by Mark Tufo
Those that could, silently followed her to say their goodbyes and give their hero the honor he so well deserved. It was all Azile could do at first to not turn on them and tell them to leave so she could be alone, but she bit her tongue when she saw their honest suffering. A cairn of stones had to be constructed for a tomb; the ledge of the small mount was too dense and rocky to dig a proper grave.
“Here you lie my love. The only man I have ever known that placed the safety and well-being of all those around him at a higher value than his own life. I wish I could say that you are in a better place,” she stopped to sob, “but...but I fear that isn’t the case. You gave everything, even though you knew losing meant that you would suffer for all eternity. If there is any peace to be found, Michael Talbot, I know of no other person more deserving than you; may you find it at last.” She planted heather into a crevice between two large stones where it would cover the mound and glow in the dawn’s light.
In turn, everyone else laid flowers across the cairn, covering it in vibrant purples, reds, and yellows. It was Oggie that approached the mound last. From his muzzle he dropped a wolf inscribed hand axe and turned away, his head and tail hanging low.
Mathieu patted the dog’s broad shoulders. “You have a home with me, wherever that may be, my friend, should you so desire.” Oggie licked Mathieu’s outstretched hand.
“We are going home, Azile,” Inuktuk had come up to offer her condolences. “You are welcome with the Landians, however long you wish. If there is anything we can ever do for you, please let us know. We are forever in your debt.”
“Thank you,” Azile said. The Landians headed back down the hill. There was a small parade of people as Lana said her goodbyes and told Mathieu that she hoped he would visit; he assured her that he would.
Bailey was last. “We are going to start over Azile. We could use your help when you’re ready. Mathieu, you will always be welcome as well.”
Mathieu, Oggie, and Azile stood atop that hill, Azile’s long hair blowing in a breeze that was beginning to pick up.
“I fear a storm is approaching,” Mathieu said.
“The storm is already here, Mathieu. It rages inside of me.”
Mathieu thought she meant metaphorically; he was rocked by her next words.
“I’m pregnant.”
26
EPILOGUE THREE
LUNOS WATCHED HIS Lycan depart. He pondered trying to assemble them and step squarely into the vacancy Michael had so graciously afforded him and then immediately realized the poor decision that would ultimately become. He had been shunned by his kind at birth for avoiding the culling, the ancient right and duty of the strongest in each Lycan litter to defeat then consume their lesser siblings in a show of ultimate dominance. This tradition ensured strength and balance and had provided stability within the Lycan for millennia. Theirs was a harsh world where only the strongest could survive. Resources had become entirely too scarce to feed the rapidly growing population since Xavier had gone against an instinctual part of their species in an attempt to foster greater numbers in the clans. Litters under his rule had been immediately separated at birth despite a silent, but steady protest from his subjects.
With Xavier gone, the clans were likely to return to their old ways, in which case he could very well find himself at the wrong end of a deadly mob attack. A hatchling of a plan began to form in his head. Living alone for so long, he had not imagined the heady feeling of power, of real power over others, and he was in no rush to yield that. He bounded off to hunt for the infected who had fled.
27
TALBOT-SODE 1
Pre-Lycan Invasion
THERE WAS A time before I relegated myself to the basement and the single, disintegrating chair, that I would occasionally venture back into the destroyed upstairs. If I squinted my eyes just so and let the tears that would invariably fall hang between lashes, I could almost make out the ghosts of the past. Gary smiling as he hummed some hair-band song, my father cleaning a rifle, Ron attempting to keep up with his daughter, Melissa’s, teen-aged high-speed chatter. There was my sister, decimating some food-like substance on the stove. Warm yellow light illuminating the rich wood of the walls, a roaring fire banked safely in the stone fireplace. I could almost make it into a Norman Rockwell painting. Almost. Then the tear would fall or I’d blink my eye, shattering the illusion and I would once again be looking at the black and gray world that assaulted my vision now.
Destroyed furniture laid askew, thick sheets of dust blanketed everything like a spectral duvet. Burn marks scorched two walls and reached high enough to touch the ceiling. As much as the false elation of my mirage would momentarily lift my spirits, they would crash two-fold when I realized that the view was nothing but a projection from memory. I usually only came up here when I was looking for a healthy dose of self-immolation by reminiscence. I don’t know if I felt the need for conflagration, just sometimes it felt like the right thing to do. Because somehow, by virtue of still being alive, I’d left them, I’d left them all, and there had to be a price to pay for that. I didn’t give a shit if it was self-imposed or not. I deserved to pay it.
The floor popped and groaned its protests as I walked across its scarred surface. I don’t know what I was looking for, but certainly not what I came across. My goal was the glassless window. I felt a strong need to see the outside world just at that very moment, as if to stay confined in this stifling room of dead memories would be the end of me. I was halfway there when my boot caught on the edge of a box and turned it over. Papers spilled and fanned out across the room, blown by a slight breeze from the window. I didn’t care. My destination was to that opening, the gateway to the living and out of the tomb I was perpetually in. My foot stopped short as my brain automatically deciphered the words on top of that first upturned page. Talbot-sode 1. I hovered; well, one foot hovered, anyway. Quite literally, it just hung there. If I brought it down, it would step right on the paper and I knew it would dispel in a puff of white dust that shimmering hallucination that looked an awful lot like a journal entry.
