by Mark Tufo
“Fucken funny.” I said as I grabbed a mug of the steaming goodness. Dunkies it wasn’t, but it was still incredible in its own right. I sat down next to him just to fuck with him. I attempted to put my arm around him.
BT shot up like a bottle rocket. “Dude?!” BT said disbelievingly.
I feigned innocence.
BT moved his small camping chair to the far side of our impromptu campfire. Sometime during the night someone had found and placed a Styrofoam prop fire resplendent with rocks and logs into the middle of our clearing.
As BT settled his not insignificant weight into the chair I had to ask. “How the hell is that thing supporting your weight.”
“Play nice boys.” Jen said as she came from the direction of the restrooms. She handed BT a canteen heavy with water. BT drank greedily, easily consuming half of the contents.
“Want some?” BT asked as he held the canteen out towards me.
“No, I’m good. I’ll go get my own.” I answered.
“Mike, just take this one man.” He said thrusting the canteen a little closer to my face.
“Don’t sweat it man. I’ll go get my own.”
“There’s some right here. Don’t be difficult.” BT said, his dander starting to get a little riled.
“BT I don’t want it. I’ll get my own.” I said a little more sternly.
“It’s because I’m black isn’t it!” He yelled.
Jen had stopped what she was doing to see how this potentially volatile situation panned out. Oh I knew how it would end up, my teeth in BT’s knuckles seemed the most likely scenario.
“BT, come on you know me better than that.”
“I don’t know shit.” He hissed. His bulk seemingly swelled in proportion to his anger. He was a second and a half from coming out of his chair.
All of the boys were now a few feet away, Brendon was coming to the forefront, trying his best to throw a wedge between me and BT. I didn’t think he would even qualify as a speed bump if BT got going.
Tracy had taken this, the most blessed of opportunities to emerge from our tent.
“BT.” She said with no small amount of force.
“My beef’s not with you Tracy.” BT said never taking his eyes off of me. “Is this how you want it Mike? You’re woman doing your battles for you.”
“BT!” My wife yelled.
“What WOMAN!” He shouted back.
“He wouldn’t take that canteen if I handed it to him.” Tracy said.
“Huh?” BT asked, confusion creasing his brow.
“BT, Mike is a germ-a-phobe. I swear to you as I stand here, he would not take that canteen from me if I had just taken a drink from it.”
“Really?” BT asked incredulously. He then turned back to me. “I guess I owe you an apology.” He said as he laughed. “Wait then how do you two kiss? Forget it I don’t want to know.” And then apparently this was the funniest thing in the world. In between swigs of the canteen BT would break out into spontaneous laughter. “Can’t…kiss.” He laughed. “You have cooties.” If the guy wasn’t such a solid block of granite he probably would have split his sides he ended up laughing so hard.
“No shit Mike? You can’t drink off someone else’s beverage?” Jen asked. “That’s funny.”
I forced an anemic smile. Neurosis number 22 had reared its ugly head.
“How’d you have kids? Artificial insemination?” BT said roaring with laughter. “Immaculate conception? Wait…wait…I know…stunt double!”
I got up and left BT to his own devises, at this pace it would be hours before he realized I was gone.
“Holy shit, Mike. That was close.” Brendon said, as we put a few feet between us and the tittering titan.
“Yeah about that Brendon, I appreciate the sentiment. But you’ve seen the propensity I have for getting into trouble.”
“In a hurry.” He added.
“In a hurry.” I conceded. “The point is Brendon, I don’t want to drag anyone else down with me.” He looked crestfallen. “Like I said Brendon, I do appreciate the help, I just couldn’t live with the guilt if anything happened to anyone of you, especially if it was to save my ass.” He looked like he was about to say something. I didn’t want to give him any room for maneuverability. “Besides can you imagine how bad Nicole would make it for me?” I looked at him questioningly.
“I suppose you’re right.” Brendon acknowledged.
I arched an eyebrow at him.
“No you’re definitely right.” He concluded.
