by Mark Tufo
“I’ll go next, Mr. T,” Tommy said as he started to fit the makeshift harness around himself.
“Are you sure?”
“All clear.” Drifted up from below.
“Alright, we’ll be down in a minute,” I answered her.
Tommy was just finishing up and getting ready to climb though the doorway.
“Hold up,” I said, grabbing the back of his shirt. “This smells worse than that thing you were trying to call a Pop-tart.”
“She’s trying to help, Mr. T, so maybe she’s seen the light.”
“The only light she’s ever seen was from the end of her cigarette. Take the harness off.”
“Hurry up!” she called from below.
I went over to the cages and grabbed a small goat that had died relatively recently. “Sorry,” I told him. I quickly tied him into the harness.
“Is this necessary, Mr. T? We’re wasting time.” Zombies were once again hammering at the doorway to our retreat.
“Oh yeah, most definitely necessary,” I answered as I gently placed the goat into the shaft. “Tommy is on his way down!” I shouted.
“Good, good.” The second good was muffled halfway through as if spoken through a doorway.
We were at just about the same point on the sheets as when Deneaux had us go slow when we felt intense heat blaze up. We both pulled back as a blast of super-heated air flowed past us. We let go of the rope when we realized fire was consuming the sheets at an unnatural pace.
“Fucking bitch tried to kill me!”
I had to laugh, hearing swears come out of Tommy was almost as rare as watching him eat a normal Pop-tart. “Don’t feel bad, I’m pretty sure she was hoping it was me.”
We both found ourselves now staring at the closed door marked with a warning sign and the word “Incinerator.”
After a few moments, we both heard Deneaux’s voice drift up. “Michael, are you well? I’m sorry about your friend, but I believe I’ve figured out how to shut this off now.”
“You know I’d love to give it a try, but now the rope is gone.”
“Pity. I’d like to wish you good luck, Michael, but I wouldn’t mean it. C’est la vie.”
Tommy was about to shout something when I placed my index finger over my mouth. “She thinks you’re dead, let her think that.”
“Fucking heartless bitch,” Tommy was muttering as he walked away.
I shook my head. It was like listening to a toddler swear for the first time; simultaneously hilarious and frightening. Frightening, only because you hoped your spouse wouldn’t come home while the baby you were tasked with watching was now running around the house shrieking at the top of her lungs, “fucking shit, fucking shit!” after mimicking your earlier outburst.
It was one time—I can’t be held accountable for that…
The Red Sox had just given up the tying run in the top half of the ninth and I was stressed out. This gets worse because Nicole wouldn’t stop, no matter how much I cajoled her or tried to bribe her…or even scold her. Probably because every time she said it, I would giggle uncontrollably. There is just something endearing about a baby swearing. Maybe it’s because they have no idea what they’re saying, or maybe it’s just because of the sound of their infant voices saying something so scathing.
Who knows? But if Tracy came home and her daughter was running around screaming that profanity, I was going to end up sleeping at a friend’s for the next couple of days. Which ultimately made no sense since she swore like a sailor on drunken shore leave her own self. Nicole wouldn’t stop. Most babies move on quickly to their next point of distraction. Not Nicole, she held onto that phrase like a Bible thumper to the scripture. “Shit, shit, shit.” I was running my hands through my hair. My eyes were looking down to the bathroom and the medicine cabinet. Nicole followed me down that hallway swearing the entire time. I’m sure it didn’t help that my shoulders were rising up and down as I laughed.
“Stop it,” I admonished her, turning around and sticking my finger in her face as I got down to her level.
“Fucking shit,” she answered me.
“Wonderful.” I stood back up and went to that medicine cabinet, hoping we had what I was looking for. “Bingo,” I said as I grabbed the bottle of Nyquil. “Want some cherry-soda?” I asked her. With my small swearing machine in tow I headed to the kitchen. “I’m going to burn in hell for this,” I said as I dumped some of the cold medicine into her sippy cup with some cola.
Her face wrinkled up as a taste she enjoyed was very much tainted with the bitterness of the medicine. Apparently the pull of sugar was stronger than the repulsion of the sour drug, because she drank everything. I washed out her cup to get rid of any residual smell. I thought my plan was going to backfire for a moment as the sugar coursed through her body; she ran around like she was hopped up on pack of Pixy Stix. Then, as if I was watching a wind-up toy on its last few turns, she began to slow and finally crash.
“‘Bout fucking time,” I said softly, and with a sigh of relief, as she laid her head down on the floor on top of her stuffed giraffe.
The Sox were in the bottom of the twelfth just as Tracy pulled up. I could hear the car in the driveway. I looked over to Nicole who was still sleeping peacefully, her mouth moving as if she were chewing or maybe saying something in her dream. I’ll swear to this day it looked a lot like “fucking shit.”
“How was everything?” Tracy asked as she came in, placing her keys on the small table next to the door. By the way, this was a concept I had yet to grasp no matter how many times I lost my own keys.
“Great,” I said softly, pointing to Nicole’s prone figure. “Holy shit!” I yelled as Wade Boggs lifted a ball up and over the Green Monster.