I honestly don’t know how long I stayed like that. Felt like a week—could have been four or five minutes. My heart quickened, I was afraid of moving and shattering the image, though I blinked rapidly a few times to see if my eyes needed cleaning. To stay or to go, that was the question. Shakespearean plagiarism if ’ere there art any. Who the fuck was left to sue me? That window still held sway, but a small sliver of the past? A chance to once again walk with those I loved? It was a no-brainer. I swung my leg to neatly avoid the treasure I had inadvertently mined. My next fear was that I would reach down to grab the paper and it would disintegrate like ash, crumbling and blowing away in a whiff of smoke.
My hand trembled as I brushed up against the folio. I nearly held my breath as I gently picked it up. Now that I had it in hand and it retained substance, I was not so sure I wanted to read the words upon its pages. Would I feel better for it or worse? I rooted around within myself and found there was not much poorer I could feel, so I figured I’d go for it. After all, it really can’t get much worse than wishing for death. I smiled as I read the first paragraphs. That time in my life was pretty stressful; I’d just been laid off and we’d had to move to the Little Turtle complex. Amazing that I’d thought that a particularly rough patch, when right now I would give anything I had to be back at that moment. With my kids and my wife...it’s true: you never realize just how good life is until it’s taken away. I’ll never figure out why humans are wired that way. We have got to be the only animal that inhabits this planet that cannot simply enjoy the moment. Constantly dwelling on the past or planning a course for the future.
I’ll leave the philosophy 101 shit for another day; maybe it’s time to just relay the story I had meant to add into my much earlier journals, but never found the time. It was December, the year was nearly impossible to read, not that the ink had faded, but rather my handwriting was so atrocious as to be indecipherable. Didn’t matter much an
yway. It was December and Tracy and I were on another Christmas shopping excursion. We were doing our best to stretch an already thin budget to give the kids the kind of holiday we felt they deserved. What they didn’t know, and we never told them, was Tracy and I ate a lot of Ramen to help save for those gifts. Of course, we lost some weight as well, so, win—win is one way of looking at it. Though, if I never ate another pack of sodium-laced noodles I’d be fine with that.
Floundering off the path again. Anyway, we were shopping at Walmart. Now I know a lot of people used to look straight down their long snooty noses at the bargain store. That was never me; even when we had money I enjoyed the convenience of the superstore. Where else could I get white chocolate covered Oreos, 9mm ammunition, and a Star Wars astromech droid all on practically the same aisle? Right now Walmart was all we could afford, but what I’m saying is we would have been there anyway.
“Welcome to Walmart!” the rotund kid with the huge grin said as he stuck a smiley face sticker on my forehead, right under the knit edge of my winter cap. He tried to put one on my cheek but I thanked him profusely as I put my hands up and moved to the side, away from the aggressive greeter. “Okay then!” he said very loudly before leaving us alone, or so I thought, and expressing to the next customer just how appreciative of their business he was, as if he were making a percentage of the sale. Tracy and I walked side by side, me pushing the cart, as we talked about what we wanted to get for the kids, and where it might be found. The store was packed with merchandise and with people looking to purchase the aforementioned stuff. At times, Tracy and I had to fall into single file. Most times I let her get ahead, because, well, the view was great from there.
A couple of times out of necessity or bad timing I would end up in front. The first instance nothing happened, as she had been busy checking her list. The second time was a little different; maybe she liked the view as well, or possibly something caught her eye, because she started laughing. I turned to ask her if she wanted to share what was so funny. She touched my ass, which is always a bonus, and then showed me a yellow smiley face sticker she’d pulled from my butt.
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been walking around the store with a smiley face on my ass?”
Tracy laughed. “Looks that way.”
“That kid put a smiley face sticker on my ass?”
“Maybe you should have just let him put it on your cheek like he wanted to. Wait,” she started laughing again, “I guess he did.” She thought that was absolutely hysterical, I thought it was pretty funny myself but it was just fun to play the indignant card.
“Are there any more?” I tried the impossible dance of looking at my ass. You know the one, head over shoulder, one hand holding an opposite ass cheek as you twirl hopelessly about.
“I’d tell you if there was.”
“No you wouldn’t. Look, you can’t even hold a straight face while you say it.” I did two more revolutions before I realized the futility of my actions. Plus, if people hadn’t been looking at my ass before, they were definitely doing so now. “I’m gonna go back there, take his roll of stickers and cover him with them.”
“Oh, Talbot, he was just having fun.”
“Gonna go stick them on his ass. See how he likes it.”
“Oh, that ought to go over well. I can see the headlines now. Local man in jail after ass-fondling Walmart greeter.”
