by Mark Tufo
“This is ridiculous!” Durgan cried. “How long can it take to smoke a cigarette? You have to finish that damn thing eventually and I’m going to make you pay for delaying the inevitable.”
“Worse than death? You twit,” Mrs. Deneaux said.
“I’ll kill you just for fun you old hag,” Durgan said to her, pointing his finger.
Never skipping a beat Deneaux answered. “Worse than you have tried. Give it your best shot.”
“All of a sudden I like you,” I told Mrs. Deneaux as I gingerly crushed the cigarette under foot. If it had offered even the least resistance I would have toppled over.
“Michael, you don’t look well,” Tomas said.
‘Thanks!’ I wanted to yell at him.
“Nothing a case of the deads won’t cure,” Durgan said.
“The deads?” I asked.
“Make the black man move,” Durgan said as he approached steadily, fists clenched by his sides.
Halfway to me and BT had not yet let go. I could feel him fighting within himself to throw me to the side and fight Durgan. It would be an awesome spectacle, just like when I was ten and my friend and I would watch Creature Double Feature on the UHF channel (if you don’t know what UHF is, it’s a dark time in our planet’s history, when we only had about five or six channels to choose from; it was hideous. No 24/7 cartoons, sports or comedy. I shudder to remember the days.) Godzilla versus King Kong, it would have been awesome.
“Michael, if BT does not move, we are done here,” Eliza said evenly.
“BT,” I said.
“I can’t man, he’s going to kill you.”
“What about that whole thing about death not having the right size for me and all.”
“Oh, I was just saying that.”
“You really suck man, now let me go.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” ‘No.’
“This is going to hurt you way more than me.” Durgan said smiling.
“How are you walking so well?” I asked truly wondering not just stalling this time.
“I’m cured man!” Durgan shouted.
“How do you get ‘cured’ from an amputated leg?” Now I was really curious.
“Eliza…” Durgan was cut short as Eliza yelled at him to finish me.
Well that one name pretty much answered my question irregardless that it was a cut short answer.
For each step back that BT took, Durgan took two forward. I swayed back and forth like a tall reed in a soft summer breeze. The best thing that I could ask to happen was that I would be on the back bend when Durgan swung. The audible crack as my jaw burst echoed throughout my skull, the reverberations finally ending in my left pinkie toe, and no I do not know why.
I could vaguely hear Durgan screaming at me to get up so that he could finish me off. It was much more comfortable where I was. I could hear Tracy and Gary, pretty much everyone urging me up, their urgent cries ringing in my ears. But I was falling deeper; the red of pain was rapidly becoming the black of unconsciousness.
It was them that I held on for. Durgan would only wait so long to get from me what he felt I owed him. If I were to pass out, he would still finish me off, most likely starting with a few rib crushing kicks followed by some face pummeling blows, capped off with my head in his hands as he cracked my neck. I might not experience any of the pain involved, but my family and friends surely would.
My jaw rattled in my head, teeth grinding against teeth as I turned over trying to get leverage with arms that couldn’t support Gumby. A fresh wave of nausea and pinpointing blackness threatened to thwart my best efforts as my arms gave. I collapsed, jaw first, onto the tarred roof.
“That’s right, you piece of dung. Get up!” Durgan yelled, “What? No witty comeback you shithead?” His spittle rained down on me.
The thought of uttering anything more than a throaty moan made me wish for my mother, and I hadn’t done that since I was six.
“If you don’t get up in the next minute I’m going to start teaching your wife what it means to be with a real man,” Durgan boasted.
“You even look at her funny and you’ll be licking your own asshole!” BT yelled.
“You’re welcome,” BT said as I gave him the thumbs up sign, my face still buried in the roof.
Henry charged at Durgan. If I could have screamed at him to stop, I would have. Not that he would have listened. That’s the sort of relationship we have, I give him cookies, he does as he pleases. Henry wrapped his muzzle around Durgan’s lower leg. He must have put all his strength into it because Durgan screamed to the heavens, although they would have turned a blind eye to him as they had to me. He shook his leg violently and swatted Henry away. Henry yelped as he went tumbling twenty feet away. I was thankful to whatever was watching over me now that Durgan was only able to land a glancing blow. Henry came to a stop by the edge of the roof. I could tell his head was reeling as he looked up, eyes not focused on anything, but he’d be all right. More than I could say for me.
The pain in my jaw had begun to ebb. I attributed it to the high octane adrenaline injection from Durgan’s threat. To threaten me was one thing, my family? Well, that takes on a whole new level, and to top it off the asshole hurt my dog!
“You don’t understand now, Lawrence,” Durgan sneered. “I can kill you too, just as easily as I can kill him,” he said pointing over to my mostly prone body.
“He’s not quite dead yet,” Gary said, quoting Monty Python as I struggled to gain vertical-ability.
“Did you really just do that Uncle Gary?” Travis asked.
Gary smiled diffidently.
Durgan turned to see me. I was now resting on my knees. I probably could have stood at this point, but I was busy listening to the knitting of the bones in my mouth. It was disturbing. The grinding as molar scraped across canine was akin to biting down hard on fork tines.
