by Mark Tufo
“Help!” Paul thought he shouted, but the weight on his chest and the choking smoke might have seriously hampered any volume. Someone must have heard it as the passenger door opened and Mike peered in.
“Paulie, you alright?”
“Yah, except for the broken ribs and potential barbecuing, I’m doing dandy,” Paul wheezed.
“Paul, I’m going to get Dennis out first,” Mike said.
Paul figured Dennis was either not quite as stuck as him or in worse shape, so either way, it made sense that Mike would try to get him out first. Paul, however, was not looking forward to burning alive. He had read once that it was the most painful way to die although, whoever had done the study and who were the test subjects, he just wasn’t sure.
“Dude, just hurry! Barb’s (Paul’s mother) gonna be pissed if I ruin this new shirt she bought me.” Paul tried to laugh at his poor attempt at humor, but it came out more as a grunt.
“Dude, save your strength. I’m going to need your help when I get to that steering wheel,” Mike said, lifting his broken arm up with some difficulty.
“I didn’t know you were double jointed.” Paul swooned a little at the sight of the broken, bent appendage, but would later remember it as smoke inhalation poisoning.
Paul sat for time un-recordable as the heat in the car began to turn up. The back door opened and Paul could crane far enough to see Mike climbing into the backseat. Mike’s heavy grunting dominated all. It was even louder than the crackle of vinyl seating on fire. When Paul heard the heavy thudding off to his left, he figured Mike had extracted Dennis.
Paul watched a line of flame traveling closer and closer, as if seeking him out. “Umm Mike, it’s my turn, buddy,” Paul said, pissed at himself that he was letting fear put a quaver in his voice, but he’d take that over frying in his car any day.
“Mike?” Paul asked. No answer. “Dennis? Guys? Come on, man, what the fuck?” Paul pressed up against the steering column, but his fractured ribs prevented him from giving the thrust he needed to escape his fiery prison.
Paul turned to his left as far as he could. He could just see two sets of legs on the ground. Mike must have passed out. “Mike! Wake up! Mike! Help!” His crying out was as much for his rescue as for his friend’s. He thought that Mike and possibly Dennis were suffering from more grievous injuries than he knew.
Paul started to make his peace with God, and was doing fine just up until he caught on fire and then all bets were off. “Talbot! Get up!” Paul screamed in a last ditch effort to get some assistance.
Paul finally heard some rustling on the ground. “Thank you, God,” he whispered.
Paul turned as Mike stuck his head back in the car door. “Paul, I just want to get him clear.”
Paul understood the necessity of the act, but he wanted to be clear of the burn zone too. Self-preservation is a powerful instinct. It’s not called friend-preservation for a reason. “Hurry up,” Paul ground out. Mike did not hear it as he was already dragging their friend to safety.
“Paul, I’m going to need your help,” Mike said as he climbed back into the car, quickly slapping out the flames that had crawled onto Paul’s leg.
“Mike, I don’t have much left.” Paul was mad with himself that he felt defeated, but the smoke, fire and pain in his chest were quickly draining him of fight and life.
“Bud, use whatever you got, because we either both get out of here, or we’re both going to be on the school lunch menu tomorrow.”
Paul didn’t think this was the right time for a joke, if that was even what it was, but it had the desired effect.
“Fuck that,” Paul croaked, thanking anyone that would listen that he hadn’t started coughing when he pulled in a particularly nasty influx of polluted smoke. Although we’d probably be the tastiest things they’ve had in a few years, Paul thought. He wanted to tell his friend the joke, but the pain was too intense and he didn’t think he could afford to inhale any more noxious gases.
“When I say three.”
What about three? Paul thought. Consciousness was becoming as elusive as a Vaseline-coated eel.
“Three!” Mike said.
Where was one and two? Paul wondered.