“Mike, you know how I feel about you swearing in front of her. Kids pick that stuff up.” She walked to the kitchen to put down the bag of groceries she was carrying.
Nicole had one eye open and was looking at me, a knowing smile across her lips.
“You little shit,” I said quietly.
“Mr. T, what now?” Tommy’s question pulled me from a much more happy time.
“Sorry, just took a little trip down memory lane,” I said.
“Don’t worry, it wasn’t enough medicine to even make her go to sleep.”
“When this is over, you and me are going to have a little talk. Forget it. I don’t even want to know how you knew. Whether you were in my head or watching I don’t want to know. What we’re going to do now I’m not sure.”
Chapter Sixteen – Mrs. Deneaux
“Never thought I was going to get rid of those twits. One down, one to go,” she said.
She looked through the small viewing port as what she believed to be Tommy ignited from the inferno designed to reduce all manner of organic material. This would then quickly be sucked up into the specially designed filtration system.
“Too bad it wasn’t Michael, or that they had both come down at the same time. That would have been perfect.” She smoked a cigarette and waited for the incinerator to cool down to acceptable levels so she could yell up at Michael.
She closed the door and hit the automatic button to the side of the door that lit the incinerator up manually. What Dixon hadn’t told her when he had brought her on a tour of the facility was that it had a fail-safe and would only blaze for fifteen minutes before automatically shutting down in order to avoid overheating.
“You get through that and I’ll truly be impressed.” She was staring into the vortex of blue-red flame. She knew she wasn’t out of the woods quite yet, but she was a lot closer now than she had been. If she were to escape with Michael and Tommy, the time would invariably come when he would ask her the questions he’d been meaning to; in all likelihood, that was the only reason he had even bothered to bring her with him. It seemed he always felt the need for closure. She felt a momentary pang of regret as she walked out of the room, but only because she had lost a protective layer from her most immediate threats.
&nb
sp; “On your own again, Vivian. Well, it’s not like it’s the first time.”
She poked her head out and looked up and down the corridor. When she realized she was alone she headed quickly for an emergency door that could only be opened from inside. It had a two-man guard station that had been under video surveillance. To go out this way not during an emergency involved multiple clearances and a thorough pat down to ensure no valuable data or equipment was leaving with you. The guards were long gone, and with the computers out of commission, so was the camera’s feed. She flipped it off anyway. She swept her keycard past the reader. The light stayed a steady red until she also entered in a seven-digit code that even the guards wouldn’t have known.
She stepped into the escape corridor. It was impossibly long, measuring over three football fields. She could barely make out the far end, but what she could see from here looked clear.
“Now what?” she asked herself in a rare moment of self-doubt.
If she let the door shut, there was no way to open it from this side. The chances of Michael following were slim, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other personnel in the bowels of the facility looking for an exit—or even a few hundred zombies for that matter. If, for whatever reason, she couldn’t get the far door open, or something was already in the dim hallway with her, she would have no avenue for escape. The trepidation had her frozen for a moment, and that angered her to no end. In her mind, inaction was far worse than a wrong choice. She dragged one of the guard’s chairs over and wedged it in between the door and the frame.
“I still have this,” she said, pulling her pistol free from its holster. “Hell or high water…let’s get going.”
She plodded a slow and steady course, keeping a constant vigil ahead and behind her. When she got to the far side, she let out a small laugh as she looked at a regular door with a push bar, the same as any door you’d find in a school or public building. There was no keycard or codes necessary. Her fear was unfounded. She pushed it open and stuck her head out into an underground garage. There were a few government vehicles and not much more. She came back in and looked the way she had come. Now she was wishing that she’d had enough faith to go on with the escape door closed. She took a step as if to go and undo what she had done and thought better of it.
“Always forward, Vivian, never look back. What’s done is done.” She stepped out into the garage.
Chapter Seventeen – Mike Journal Entry 8
“Man, that’s hot,” I said for the tenth time.
“How many times are you going to touch the door and pull your fingers from the heat?”
“Probably just a few more times.” I winced as I once again yanked my scorched digits away.
Tommy just shook his head. “She was going to kill me.” He’d said that about as many times as I’d touched that damned door.
“I told you, I’m sure she was really hoping it was me.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“No? I mean, because it would make me feel better if it had been you she was trying to kill more than me.”
“Really?” he asked so forlornly.
I lied and told him, “No, not really.”
I placed my hand against the door again, this time feeling that it wasn’t as hot. “I think it’s running out of fuel or something.” I was pretty sure that I burned my eyebrows off as I opened the door to investigate. That is, if the smell of burnt hair was any indicator.
“Is that smell you?” Tommy was blocking his nose.
“I would think that odor would be right up your alley after some of the crap you eat,” I told him as I slammed the incinerator door shut. “Think I might wait a while before I try that again.”
“I give it a minute,” Tommy replied.
“Do you think the incinerator goes off with the power?” I asked, staring at the door. The pull to open it almost overrode the chance of getting burned again. Almost.
“I don’t know…maybe.”
