially encased. Harriet and Vincent had been busy pulling all their stockpile up here. Must have had calves like pro football players after all that exercise.
“This will at least solve our food problems,” BT said as he somehow shouldered his way past me. I was just about embedded into the wall as he did so.
“Don’t let me get in your way,” I muffled out.
“Son of a bitch.” He’d made his way over to the prone form of Harriet. I didn’t need to see her exposed skull to realize what he was seeing. “She had a rifle. Loaded and the safety was off. Would have been a lot easier getting rid of that witch if that wasn’t the case.”
I wisely said nothing. I hate to admit it, even to myself, but I don’t think I would have got rid of Deneaux, even if Harriet had been holding a rosary.
BT pulled Vincent’s body out of the window. “She was right,” he said to Tracy, showing her the rifle.
“Of course I was, dearie,” I heard Deneaux call up to him. “I don’t need a formal apology; a simple thanks will suffice.”
“You’re lucky I don’t just shoot you,” BT told her.
“That’s not an acceptable way to thank someone for saving their life.” I couldn’t see Deneaux, but I knew she was smiling up at him.
“What exactly did Vincent say?” BT asked pulling his head in from the window.
“He said he was going to shoot me or something like that.”
“Not something like that. What exactly did he say?”
“BT, you know I’m not good with remembering stuff exactly and I was a little under duress. You saw me diving, I definitely thought my life was in danger.” As I said the words it sparked the memory. “Wait, wait...he said something like ‘That was the only thing saving your life’ when I’d asked everyone to put their guns down and then he cocked the hammer.”
“You sure about that?”
“That, I’m a hundred percent sure about. That’s a noise that gets kind of burned deep into the folds. BT, I’m not completely convinced he was going to fire, or if she was, but I was at the point where I thought it was a distinct possibility.”
BT wiped his face with a meaty hand. “Let’s just get some people up here, there’s a lot of food to grab.”
I laid the couple out and grabbed some blankets off the bed to cover them up before anyone could join the working detail. It was not lost on me that Deneaux did not come up and help. I can’t believe that it had anything to do with guilt or that she didn’t want to see her handiwork. I was pretty sure it was more about not doing menial labor.
With most of us working, it only took about an hour to grab everything we could fit or that was worth taking. On one hand, it was great having Trip. He ate his weight in food that hour making it that many fewer trips we had to do up and down those stairs. On the other, it was a pain in the ass working around him, as he was constantly eating and moving at a quarter speed as he did so.
We were just about done; Trip was leaning up against my car. He was eating a jar of ham hocks, whatever the fuck those are—smelled pretty ripe.
“Mike, she’s not supposed to be here.” He’d stopped eating, a ham hock caught between the lip of the bottle he was holding and his mouth. He was staring off into space. I cannot even begin to convey how unsettling it was for him to call me Mike. I had a feeling who he was talking about, but I had to make sure before he slipped back down.
“Deneaux?” I prodded.
“She’s changing everything. People that are supposed to die are being saved and those that should live are being killed. She is single-handedly destroying this timeline.”
My mouth was open, a thousand and two questions at the tip of my tongue. Suddenly John became Trip again.
“Ham hocks? Oh crap! I’m a vegetarian!” He seemed genuinely distressed as he ate three more before putting the lid back on and the bottle in the car. “Ron’t rell Rephanie,” he chewed.
“Vegetarian my ass. I’ve watched you eat raw frozen hot dogs.”
“Those weren’t popsicles?”
I left him there with his blank look as he tried to figure out what exactly he’d eaten. I noticed he reached back in the car and spun the top off his definitely not-vegetarian snack.
“What the hell good is it having a Spirit Guide that’s always getting lost?” I asked no one. I sought out the only one that could help. “Tommy, any news on the psychic hotline?”
“I haven’t heard from Dianne Warwick, if that’s what you’re referring to.”
“Too bad. Maybe she’d know what the hell is going on here.” I explained to him what Trip had just said.
“Oh,” was Tommy’s response, though he looked like he had a whole lot more going on in that head of his.
“Oh? Spill it, kid.”
“You know that since my link to Eliza was snapped I’ve not had the same view of the unseen.”
I nodded.
“Right after the Demense building, and even more so. But since she showed up at your brother’s, it has gotten worse, significantly worse.”
“You mean your ability to divine?”