Durgan looked at me in alarm as color began to wash back into my face, from winter pale to spring hale. He gave a quick glance to Eliza as if expecting direction, but none was forthcoming.
I put my left foot under me and stood up shakily. I wouldn’t be scaring a Girl Scout, but Durgan looked like he was having second thoughts.
“I broke your jaw, Talbot. Now I’m going to break your spine,” he said as he advanced again.
It hurt like hell to say it but it was worth every snap and pop as I moved my still healing facial bones. “Bring it,” I said as I put my hands up in the old school boxing fashion, fists upside down and all.
I tried to dance around like Muhammad Ali, but I think I looked more like Whitney Houston (you know… can’t dance).
Durgan bull rushed me. I was still operating on something close to seventy-five percent of the old Talbot, but it was way more than he was expecting. So when I side stepped his advance and put everything I could muster into his kidney, his heavy expulsion of air was all I needed to know that I had surprised him and potentially inflicted an iota of damage.
“You should have just stayed down,” Durgan said as he turned. His eyes glowed with a festering heat of hatred and contempt. “I might have made it relatively painless,” he said, advancing but much more slowly and warily.
And without warning he struck, like a cat let loose from a tight trash bag. I didn’t think anything that big could move that fast. His ham-sized fist slammed into my temple. If it hadn’t first caught my upraised fist he would have killed me. Upgrade or not, he would have caved my skull. For the second time I went down, this one with more force than the first. My jaw dislocated as the side of my face bounced from the impact.
“Fuck you Talbot!” Durgan shrieked, standing over my body with his fists by his side, veins bulging out on his neck, his arms throbbing with power.
The pain was intense, but something was happening within me. What started as a ten on the pain index and should have taken days and heavy doses of opiates to alleviate rapidly began to climb down the pain-o-meter. Ten became an eight, which in turn became a five
, and then a distant memory at a one or a two.
“And to think I once thought you might be a tough opponent. You ain’t shit!” he screamed.
“You talk too much,” I said as I got my feet back up under me.
If Durgan’s neurons would have just fired a little quicker and he never gave me the chance to get up, then my family would have been doomed. But he just kept watching in amazement as I got completely up onto my feet.
“You should be dead!” he yelled.
“But yet here I am,” I said softly, trying my best to not engage my jaw. A lot easier written than said.
“This can’t be. I’m five times the man I was. You should be dead!” he screamed in consternation, “Eliza, it’s not working. I hit him with everything I had, you promised!”
Eliza looked over to Tomas who never betrayed anything, but the proof was in my unwillingness to die.
“I fear, my pet, that the rules to the game have been changed,” Eliza said.
“What does that mean?” he asked her.
“It means that Michael has cheated and as such our agreement is void,” Eliza said.
“Not true, Eliza,” I said to her. “You said I could not accept help from anyone on this side. You said absolutely nothing about help from your side.”
Eliza was trying to find a loophole in her agreement. I could see the machinations working behind her black eyes. “Very well,” was her grudging response.
Durgan was being unbelievably slow on the uptake of this new information. He could take as long as he desired. I wasn’t waiting for him to figure it out. I swung a roundhouse that started somewhere south of Detroit and struck him flush in the nose. Blood blew in a circle away from the impact. His eyes immediately flooded with tears as he dropped down to his knees.
“Yeah!” BT shouted.
With my other arm I hooked an uppercut that shattered all of Durgan’s front teeth, pieces of which intermingled with the growing puddle of blood pooling on the roof. Durgan began to sag forward. I kneed him in his already destroyed nose; shards of bone drilled into my knee as the impact also drove pieces up into his brain casing.
“Ris ran’t ree happenin,” Durgan said through a jumble of broken teeth.
“Oh, I assure you it is,” I said, punching him in the back of the head as he began to pitch forward.
Durgan was face first on the ground, his ass still up in the air. It was a comical pose but it contained no humor in it.
“This is for Jed,” I said as I reared back and kicked him square in the ribs. At least two snapped as he fell onto his side. “This is for shooting me!” as I kicked him flush in the stomach. The force of the strike rolled him over onto his back, a gale of wind fused with blood expelled from his mouth. “This is for Jen!” I said kicking him in his junk. I thought Jen would appreciate that, being the man hater that she was. I got a sick sort of satisfaction out of that.
“This is for the little kids at Carol’s house!” I cried, bringing my heel up.
“Talbot!” my wife yelled.
I wavered in midair.
“That’s enough! He’s done.”
He should have been dead, he really should have, but we weren’t playing by the same rules any more. As if to prove my point, Durgan began to stir. In a few more minutes he’d probably be fine and I wouldn’t be able to surprise him twice.
“He’s got no choice,” BT told Tracy as she turned her back on the horrific scenario.
I brought the heel of my boot down on the bridge of Durgan’s nose. His skull snapped like a fragile egg, blood and brain matter splayed out across the ground.
“You’re next Eliza!” I yelled, grinding my gore soaked boot even deeper into the recess of what once housed Durgan’s mad melon.
At some point during the fracas, Eliza had left the rooftop unnoticed, taking her zombies with her.
