by Mark Tufo
“I would, Josh. My friend is out there and I’d like to find him.”
“I understand because if I knew where my dad was, I’d try to find him too,” Josh said, wiping his nose and extricating himself from Mary’s arms. “I’ll be right back,” he said, heading back upstairs.
Mary let out a half sob, half gasp. “I’m watching him grow up right before my eyes. Sometimes, he’ll always be my sweet six-year-old, and then sometimes like now, I can see the man that he is becoming.”
Gary finished cleaning up the carpet as Josh rummaged around in his room.
Josh came down the stairs with what looked like the monster truck version of a radio-controlled vehicle.
“Oh, honey are you sure?” Mary asked, placing her hand to her chest. “That was a Christmas present.”
“Mom, Hugo is the best chance Mr. Talbot has of getting to his friend.”
I gathered that Hugo was the name of the truck. “Josh, I don’t know how this is going to turn out.”
“He never does,” Gary added for good measure, coming back from the kitchen.
“I thought the peanut gallery was closed?” I said hotly.
“Boys,” Mary said, playing referee.
“It’s alright, Mr. Talbot. Maybe if you find your friend, then you could go and maybe find my dad.”
I looked over at Mary. I would be lying if I said anything but the truth of where I thought his father was.
“I know that look,” Josh said. “You don’t think my dad is alive. But he has to be! He wouldn’t have just left us, not now.”
“Josh, I will promise you this, if I can get to my friend and get back, I will go check out where you think your dad went.”
“Electronix Emporium,” Josh said quickly, now beaming. “No fooling? You’ll go check?”
“He’s a lot of things and many of them not good, Josh, but a liar isn’t one of them,” Gary said.
“Gotta love a good, back-handed compliment,” I told my brother.
He nodded his head in appreciation.
We moved to a different window on the same side of the house, one where we hoped there would be less zombies. We were right, but then we encountered our next situation - Hugo would not fit through the bars.
“It’s almost like it wasn’t meant to happen,” Gary said. “Like a sign, a bunch of signs.”
“Since when did you become a fortune teller?” I asked him sarcastically.
“Since my fortune got tied up in yours,” he answered quickly.
“As good a time as any, I suppose,” I told him.
“It’s only going to fit out the door,” Josh said, slamming the window down before we attracted any more visitors.
“I’d rather not open any doors,” Mary said.
“How were you planning on letting me out?” I asked.
“Hadn’t thought that far,” Mary said, as realization dawned on her that she really hadn’t gotten that far.
“See what happens when you’re around him for too long?” Gary asked sympathetically.
“Is that like his vampire psychic powers warping our mortal minds?” Josh asked expectantly.
“No, he’s always had this effect on people,” Gary said dryly.
Josh looked a little bummed that it wasn’t a supernatural cause that made those around me go crazy.
“Back door for the car, front door for me?” I asked the household.
“No,” Mary said without hesitation. “I will not have both of my doors opened simultaneously. You don’t even know if this will work. We put the car out, Josh sends it on its way and we see if they follow.”
I didn’t like the plan. At absolute best, the car had a hundred-yard range with Josh’s controller and then it would just stop. I needed a bunch of zombies to go and check this thing out and in a relatively small amount of time before the car hit its max threshold for signal-catching. I should have given the kid way more credit. He had a trick or two up his sleeve to give me the time I needed.
“How we looking?” I asked Gary and Josh, who were peeking out a window adjacent to the door.
“There’s a few milling around, but if you don’t stop to wash your hands or anything, you should be fine,” Gary said.
“You’re on fire tonight,” I told him.
He grinned back.
“You ready, Josh?” I asked.
He spun the wheels on the truck I was holding in response. The torque and the shock almost made me drop the thing. This time, I had secured the small bag of bait on the top of the car, careful to make sure that nothing hung down that could get hooked up in the wheels.
“This sucks,” I said right before pulling the door open. Zombie heads swiveled to the noise, food recognition dawning on their eyes as they began to forge ahead. I started to fumble with the security door, which was, I guess, out of my skill set because I couldn’t get the damn thing open. Mary rushed to my aid, undoing the lock and pushing the door open. I looked at her in gratitude.
