by Mark Tufo
Peter traveled almost across the whole Pender backyard before he set up his new domicile in the apartment above the garage. The independence was invigorating. Between work and wreaking ruin on the minions within the HALO universe, Peter had very little time to deal with the fairer sex. It wasn’t that he didn’t think, dream, eat and sleep about them, it was just that they were a mystery that defied explanation. He could glance at a black blurry box the size of a foot locker photographed from 2,400 miles away and let you know with stunning detail the threat level that it imposed. Women he couldn’t decipher with a Cray super computer. HALO was easy in comparison, kill or be killed, no right no wrong, no double meanings, no games. It was straight forward and linear, whereas women were all dangerous curves.
Liver had saved Peter’s life, not directly mind you, but the effect was the same. The day his division was scheduled to receive the flu vaccine, his favorite restaurant Ma’s Grill and Home Cooking (the slogan being ‘the food tastes just as good without all the nagging!’) was having a special on liver and onions. This was hands down his favorite meal on the planet, which confused the hell out of his parents because they had never once made it for him while he was growing up. Ma’s was slow, the smell of the liver keeping her normal customers at bay.
“I thought you guys would be packed,” Peter said excitedly as he placed his order at the counter.
Stan the cashier, a young man doing his best to not let the smell affect him, could only shrug his shoulders in reply.
The only other customers in the restaurant were seated as far away as possible from the grill, although it didn’t help. They were unhappily shoveling their food into their mouths as fast as they could in an attempt to be out and away into the chilly air of Kansas City .
“I thought you said this place was good?” Peter overheard the woman ask her male companion in the booth. “Everything tastes like liver,” she said in distaste, roughly placing her sandwich down on her plate.
To Peter that sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world. “See, that’s what I mean about women, there is just no figuring them out,” he said silently to himself, shaking his head.
Stan had hastened to the back of the store to crack open the door and allow some carbon dioxide from the Fed-Ex truck parked in the alley to enter in. It was heavenly in comparison to the stench of grilled liver. Stan reluctantly closed the door just as a man approached from behind the open door which had effectively blocked Stan’s view. Had Stan been able to see he would have noticed that a fever ravaged man was approaching, red lines radiating out from his scalp and crisscrossing on his sweaty cheeks. Blood and drool combined to flow freely from his mouth; the smell of liver which he had hated his entire life all of a sudden it smelled like sweet ambrosia, and right now he didn’t care if it was off the grill or out of a body. One of his last coherent thoughts was ironically wondering where his last thought had come from.
Peter took his time returning to work, reveling in his great lunch. It wasn’t until he entered the lobby and saw the sign: FLU SHOTS HERE >>> that he realized his mistake.
“Dammit,” he whispered as he ran down the hallway to the conference room that was set up just for this occasion. Peter dreaded being sick, mostly because his mother thought she made the best chicken soup this side of the Mississippi , when in fact she didn’t make the best soup west of her own kitchen. But primarily he hated it because it slowed his reflexes and his HALO kill ratio would take a hit. He skidded to a stop right outside the door just as the nurse was putting the waiver forms back into her bag.
The nurse heard and then saw the man; his features let her know how disappointed he was. “Don’t worry sweetie, we’ll be back tomorrow for the 4th floor, just get in line and we’ll take care of you.” But that was a lie, the nurse did not return the next day, and neither did 90% of his department who had missed work.
“What a weird day,” Peter said to himself as he walked home from the bus stop. The streets of Kansas City looked deserted, barely anyone had showed for work and Ma’s Grill was closed. The bus which was generally standing room only had only one occupant and he was a bum with a bus pass. He was on the bus every day. He just rode it all day long in the winter to stay out of the cold. Peter sometimes wondered why the homeless man didn’t just buy a ticket to Atlanta , seemed like it would have saved him a lot of time. What Peter didn’t know was that the man lived for the here and now. The future was the big unknown, a doctrine that the rest of the surviving human race was to become very familiar with.
Peter stepped onto the gravel of his parents’ driveway and turned to watch the streetlight turn on. “Ha, beat you this time!” he shouted to the indifferent fixture. He noticed the lights on in his parents’ house but did not see any movement. “Probably watching a movie,” he said aloud to somehow dispel the dread that was building up.
He looked up and down the street uneasily before entering his tiny abode. It was never Grand Central around here, but it was quitting time and there should be and was always more movement as folks returned from work, errands, school, whatever. Realization did not completely sink in until he logged on to Xbox Live and noticed there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of the usual volume of games being played. He had no explanation for the increased beating of his heart or the sweat that started to build up on his forehead and palms.
He looked out his window and across the yard into the large bay window that dominated the back of his folks’ home. Nothing looked unusual except for the lack of movement. His mom was usually a whirling dervish of activity, preparing dinner, doing laundry, playing with their two Maltese dogs. Peter picked up the phone to call his parents, but the phone alternated between a fast busy signal and the three tone warning of a downed line.
