by Mark Tufo
Becka began to walk out from behind her work window, her phone lining up to take my most unflattering photograph since the DMV.
“Becka.” Don began. “Don’t you have some work you could be doing?”
‘Oh please’ her expression dripped. The sour look did little to dissuade Becka from her present course of action. I was too shocked to do anything as Becka took not one but three pictures of me. I heard that at least two of them ended up on the internet.
Don and I both shared a moment of commiseration as we stared at the retreating form of the laughing Becka. “I’m sending it now Tonya, let me know when you get it! GET OUT!” She shrieked. “Bobby Ricci asked you out!” The rest of the stimulating teenage-ese dialog was lost to us, as Don and I again resumed our parley.
“You could start helping me, by firing her.” I pointed vehemently to where the demon spawn had retreated.
“She’s the best of the last seven people I’ve had working there” Don answered me back, his tone laced with dejection.
And like that the heat of my anger ebbed, Don was as much if not more of a victim in this whole affair than I was. He had been dealing with irate customers seemingly his entire professional life.
“Samir.” One of the fry cooks shouted from behind us. “What the hell is a fried salad wrap with M&M’s?”
Don put his hands over his face. If he had access to anything sharper than a plastic butter knife I think he would have taken the opportunity to perform hari-kari on himself.
I wanted this encounter to be over with and out of here before it got any more bizarre. Sometimes I amaze myself with my flashes of prophecy. “Listen.” I said hopefully. “I just want to get my order and get out of here.” Don didn’t respond, I somehow took that as a good sign. “Ok.” I said nervously licking my lips. “I’d like to get two quarter pounders with cheese meals, a crispy chicken sandwich meal, two big Mac meals, and the two cheeseburger meal with extra pickles. Oh yeah and all of them with coke is fine.” Don still hadn’t moved, not to even put my order into the not-so-idiot proof picture laden register. At first I was sort of impressed that he would have the ability to memorize my whole order. Still nothing was happening. “Don?” I asked cautiously.
“YOU WANT! YOU WANT! What the fuck about what I want!” He screamed. The entire restaurant stopped and stared, even the nearly useless work staff. “You think I want to manage a bunch of zit pocked, hormone infused, spoiled brats that would rather be at home jerking off than making an honest living? And do you think I can get any of them to wash their hands after they’re in the bathroom for a half an hour doing God knows what?” I heard distant retching as one of the customers realized what they might be eating. One of the sandwich assemblers laughed out loud as he realized that he had just been called out. I noticed with disdain, the nearly full box of sani-gloves next to his workstation that were going completely unused.
Customers began to leave in droves as if they could sense the oncoming explosion, why had my prophetic self picked this time to desert. Of my entire order why he focused on this part I’ll never know.
“You want some extra fucking pickles!” He yelled.
I nodded dumbly. Eyes wide open along with my gaping mouth.
“I’ve got your fucking extra pickles right here!”
I can’t express to you how relieved I was when he didn’t pull his pants down and expose his ‘male pickle’ to me. My respite was short lived though as he picked up a ten pound jar of pickle slices and began to hum handfuls of the tangy sandwich slices at me. I stood dumbfounded as the rippled briny preserves slapped against my entire body, I guess I should be glad they were the sandwich slice variety as opposed to the spears. (Poor joke, I know but how much further into absurdity could I travel.) I walked out of the store under a hail of fire, slices stuck to my face, neck and head. The sun began to instantly brown them as I dazedly strode to my car. I cannot recall the rest of the ride home. It wasn’t until I walked in the back door and Tracy ‘greeted’ me, that the day began to come back into focus.
“Where’s the food?” She shot out, her initial anger at my becoming unemployed still highly evident. As she began to look closer at the near comatose expression on my face, the ketchup on my pants and shoes and the pickle slices that dripped to the floor that her demeanor changed. “Oh Talbot how do you get into these messes?” I would have aimlessly argued that I had nothing to do with it, but her ensuing laughter was like the siren call to sailors of lore. I joined in with her wholeheartedly. After heavy moments of out-of-control laughter we locked into a vinegar infused kiss that temporarily made all of our earthly concerns melt away. For twenty beats of my heart, the entire day had been worth the pay out.
