by Dalton Wolf
He said this as Athena ran her panabas half way through the skull of a little old dead woman in a flowing, traditional black dress.
“Oh, they were dead set on going to temple yesterday even though The Maker clearly had given them the day off. But, oh no, they wished so much to prove their faith. Now what are they? Garden fertilizer. The Lord does not show mercy to the stupid, Saul! This is what my father always said to me. Oy! What has happened to this world?”
“Ok, Athena, go in and get them,” Calvin ordered as Trip and Brick waltzed together through the rod iron gate from the back indicating the yard was clear.
“What? Now? We have things,” Calvin could hear Saul saying as Athena ushered him out of the house.
“I know Dad. We’ll get them for you. We’re protected and you’re not.”
“No one is protected when the dead walk the Earth.”
“We have armor on.”
“What is with these costumes?” Miriam asked, pointing to the oddly attired group as she shuffled out the front door.
“We’re wearing it for protection from them, Mom.”
“Protection. The police should be protecting us, with all the taxes we pay to this forsaken city,” Saul argued.
“The police have their own families to worry about.”
“What? What! This. This is their job. To protect and serve. That’s what it says on the side of their cars. And here we are shooting our neighbors who are trying to eat us.”
“We’ve got this under control, Dad,” Athena said, pulling him along each time he finished saying something, only to have him pull up short to speak again.
“Under control. You have this under control? Let me tell you something. Leave the control to those who are trained to use it.”
“That…that doesn’t even make any sense, Papa,” she argued as Tripper and Brick escorted the Grissoms and Bergs past them to the ambulance.
“This whole thing doesn’t make any sense,” Saul stopped and pointed at her. “And running around playing damsel in distress and the knights of chivalry is not going to solve anything.”
“You might at least have noticed this damsel is wearing armor and jousting with the men,” she muttered.
“I am old fashioned, dear one. Yesterday I gave you your bat mitzvah and now you’re running around playing King Arthur with swords like a young man. It’s not normal. If not for Calvin I would worry you would come home with a young woman lover, not that I am saying there is anything wrong with that. Your mother and I would love you no matter what. But you should be going to dances and—”
“—cooking and cleaning and all the stuff grandmother fought so hard to change? The days of the repressed housewife are supposed to be over, daddy.”
“I don’t want you repressed, my heart, I want you safe,” he explained. “I miss my little Gindele, my Neshama.”
“I’m still your little girl, Papa,” she said, hugging him as she pulled him along. “It’s just that girls kick ass now,” she added, emphasizing her point by spinning her blade around with her free arm.
“Oy, you be careful with that cheese knife. You go lopping off an ear or finger and there goes your education.”
“I’m not going to get any dumber by losing a finger or ear, Daddy.”
“No, but you already don’t listen half the time, so lopping off an ear would make you deaf. You lose a finger and you can’t type anymore.”
“I’m not a typist,” Athena growled. “I mean, I type, but…just what exactly is it that you think I do?”
“Your mother says you are a secretary, I figure you must type.”
“I’m an administrative assistant.”
“Yes, that is what I said; you are a secretary.”
“No. It’s not the same. I’m the Chief Executive Assistant to the President of a multi-billion dollar multi-platform industry.”
“What, what, what? Are you Vice-President? Are you even a manager? No. You are just an Executive Assistant. Fancy words for a fancy secretary.”
“I help run the company, Dad,” she argued.
“The janitorial staff helps run the company.”
“I make more money than everyone here put together,” she argued.
“And how does this look? The President’s secretary making more money than the other company officers? It’s shameful. How does Calvin let this continue?”
“It’s not like that,” she stomped her foot angrily.
Saul shot a wicked wink at Calvin while she begged the sky for help and her fiancé tried to keep a straight face.
“Yes, yes, I know dear. I just like seeing you get riled up about it,” he squeezed her cheek and shuffled past her.
“Get in, Dad,” she nearly shoved the man into the back of the Wagon, almost dislodging his yarmulke.
