A Plague Upon Your Family zf-2

by Mark Tufo

  How can anybody be alive in the 21st century and not know the name for the living dead. I was soon to learn that he was a fan of all novels, if they were of the western variety. Not many zombies traversing down the Rio Grande back in those days.

  “Zombies.” I assisted him.

  “Yeah right those things. We had a hell of a time those first few days. Didn’t sleep much, shot my way out of more jams than I care to remember.” He shuddered as he thought back. “Maggie and Greta never so much as fired a gun. ‘Sides I didn’t want her to be weighed down with those pictures in her head. Maggie that is, I thought Greta might be good at it, seeing as how mean she is. The only thing she was good at was pointing out what else needed to be shot, I suppose that had its own benefits.”

  “And minuses.” I added.

  “And minuses.” He said looking at me. “We tried to make a go of it from the lobby. Our place is downstairs and there’s a full kitchen with food and amenities. But they kept breaking through whatever defenses we put up.”

  I sympathized, how many seemingly unbreechable defenses had they circumvented at Little Turtle. A pang of homesickness coursed through me like bad chili.

  “After the fourth night of no sleep, we moved to the second floor. Seemed hardly worth it at the time, it just meant those things were going to be a little more tired before they ate us. Was Maggie had the idea to get rid of the steps. First we threw some dressers and beds, mattresses whatever it took to keep them from getting up here. Then I grabbed a toolbox that I have in the utility room up here and smashed through the concrete step. The hardest part was sawing through the metal support each step had. Figured two steps would be enough, I did four on each stairwell.”

  “Great minds think alike.” I recounted to him my whole stair removal and carnival ride installation. He got a good laugh when I told him how pissed off my wife had been.

  “We lived on crappy candy bars, mountain dew and old donuts for five days while those things hovered around looking for food. And then they just sort of up and left. I killed whatever stragglers came by, but the worst of it seemed over. I nearly broke my leg when I tried to jump over the missing steps. I went back to our apartment and grabbed boxes of food to bring back up and then I realized I’d never be able to jump that gap going up. Not nearly as spry as I used to be, I used to play football when I was in high school, outside tackle.”

  He seemed to need to tell me all this I didn’t see any reason to stop him. Figuring I might be ensnared in his story for a bit, I took a moment as he sorted through his old memories to let everyone know below that it was a-ok up here and that they should park and bring ALL the ammo. If we were going to be in a firefight, I was going to make it as one sided as possible.

  He continued as if I had never turned away. “But that was a long time ago and I would have played college ball ‘cept for a knee injury my senior year. Last damn game of the season and we was winning 42 to 14. I was laughing and joking and actually making eyes with this pretty little cheerleader.”

  “Maggie?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Just a guess, you two look like you’ve been together for a long while.”

  “I’m really glad I didn’t shoot you.”

  “You and me both Denmark.”

  “So there I am making an ass out of myself and the play goes off and I’m not paying any attention. My own teammate blindsided me. Not his fault at all, I never moved. Saw nothing but red as I fell in pain. Maggie was the first one to me. Not sure if she felt guilty about the whole thing but if it got her to say ‘yes’ when I asked her to marry me than it all worked out for the best.” His look was still of that far away dreamy quality, in a much happier time and place. “Where was I?” He looked like a coma victim suddenly come back to awareness after a prolonged sleep.

  “Mountain dew and a bunch of food.” I prodded.

  “Oh that Mountain Dew, that’s the devil’s brew that is. Never so much as sniffed the stuff before they came. Now I’m addicted to it. Damn near cost me my life.”

  I laughed to myself. He talked about good old mountain dew like it was crack and you would have to go down to the seedier parts of towns and find a dealer. Did they pour it into little baggies? Would you buy it by the ounce? I let me inner thread stop as Denmark continued with his story.

  “So first when’d...”

  ‘When’d?’ Is that a word? I’d have to ask Tracy later.

  “…I realized I couldn’t get back up the stairs I grabbed this here ladder.”