CHAPTER 17
“You’re probably right.” I said answering her original question back in the here and now. But I still looked longingly at the rapidly departing, true King of Hamburgers. My heavy sigh, went unnoticed or ignored didn’t really matter which, I wasn’t getting any golden bronzed dipped in sunlight French fries no matter how much I pouted.
We were still hours away from Carol’s and the weakened winter sunlight was doing its best to retreat into the west ahead of the frigid night. We had some choices, none of them particularly grand. We could push on through the night and get to Carol’s in the blackest part of the evening. My feelings were that entering into that nightmare during the brightest part of the day might make it minutely more palatable. So we could cross off option number one. Number two consisted of pulling off to the shoulder of the road and sleeping in the car, one look at the depleted gas tank gauge revealed that we would not be able to keep the car and subsequently the heater running for the entire night. Of the ‘choices’ we were contending with, we would have to pick the one that was the least unsavory. That doesn’t mean it was a good choice, just better than the rest. It’s like the choice to eat chocolate covered ants or caviar. They’re both choices but they both suck. Kind of like having to vote for either candidate in a presidential race, no matter which way you go you’re guaranteed taxes will increase and the winner will blame the losing parties ineptitude for the necessity of the increase.
Option three involved pulling off the highway, getting some much needed gas and finding some sort of safe haven to sleep the night away. Our luck at safe havens had been largely devoid these last few nights. I had my doubts that would turn around tonight. I pulled the van over and waited for Brendon to come up alongside. I laid out all my thoughts, hoping that someone might potentially have a better idea or possibly dissuade me from my present course of action. I’m a control freak in the strongest sense of the phrase but only in so far as a situation can be controlled. I’ve yet to come across a zombie that ‘heeled’ when I told it to.
“How long would it take to get to Mom’s?” Tracy asked with a strange mixture of hope and resignation.
“Shit maybe four hours.” I said rubbing my eyes. “I’m exhausted though and we’ll still need to pull over somewhere and get gas.”
“What about finding a motel or something like that?” Brendon asked. “We could stay on the second floor, there’s usually only one or two stair cases that we would have to defend.”
What he omitted, probably unintentionally is that one or two staircases meant only one or two escape avenues. Our lives depended on me always keeping vigilant. But it was still a decent idea. We had to stop, that was not the issue. We might as well be as comfortable as humanly possible, while we were still humans.
The stress I felt everyone exuding was tangible. It had a texture, a thickness to it. When we were moving we were safe. Every time we stopped the danger caught up to us. Only Justin and Tommy thought stopping was a good idea.
My hope was that Justin wanted to stop to give his low grade fever a chance to dissipate, I would not dwell any longer on any wild theories that I could not prove, but could still feel, in the depths of my soul. Damn him, the warring factions in myself were mere children throwing stones to what was going on in his head
. He might be the biggest threat to all of our survivals and he was my son. My soul wept, my essence raged, nothing changed.
“Ryan says something about a lantern being on.” Tommy said his eyebrows pinched in a frown as he tried to make sense of his ‘seers’ words.
You could hear a pin drop or Jen peeing a few feet away, you decide which descriptor fits. They were both accurate if not both politically correct. However I don’t think this was going to be on any ACLU docket in the foreseeable future.
“What’d I miss?” Jen asked as she came back wiping her hands in the snow.
BT gave her the short version. “Brendon thinks we should stay at a motel and Tommy says there’s a street light on somewhere.”
She looked as confused as the rest of us, but she recovered a lot faster than any of us. She leaned her head into the minivan.”
“Hi Tommy.” Jen said with a smile. Tommy blushed. “Whatcha got there?”
“Triple berry pop-tart with peanut butter frosting.” He said proudly.