“Put the damn car down!” she shouted at me, never taking her eyes off the advancing horde.
Josh already had the wheels turning as I placed it on the ground. The car shot from my hand as it made contact with the hard surface. A zombie slammed the door into my hand. I was sure I felt a couple of bones shatter as Mary wrenched me on my back, pulling me in. She quickly locked the screen door, and I scrambled out of the way as she hurriedly shut the front door.
My hand was already turning that bluish shade of pain and internal bleeding.
“You righty or lefty?” Mary asked, holding my hand.
“Righty,” I told her, “but I shoot leftie.”
Her face sank a little as she held my rapidly swelling left hand.
“I’ll be fine,” I told her. “I have wonderful recuperative powers.”
She looked at me funny; I did not feel the need to elaborate.
“Mike, your hand is broken,” she said, pushing her finger into the bluest part as if to prove her point.
“Yup,” I winced.
“Hey, they’re following it!” Josh stated exuberantly.
I figured I only had seconds before the car had traveled its furthest radio-receiving distance and then they’d turn their attention back to me.
“Wish me luck,” I said as I once again opened the front door. Hand Slammer was gone this time and I had, at least, learned something from Mary as I got the security door opened much more easily. I looked immediately to my right, expecting to see Hugo rapidly approaching maximum distance. All I saw were zombies who were heading towards the side of the house. I ducked my head back in, Josh and Gary had shifted to another window. The kid was brilliant. Instead of just taking the car and heading for maximum distance, he was dodging and weaving it through the zombies, thereby giving me way more time to get the hell out of here.
“Go,” Mary said, her eyes wide with fear. Partly because I had the front door to her house open and partly because I wasn’t moving yet.
I jumped down the three steps and started running in the direction I had last seen BT heading. As soon as I hit my stride, I began to doubt the validity of my entire plan. I’m all for “alone time” and the need for it, but somehow during a zombie-pocalypse doesn’t seem like the right time. Should I shout? There weren’t tons of zombies out, but I also didn’t want to change that status. By my reckoning, one zombie is one too many.
I skipped Mary’s neighbor’s house, and as I approached the next, I began to wonder if BT had maybe traveled through a backyard or two and maybe got on to another street. I mean, what then? He knew where we were, but I had no clue where he was. Why don’t I think this shit out before I act?
I could hear Josh’s car off in the distance, but for some reason, that distance was getting closer.
Chapter Eight
“That’s awesome, Josh, they’re all following it,” Gary said excitedly.
Josh did not immediately answer, as sweat began to form on his head. “I’ve lost control!” he shouted. “I think the
batteries in the remote are dead.”
“Shouldn’t the car just stop?” Mary asked.
“No,” Josh said in resignation. “I put the car on ‘auto’ so that it would keep running when it was out of range.”
“Well, that’s alright then, isn’t it, honey? We’ll get you another one,” Mary said, leaning up against the front door as if she thought it might open without her there to stop it.
“Which way did Mike go?” Gary asked, moving from the window on the side of the house to one of the side lights by the front door.
“Left,” Mary answered.
“Figured as much,” Gary said as his eyes tracked Hugo heading left.
“Shit,” Josh said.
Mary did not correct him, not this time. If ever there was a time and a place to use an expletive, this was it.
Hugo was heading down the street towards Mike like a heat-seeking missile.
Chapter Nine – Mike Journal Entry 7
“Shit,” I said, watching Hugo head my way. “I bet Gary’s working the damn thing.”
Hugo was cool; the two dozen speeders trying their best to catch him were not.
“Here we go again,” I said as I began to run. Couldn’t I get déjà vu, at like Oktoberfest, while I was sampling different beers? Because that would be so much cooler.