BT had for the most part calmed down. Tracy, I guess wasn’t ready to let him off the hook, quite yet. “Yeah you should see what he has to do before he gets on a toilet.”
“Tracy!” I shouted, more than a smidgeon mortified.
“Oh that’s not even the worst of it, at…”
“Oh for the love of God.”
Justin, Travis and Tommy had resumed their dummy target practice. Now seemed as good a time as any to see how it was going. Two rows of seven dummies were lined up like advancing zombies. Errant arrows were strewn everywhere including the ceiling, but more than a proportionate amount had struck their targets with withering precision. As we came up to the ‘range’ Tommy was drawing the bow back, he let loose an arrow that created sparks as it plunged feet well short of its intended target.
“Good one, Tommy.” Travis said. “That’s your closest one yet.
Tommy was beaming. “You fink?” He asked as he handed the strawberry jelly coated bow to Justin.
“Uck.” Justin said as he pulled out a small box of baby wipes just for this occasion.
Brendon and I both looked quizzically at each other. Brendon broke the silence first.
“Mike this is about a third of the distance when he shot that guy from Durgan’s assault.”
I nodded, what words were there?
“And now he has a professional bow, not that piece of crap kid’s toy.
I nodded again. It was nice to know that someone else was seeing what I’d been seeing for a while.
“What’s up Hon?” Nicole said as she wrapped her arms around Brendon. “You look a little out of sorts.”
“Nothing babe.” Brendon said as he leaned down to kiss her.
I turned away slightly. I didn’t want to make anybody else uneasy. It was just that well dammit, I could not get the image of my daughter being anything other than that precocious seven year old, daddy’s little girl thing, out of my head. I know she’s an adult and she has her own life now. It’s just that in my reality she has chosen the realm of celibacy. It’s small measures like this that allow me to sleep at night. One of these days I know, sooner rather than later, my brain is just going to freeze up. It will be the human equivalent of the blue screen of death. Unfortunately I have yet to discover my reboot button.
Justin let loose his shot. Everyone laughed and cringed in equal measures as the arrow struck the dummies stones. I swear he looked right at me for half a heartbeat before he joined in the celebration with everyone else. A loud ‘twang’ up by the front of the store cut the revelry short. I should have taken charge and started delegating. Getting out of the store alive should have been my main objective. But I’ll admit, curiosity got the better of me. For one fleeting night since this whole shit storm started I had felt good, safe even. But it was all an illusion as I was about to painfully learn.
Travis was first to the front. “No biggie Dad, there’s only one.”
He didn’t have to add…zombie.
“Uh…Dad there’s more.” Travis said hesitantly.
“Well shit, there’s always more. They’re like fucking wolves, pack animals.” I said peevishly. I was more than a little pissed that my home away from home was no longer the safe haven I had deemed it to be.
Brendon and Nicole had reached the front and were standing next to Travis. Nicole had turned and was running back to our ‘campsite’. She said nothing as she brushed past.
“What’s the matter with her?” I asked. I
was really hoping it was the overly dramatic part of Nicole coming out. It wasn’t.
“Mike you’re going to want to see this.” Brendon swallowed.
“Am I?” I asked. I was liking this less and less. And then someone punched the shit out of me. Figuratively, although literally would have been better. My old world nemesis stood less than 3 feet away from me separated only by a flimsy pane of glass no thicker than a coke bottle.
“Oh Jed. What did they do to you?” I wanted to cry. I fell to my knees, hampered somewhat by the new sport brace I had ‘acquired’ but to the ground I went. I buried my face in my hands, tears of true sorrow leaked through my clenched fingers. My body tensed each time Jed head butted the glass. His mouth snapping wildly at the air, drool ran viscously down the front of his tattered shirt. A broken tooth protruded at a slight angle from his top lip. Dirty, fingernail torn hands scratched at the glass. Cataract clouded eyes stared pitilessly at me. It wasn’t until I let my gaze travel lower that my resolve got steeled or more likely my innards got liquefied. “Brendon, take Justin and Travis and let’s start the evacuation process like we talked about last night.”