“Pushing is it? What? You’re mad now?”
“Oh leave her alone and get in, Saul,” Miriam pushed him too. “Sorry, dear,” she apologized to Athena with a soft hand on her armored shoulder. “He’s been like this since Mrs. Wolowitz tried to eat him when he took her pruning shears back the other day…why did she do that, dear?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” Athena replied honestly. “But we’re trying to find out.”
Sarah and Tripper stepped down together from the back of the Paddy Wagon looking frazzled under their open helms. Each had just finished similar conversations with their own parents.
“Is it too late to put them back?” Athena asked over the private com channel. Several others laughed, but she couldn’t tell which ones.
“She’s got a point. We’ll need to leave them somewhere so we can work, Calvin,” Tripper cautioned over the mic.
“Hey, my Dad still works out,” Sarah complained. “And yours is no slouch either. Maybe they can help. Athena is the one whose parents decided to have another kid after forty years.”
“I’m not saying they’re useless,” Tripper rebutted. “I’m saying there’s a chance I might kill them myself if we’re stuck together in the same building for too long.”
Several of the others laughed. All but Joel and Gus gathered outside the vehicles, out of earshot of the parents. Calvin looked around, considering their options. “I don’t know what we can do about that. Maybe we’ll set them and any others up at the Fortress and let them run things there while we make the Dungeon our new base.”
“That’s cruel, Calvin,” Athena reprimanded him.
“Hey, you’re the one who has to have those marathon exchanges with your dad just to ask how his day went. If we stay in the same place, you’ll be having those all of th time, but I guess if you have no problem with it…”
“Although, I supposed we could tell them we’re helping Hephaestus with his equipment,” Athena suggested as an afterthought.
“Even though we’ll most likely just be in the way there,” Tripper added honestly.
“Won’t it be like we just saved them from a house surrounded by zombies and stuck them in a bigger house surrounded by zombies?” Sarah asked. “We might as well have left them here until it’s time to go.”
“Hmm, that’s a good point,” Calvin admitted. “Rescue them just to dump them off somewhere still in the middle of this mess?”
“We don’t know how fast we might have to light out of here,” Tripper argued. “And we’re talking about a stocked fortress compared to a house in the suburbs. I doubt they’re going to complain.”
“Have you met your parents?” Sarah asked. “Or mine? Or…any of ours?”
“Well, I can’t stay with them. They’re always on my ass about the future. And now that Calvin’s asked Athena to marry him they’ll…”
“What?” Sarah’s eyes narrowed.
“Nothing. Nevermind.”
“You’d better finish that sentence.”
“We need to get going,” he suggested.
“Thadius Reginald Iggy Percivale Paul Edward Roy Grissom, if you’ve got something to say, you’d better come out with it if you know what’s g
ood for you.”
“That’s not my name,” he insisted heatedly, eyes blazing.
“It was before you changed it,” she responded smartly, returning an equal inferno.
“Well I did change it, legally. So call me by my name or don’t call me!”
“I’m sorry. I know what happened between your dad and brothers with the business and everything. I shouldn’t have used their names, but I wanted you to know I’m serious. Tell me what you were going to say.”
“Look, I’m just saying…”
“It’s just that…Calvin proposed and now our parents are going to know…”
“You mean that they are going to be on your ass about why you haven’t asked me to marry you, too?”
“Yes,” he admitted, hunching his shoulders and refusing to look at her.
She sighed.
“Trip. We’ve talked about this. I don’t even like you that way,” She said.
He laughed loud and hard, and so did the others.
“Seriously, though,” she grabbed his hand. “We agreed to take it slow and I’m fine with that, even if it takes another five years. You don’t have to go and propose just because Calvin did. Even though his was very romantic and we could have a double wedding and—”
“—we can’t wait five years for him to get it together,” Athena warned the couple.
“Don’t wait on us,” Sarah said. “You know he’s always been slower than Calvin.”
“Here,” Trip said, tossing a small black velvet box at her. “Now do you understand?”