I started running down the sidewalk. Hugo was about dead center on the street. I don’t know about you, but I’d never had much luck with RC cars. Usually, I crashed them into something or they broke consistently, but not good old Hugo! Nope. He was running straight and true right down the bloody center (English slip) of the road. He was looking like he could do it all night long. What was even way better was that the damn street we were on did not have a curve in its foreseeable future. The one and only thing I had going for me at the moment was that the zombies were completely focused on the truck and its bloody contents (not an English slip, actual stuff it was hauling).
I had a few options. First, keep running in the same direction. Hugo would pass me up shortly and I would become victim to those old zombie posters. You know the ones, “I don’t have to be fastest, only faster than you!” Hugo would zip away and the zombies would turn to me for solace and food. I might be able to keep one or two at bay, but I did not understand my powers well enough or even know if it were possible to do much more than that.
Second, I could cut across a yard and start searching elsewhere, but here we come back to the needle-in-a-haystack analogy, although with the size of BT, it’s more like a cop’s nightstick than a needle, which in reality, shouldn’t be all that hard to find in one haystack. Or third, I could hide behind a bush against the house I was next to. I didn’t like the idea of not moving, especially if even one zombie was looking my way when it happened. But it might work, I’ll just let them run on by. I thought through all of these scenarios in a flash, and was already diving into a small mulberry bush as I was thinking it. Hugo was almost even with me by the time I was able to turn and feel that I was completely concealed from the road. The zombies were a good twenty yards trailing, but they didn’t look like they planned on stopping. My upper torso was completely under the bush, but the bottom-most branches were still a good six inches above my back, and my legs were uncovered. This, all of a sudden, felt like not such a great maneuver. If a zombie saw me and headed this way, it would be all I could do to extricate myself from my hidey-hole and get up to full speed.
“Dumb, dumb,” I said softly as the zombies approached. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of the crunching of plastic, and the high-pitched whining of spinning tires upturned. Are you shitting me? Hugo took this most inopportune of times to flip. I stuck my head out an inch, two at the max to see what happened. I was done in, by a fucking pothole! How damn ironic is that? The very job I had been doing before the zombies came and my equivalents down in North Carolina couldn’t do their part to make our streets a safer place to drive on.
The zombies pounced on the truck. The wheels stopped spinning as Hugo’s life came to an abrupt end. Gary’s shirt was shredded in the feeding frenzy, bandages and swabs flying like chaff in World War II. Zombies sprang up as they realized they had been duped. Well, maybe they didn’t figure that part out; they just knew they weren’t eating anything with substance and now they were on active search mode again. I pulled my head in slowly, not wanting to give my spot away. The moonlight felt like it was shining bright enough to rival a morning sun. Sure, no clouds when you want one, unlike that time back in 1978 when I was trying to watch the lunar eclipse. Oh yeah! They were all over the place then. Stayed up all effin’ night, didn’t see a damn thing except for clouds. I told God that he should probably stick to his day job and leave the ironic comedy to the professionals.
“Awesome,” I whispered, putting my head down for a second. Had to be at least thirty zombies just milling about, no more than thirty to forty feet from where I was. They didn’t go back to Mary’s house, which would have been a blessing. They just milled around, like stoners in their parents’ basement. They just didn’t know what to do with themselves. I’d been one of them, so I knew this could possibly go on all night. I guess zombies were a lot like stoners; neither did much in the way of action until food was involved. At least, I would be able to keep myself amused.
I would have to do something before daybreak. I was entirely too exposed like this. I decided I was not going to wait until the very end to do something. Normally, I’d wait until the sun was beginning to peek up over a nearby rooftop. I was sick of close calls when it was time to move. I slowly inched further back and closer to the foundation of the house I was hiding next to. The loud snap when my rifle sling caught a branch above my head, snapping the dry appendage in two, did not go unnoticed. I stopped moving completely. I mean, except of course, for my heart which was banging so hard it was popping my chest off the ground by a good six or eight inches. (Yes, yes, it’s my flair for the dramatic, I was scared. You have thirty or so zombies stop everything they’re doing and more or less look in your direction, and let me know how you hold up.)