“Should probably go and check on them,” he mused, still gazing out the window, the phone chirping in his hand. He wouldn’t have gone if he had stopped to turn on the television. Early stories were already reporting mass riots involving cannibalistic mobs. He walked down the stairs, the air seeming oppressively heavy. The clicking of the phone was drowned out by multiple sirens caterwauling a few blocks away. Peter moved his hand up to his face, studying the handset he carried, suddenly wishing it was heavier and had a longer reach. “Now why would I need a weapon?” he asked himself. “I’m going to my parents’, not Detroit .” Each step got heavier and heavier as he crossed the yard. “Come on Mom, just walk by the window, just once,” he pleaded. More sirens joined the fray and for the life of him he could not figure out why his parents weren’t checking out what the fuss was about. ‘They must really have Breakfast at Tiffany’s cranked,’ he thought, looking for humor and finding none. The sirens which had violently been pushing the silence away cut off as if on a timer as his foot hit the first step on the back porch. The vacuum of sound was immediately filled in by the frantic barking of Chip and Dale, his mom’s dogs.
“Chip and Dale never bark,” Peter said aloud. “Mom dotes on them too much for that.” He never noticed as the phone slid from his grip and cracked on the cement. His eyes were fixed on the door handle. For reasons he could not explain, he was more afraid now than that time he had stopped a barge three miles off the shore of Florida that carried two nuclear warheads. This was far worse, this was quite literally happening on his own doorstep. Retreating into the alternate reality of HALO right now seemed like the wisest course of action. And he was close to that decision, he wanted to put this made-up nightmare behind him and go try out the new game armor he had purchased.
He had actually started to softly close the screen door and turn to walk away when Chip’s or possibly Dale’s barking changed into a high pitched howl. “Never heard that before,” He said, frozen in indecision, half in and half out of the entrance. He gripped the door handle and pulled back quickly. “Whoa, that’s freezing!” he said, blowing air into his palm. Even the dog’s change in tone was not enough to force him into action. It was the three shambling strangers that had just entered into the
circle of light at the base of his driveway that sealed the deal. “You guys don’t look so good,” he said as he twisted the knob and prayed to the patron Saint of All Who Opens Things that the door was not locked.
He was in and had quickly shut the door before the smell assailed him. His first thought was that he was wearing the same shirt he had worn for yesterday’s luncheon special and had possibly taken home far more than his fair share of cloying liver and onions’ odor. Although that would have been heavenly compared to the aerial blast of assification that filled the room. Chip, the lighter colored of the two dogs came running down the hallway, tail tucked between his legs. He stopped right in front of Peter and began to piss all over the floor, something he could not remember the dog doing even when he was a puppy.
“What’s the matter boy?” Peter asked, lowering himself down to the dog’s level. Chip was shaking violently and he pulled back when Peter tried to comfort him. Peter stood back up; Chip ran and hid behind the couch. “Mom? Dad?” Peter said so softly they might not have heard him if they were in the same room. Peter wanted to check the basement first because it was on the opposite side of the house from where Chip had run out from. “Not very logical,” he chided himself. “Or courageous. Come on, what would Death by Murder667 do? Well, first off he’d have an M392 and about 25 hand grenades, so that’s not going to work so much considering I don’t even own a squirt gun. But Dad does. Yeah, and it’s down the exact hallway you’d rather not go down. And who the hell are you talking to?” Peter started slowly down the hallway and turned back to where the small dog had hidden. “Any chance of some back up?” Not so much as a whimper. “Solo mission then,” he said, steeling himself to go down a path he’d traveled at least ten thousand times in virtual reality. The atmosphere, the stink, the feelings of dread all intensified. Each step became a chore, a vastly distasteful chore.
He could hear something tapping in his parents’ bedroom. It was a discordant sound that more than anything had Peter on edge. The door was half open but no light spilled out, and the ambient light from the hallway did little to pierce the darkness beyond.
“This sucks,” Peter said hardly a register above silent. The tapping grew louder and more frantic and then suddenly stopped. The tapping which he had found ominous was light years better than the ensuing quiet. Something stirred in the darkness. Peter involuntarily checked his chest for his trademark hand grenade bandoliers. “Yeah, that’s how most people solve their problems, throw a hand grenade in their parent’s bedroom.” A face materialized out of the gloom, it was familiar yet unrecognizable. His mother looked through Peter with opaque eyes. Blood lined her mouth, entrails emblazoned her night shirt, a jagged strip of flesh was torn from her forehead where dirty white bone shone in the light. If his mother had not slipped on the remains of Dale, Peter would have died that night, frozen in fright. His last thought as he fled from the house was that the tapping noise had been Dale’s toenails hitting the wall in his death throes.
Peter spent the next two days barricaded in his apartment, only occasionally stealing glimpses of the chaotic outside world. Hundreds of zombies had passed by his house, this he could tell by the smell alone. The windows were shut and duct tape sealed every crevice, and still the stench bled through. Gun fire gave him grim hope that not all was lost, but by the end of the second day the frequency of shots was becoming less and less and the smell was getting worse. He was able to do the math in his head on that one. Sleep was infrequent and always ended abruptly when the ruptured skull face of his mother crept in on him.