“She said there was a pressure switch. That has to be electronic, right?”
“Not necessarily, it could just open up a valve that allows forced gas to shoot in and be ignited by a pilot light.”
“You think? It’s got to be an electronic ignition, doesn’t it?”
“Is it worth taking a chance with your life?”
I wasn’t seeing a whole bunch of options. We had to wait until the batteries ran out; we’d be bathed in a complete and utter darkness. Then I was going to get into a tube that would hurtle me two floors down into a potential blaze. Even if I survived the fall, and there was no fire, I’d be in an area with which I had no clue of the layout. There could be zombies all around and I’d never know it, except for the smell, and that wasn’t going to tell me specifically where they were, just a general location. Fucking Deneaux was probably halfway to a beach house in Malibu by now, sipping a margarita. There was a high probability that, even if we made it down, we’d wander around the basement like we were in ancient catacombs, forever searching for a way to escape. That was the kind of crap legends were made from.
“Bunsen burners!” I shouted out loud.
“Is that some new sort of swear word, Mr. T?”
“This is a lab, right? They have to have some sort of thing to heat up test tubes and stuff to light them with, right? We’re going to need them soon, ‘cause I don’t want to end up lost in some catacombs like in Zelda when Travis had to help me out.”
“Catacombs? Zelda? Are you talking about a video game?” Tommy asked.
“Maybe. Just help me find something that makes a flame.”
It didn’t take too particularly long until we came across what we were looking for. The benches set into the walls around the far side had the burners built in and these were attached to a gas supply—probably the same one that burned the stuff that went wrong. We eventually found the older equipment in one of the tables we were using as a stop against the zombies. In it were portable burners and small containers of propane.
“Oh, thank you,” I said, kissing the bottle and looking up. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m scared of that kind of darkness, it’d be unnatural not to be.”
“I didn’t say anything. I don’t like it either. I once was under Paris in the catacombs for almost two weeks.”
“Did you mean to be?”
“No, I was chasing Eliza during World War I.”
“In the catacombs?”
“She would drag victims down there so she could take her time feeding, ended up being dozens of them.”
I shivered involuntarily as a crawling spider sensation traveled up my spine and settled at the base of my neck. “How’d you get lost?”
“She caught on that I was following her, so she grabbed a young woman right off the streets in broad daylight and dragged her kicking and screaming into that hellhole. She knew I would follow and do all I could to help that poor woman. My sister knew her way around that maze like she’d built it. We made turn after turn to the point where I couldn’t even begin to recollect how we had got there. My mind was so preoccupied with the cries of the woman, she was slowly bleeding. When she felt she had lured me in far enough, she ripped the body of that poor soul wide open. My senses had been completely overwhelmed by the smell and the sight. I did all that I could to save that poor girl, but there was little I could do except hold her head as she died. By the time I laid her on the ground, Eliza was long gone. I stood and looked around, realizing I was in a convergence of tunnels and each and every one of them could have been the one that brought me to my present location.”
“I thought Deneaux was bad. You were in there for two weeks? How? How did you get out?”
“The hunger. I caught a few rats, but the longing, it was almost more than I could bear. I thought my stomach was going to rip through my midsection. Some teenagers came down into the maze-like crypt on a dare, even back then they were dumb and did all sorts of stupid things. I smelled them, and at first they were so incredibly f
ar away. I stumbled toward them like a drunk to a blessed bottle. They were smoking stale cigarettes and drinking cheap wine, daring each other to go further. One of them named Pieter did. He had an old lighter he was using as a torch. I felt his fear as it illuminated my face. He was too frozen to cry out, to run, to defend himself. I’m so ashamed.” Tommy turned away.
I’d seen the beginnings of tears watering his eyes. I knew how the rest of this story went even if he didn’t finish it.
“He was just a kid, Mr. T, younger than Travis. I couldn’t control myself.” His hands were now shaking.
“It’s okay, Tommy. You don’t need to continue.”
“I do, Mr. T, because it didn’t just stop with him. His blood coursing through me triggered something animalistic, something barbaric. His friends were calling out for him when they could no longer see his small torch. They were coming closer, laughing and shoving each other, even as I drank deep. Pieter’s eyes were fluttering as I drained him of his essence. His mouth was moving, I believe he was trying to warn them. I didn’t care…I wanted them to come closer. There were three more boys. I didn’t stop until they all became permanent residents of those confines.” Tommy was crying like I’d never seen before.
What could I tell him? Wasn’t like I could pull out the standard, “Well at least no one died” line that I had used countless times with my daughter’s myriads of dramas as she grew up. He’d killed four youths, and even if they were dumber than shit for going down into that vast underground wasteland, they sure didn’t deserve to become a vampire’s meal.
“Why are you telling me this, Tommy? It serves no purpose.”
“Because…” He attempted to compose himself. “Because I would rather that incinerator be on than to have to go through that again.”
That I could understand. Was it even conceivable that we could be lost for that long? How long does a Bunsen burner burn? I needed to distract Tommy from his present dark mood. He seemed to be spiraling even further down the rabbit hole that he had dug for himself.
