by Mark Tufo
There was a long pause.
"Umm, this is where you two are supposed to ask what the options are."
"Okay, I'll play," Paul said. "What are these options?"
"I can kill you where you stand." Paul and Alex tensed. "Damn near made you both piss your pants didn't I?" he cackled again.
"Fucking hilarious!" Paul yelled hoping that the increased volume hurt their captor's ears.
"Or you can let me come with you."
"Well, let's see." Alex said. "You kill us or we let you come with us. Hmm, let me think."
"Ah, not really funny Alex," Paul said, putting his hands back up in the air.
"Who are you?" Alex asked.
"Answer me first."
"Fine, you can come with us," Alex said.
"Great, I was starting to get a little lonely." It was tough to describe the man that walked out of the woods being that he was fully clothed in a gilly suit. (A specially designed camouflage for elite snipers.) "They call me Mad Jack. Well actually I call myself Mad Jack. I was going to go with Mad Max but that Mel fellow already used it and I wanted something unique."
"Is that a toy?" Paul asked, pointing at the red tipped 'machine pistol' Mad Jack was holding.
"It is most certainly not a toy!" Mad Jack said indignantly. "It shoots air soft pellets at 325 feet per second at the cyclical rate of 125 rounds per minute. It can cause quite the stinger if it hits a vital area."
"Crazy Jack might have been a better name," Alex said, grabbing his rifle off the ground.
"What are you doing out here Cra…I mean Mad Jack?" Paul asked.
"Had to take a piss, been drinking since the sun came up."
"With a directional microphone?" Alex asked.
"Oh yeah, let me get that." Mad Jack turned back around and went into the woods.
"He's friggen crazy, Paul. We should just get out of here."
"Still have my ear piece on!" Mad Jack yelled back from the woods.
"Just kidding," Alex replied.
Mad Jack came out of the woods with an impressive array of equipment. "I was a techie nerd. Worked for the State Department before the biters came. Been ransacking Radio Shacks ever since."
Now that the threat was over, Paul walked over to look in the van to see what wares Mad Jack might possess. "Holy shit!" Paul exclaimed.
Mad Jack looked down at the ground. "Yeah, I really like Schlitz."
"Must be twenty or thirty cases of the stuff."
"Thirty-two." Mad Jack answered.
"I'll ride with MJ," Paul said happily.
Alex walked up to Mad Jack just as he pulled off his headgear. He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties and as far as men go would be considered on the plus side of the good looking column. Not Brad Pitt but definitely better than Quasimodo. The relief in MJ's eyes was evident. He had been alone for a long time. They shook hands.
"What brings you out this way, Mad Jack?" Alex asked.
"Had an apartment in Kansas City before the city burned to the ground. Been on the road ever since. Seen some things that I can't unsee," he answered vacantly.
"That's the way of the world now," Paul answered, coming up to the duo. "Is that the only weapon you've been using?" Paul asked, pointing to the pellet gun.
"This thing is bad assed," Mad Jack said, plowing some rounds into the side of the tractor trailer. They bounced off hollowly. "See!" he said proudly.
"How?" Paul asked, shaking his head, meaning how had MJ survived so long.
After a few moments when the occupants of the truck realized that there was no immediate threat, they took the opportunity to stretch their legs and to meet the stranger.
Mad Jack could not keep his eyes off of April. She didn't seem to mind all that much but she remained guarded all the same.
"Oh, get a room." Mrs. Devereaux said, lighting a cigarette.
Mad Jack blushed.
"We really should get going," Marta said to Alex. Alex was inclined to agree. Standing in the open was an invitation for trouble.
"I'm glad you're letting me come with you," Mad Jack blurted out.
"Yeah, it's a good thing we said yes," Paul stated sarcastically. "It would have been a bitch treating all those red welts if you had opened fire."
"Which direction you headed?" Joann asked.
"Whichever way you are. I've only been wandering since I left home," MJ told her.
"Oh great, another mouth to feed for nothing," Mrs. Devereaux said.
"As opposed to all you bring to the table," April said sharply.