“Dad.” Travis entreated. “You said we were out of pop-tarts.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Wait.” Now I leaned my head into the minivan. “Did you say peanut butter frosting?”
“Uh huh.” Tommy said, shifting uncomfortably as he noticed that everyone was looking at him.
“Did you spread peanut butter on your pop-tart Tommy?” I asked.
He looked at me like I was crazy. His eyes rolled as he answered me. “We don’t even have any peanut butter Mr. T.”
“But pop-tarts never made a peanut butter frosted variety Tommy.” I intoned.
“Oh forget the pop-tarts Talbot.” Jen hushed me.
(I let it go then but I haven’t forgotten about them yet and I can guarantee when the savage vestiges of Alzheimer’s are rendering my mind into brain flavored oat meal and I am slinging my own shit against the walls that I’ll remember triple berry pop-tarts with peanut butter frosting. Oh you dear reader can be assured that after Jen got her answers I checked that pop-tart out and it was indeed the flavor he described. Not that the kid had ever lied but maybe he got confused. He hadn’t.)
“Okay let me get this straight, Brendon says ‘motel’ and Tommy says ‘street light is on’, right?” Jen asked.
Nicole clarified with. “Lantern, he said a lantern was on, not a street light.”
“Let’s go, we’ve got a motel to find.” Jen said with a huge smile on her face.
“Um any chance you could let the rest of us know what mystery you figured out?” BT asked.
“Come on in, we’ll leave the light on for you.” Jen beamed.
“Huh?” BT asked.
Tommy around mouthfuls of an impossibly flavored snack nodded fervently in agreement.
“The old Motel 6 catch phrase.” I wrapped up.
“Exactly.” Jen said. “Let’s go I’m freezing.”
Nobody needed any more persuading than that.
Within twenty minutes we came up on a viable choice for our overnight stay, even if there wasn’t a Dunkin’ Donuts. Beresford South Dakota was about to become our home away from home, at least for the night. It was by far the prettiest place we had stopped thus far in our journey, with its tree lined streets and the pond in the center of town. But pretty doesn’t equate to safe. It was a given that zombies travel to where the food is. So by pure theory alone small towns should be the first places to become devoid of the offending vermin. Like flesh eating locusts, they plunder and pillage the local resources and move on. They don’t hunker down and make roots. Can’t really cultivate a human farm, can you? And then I shuddered as I thought about The Matrix. Okay, but that was about machines harvesting humans for energy. If I come across penned up humans with zombie cowboys, my tentative grip on the fringes of sanity will be forever frayed. I shook my head, trying my best to dislodge the offending vision. Like this shit isn’t bad enough I’ve got to try and drum up even more exciting scenarios. ‘Ah what I’d do for a nuclear bomb.’
“A nuclear what?” My wife asked. Her contortion of fear was clearly outlined.
“Did I say that out loud?” I asked, clearly confused. When had I last let the inner thoughts of my unkempt mind out for all to see? My inner trappings were not a pretty place and I always made a careful case to make sure that my mind was shuttered against even the most curious onlookers. Tracy had long ago learned to not try and find out what I was thinking. My sometimes candid answers more often than not left her confused, concerned and just plain weirded out. Honest to God, I used to think that everybody thought the way I did, and were just as good at hiding it as I was. That however wasn’t the case. My depths of paranoia, conspiracy and psychosis approached and most likely surpassed levels that should have been medicated away. But it was these same ‘malfunctions’ of my mind that had my family thus far safe and sound. If I had really been able to ‘realize’ my dream though we would be riding this out in style in some giant underground shelter. I envy all of you that had the resources to pull that off.
“Look the light is on!” Tommy said excitedly.
And it was. The chill of icy fingers that ran up my spine was back and it was corpse cold. I shuddered involuntarily. Nobody but Tommy saw good in the stupid little hundred-watt bulb, shining bright through the twilight.
“How is that light still on Talbot?” BT asked in hushed tones, with a note of reverence in his voice.