I didn’t even want to breathe, but when your heart is slamming away and your adrenaline is juicing the works, it just isn’t possible. I let a small exhalation of air go. GOD, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I screamed in my head. The night was just cool enough that I could see my breath as it lazily swirled past my face. Might as well have been crashing cymbals together. A couple of zombies had honed in on the movement of coiled, cooled air, but as of yet, had not made any direct connection between it and a food source. But I had to imagine that they would come check it out. What the hell else were they going to do? I’m sure they weren’t worried about missing an ice cream social or something.
A few of the inquisitive zombies started to slowly make their way over towards my location. I was gradually inching my way back even further, so that I could stand and make a run for it. I was tempted to head back towards Mary’s, but I wasn’t sure if I’d make it, or more likely, if she’d even open the door. Oh, I’m sure she’d make a good show of it for Gary. But I could almost picture her fingers fumbling with the lock on the security door (yes, the same one she had already twice proved how adept she was with) as zombies began to chew on my flesh. And then she’d have this small, devious smile that would flash across her features right before she shut the front door.
I wasn’t even going to attempt that avenue. Mothers are entirely too protective of their offspring and now that she knew who and what I was? Yeah, better to not try that at all.
The problem at hand was that the three amigos kept advancing on my spot, not with any determined reason yet, but that was only a matter of time. I thought about sending them off one by one, but then I would definitely be giving my position away. If the rest of the troop joined in the fray, I would not be able to divert my attention to each of them in turn quickly enough to repel them.
“Piss, shit and vinegar,” I muttered. Pretty archaic curse words, but it seemed like the right thing to say. I must hav
e been channeling an old man because I don’t remember ever using or hearing that particular combo of words in that fashion, ever. My feet were up against the house, I wasn’t going any further back, next thing for me was to rise and run.
“Did it crash?” I heard Josh’s voice from up the street.
“There’s a bunch of zombies in the road, but I don’t see your truck or Mike for that matter,” Gary answered.
Every last zombie turned to the voices, I was completely forgotten as the zombies went from ambling to full throttle in mere moments. It might not have been the cavalry to the rescue, but the outcome was just as effective.
“We should probably get back inside,” Gary told Josh.
My smart-ass comment would have been, “Do you think?” But right now, all I wanted to do was a small jig. I wanted to, but I wouldn’t. There was still a good chance that somebody alive and breathing would be in one of these houses and they would never be able to unsee that. I didn’t want to put anybody through any more stress than they had already been. There’s a few things in this life we should never be exposed to, one is my dancing; another would be anyone picking their nose and eating it; and third would be zombies. Anyone still alive who had already seen two of those, I would not heap anymore misery on.
The zombies were racing down the street, I could hear Mary urging the boys in and then the resounding thuds of both doors being shut. I once again felt alone and scared. Man, I just can’t seem to get my shit together. Two seconds ago, I was praying for this and now that I’ve got it, I don’t know what to do with it. Time to find my friend. I didn’t have a shred of proof, nor any type of psychic link to him, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that BT was in trouble. I stayed as close to the houses as I could. Hating every time I had to run across a side yard to get to the next dwelling. I was figuring I was in more danger of catching a round from a homeowner at this point, while I was in the open.
I had traveled another two houses when I started to see signs of a struggle. This was no CSI crime scene where I needed a magnifying glass and special chemicals. The headless zombie kind of gave it away, followed by a second and a third. I was passing the front of the house, and the zombie bodies were beginning to stack up. My heart or maybe my stomach or just plain both were struggling to find room in my throat. On the right side of the house, I could see a six-foot privacy fence. The gate was gone or buried under even more zombie bodies. It was impossible to not step on a zombie as I made my way through the constricted area. I now heard the distinctive sound of metal on metal. The repeated click was nerve-wracking. I pictured all sorts of travesties, but nothing could live up to the truth. I turned into the backyard, thankful that the space opened up and I could stop stepping on bodies. Twenty to thirty zombies lay strewn about, some with bullet holes, most with caved-in skulls, some with sliced off arms and decapitated heads.