I left it at that. Odds were she was pretty close to factual how that course of action would end. Cops would show up, I’d have the kid on the ground, face down as I repeatedly stuck stickers on his ass. Occasionally taking the extra second to allow my wife to think things through for me has worked wonders; I should probably do it more often. We were heading into one of my favorite areas in the store—electronics. People were talking animatedly around us, the televisions were blaring out Christmas shows and stereos played Bing Crosby crooning to White Christmas. Despite the racket, it was sort of blissful. I love that kind of stuff. It’s no wonder I never heard the warning to “Watch Out!” I was looking to my left at a fifty-inch television that my unemployment benefits were never going to be able to pay for, when my right leg was struck. Luckily, my plant foot didn’t stick or the crazy old bitch on the shopping scooter would have used me as a speed bump. As it was I fell over to the side, crashing into the basket of her cart as she forced me into the shelf of cordless telephones and answering machines.
She’d hit hard enough that I took down a fair amount of the display. There was a loud beeping as she hastily backed up, leaving my lower body on the shelf and my upper draped across the floor.
“I’m so sorry!” A woman trailing the older lady on the cart had run up beside us. “She’s never operated one of these before! I’m so sorry!” she said again.
“What the hell? So you thought during the busiest day of the year was a good time to teach her?” I was pissed as I pushed myself up and off the ground. By now a sizable crowd had gathered to watch the train wreck, including four or five employees who assisted getting me up and putting the phones back where they belonged.
“Are you hurt? You’re all dirty,” the greeter said as he brushed my ass off.
“I think I’ll be fine,” I said as I eased him away from an area he was clearly too interested in. “There’d better not be any more stickers, buddy.”
“I’m on break,” he said, as if that addressed my concerns.
The lady that hit me was slack-jawed and dead-eyed, I would have sworn she was the victim of a stroke, and I don’t mean previously, I’m talking about right this very second. I wanted to rail on her for being a shitty driver and maybe how about she watch where in the fuck she is going, but it would have been like screaming at the special needs greeter. Who does that shit? She couldn’t help herself and I would have to chalk it up as an accident. That was, of course, right up until the millisecond her eyes met mine and the light of intelligence sparkled in them along with an almost imperceptible upturn to the right corner of her mouth. She’d fucking known what she’d done and she’d thoroughly enjoyed it. I wondered how much trouble I’d get in if I thumped her in the head with one of the phones by my feet? “Oh my god,” I would say. “Sorry! I’ve never operated one of those before!”
“Come on, auntie,” the other woman urged. The caretaker was looking at me and apparently saw something she didn’t like.
I was left standing there, so I bent over to help pick up the strewn around electronics.
“I think you’ve done enough, sir,” a surly, squat, female employee said as she began to pick up the merchandise. She was acting like I’d flung myself into the display in a drunken stupor. I sheepishly walked away.
“Honestly, Talbot, I can’t take you anywhere. Are you alright?” Tracy asked.
I knew how this would go. If I told her I was alright it would her give her the freedom to laugh, which she was on the verge of anyway. On the flip side, if I said something hurt besides my pride she would give me shit that an old woman had taken out a Marine. This was clearly a case of not being able to win. I gave a non-committal grunt, which was really the only option available to me. I did walk with a slight limp in the hopes of a little sympathy. After ten minutes or so I’d let the episode slip into the back of my mind, although this would be one Tracy would recount to family members for a good long while. The cart was nearly three quarters full and we’d yet to go to the food side of the store.
We were coming down the cereal aisle and I caught sight of the door greeter who apparently wore multiple hats. He was busy stocking some groceries. Looked like an off-brand box of pastry squares.
“These are the best,” he told me, holding a packet right up in front of my face.
“Cheesy cherry pastry puffs? Sounds delicious,” I said in as convincing voice as I could muster.
“That’s what I thought.” He was opening up each of the small boxes, taking out one packet, and putting it into the large front pocket of his blue smock.
“You never know when you’re
going to need one of these.” He was smiling as he looked at me.
“Yeah...hopefully, never,” I mumbled as we left him to his “work”. “That can’t be legal right?” I asked Tracy. She shrugged and we marched on. We got to the end of the aisle and were heading for the meat department. We were going to grab a turkey. I took one last look behind me; the boy was now opening up the stolen packets and stuffing them into his mouth as fast as he could get his full hands up there. Looked like a fucking paper shredder at a large corporation undergoing criminal investigation just minutes from being served the warrant.
I was turning to tell Tracy to take a look at this, when I once again heard the telltale “Watch out!” I was completely blindsided. This time I went face first into a display of tinned hams. Jacob Marley and his hundred foot chain didn’t make a quarter of the racket as he haunted poor Ebenezer than I did when those containers smashed onto the floor. Some skidded twenty or more feet along the slick tiled surface.
“I’m so sorry,” the niece said, clearly mortified.
The witch, on the other hand, was cackling like a fucking crone. Even my beloved was having a difficult time holding it together as she helped me up. My knee had busted through one of the containers and was encased in that disgusting, congealed wad of lard and fat those hams are famous for. Nothing says “appetizing” more than a half inch layer of pork flavored snot. The greeter, whose face was now covered in cheesy, cherry goo came over to help again. He spewed a decent sized wad of pastry crumbs on me as he checked me over and tried not to choke from laughing. I was beginning to think Crumb-Face and Crone were in on this together and I was the butt of their joke. Either that or the cosmos was just having a grand old time with me tonight.