  Which was vibrating slightly from Brendon’s third trip up with ammo. “You sure about all this ammo, Mike?” He asked pleadingly.

  I nodded, not interrupting Denmark’s story. I heard Brendon mumbling something about how ‘just because I was his girlfriend’s dad (mumble) go fu…(grumble)…self.’ The rest was lost as he moved further away and Jen came up with some food. I smiled. Sometimes command had its perks.

  Denmark continued his narrative. “And that’s how we’ve been getting stuff. That mountain dew though, I couldn’t get enough. Emptied the soda machine up here within a couple of days and then the one downstairs a few days after that.”

  I thought that might be where his life had been endangered, I was wrong.

  “I went for about 48 hours without the stuff, I was sucking down Pepsi’s in hopes that they would ease the craving. It didn’t work, I thought Sprite might do the trick, didn’t even come close. Maggie thought I had lost my mind when I told her I had to go down to the Piggly Wiggly to get me some more. She told me I was going to do no such thing. Greta just gave me a list of things she wanted. Maggie got so upset I figured she was finally going to give her sister the old heave ho for that. Well you can see that didn’t happen.”

  I lamented with him at the appropriate time.

  “So’s I grabbed Ole Bessie here.” He said holding up his rifle.

  It looked nothing like its namesake. It was a tricked out AK-47 with a sighting laser (obviously) and a 150 round ammunition drum attached. I had no idea where he would have come across such a monstrously wonderful weapon but I was going to ask.

  “And I climbed down the ladder, the missus told me that if I didn’t come home safe and sound to not bother coming home at all. She was so upset I don’t think she knew that she made absolutely no sense. I figured if I got in enough trouble that I couldn’t get home, then I was pretty much dead.”

  I nodded with him in agreement.

  “So then she tells me that if I’m going anyway I might as well get…well you get the point, ended up she had a list too. Felt like a damn fool heading to the Piggly Wiggly with a rifle strapped to my back. Drove my old pickup truck.”

  Which was actually a 2009 GMC Jimmy, the thing was pristine, I looked longingly at it and then back at the Terrible Teal Machine a few times during our stay there.

  “Got to the mart and it was quiet, quiet like the world was holding its breath, wondering what was going to happen next. There was nothing on those two shopping lists I felt was worth my life, damn near turned around the second my boot crunched down on the pavement. I was gonna go back and tell Maggie, my knee was acting up and I couldn’t walk right, much less run iffen I had too. Maggie and Greta would have known I had chickened out, but Greta would have told me so to my face, that dour faced….., is she around? No? Bitch. I had one foot on the ground and one still in the truck. That damn Dew made me do it. I had to have it. Seemed about the only thing in this world ‘sides my Maggie worth living for.”

  I loved beer, and I couldn’t even begin to explain how I longed to chug that nectar of the gods but would I risk my life for it? And then I really, I mean really pondered the question. Fuck, I think I would. Stupid, sure but there’s more than one person, starting with my wife, that’ll tell you I’m not a rocket scientist.

  “I used my tire iron to pry the doors open, no ‘lectricity and all.” He looked at me as he said this to see if I was judging him for his lapse in moral character.

&nbs
p; It took me a second to understand what he was asking me. My understanding? My forgiveness? “We are all doing what we need to do Denmark.” Why he cared about my thoughts on the matter, I didn’t know. I didn’t then and I don’t now, have the power of absolution.

  “Smell. The smell was what hit me first. I don’t like to think of it much. I can still recall it. When I was 15 had a Coon dog, that got sprayed by a skunk, that was Chanel No. 5 in comparison.”

  Oh I knew that smell all too well, the zombies, not the Chanel No. 5. An SOS pad on a stick, shoved up my nose, and thoroughly whisked around would not eradicate the perpetual olfactory odor that had been burned in that unfortunate sense.