Brendon had learned quick enough to not question orders for that I was thankful. “One car or two Mike.” He shot back quickly.
“We’ll do two, but let’s make it really quick.”
Curiosity was killing him I could almost sense it. “There’s only a couple Mike. I know it’s Jed and all, but still.”
I pointed to a small nametag festooned to Jed’s breast pocket.
“Oh fuck.” Brendon, turned on a dime, Travis and Justin were on his heels.
I stared long and hard into Jed’s eyes trying with every particle of my being to discern some small part of him that may have retained anything remotely resembling humanity. There was nothing there. He would eat me as quickly as the next without the smallest bit of remorse for what he did. I slowly removed the weights that BT had placed the night before. Each one seemed to be attached to my heart, miring it down into the depths of despair. BT came up just as I had finished pulling the last 50 pounder out of the way.
“Oh I knew if I waited long enough I wouldn’t have to move those things again.” BT said in way to jovial a mood for my liking. He saw that I was not enjoying his conviviality. “What’s up Mike? I mean Nicole came back crying and then the boys said that we had to get stuff ready to go, but they said there was only a few zombies.”
I just pointed out the door. Jed had followed me and watched me hungrily as I cleared the doorway.
“It’s just a…Jed? Is that Jed? What the fuck is Jed doing here?”
“Look at his name tag.”
“What the fuck is a zombie doing with a name tag?” BT asked. His features turned ashen as he focused in on the little white card.
I hated nametags and this one wasn’t going to do anything to change that. Anyplace you ever had to go where people needed a nametag was not a place that I wanted to frequent. I don’t give a shit if you’re Cindy from Spokane, I didn’t know you before tonight and I have no desire to know you after. Do they use them at High School reunions so that you recognize then laugh at the football jock who is now fifty pounds overweight and balding? Or maybe for the prom queen who pumped out 5 kids, smokes like a chimney and now scratches her ass in public? I mean if that’s the case then I guess they’re alright, but Jed’s nametag didn’t give a name, only a message. ‘Found You’. Those two ominous words were a personal affront. Don’t get me wrong I understood that this world was now a survival of the fittest. It was a depraved cruel world and getting harsher by the moment. Zombies were everywhere and would attempt to eat us with wild abandonment. Renegade roves of thieves, muggers, pillagers and general degenerates were also out there and given the opportunity would take everything they could from us. But this was different. We were being hunted, purposefully sought out for extermination. My fears for my family soared to new depths of despair. Like life wasn’t already hard enough. I had come to love Jed, but I thought no more for the bullet I put through his head than he would have had he got a hold of my flesh.
“FUCK YOU!” I screamed into the day, hopeful that my words would find the ears of those that came after us.
And they did, but not with the desired effect. The car that had delivered Jed sat idling in the shadows of an alleyway across from the sporting goods store. Cigarette smoke poured out through the slightly open window, a mirthless laugh escaped the driver’s dry and cracked lips “Soon Talbot, so very, very soon.” The car pulled out and away on the deserted roadway as Jed’s body twitched one final time on the frozen pavement.
CHAPTER 15
Within ten minutes we were loaded up and on the road. My mood couldn’t have been any more sour if I had just come home to realize my wife had run off with my best friend and taken the dog. (Wait, scratch that, if she had taken Henry that would have been worse.) A small grim grin bubbled to the surface with that new thought.
“Mike.” Tracy said her face a lighter shade of white. “Mike.” She said again when I didn’t immediately respond. “Brendon’s having a tough time keeping up.”
“Huh.” I said breaking free from my black thoughts.
“Brendon, the other minivan, they can’t keep up.” She said, her knuckles white on the dashboard.
The tachometer was buried deep in the red as the Terrible Teal machine was topping out at somewhere near 120 miles per hour. I couldn’t be sure because the numbers only went to 110 but the needle was pressed firmly against the upraised stop pin. Brendon’s van was a distant memory in the rear view mirror.