Seventeen diet 7 Ups, half a bottle of ketchup and something that might have been a corned beef sandwich lined the barren shelves of Pete’s fridge. “Always ate dinner with Mom and Dad,” he choked out. Pete understood the irony of starving to death in his apartment or becoming dinner for the abominations that walked outside. ‘It’s an eat or be eaten world,’ he thought sourly and with no humor.
Three days later and even with strict rationing he was down to one 7 Up. The previous night he had stripped most of the bluish-green mold from the mystery meat sandwich. His stomach had cramped something fierce but it was worth it. The 7 Up and ketchup soup just wasn’t cutting it anymore. He didn’t dare drink any of the tap water until he was sure that wasn’t the agent that had caused this epidemic or whatever it was. Hunger and depression was making him lethargic, and leaving the couch was becoming increasingly difficult.
He was like the frog put in a slowly boiling pot of water; he would never leave this apartment. Starving to death was a slow painful process and was worlds better than the alternative. If not for the smell of smoke that was exactly what would have happened. Fire was the mitigating factor. Pete could think of no worse way to die except for maybe having rats eat his eyeballs while he was strapped to a table, but that was a completely different nightmare. Pete did not want to burn, charred blistering skin peeling back from his hands and face as lava hot smoke burned through his chest, exploding his lungs and torching his throat. The fluid in his eyes would sizzle and explode, his mouth forever pulled back in a smile of death like the victims of Pompeii .
He peeked out the window, the first time in a while he had cared enough to bother. Two streets away, in the general direction of where Susan Payne had lived (the first girl he had ever kissed), the sky was completely enshrouded in thick black smoke. Fine filaments of the sooty substance w ere bleeding through under his door and even around the uneven edges of the duct tape. He momentarily considered throwing up another layer of tape and sticking a towel under the door, but to what end? All that would accomplish would be allowing the fire time to catch up and roast him alive instead of suffocating him to death. Neither way was a savory means to his end.
The fire storm had one benefit, the things that were human once wanted as little to do with the fire as any other living creature. Squirrels, cats, dogs, and what he would come to know as zombies all made hasty retreats in the opposite direction from the impending doom.
“Now or never Pete,” he told himself, taking one last glance over at his parents’ home. He absently wiped a tear away from his eye. The fire had jumped to the street parallel to his own. He could see the flames as they licked the edges of the homes. God had turned his back on man, hell had been unleashed on earth, the proof was now devouring the Almstead house. The fire was a vengeance, a scouring of all that was wrong with the world.
Pete walked slowly through his apartment taking mental images of a home he would never return to, then left with nothing more than the clothes he was wearing. He ran to the driveway to get the white van his father used for his in-town delivery service. He went directly to the back of the van, feeling around the juncture where the bumper met the frame until he found what he was looking for, the spare key. His mother had made Pete’s dad get the magnetic contraption after his dad had called the locksmith for the third time in three months because he had once again locked the keys in the van. Funnier still was that in the twelve months since he had the spare key attached to the bottom of the van, he had never again locked his keys in the car.
Pete adjusted the captain’s chair and turned the ignition over. His heart skipped a beat when he peered into the kitchen window and saw his mother staring back at him. He threw the van into reverse heedless of whatever might be behind him. He nearly took out the privacy fence that encased his parents’ yard. He never took his eyes off that window as he stopped and then placed the car into drive; his mother’s gaze never wavered as her milky white eyes followed his treacherous departure.
CHAPTER THREE – BT
BT watched as Mike rolled down the gravel driveway. Surrounded by people, BT had never felt more alone. He draped his huge arm around Nicole as they walked back up into the house.
Nicole was crying, partly from hormones run amok, mostly from watching her family drive away. “Will we ever see them again BT?” she managed to ask through her sobs.
“We’d better, because I don’t know how long I can survive your au
nt’s cooking,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. It worked for a moment, and she silently thanked him for it.
Carol had stayed in the kitchen opting not to watch the departure. BT came over to see how she was doing.
“Was it wrong of me to not see them off?” she asked the big man. She never gave him an opportunity to respond before she started talking again. “It just felt like that would have been too final, do you know what I’m saying?” BT nodded because that was exactly how it felt. He didn’t tell her that it felt that way no matter where you stood. That wouldn’t have helped. Carol then did something unexpected, she turned and gripped him hard in a bear hug, her hands not making it halfway across his broad back. BT was not used to being thrust into the mode of comforting people, not many people looked to a 6’8” 350 pound bear of a man for solace, it just didn’t happen.
“There, there,” he said, patting her back gently. He thought that he had seen this technique once in a movie and it had seemed to work. He looked more like a person who doesn’t like dogs and taps the tops of their heads gingerly, hoping they’ll go away.
Tony Talbot took this opportune time to enter the kitchen. BT wouldn’t swear to it, but Tony and Carol had seemed to hit it off. Maybe not romantically, not yet anyway, but there was something to be said about being around someone your own age. They had an uncanny ability to ease the mind of the other, shared experiences possibly or maybe even shared worries, didn’t matter. Whatever it was they each found peace in the contact. BT was grateful when Carol broke the hug and acknowledged Tony’s entrance.