“Oh…” Sarah breathed, tears filling her eyes as she opened the box to reveal the golden ring with a silver Pegasus in the clouds flying over a rainbow of tiny colored precious stones.
“I designed it myself over a year ago. I was the one who was supposed to propose first,” he explained in head hung in chagrin. “I was going to do it at the parade but sometimes things don’t go the way you plan them. I was watching the sky so much because a plane was supposed to fly over towing a sign saying, ‘Sarah Berg, look back’ and I was going to be down on my knees with the ring. You know the kind of government favors I had to pull and the background check I had to endure just to get a plane and a pilot in the air that day? The President knows my name and face because of the e-mails I wrote, since he was going to be here too. That’s pretty fucking cool.”
He dropped to one knee and took the ring out of the box and then took her hand and placed it over that finger. “You were supposed to look back and see this. That’s why I was dressed so nice.”
“That was nice? A blue sweater and white pants?”
“You always said that was your favorite.”
“Well, yeah, but…never mind.”
“Do you want me to do this, or not?”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“You know I’m not a good talker like Calvin. And I’m not good at the fluffy pink romance stuff. I’m a smartass. But you know I love you Sarah. And I know you love me. We get along better than any other couple I’ve ever met and if something were to ever happen to Calvin you might even win the best friend contest I’m going to have.” He waited for the sniveling laughter from behind to trail off before finishing.
“There are so many reasons why I love you and why I think we should be together, but we don’t have the kind of time it would take to list them all, so I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to tell you all of them. Everyone knows we belong together. Will you marry me?”
“I suppose,” she nodded and he slid the ring all the way onto her finger.
“The wedding ring is gorgeous,” he said. “You’re going to love it. Unfortunately it’s back at my place.”
“We’ll get it someday,” she promised.
Everyone congratulated the couple with hugs and slaps on the back of their armor. The hugs stopped when one of Calvin’s chainmail rings, broken from the shooting, became linked in Sarah’s chainmail and Trip had to run to the Hedgehog to get a pair of pliers to separate them. Boomer and Joel said their congratulations over the com system. When things quieted back down a little, Boomer’s sharp ears caught some muffled screams and banging. “Listen. What the hell is that?” he asked the others.
Calvin shushed everyone. After a few seconds of hard listening, the group turned and faced the Paddy Wagon only to see three sets of parents peeking out of the thick rear windows cheering the couple and pounding on the glass. Boomer’s dad was noticeably absent, but that was understandable.
“About putting the parents in different place, I think we all will need to keep an eye on Mr. McClintock. He’s going to need help.”
“Your parents can take care of him,” Boomer suggested. “And we’ll make regular stops to check in on him,” he promised. “He’s gonna be ok. He’s a tough old bastard.”
“And how are you doing?” Calvin asked his friend.
“I’ll survive. Everyone knows I never did get along with her. She kicked me out of the house before I’d graduated high school just because I didn’t get straight A’s. That’s a little fucking crazy…but I did love her. She was my mom and I’m going to miss her.” Despite a strong, convincing facade the shadow of his broad shoulders shook for a moment and he ducked low in the cupola to recover. With a shiver of his chainmail coif rattling over the radio channel, when his head rose into view once more and he took up position he was once again the undaunted, iron-jawed Boomer everyone had come to know and love. “Just don’t get on me for how I may treat these Deadheads for a while,” he muttered with a grim determination.
“Fair enough,” Calvin consented with a nod.
Assessing the neighborhood, everything seemed empty for the moment. Zombies lay scattered throughout the distance, oozing brain matter and vitreous humour from destroyed eyes onto streets and sidewalks. The sweet scents of freshly mowed lawns still hung heavily over the neighborhood, disturbed occasionally by wafting tendrils of smoke from a barbeque somewhere in the area. Someone is still living a normal life somewhere out there, at least. Calvin was pleased to note. Off in the distance a dog barked and birds chirped in the trees. The only things missing from making this a perfect suburban day, other than a serious lack of twice dead neighbors, was the gentle hum of a lawnmower or weed-whacker somewhere down the street and a neighbor washing their car in the driveway. As the first large droplets of rain began to fall and a brilliant flash and clap of thunder shook them all, he reconsidered. And the sun. The sun would be good.