  “Michael, I pretended it was the meat gone bad. I guess it kind of was.” He laughed. “Just wrong kind.” His smile disappeared as rapidly as it had come on. “The regular lights were out. There were still a couple of red auxiliary lights hanging on to some small trickle of power. It did little to make the store seem more shoppable. If some little five year old had come from behind a register and said ‘boogey-d-boo’ I would have pissed myself.”

  I laughed. Denmark didn’t share in my view. I get that a lot. Either my base of reference is highly skewed or everyone else’s is. I figured it was everyone else, why shine that light on myself.

  “I propped the door open to get some light and some breathable air in. It helped some, but only if I stayed within 15 feet of the door. Figured my odds of everything on my lists being that close was slim to none.” He laughed. I didn’t. We’d synch up sooner or later.

  “Good story Mike?” Brendon said peevishly as he made his 4th? No maybe 7th trip up the ladder.

  I wanted to respond and tell him ‘Yeah not bad.’ But I needed to remember that in the post-apocalyptical world virtually everyone was armed.

  Denmark wiped his face with rough hands, long exposed to the ardor of hard work and cold weather. If he had cried, I pretended not to notice. “And then they started to come Mike, those…those things. They were my friends and my neighbors, I blew the head off my kids Sunday School teacher. Perts, the postman nearly got me, I’d never seen him move so fast when he was delivering the mail.”

  I so wanted to laugh now, again, not appropriate.

  “I put twenty rounds in him ‘fore I had the good sense the lord gave me to let go of the trigger.”

  I harkened back to my magazine emptying encounter with the double-fat twins. I think that was like twenty years ago.

  “And still they came Mike, had to have been a couple dozen iffen there was one. My ammo drum came up empty just as I killed the last one. If there had been just one more, I probably would have just stood there while it did his thing. I think I was in shock.”

  “That’s understandable Denmark. Not many a man has had to go through what you’ve gone through.” I almost thought of adding ‘at least that’s how it used to be, anybody alive now has had to’.

  “I didn’t even go back to the truck and get the extra ammo. I grabbed a cart and a sanitary wipe.”

  A man after my own heart.

  “And shopped, I walked around the bodies like it was the most natural thing in the world. I did grab three of everything just because I never wanted to have to go back to that store again.” He wiped his face again, attempting to remove the invisible stain that the encounter had placed on him.

  I assured him, that was the way of the world now. It wasn’t a pleasant prospect but he had done nothing shameful or worthy of his guilt. He appreciated the words but I don’t know how effective they were.

  CHAPTER 18

  Within the hour we were all sitting in unit 203. Denmark had salvaged an old potbelly stove that kept the room a balmy two degrees below the temperature on the surface of the sun. Occasionally I had to go outside to keep my lungs from cooking because of the super-heated air. If it bothered Denmark, Maggie or Greta, in the least, they didn’t let anyone know. The mood was convivial, even Greta smiled a few times which I think really caught Denmark by surprise. I was fairly convinced he didn’t think she had the muscle memory to do such an action.

  Everyone had let their guard down somewhat. Maggie couldn’t stop fussing over the boys. She said they reminded her of her own boys. They had not heard from Larry or Jim since the start of it all. For moments she would get lost in her thoughts and grief and then come back around full circle beginning with wiping Tommy’s Kit-Kat swathed face. Travis squirmed from her ministrations. Torn between acting like the man he was rapidly and forcibly becoming and the boy who still looked to adults for all the answers and protection. Justin feigned sleep to be left alone. In my twisted brain I feared that it was the contact with goodness that so repelled him from her.

  Denmark was a great storyteller and had the entire room enthralled in some story involving a canoe, a tree that ate people and a cat that saved the world. Between the length of the day, the heat from the stove and a now sated belly I found myself dozing off. I was startled awake to some raucous laughter, something about the cat falling out of the canoe and into the water. I stumbled out of the room. I had the uncomfortable feeling that my liver was beginning to cook from the inside out. This must be what that poodle felt like when its master tried to dry him off in the microwave. I opened the door and the bracing cold in my face as well as the fire behind the sensation was invigorating.