Air seemed to rush into Paul’s lungs as Mike pushed up on the steering column, and lucid thought came back in a hurry. Paul began to fight back for the life that Death was in such a hurry to get its greedy hands on. The steering column moved by minute fractions of an inch. What made the rescue attempt even more infuriating, was that as the column moved up, so did Paul’s compressed chest. For all their straining, it did not appear that they were making any headway. Death had parked its ass on top of the steering wheel, its sightless eyes peering deeply into Paul’s face. Paul could just see Death’s silhouette and the light that shone through it and beyond it.
“I’m not ready for you,” Paul told Death.
“Most aren’t,” it answered back.
Paul hadn’t been expecting a response. Now he knew how close he truly was, and with every last ounce he had left, he pushed up.
“Dude, this isn’t going to feel good.”
“What?” Paul asked, not sure who he was asking the question to, and why Death would hurt him?
And then blissful sweet air! Paul’s chest heaved with the glory of it. The cold of the night was exhilarating on his heated skin. Paul glanced over and back to the car. Death was becoming a phantom shadow once again. Paul let loose a scream that Jamie Lee Curtis would have been proud of as Mike dragged him further away from the pops and cracks of his car while it went through its death throes. Paul looked one more time into the car before he passed out. Death flared brightly for a moment and then was gone.
“Did you see that?” Paul asked. But Mike was looking in the other direction and Paul had the feeling he might have already blacked out.
When he awoke three hours later in the hospital, he was hooked up to a variety of machines, each with its own distinctive trills and beeps. Mike was asleep in the bed next to him and Dennis was nowhere in sight.
“Mike? You awake?” Paul asked, barely above a whisper. His chest hurt, but it wasn’t the all-consuming pain that it had been in the car.
“Dude, they gave me Diadlin. If I open my eyes, the room spins like a top on a playing record,” Mike said.
“Is it any good?” Paul asked.
“It’s unreal, I’ve tripped with less intensity.”
“Where’s Dennis?” Paul asked, concerned that possibly their friend hadn’t made it.
“I think he went to get some potato chips.”
“Huh?”
“He’s fine. Got a knot on his head; that’s about it. I think he’s going home tomorrow.”
“What about you?”
“Compound fracture on my left arm, no baseball for me this spring. But if they keep giving me this shit, I won’t really care.”
“Dude, I’m sorry,” Paul said, almost crying.
“For what? It was an accident.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t so fucked up.”
“Nobody died, man.”
“We would have, if not for you.”
“I guess that makes me a hero,” Mike said. Paul knew he was kidding but kidding or not, it was the truth.
“I guess it does.”
“Dude, you’re embarrassing me, and you need to be quiet for a while. I think I’ve found a way to move things with my mind.”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Nope, try it man. You’re on the same shit as I am.”
The remainder of the night went quietly as Paul and Mike tried to move things around their room with mind control. It was an unsuccessful experiment, but thoroughly enjoyed by both.
***
Paul was still staring deeply at the candle; half of it had burned. “Four hours, I can’t have too much time left. I sure wish I could get on WebMD and see what the symptoms were, so I’d know when to take myself out…to the disco!” He laughed. “Okay let me run d
own everything I’m feeling. My right ankle twinges and my left foot burns a little, my eyes feel like someone is hanging barbells on them, my mouth tastes like dry cotton and…that’s about it. No fever, no craving for brains. Can the virus not survive outside the host? Come on, how long would it have taken the bullet to go from its head to my foot? That can’t be it. Was the bullet too hot for the virus to survive?” Hope, which was at an all time low in Paul, surged. “It’s a pathogen right? How hot was the bullet? It’s got to be some absurdly high temperature, right? Maybe it cooked it! I friggin’ might be alright.” Paul thought about getting up and doing a jig, but even in his painkiller-addled mind, he knew that to be the bad idea that it sounded like.
Chapter Fourteen – Mike Journal Entry 9
“What are you doing, Mike?” Gary shouted from a window he had just opened.
“He’s been bit,” I said. At this point, I was full on crying.
