by Mark Tufo
I had a moment of panic as I looked at Henry in the front seat staring back at me. If he had inadvertently locked the door, which he was prone to do, I was a dead man. I couldn’t even count the number of times I had let him in on the passenger side only to have him come and greet me on the driver’s side and push the lock button down. Then he would just sit there with his huge panting grin wondering why I wasn’t joining him inside. I wouldn’t swear on it but I think he did it on purpose. I had taken him on dozens of car rides and never once had there been a problem. The day I had to take him to the vet for some shots he locked me out of the car. Two hours and a missed vet appointment later, the lock smith came and opened the car door.
“Hey buddy, you really should make a spare,” he told me as I wrote him a check for a hundred and ten dollars.
I told him to blow me, he laughed.
Five days and four uneventful car rides later, I was able to secure another appointment at the vets. This time I made sure that as soon as I put Henry in the car I ran around to the other side to get in. I slipped a little in the gravel by the front end and by the time I recovered and was able to get a hand on the door handle, I heard the telltale ‘click’ of the lock being engaged. There was no denying it this time. Henry was full on smiling at me. It was no damn pant. I was cursing loudly as I headed into the house.
“Talbot, did that dog get the best of you again?” Tracy asked, smiling almost as widely as Henry.
I was beyond pissed as I made sure to pick a different locksmith lest I get the same smart ass as before. I paid the extra twenty to have him make a key on the spot. This guy was an hour and a half quicker than his competition and so I was still able to make it to the vet. Henry was not a happy camper and let me know by leaving an extra heavy puddle of drool on my seat. The twenty minutes it took to drive home was excruciating as the thick saliva soaked through my jeans and onto my left butt cheek.
There was no way he could have known, right? In the hundreds of car rides we had taken together he had locked me out four times. Two were for the vet, once when I wanted to get his picture taken with Santa. The last time had been the summer before. It had been an unbelievably hot day, for some reason I thought it might be cooler at the dog park. Henry had been hesitant to leave our air conditioned home. I had to pick him up off his doggie hammock and physically put him in the car. I had no sooner placed him in the passenger seat when he stood up. He crossed the bridge between the two seats, lifted his left front leg and pushed the lock down with his paw. I watched in amazement. He wasn’t running around crazy and just happened to hit the lock, it had been a deliberate action. He had told me in no uncertain terms that he didn’t want to go. I reached up under the frame of my jeep, grabbed the key I had hidden with the magnetic box, opened the door and let Henry find his way back to his hammock where he stayed the majority of the day. He occasionally got up to drink and eat, but for the most part he and the hammock were a fused entity.
I now had to hope, with my life on the line, that Henry’s actions had ALWAYS been that of a fully cognizant being and not those of an over exuberant puppy/dog. Henry jumped into the back seat just as I got to the door. Travis and Justin who were quicker than me had already gained entry. I pretended for pride’s sake that I was covering Meredith’s retreat, which technically I was, but she was also quicker than I. This was a blow to my ego. I could smell the gunpowder of the expended rounds as they came dangerously close to my back. The zombies were within striking distance. If they could breathe, I would have felt their exhalations on my neck.
Meredith, Justin and Travis had made it in. Henry had not locked us out after all, but that still did not quiet my hammering heart as my hand wrapped around the cool metal of the handle. If I lifted up and it did not disengage the locking mechanism, there would not be enough time for anyone inside to help me out. I know Henry didn’t lock me out now I had to hope that good old Detroit engineering didn’t pick this most inopportune of times to fail. The handle pulled up with that satisfactory tug and the door swung outward just as my head jerked backwards. A zombie had grabbed a handful of the hair on the back of my head and was pulling for all it was worth.
“Zombie’s got you Dad!” Justin shouted, pointing.