  “What’d you grow up in a barn.” Came Denmark’s voice.

  I had heard the rebuke from my mother enough to know he wanted me to either go in or out and shut the door in either case. My intention was to continue on out and pull in some cold fresh air into my lungs in hopes to store it against the stove's blistering heat.

  “Michael?” Denmark asked when I didn’t move.

  Tracy turned to look due to Denmark’s tone. I was a man frozen but not by cold. “Talbot?” No response.

  I turned. “Boys.” And that was all it took, Brendon and Travis grabbed their gear and followed me out onto the balcony. It was the smell. I couldn’t see a damn thing below me. It was a new moon and even if that wasn’t the case the thick cloud cover still would have blanketed any potential light. Between the smell and the shuffling, we once again found ourselves in the midst of the enemy. It didn’t quite smell or feel like the mother lode but we wouldn’t be able to tell until the morning.

  “Sweet Jesus.” Denmark said as he came to the railing.

  “Den, don’t you use that kind of language.” Maggie shot from behind him.

  “Haven’t seen a one of them in nearly a week I figured it was over.” Denmark remarked.

  I felt terrible. I knew without a shadow of a doubt we were the reason they were here. I don’t know how I knew it but I did. BT was busy moving some of the ammo cans into place. Jen was loading and then checking her loaded weapon over and over again like a looped tape.

  Tommy stood next to me. I was going to have to ask him how he kept doing that. “He’s coming Mr. T.” He might as well have sliced through the thin skin up my spine. Cutting through the small layer of connective tissues and nerves and then pulled the bloody pieces apart to drop ice into the wound. I managed to not convulse at his words but not by much. Tommy hugged me tight although I didn’t relish the attention. The last time Tommy hugged something this fiercely was when Bear had sacrificed himself for us. The ice on my spine turned to salt, my throat constricted. “I’m sorry Mr. T.” Tommy wailed.

  I wanted to assure him everything was going to be alright, but all that kept going through my head was, ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.’ You get the point. I was collecting my thoughts, when Jen asked me where she should set up.

  “Uh.” My mind was addled. “Uh maybe take Tommy back into the room and get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day and nothing’s going to happen tonight.” ‘Unless I die’ I wanted to add.

  “Tommy’s still in the room.” Jen answered.

  “Wha..” I turned to look. Tommy was still seated in the far corner of the room. Maggie was busy wiping chocolate off his face.

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nbsp; He peered up and over her shoulder when he felt I was looking at him, his expression told me the encounter had been real. ‘Oh fuck.’

  I told myself over and over again that long night, that I was still alive. But who was kidding who. I was a dead man walking. Had Tommy cursed me with a self-fulfilling prophecy? Would I now seek out death? Or had he blessed me with the opportunity to tell the ones I loved how I felt? Now remember I am a former Marine raised by a former Marine, marching into death was my business. Telling people I loved how I felt about them scared the shit out of me.

  “Jen you’ve been doing a great job. That gun is loaded.” I told her. Damn it, ok I’ll get better with the next one.

  I could feel her confusion at my words as she answered me. “Thanks, I think?”

  “Hey BT how you doing man?”

  “What do you want Talbot? Can’t you see I’m busy?” BT was busy stacking ammo cans of varying calibers all around the top balcony of the motel. The Battle of Motel 6 might not become nearly as famous as the Alamo, but I would bet we would fire as many shots.

  “I just wanted to tell you BT, thank you for saving my life back there in Bennett.”

  Without looking back at me as he placed another 50 pound can down. “Didn’t so much do it for you as I did it for myself.” Now he stopped to look at me to find out my reaction. “I told you before Talbot, you have this uncanny knack for getting out of jams and I want to be there when you do.”

  “Thanks I think?” I answered him. “All the same I wanted to make sure you knew I appreciated what you had done.”

  “You’re welcome.” He said as he lugged a few more ammo cans away.