I watched as Gary’s head dropped. The zombies who had previously been at the front door began to quickly move to the sound of Gary’s voice. I was just so sick of it all. The pressure of everything was taking its toll. My friend was dying because of some stupid idea I had of giving Eliza a black eye. Even if I had succeeded in killing the bitch, it wouldn’t have been worth the price of my friend.
“What are you going to do?” Gary asked. He was obscured by the zombies, but his words were not.
Just stop!! I screamed in my head. The zombies by the window didn’t move away, but they did stop jostling in their ever earnest need to eat us.
“Wow, that was weird,” Josh said, I guess from behind Gary. “They look like they’re frozen.”
“Mike, what’s going on?” Gary asked, but I barely heard it as I looked over to BT, whose spasms had stopped. He wiped his lip, and then began to stand up. I looked up into his eyes as he got to his full stature.
“You alright?” I asked him, fearful of his answer.
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “The pain stopped.”
“Stopped? That’s the word you’d use to describe what happened?” I asked him, a glimmer of hope beginning to flower.
“I guess. I can’t think of a better way to describe it. One second, I was in such intense pain, I couldn’t think, and the next I wasn’t. What’s going on?” he asked. Then he looked at the grin, which I think was spreading across my face.
“I think I’ve gone two up on the lifesaving competition,” I told him.
Horror showed in his eyes. “No way!” he sputtered out. “I just killed fifteen zombies with a damn baseball bat! I think I just saved your ass, right then! At worst, making us even.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was never really in danger. The closest I came to getting hurt was when part of his bat almost hit me. “Fine. I’ll give you that one, although I might lodge a formal protest.”
“What’s going on, Mike?” BT asked, picking up on my now good mood. It was hard not to. I had just been holding a gun to his head and now I was smiling like it was Christmas day and I was seven years old.
“I’ll explain it to you when we get in the house. Come on, my friend.”
Within a few moments, we were at the door having a rather heated, one-way discussion with Mary. She was doing most of the yelling and we were doing most of the listening.
“Was he bit?” she asked for maybe the umpteenth time.
“Well technically, yes,” I answered her in kind.
“Well then, didn’t I already tell you that you cannot bring him in?” Her pitch elevated each time she asked the question in the hopes that it would finally register with us on some level.
“His name is BT,” I told her.
“Don’t!” she yelled even louder. I can’t imagine how it must have echoed in that small house. She was making my ears ring and I was on the other side of a thick steel door. “I do not want to know what his name was.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve stopped it. He won’t become a zombie now.”
“Holy shit!” she yelled. “Do you see that?”
BT and I looked around, thinking there must be some new threat.
“I think I just saw a fat pig flying!” she continued.
“Hilarious, Mary. I’m telling you he isn’t in any imminent danger of turning into a zombie.”
“Imminent?” BT asked quietly.
I shushed him with my hand. “I’ll explain later.”
“Imminent?” he asked again.
“Gary, could you please tell her?” I asked my brother through the door.
“Tell her what, Mike? I wouldn’t even know what to say, and besides this is her house.”
“Come on Captain Fix-It, tell me how you stopped a virus once again with your mind control.” Mary was taunting me with a sneer in her voice.
“Did you see the zombies by your bedroom window?” I asked her.
“She’s nodding her head,” Josh said for his silent mother.
“Why do you think they just stopped attacking?” I asked, trying a different avenue.
“They’re just asleep or something. Zombies sleeping doesn’t mean that you’ve learned how to cure people from a zombie bite,” she said.
“I never said anything about a cure,” I told her.
“I’m not cured?” BT asked quietly.
“Mary, please, I need to get his wound cleaned out and a quiet place to think about this.”
“Why don’t you just fix his germs along with the virus, or whatever the hell it is?”
“Mary, I’m not a doctor.”
“But yet, you’ve somehow managed to stop zombieism.”