I wanted to shout ‘Really?’ but there is a time and a place for sarcasm and I certainly didn’t have the time for it. I had a variety of none too pleasant sensations all happen quicker than the blink of an eye. The first being the razor sharp burn of pain as a bullet scraped against the side of my head, the second was the separating of a fair portion of hair and skin from my scalp as the zombie behind me suffered a fatal head shot; his hand spasmed closed even tighter, and as he fell he took a part of me with him. The third was my shoulder getting slammed by the car door as BT used our other ride as a battering ram. Zombies shot out at odd angles as the ton and a half projectile slammed into them. I could see Tracy holding on for dear life in the passenger seat. Gary was in the back seat and he spared me a side-long glance as they passed by. BT had bought me a few precious seconds and I would not squander them. My head initially dragged even further backward from the clutch of the zombie and then shot upright as my scalp finally let go of its prize. I didn’t even bring up my right hand to see how deep the wound was from the bullet. It wasn’t like I was going to be able to do anything about it right now and I was too scared to check anyway.
“Oh my God!” Meredith screamed, “You’re bleeding from your head!”
“You’ve been hanging out with Justin too long,” I told her as I shoved the car in gear and screeched the tires out of the parking lot. BT and the fire truck were not far behind. Neither were the zombies for that matter.
Blood was accumulating in my lap at an alarming rate. “How bad is it?” I asked Meredith. If I was to solely base her answer on the expression she was wearing, it was safe to assume my brains were exposed and were leaking down the side of my face.
Justin pulled himself up from the back seat and gingerly probed his fingers around the wound.
“What are you doing? It feels like you’ve got arsenic on your fingers,” I fairly yelped at him.
“Well, to quote Monty Python, Dad, ‘it’s only a flesh wound.’” Justin said still messing around with a flap of skin attached to an exposed nerve bundle secured tightly at the base of my spine.
“Yeah, but if I remember right, the ‘flesh wound’ in that movie equated to a missing arm,” I told him.
“I’m not sure it will even leave a scar,” Travis threw his two cents into the mix.
“You guys aren’t just saying this like they do in the movies are you? ‘Oh Murphy, it’ll be alright,’ meanwhile the guy’s guts are blown all over the beach.” “Wow, Mom did say you were a little dramatic,” Travis laughed, “but I didn’t really believe her, at least until now.” “You get shot in the head, smart ass, and then tell me who is being dramatic,” I said as I finally mustered the courage to put a finger up by the grazing. The wound was shallow and about the width of the tip of my pinkie finger. I had once again cheated death. This hadn’t been my closest call but it was in the top five. The black robed one would have to wait yet a while more. Could Death alter destiny to serve his needs? Or was he (it) merely one more cog in the vast machinations of fate? No more able to alter his course than a blade of grass in a swift running stream. Were any of our ends foretold, the time and date written on head stones, or were they fluid? Did Death wait for an ‘expected’ demise or was his arrival contingent on our passing?
I preferred to think that he was snapping his fingers in the familiar ‘Damn, he got away’ gesture rather than sitting back with a slated schedule and saying, ‘Not yet, but SOON.’ Giving Death the finger seemed WAY cooler.
After a couple of miles when I was fairly certain we had lost our dinner guests, I pulled over to the side of the road. The wound may have been shallow, but it would not stop bleeding and I might be entirely too thickheaded to know when to die but I’d passed out before and I did not want to suff
er that indignity again. Perla jumped down from the fire truck with a white first aid kit.
“I’m so sorry Mike,” she said as she came towards me.
I staggered out of the car, some was from blood loss, some for dramatic effect. Hey, it’s not every day you get shot in the head, might as well milk it for something.
“Mike?” Tracy asked approaching hesitantly. Concern, care, and worry were all wrapped up in the one word question.
“I’m fine,” I said leaning against the car heavily.
“It barely touched him,” Travis said as he got out of the car to check the approach from our rear.
“Yeah, it’s bleeding much worse than it actually is,” Justin added as he reloaded a magazine.