Tracy placed her hand on my shoulder. “Mike.” She said pleadingly. BT sat quietly in the back. A few more shades lighter and he would be able to get into some of the finer country clubs in the area. A tire blow out now would most likely send us into the Guinness book of records for most barrel rolls. Well as a kid I had always wanted to get into that book of oddities. Probably for something more mundane like how many pieces of bubble gum I could chew and not necessarily for being the world’s largest rolling meat grinder. My foot eased off the accelerator. I had placed so much force on my right leg trying to press the gas pedal into the floorboard that I was now in the unenviable process of trying to alleviate a charley horse while also keeping this missile on the straight and narrow.
Even with Brendon traveling at a steady 70 miles per hour, I was out of the van and massaging my offending calf before Brendon even came into sight on the horizon.
“Jesus Mike, what the hell are you doing?” Jen asked as she came out of the van.
I looked over to Brendon he looked strained. Pushing the non-aerodynamic brick down the highway at speeds he didn’t feel comfortable with had made him break out in a sweat.
“Sorry man.” I said to him.
“It’s nothing.” He lied as he pulled his fingers off the steering wheel.
“Dad, you don’t look good.” Nicole said with concern.
Justin smiled from the rear seat in the van.
“It doesn’t matter.” I said bleakly.
“What doesn’t matter Mike?” Tracy asked as she came up beside me.
“All of this, none of this. No matter how hard we run, no matter where we go, they’ll still come. They’ll come a time, no matter what I do, I won’t be able to stop them from taking you, any of you.”
“Mike, it’s not just you.” (I wasn’t going to add this part but it’s part of the story and it only scratches on the outer corners of breaking the man-code.) BT said tenderly. He had come out and was actually giving me a hug. “We’re in this together. We’ll look out for each other. I would no sooner let anything happen to any of your kin than I would let something happen to myself.”
He was big enough to be my dad when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, the proportion was correct. I lived that lie for a few more seconds as I collected my despair, and didn’t so much dispose of it as try and compartmentalize it. I could tell it was surging and would soon leak from under the door of
my makeshift compartment and probably out through the keyhole but for now I had gained a measure of composure and was once again ready to face the world, for the most part.
“Tracy, you want to drive?” I asked her. It was then I think everyone must have thought I had finally given up.
“What? My knee is killing me.”
“Uh huh.” BT said as he got back into the van.
That was mostly true, but there was still a part of me that might have relished the thought of screaming off the road at a buck twenty and plowing into a utility pole. I would not give my pursuers that satisfaction. Someone was going to catch a lot of lead for pushing me this hard, and maybe an arrow or two for good measure.
Tracy drove well, which in itself was something of a feat. Normally the only way she got behind the wheel with me in the car was when I was entirely too inebriated or had suffered one of my many varied injuries. Under either circumstance I didn’t give a rat’s ass on how she got me to where we were going. I can’t even begin to relate to you in this narrative how many times the kids had come home from somewhere where their mom had driven them and had horror stories about this and that person being cut off, semi’s turning over and small planes bursting into flame. I think there was even something in there about a dam busting but that might possibly have been an over-exaggeration. I dozed in and out of a fitful sleep. My mood fluctuating between pissed off at my lot in life and happy that I wasn’t being pissed on. Basically varying degrees of suckydom.
Tracy kept to a geriatric pace off 55ish, it wasn’t that the conditions merited the reduction in speed, I’m just not so sure how willing she was to get to where we were going. It’s all great in the abstract. ‘I’m going to save my mom!’ but when you get down to the nitty gritty and you realize that you haven’t heard anything in weeks from your 79 year old mom, who lives alone on a farm in North Dakota in one of the coldest winters in recorded history during an outbreak of zombieism, well that reality begins to make a weight of its own. Like a dying star, it creates it’s own mass and sucks everything, including your inner light, into it. The odds were about as great as winning the lottery, that we would find Carol, hale of health.