There was that sneer again; it was infuriating. “It’s not like that. I told you. I was given some sort of link to them and I have some moderate control, if they are nearby.”
“How nearby?” BT asked. “I mean, do I have to go into the bathroom with you now?” BT asked, looking completely mortified.
“I shouldn’t have even let you in! You jeopardized my entire family.”
She was right, anyone around me was in more trouble just for being in proximity. I couldn’t argue that point.
“What if I can guarantee you that I can control a zombie if it is around me?” I asked, but Mary didn’t respond.
“She’s listening,” Josh said.
“Meet me back by the bedroom window.”
“What are you going to do?” Gary asked.
“Just hand me some rounds through the windows,” I told him.
The six zombies were right where I had left them. Gary dropped the rounds out the window, not wanting to expose any part of himself, I couldn’t blame him.
I loaded my rifle up. “You guys might want to cover your ears and turn away.” Nobody immediately moved to do either of those things until I placed a round dead center in the forehead of the closest zombie. Mary was shouting something, but I couldn’t hear anything, at least not until the fifth zombie fell, leaving one zombie standing.
“…Does that prove?” she was yelling.
“Huh?” I asked; my ears were ringing. I had not felt anything from dropping those five zombies. I was wondering if it was due to the loss of my soul or the callousness of the world we now lived in. Both reasons sucked. I didn’t see one being much better than the other.
“What does that prove? You killed five sleeping zombies. Aren’t you the great white hunter?” she said with contempt.
I didn’t answer her because it would have been laced with expletives and I didn’t feel like going down that road. Looking back, I wish we had just gotten Gary and gone to a different house.
I handed BT my rifle.
“Now what?” he asked. He had, apparently, not gotten the memo.
I was staring intently at the zombie. Its frozen state evaporated as its hunger lust came back into its eyes. BT immediately brought the rifle up.
“Hold on,” I told him; the zombie did a quick scan of those around him.
“Mike, this really has a feeling of one of those things tha
t sounds way better on paper,” Gary said.
The zombie didn’t seem very interested in me, but BT looked pretty good from the way the zombie was licking its lips.
“That’s disgusting,” BT said, holding the rifle up; the barrel was almost touching its forehead. “Mike, I have absolutely no idea what you’re up to, but I’d really like to know what you’re up to.”
“See how he’s keeping it from attacking?” Josh told his mother. The kid was pleading for my case. His mother hurrumphed.
With some effort, I was able to pull the zombie’s attention away from BT to myself, but it kept looking over at BT, hoping he wasn’t going to leave.
“People don’t get it. I’m always telling them the dark meat is sweeter,” BT said.
“There is no way you just said that in this situation,” I said, trying to keep all my attention focused on the zombie.
“Why’d you kill all the other zombies?” Josh asked.
“Because I wouldn’t have gotten them all to listen,” I answered him. I could feel the temperature of my body begin to rise as I worked in overdrive to try out an experiment I wasn’t even certain would work.
“If you’re all focused on this one,” BT asked, “am I going to be alright?”
“You’ll be fine, I have enough concentration to work on this zombie and keep your virus at bay, but if people keep asking me questions, my strength is going to get a little diluted.”
“Mike! Come on, brother! What are you doing?” Gary asked.
“Zip it, man!” BT said, taking one hand off the rifle and pointing a huge finger in Gary’s direction.
I think it was the first time I had ever seen BT raise his voice to Gary, but I guess when you have the threat of becoming a zombie hanging over your head, all bets are off.
The zombie jerkily moved closer to me. It was like trying to force magnets of the same polarization together. The zombie really did not want anything to do with me. I kept reeling him in closer. My eyes were watering from the stink of it. Its gray, vein-lined face was less than six inches from mine. It finally stopped trying to find BT and its eyes locked onto mine. Its mouth opened up. It ran its gore-encrusted tongue over the shards of its remaining teeth. This one looked like it had eaten a bag of marbles; blood welled up from where its tongue made contact.