Perla placed a hydrogen peroxide soaked cloth to my head pinkish foam oozed from my wound. The resulting sizzle sounded much like the Pop Rocks candy I had enjoyed in my youth. Who am I kidd ing, I had eaten a bag of the sugary goodness not a week before the zombies had come. I found them in a dollar store and bought the whole box. I had hidden them out in the garage, not willing to share nor divulge my secret stash.
I was trying to pull my head away from Perla’s ministrations; she wasn’t having any of it. She quickly placed some disinfectant on the wound and then wrapped my head in gauze. My head began to throb like I had spent the last three nights partying, but without the resulting fond memories of crazy actions performed.
“Good thing you jarheads have thick skulls,” Brian said as he came over. “Left my damn rifle at the fire station .” “Doesn’t surprise me,” I told him. “I wouldn’t think as an army dog you’d know how to shoot it anyway .” Brian looked at me sternly. I thought I might have crossed an imaginary boundary with him before he smiled. “You alright?” he asked seriously.
“Yeah, just feels like someone is tapping on my skull with a ball peen hammer.”
“We still on then?” Jack asked from the ladder, watching the conversation from above.
“Your head is still bleeding, Uncle,” Meredith said as the cloth around my head began to soak red throughout.
Gary came over to give me a quick once over. When he was confident I wasn’t going to expire, he popped the hood. Chunks of gore ran towards the windshield as he raised it up. Tracy ’s car looked like it was in imminently more danger of going to the great beyond. The front end was caved in and the smell of caustic anti-freeze filled the air.
“Radiator is shot and the fan has cut through some electrical lines,” Gary said mournfully as he stood back up, popping his back as he did so.
“Well, let’s transfer the stuff out of there, we have plenty of room with the fire truck now,” Tracy told him.
Fifteen minutes later we were back at the original overpass that overlooked the furniture store.
“This really looked better on paper,” Jack said as we surveyed the throng of zombies.
“No it didn’t,” I told him frankly.
“Yeah you’re probably right,” he answered back.
“But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to try. Isn’t that right Mike?” BT asked. I nodded in reply. “See, do I know my crazy friend or what?” he said triumphantly.
“I think Eliza is here, I can feel her almost like an echo,” I said almost imperceptibly.
“You can feel her?” Justin asked.
What was awesome was Justin couldn’t. Did Easter’s incantations really work?
“Eliza is here?” Tracy asked with alarm. “Then we should be anywhere but here!” she emphasized.
“If Eliza is here, so is Tommy, Mom,” Travis said, linking all the pieces of the puzzle together.
“This sucks,” I said. “This is just about a text book trap,”
“Brian?” Cindy asked.
I know what that implied; life right now was already difficult enough to hold onto without charging into a trap to rescue people they didn’t even know.
“Guys, you owe us nothing,” I told the group.
“What would you do, Mike? Honestly, if you were us what would you do in this situation?” Brian asked me.
“I’d leave,” I told him.
“Bullshit,” BT said. “You’d be the first in,”
“That’s what I thought,” Brian said, “Then we stay,”
“Ass,” I turned to address BT.
“Anytime,” he smiled.
“We should get moving then,” Gary said. “Zombies are zombies, but zombies in the dark are a lot scarier.” “Agreed,” I agreed.
The beeping from the fire truck as Brian backed it into the Wendy’s parking lot was nerve racking. The zombies didn’t even seem to pay it any attention. Brian backed the truck up as far as he could go; the rear tires were resting on the retaining wall. I was no expert on fire trucks and ladders, but I didn’t see any way that the ladder was going to extend to that furniture store roof.
“Good to see you Mike!” Paul shouted from the far roof, his voice traveling considerably well over the thousands of quiet zombies below, and without any roadway traffic there was really only the sound of birds and insects to contend with.
“You too Paul, although I really wish we could have met in a bar with a pitcher of beer instead,” I told him.