“My perception of things that could happen has been severely hampered. If what Trip says is right, that could be the explanation. I can’t see what hasn’t already been written.”
That g
ave me chills right up and down my spine. Deneaux was in our midst and she was a great agent for change, but just who exactly was she working for? There was safe money you could bet, for what team she played. But that would be as obvious as sending an older white guy with a crew cut into a Pink Floyd tailgate party to buy bags of maryjane. Yeah, no one would see that narc coming from a mile away. Maybe he could sound more authentic by asking where he could obtain some blotter-type acid, the kind that really makes your mind go loopy. The dipshit that sold to him deserved to be busted. You could probably see the outline of the badge hanging under his shirt. Deneaux was that obvious, or so it seemed. Would the bad team really make their intentions that discernible? And at this point, who exactly was the bad team?
My best bet was to ask the source. Even if she did know, which I doubted, she wouldn’t have any reason to tell me the truth. My life was complicated enough. I just marched right up to her face.
“Deneaux, why are you here?” I asked bluntly.
She eyed me through a haze of smoke. “I would imagine you are not referring to this exact spot, correct?”
“Correct.”
“I’m not sure, Michael.” She took a long drag from her smoke. “I was positive you had died in the destruction of the Demense building.”
“No thanks to you.”
“Are we going to rehash that? I was doing my best to have you killed. That’s no secret.”
“What’s changed?”
“I have. I have had a change of heart.”
“The question begs, why?”
“When I saw you and Tommy leave the building, I decided there and then I was going to go the complete opposite way that you had. I was on my way to the West Coast, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s when you came across those men?”
“It is. Though, technically, they came across me. I was sleeping at a truck stop. I had no other options; you were the only person that I could think of that would help.”
“Pretty big risk you took there.”
“Everything we do is a risk, especially now.”
“So, a slight twist in fate has put us back together.”
“It would seem so,” she answered. “Perhaps, Michael, this is the way it was supposed to be all along. We are survivors, you and I. Maybe we go about it differently, but in the end, we will not allow anything or anyone to interfere with our continued existence.”
“That statement rings true enough, though we both know my self-preservation extends far beyond my own skin.”
“It is a flaw you will overcome eventually.”
“Why did you kill Harriet and Vincent?”
“Weren’t they about to kill you and BT?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then it’s a good thing I am here. I’ve been playing this game far longer than you. Little Miss Christian up there? Yeah, anything but. She would have put holes in the both of you and thought less about it than I did.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“While you all were getting the food, I took a little walk to the back of the building. There are over thirty bodies, not zombies, mind you, that I believe were standing in the exact spot you were when Bonnie and Claude up there sent them packing.”
I believed her so much so I didn’t even bother going to check. BT did, though, when I told him.
“Son of a bitch,” was all he said when he came back. He was wiping his mouth with a rag. He looked pretty pallid.
We left, I was sitting next to a seething Tracy, she was still pissed off about Deneaux’s actions and now maybe more pissed that she was going to have to apologize for her outburst. I wisely said nothing. I did not so much as look in her general direction, she was actively seeking for something to turn her ire on and I was determined to make sure that wasn’t me. Maybe Deneaux was right; maybe I was more into self-preservation than I cared to admit.
We got out of Maine without having to make another stop. I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or not. It would be nice to not have to think about all that had gone wrong, though there was a deep sadness for those left behind. We did have to make a fuel stop in New Hampshire, but we decided to stay away from gas stations. It was Gary that said we should go to a dealership and siphon some tanks. It just so happened we ended up at Bournival Jeep dealership, I looked at my fifteen-year-old cheap knock-off and made up my mind right there: I was going to upgrade. Screw the roll-over loan amount and the twenty-one percent interest. My wife deserved a new one after what I’d done to hers. And plus, it did wonders for dampening her level of hostility. We topped off what needed topping and headed out. Mad Jack had suggested grabbing a trailer and some drums and filling them with gas, but I wasn’t too keen on the notion of rolling around with our own bombs. We’d just have to stop again, multiple times, in fact. Things were bound to happen, there was no way around it. We’d be vigilant, we’d stay as safe as we could. We were finally on the road to Etna Station.
Epilogue 1
“I can save them, Michael, I can save them all,” her voice came over loud and clear on the radio.
“What do you want, Deneaux?” Michael’s grip nearly cracked the microphone in his hand.