Eliza and Tomas - Interlude
“You play a dangerous game Tomas,” Eliza said, her anger running deep through her blackened vitality.
“I did nothing more than make an even fight,” Tomas said.
“With our sworn enemy!” Eliza shrieked.
“No Sister, he is your sworn enemy,” Tomas said evenly.
Eliza took a step back and took a moment to compose herself, even more angered that she had allowed her emotions to show. Emotions were for the weak-willed humans, not for her!
“To what end, Tomas, did you empower Michael?”
“I have my reasons, Eliza. It is not all a loss Sister, you have the Blood Locket in your possession now.”
“Yes, there is that,” she said, fingering the pendant that she now had safely tucked in her bodice. “We will not stray far from each other come the future. I do not trust what reasons you possess. I do not believe that we are walking the same pathways,”
Tomas smiled and walked away.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE – Talbot Journal Entry 16
The Group
The congratulations and celebrations were brief, mostly out of necessity but partly because I didn’t much feel like it. I had just crushed a man’s skull with my boot. I had trained for it a hundred times in the Marine Corps but had never actually done it. I don’t think I’d ever get over that sensation of the initial impact as my leg shimmied ever so slightly as my heel came in contact with his bone. The impact as his body first resisted and then accepted, from hard outer shell to soft meat. I can say it was Durgan for the rest of my life, but it was still one of the most singular disgusting things I had ever done. Why am I still feeling guilt? I don’t have a soul to stain.
If I thought Marta didn’t like me before, now it was personal. She was yelling at Alex just because he wanted to come over and talk to me. I really couldn’t blame her. I didn’t really want to be with myself just now.
“So what now?” Brian asked me.
“I’m going home,” I told him as I walked away.
“He wants to know if there’s room,” Cindy clarified.
“Cindy, I don’t know if that’s what I want to do,” Perla said. “I mean, if we had never come across them, Jack would still be alive.” She started to cry again.
“Mike, I cannot thank you enough for what you sacrificed and what you have done,” Alex said as he finally broke free from Marta.
“I did what I had to do,” I told him.
“No Mike, you went above and beyond what you had to do. I will never forget this, my friend,” Alex said, his eyes watering.
“I can’t see man tears right now Alex. Please tell me you just sat on your keys or something.”
Alex quickly wiped any evidence away, but the red-rimmed eyes told a different story.
“Mike, we’re not coming with you,” Alex said sadly.
I didn’t need psychic powers to see that coming. Marta was about twenty feet away going ballistic that he was even in my presence. I really wanted to look in a mirror to see if I had sprouted horns or something, maybe my skin was beginning to look brick oven red. I don’t think my feet were becoming cloven, but I couldn’t really see them and I wasn’t touching my right boot any time soon, gray-black matter still clung to them in wet clumps. I was trailing pieces of Durgan’s memories behind me.
Mrs. Deneaux came up and handed me another cigarette which I gratefully took. “I think maybe I’ll ride the rest of this out with you,” she said in her smoke ravaged voice.
My luck was getting better and better!
BT grabbed my shoulders and steered me away from the crowd. “How you doing my man?” he asked, truly concerned
“How does ‘stepped on crap’ sound?” I asked him.
“A lot like Durgan,” he said with a small laugh.
“Man, I didn’t even mean it like that. I guess I walked into that.”
“Literally.”
“This is supposed to be a serious talk, isn’t it.”
“I’m sorry, I’m still pretty hopped up,” he said looking down at me. “So, the original question still stands.”
“Pretty sc
ared, big man. Everything I did I always weighed against how it would fly when I finally got to the Gates. Now I don’t have to answer to anyone. Nobody should have that kind of power, least of all me.”
BT was nodding his head. “Mike, you have the hardest person of all to answer to,” he paused. “Yourself. I’ve never come across another person who tried so hard (and mostly succeeded) to do the right thing in every situation. Don’t worry about what the future may or may not hold, you did what you needed to do right now.”
“Thanks man,” I told him.
“You’re going to be all right, Mike,” he assured me.
I had my doubts, but I nodded at the appropriate time.
“Whenever you’re ready to roll, we’ll get going,” BT said.
“Do you believe in the eternal soul?” Mad Jack asked me curiously.
Where the hell he came from I wasn’t sure.
“I believe,” I told him, not sure if this was the conversation I wanted to have right now.
“Because if you don’t, then nothing could have been taken from you. I wish we had weighed you before and after Tomas bit you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked him testily.
“Well, I’ve read studies that the human soul has a tangibility to it. It can be measured and weighed on a scale.”
“Would that have confirmed anything for you?” I asked.
“Well, there could be a myriad of other factors. Loss of blood, passage of gas, a bug alighting from your body, wind pushing down.”
“So you wouldn’t have believed even with evidence,” I told him.
“I’m just saying it would have been interesting to say the least, and would have required more study.”
“Listen, I don’t really know you and I don’t want to have to test out just how hard I can hit right now.” He flinched. “So I’m going to be very specific. I’ve been there, twice as a matter of fact. It’s more real to me than this thing we call reality, and I would trade this life a thousand times to just stand in those fields once more.”
“Did you travel through a tunnel?” he asked.