Even from this distance I could see him nod. Alex waved enthusiastically. I returned the gesture with an arm that felt more filled with Jell-o than muscle. Have I yet discussed my fear of heights?
“That going to reach?” Paul asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.
“Find out in a minute,” Jack shouted back.
The entire group, even the pain in the ass Deneaux, watched as Jack extended the ladder. Woefully short would have been an adequate description. There was a good twenty feet between the tip of the ladder and the lip of the roof. An Olympic jumper could not bridge that gap. I smirked a bit as I thought of Deneaux trying. She could have probably made it if she had her broom.
Jack came down from the ladder control box and walked around the ladder truck until he found what he considered a suitable portable ladder.
I looked at Jack as he grabbed the ladder and then looked to the furthest point of the extended ladder which was swaying in the light breeze. “No way,” I breathed.
“Jack I don’t think so,” I said, voicing my concern.
Eliza and Tomas - Interlude
“Interesting,” Eliza said as she watched the rescue attempt.
“No way,” Durgan said as he watched the sway of the ladder. “They came up short. I say we take them out now!” “We will do as We wish,” Eliza said, nodding to Tomas. “What do you think we should do, dear Brother?” Eliza asked as she stroked his cheek.
“Michael Talbot will find a way on to that roof, Sister. And then we will have them all in one place,” Tomas answered as he looked through the window in the former store manager’s office. Grief was etched on his features, but it was belied by the eagerness in his eyes.
“All you have to do is send your zombies up to that fire engine, Mistress, and this whole exercise will be over,” Durgan said with a tone of exasperation.
Eliza grabbed a handful of Durgan’s shirt and lifted the man who weighed nearly three times her body weight and thrust him against the far wall. A small picture and a framed award shattered to the floor as a dazed Durgan tried to regain his footing.
“Do not trouble me with what you want!” she shouted. “Do not presume to think that I care at all what petty thoughts run through that pathetic human brain! You will do as I command, WHEN I command it!” Durgan was finally able to stand. He was certain that he had just suffered a mild concussion, but Eliza’s words rang loud and clear through the accumulating fog in his brain. “Yes Mistress,” he said meekly as he placed his hand up to a small wound on the back of his head. Tomas never turned around throughout the entire episode and that enflamed Durgan more than that little shit-eating grin the kid generally displayed around him.
“What are you doing, Brother?” Eliza asked as she joined Tomas back at the window. Durg
an for the moment was completely forgotten.
‘So, this is the joy of being in the company of immortals,’ Durgan thought as he pulled up a chair, his head throbbing uncontrollably, his vision slightly blurred.
“I am sending zombies to the truck,” Tomas answered matter-of-factly.
“When did you discover that you could control them?” Eliza asked with an arched eyebrow.
“Just now,” Tomas answered, deep in concentration.
“I do not think that I like this new development, Brother.”
“I would not think so,” he told her, never wavering in his concentration.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT – Talbot Journal Entry 14
“Zombies have spotted us,” Cindy said as she looked down from her perch on the fire engine’s hood.
Perla began to question the wisdom of what Jack was trying to pull off.
“Jack, I think we should just get out of here. Those people on the roof, we don’t even know them,” Perla said, embarrassed when she realized that I was within earshot.
Jack looked over towards me and shrugged his shoulders as if to say ‘She doesn’t speak for me.’
“I’ve said it from the beginning,” I told them. “You don’t owe us anything,”
“We might not know you well now,” Jack began. “But we will eventually, and I for one wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if we didn’t do everything in our power to rescue them,” he finished more to Perla than for me.
“You be careful,” she said, putting her head on his shoulder.
“I made it through a tour in Afghanistan and one in Iraq . What’s a little high wire act above a few thousand zombies in comparison?” he asked her with bravado.
“Not funny,” she said as she mock punched his arm. The words did have the desired effect though, as she walked away from him with a slight smile.
“Jack, I think we should get out of here before the zombies make their way up to us and rethink this,” I told him.