“There’s a machine with Kit-Kats in there, do you have any change Mr. T?” Tommy asked hopefully.
It’s amazing to me that all of us had known Tommy long enough that nobody even looked halfway cross-eyed at him at his pronouncement. If Tommy had said that a convention of clowns respite with balloon animals was in there singing Billy Joel songs, we would all have believed him. Of course I wouldn’t have gone in, clowns are evil, but I still would have believed him.
I pulled into the parking lot. Brendon wisely remained on the street in the event that he needed to make a quick getaway. A few more years of exposure to me and he would be completely infected with my derangement. I was like a proud papa watching his baby take his first steps.
“What are you doing Talbot?” BT leaned in to me and asked, still in that hushed tone.
I wanted to let him know that zombies were more olfactory stimulated than auditory but then I remembered that there were other demons out there that still went bump in the night. Durgan invaded my thoughts for a moment. I snuffed the thought before it could grow. My mind malignancy could not get past the thought that something was amiss here. Zombies are notorious dark dwellers, relying on smell mostly to track down their prey. Odds of zombies being around were about 10%. Next on my list were bad guys, your average low life. Mad Max types, take whatever you will and destroy the rest. Again this is a relatively small percentage, maybe 10% also. This type, while very dangerous, doesn’t lie in wait. They go out and seek to take. Okay next came just regular folks doing their best to survive. I hate to keep beating a dead horse but this is also a small percentage, I’ll stick with the 10%. I might not be the greatest role model for this example but I can guarantee I wouldn’t be hanging a ‘We’re Open’ shingle out on my front door. Now we have our garden variety bad guy, using a lure to bring in some unsuspecting slobs. This percentage was considerably higher than the others, maybe 20%. But unless you carried your own personal physician with you, inviting trouble was not always a viable advantage. It was still early enough in the apocalypse that supplies were fairly abundant. Food, clothes and ammo were everywhere. Zombies had little use for them and by this time outnumbered humans thousands to one. So what was in small supply and would become a high trade commodity? Women, God damn it, it always comes down to women. The bane of our existence and our small party contained three of the golden ones. Okay that 20% might go up.
Now this part is something I’ve let very few people know. That’s a lie. I’ve let nobody know. This, I’ve come to learn is a huge character flaw in myself. I don’t want to change it and I recognize it for
what it is. It’s the inability to reach out and help those in need. I don’t feel the altruistic requirement to help people. Now I’ll die for my family or my friends if the demands require it. I’ve risked my neck for the men I’ve fought next to and even for people that I’ve been tentatively tethered too, think Cash. But I will not go out of my way to help those in need. I’m blown away by the people that used to go to Africa and try to help populations dying from starvation. My first response was always, ‘What is their ulterior motive?’ Yeah, there’s the cynic in me rearing its grotesque head. Doctors and nurses could only be in it for the money, rich people giving to charities was for tax purposes, actors donating time to build houses, free publicity. So the thought that some people were in that motel wanting to help others was by and far the largest percentage of probability and it was easily the most difficult for me to reconcile in my mind.
I looked over my right shoulder as I backed out of the parking lot. Tommy looked like I had just run over a family of rabbits with a lawnmower.
“Did I tell you about the Kit-Kats, Mr. T?” Tommy lamented.
“What are you doing Talbot?” Tracy asked, she hated to see the distress in Tommy.
“Hedging my bets.” Was my terse reply.
“Against what?” Tracy asked. “What’s going on?” She had inklings of how deep my disturbed waters ran and for the most part made sure that she didn’t wade too far from shore. But since this whole undertaking had begun she had started to indulge me more and more. I felt sadness that she would someday swim in the turmoil I mired in daily but that was beyond my control for now.
I parked next to Brendon on the road without telling anyone. I grabbed my gun and got out. “Tra..” She was already moving into the driver’s seat.
“Hold on Talbot I’m coming with you.” BT said, as he fumbled with his seat belt, the material looked stretched to its capacity around his immense bulk.