“Just a promise—just one small promise and they’ll all be safe. You can do that Michael, can you not?”
“Tell me what you want.” He did his best to contain his anger.
“You will bite me.”
Michael understood the implications of this. Deneaux the Immoral wanted to be Deneaux the Immortal. She could make Eliza look like a cartoon character in comparison. Were the lives of his friends and family worth unleashing this creature onto the world, with her own set of twisted rules?
“You’re taking an awfully long time to give me an answer. My window of opportunity won’t be open forever. Yes or no?”
“You can’t possibly understand what you are asking of me, Deneaux. What you are asking of yourself. You realize what happens to your soul, don’t you?”
“Soul?” She started laughing. “What am I going to do with that hole ridden dirty sheet?”
Mike heard a distant scream come over the radio.
“That was your beautiful wife, Michael. Do you want me to save her? Yes or no?”
“FUCK!” he screamed. “Do it! Save her. Save them all!”
“Promise me first.”
“I promise! I fucking promise! Just do it.”
Mike knew in his heart he’d damned himself and he’d damned them all. “What have I done?” He held the microphone to his head. Deneaux had left her side on; he could hear her shots and the cries of surprise from the people holding his loved ones captive. His only hope now was that Deneaux would succeed in saving them and then as they retreated to a safer place she would trip and fall onto a land mine. All of his problems solved.
No, he was not going to be able to leave this one up to providence. He would honor his promise and so much more, Deneaux had sealed her fate when she’d presented this crossroads. He knew which road he was going to take.
Epilogue 2
Iggy wandered, eating the near-deads when necessary but preferring human meat above all others. Near-deads had hunted him mercilessly until he had turned the tables—instead of running, he’d attacked. He’d savagely ripped through throats, torn heads free from bodies, laid torsos open. At first he’d just been trying to stop them from chasing, but when he’d bitten through the arm of one of his pursuers he’d decided they were good enough to eat. He had been supplementing his diet by hunting them ever since his escape. The humans, though, they were what he wanted. Human flesh was the cake, the icing, and the cherry upon it. He stripped meat clean from their bones, savoring every morsel. Just the previous week he had come across a group of five that he had stalked, killed, and eaten. He’d eaten heartily, but now the ravenous hunger pangs were back.
“Holy shit, Bob. I think that there’s a Bigfoot!” Dave exclaimed as he stood up quickly, spilling his hot coffee over his brother’s lap.
“Jesus, Dave! You jackass. That shit is hot!” Bob stood abruptly and was brushing the liquid from his crotch.
“What do you think Bigfoot tastes like?” Dave was bringing his rifle up.
“Give me the binoculars, you dumbass. Gretchen just got these pants clean. She’s gonna be pissed.”
“Not if we bring back enough food to feed everyone for a week,” Dave replied.
“Holy shit,” Bob said as he zeroed in on what Dave had seen. “It’s not a yeti...of that I’m glad.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I’m sick of eating canned beans and I would have had to shoot it. But hell, if we’d stumbled upon one just a few years earlier we’d be millionaires. Television shows would want our story, museums, scientists...everybody would want a piece of that animal. We could sell it to the highest bidder. What we’ve got down there is a gorilla. Yeah, it’s a big one, but just an animal that escaped from a zoo or something.”
“What’s gorilla taste like?” Dave asked.
“How the hell would I know? It’s not like they have the McApe down at the burger joint. I don’t give a shit anyway. It’s still got to be better than beans and our families deserve some real meat.”
Dave was wiping drool from his mouth as his brother-in-law spoke; just thinking about having the meat roasting over an open fire was causing him to salivate. “Don’t miss.”
Bob braced his rifle up against a tree. “Don’t move, you magnificent feast.” He took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. Birds flew up from nearby trees as the great beast went down.
“You got it, you got it! Dave was jumping around.
Bob was feeling pretty good about himself, he estimated the shot to be somewhere in the three-hundred-yard range, and considering he’d never fired a rifle before the zombie apocalypse, he thought that a huge victory.
Iggy heard the loud report of the gunshot and watched as a tuft of grass ten feet away was blown up into the air. An ancient, primordial part of him demanded that he run away from the danger. The newer, more lethal part knew exactly what to do. He fell over as if the bullet had hit him; he would wait for his prey to come to him.