A distant scream ripped through this placid suburban daydream.
“Jesus,” Tripper breathed in a hush.
“Get her in gear, Felicia,” Calvin ordered, darting for the back of the Hedgehog with everyone but Athena, Brick and Sarah.
“Where?”
“There!” Calvin pointed.
The street stretched into the distance for four blocks east and ended at a T-section. At the farthest end of the block, on the southern leg of the T, and almost out of sight around the corner, a family of four fought off a mob of Infected from the bed of a silvery-blue late model pickup truck. Just as Joel, Gus and the actresses had been trapped a few days before, the family of two adults and two children were slowly losing ground to the relentless rush of hungry neighbors. Around the truck no less than fifty of the more active dead jumped and milled about. The man and woman defended either side of the truck bed, each smashing baseball bats into skulls, sending blood, bone and diseased flesh flying with every desperate swing.
“I want to go there!” Calvin shouted.
As the vehicles approached, the young ebony-headed boy in the back holding what looked like a tire iron pulled on the girl’s blonde, ratty hair and pointed. “Help us!” screamed the young girl with hair the color of the tallest grasses on the prairie.
“Don’t stop! Save yourselves!” the man yelled, but Felicia had already aimed the Hedgehog at the mob of active dead and both turrets were looking for needy eye sockets.
“Oh my god.” Sarah slowed The Wagon. “Not sure we should take
the truck in, maybe get out and run in there?” she asked Athena.
“Sounds like the best bet.”
“Let’s go.” Athena said to Brick and jumped out of the Paddy Wagon.
“What are you doing?” Brick screamed.
“We’ve got to help them!” Sarah shouted back.
“Don’t stop!” Brick demanded, reaching his foot over and trying to press the gas pedal to the floor through her foot. But Sarah’s other foot was firmly on the brake and she elbowed him in the face and slammed the vehicle into park.
“Stop it, Brick. Be a man for once!” She commanded.
“There’s too many and they’re too fast!” he shouted.
“We’re out,” Athena said from outside the vehicle, already standing next to Calvin and Tripper making a push to the aid of the couple on the pickup bed.
“C’mon, Brick! Make yourself useful you asshole!” Athena shouted, but he wrapped both arms around Sarah’s neck.
“Forget it, we’re good,” Calvin waved Athena off. “Flank them on the right so we can take them fewer at a time. Let the turrets cover our left as they turn to come after us.”
The armored fighters waded boldly into the mass, Calvin lopping heads from shoulders, Athena splitting them open. Tripper swung away, still using his trusty bat, though they had now wrapped it in some tough, reinforcing tape from Hef’s garage. Lucy aimed the double-crossbow from just outside the open back door of the Hedgehog. She’d been so quiet everyone had nearly forgotten her presence. But she intended to contribute in any manner possible, a girlie-girl trying to be an only slightly less girly-girl. The crossbow did all the work, all she had to do was aim it. Thankfully, her aim was becoming pretty good and she spiked a large suit-wearing zombie through the back of the head just as it reached a long, rotting arm towards the little girl.
“Mfgh! Brick! Help!” Sarah’s cry came over their headphones.
Each of the new combatants took a quick glance back to see an arm around her throat trying to pull her into the back of the vehicle. Believing it was a zombie, Boomer spun and raised his turret, trying to get a quick shot off through the open door, but upon seeing Brick’s face he realized their drugged-out friend was holding Sarah too close—there was no shot. There were, however, plenty of zombies out front attacking some little kids. Someone else would have to help Sarah fight off Brick. Boomer walked the turn plate beneath his feet, spinning the turret back to the front and looking for targets, burying steel darts in the brain of a short Latino in a beige three piece. “Man, he’s lost it.”