Paul would argue that they were both dead weight but he was not going to get in the middle of a catfight.
Mad Jack spoke up before things got really heated. "I know how to stop the zombies."
"That settles that. Let's get going," Alex said.
THE END…FOR NOW
BEFORE THE AFTERWORD - MIKE AND RON -
It was a typical fall night in New England, mid-40's and cool. Mike was enjoying the start of his sophomore year at the University of Massachusetts, which typically involved entirely too much partying and entirely too little studying. His roommate and best friend Paul was at a social function for his girlfriend Amy's Sorority house. Mike's girlfriend at the time, Jamie, had gone back home to North Attleboro for the weekend. As was typical, Mike's dorm room door was open and The Who was singing loudly about Joining the Band over the stereo.
"Mike! Mike! Turn that down."
Mike's face was buried in a Sports Illustrated and had not heard Peter Cables from the room two doors down. Pete actually had to grab Mike's shoulder before he realized that someone else was in the room.
"Hey Pete!" Mike yelled.
"You mind?" Pete asked heading to the stereo.
"No, go ahead," Mike said putting his magazine down.
With the volume down to a dull roar, a somewhat normal conversational tone could be taken. "Hey Mike what you got going on tonight?" Pete asked.
"Whole bunch of nothing. Paul's at some dance and my girl's gone home."
"Me, Brian and Dean are going to get an ounce of 'shrooms;' you want to go in on it?"
"I'm in!" Mike got up, closed up his room and went on over to Pete's room.
"Hey Mike," Dean said. "Want a beer?" he asked, opening up a mini fridge stuffed to the gills with Budweiser.
At that time, Mike wasn't nearly the beer snob then that he would grow up to be. "Sure, thanks."
After a few minutes, Pete returned with a baggie half full of mushrooms.
"Threw in a few for free." Pete said proudly.
"Sweet." Brian said.
Pete divided the piles into four somewhat even, lumpy approximations of each other. "Bon appétit," he said, grabbing his pile and shoving the whole mass into his mouth.
The grimace he made as he chewed them down attested to the fact of why people generally cook these in brownies. Considering they were living in a dorm and didn't have access to an oven, this would have to do.
Mike grabbed his pile and took a more manageable amount, chewing and swigging beer as he tried to wash the foul taste from his mouth. A little card playing and a beer or two later and the full effects of the psychedelics began to kick in. Mike began to feel that surreal detachment from reality. A ring of light pressure formed around his eyes. This was Mike's tell-tale sign he had crossed over into the realm of transcendentalism. The images on the playing cards began to take on mystic proportions and had no meaning whatsoever in the world of the sane.
"What game are we playing?" Mike asked Brian, who had completely broken out into riotous laughter.
"He doesn't even know what game we're playing," Brian said, grabbing his gut, tears streaking down his face. "Oh no!" Brian said alarmed. "Neither do I!" That got the whole room in stitches. Breathing was becoming difficult due to the excessive laughing.
For the next two hours Mike fluctuated between great introspection into the workings of the mind to pre-pubescent humor revolving around flatulence. Now that Mike contempl
ated the whole process, he thought tripping should actually be called 'skipping,' because that is what you did, you skipped from thought to thought.
Pete, in addition to being the person you should go to whenever you needed to get 'hooked up' drug wise, was also a fairly responsible young adult. He was one of three people on the entire floor who had not had his phone turned off yet. Thus, the knock on his door was not unexpected. Pete was a businessman and visitors were frequent. What was the surprise was who was at the door: Jenny Murphy. She was fodder for just about every wet dream in the building. That she lived on this floor was just bonus points. She was easily on every guy's short list for most attractive girl on campus. Sure, there were other beauties but she ranked high among them. At 5'7", jet black hair and riveting deep blue eyes, she was a vision.
The room which had been near raucous a moment before was now as silent as a convent at midnight.
"Hi Pete, can I use your phone?"
"Sure, come on in," the ever affable Pete told her.
She scanned the room looking at all of the occupants. As her gaze swept past Mike, he hoped that she couldn't read his mind full of all the lascivious fantasies that he had ever thought regarding her. The more he dwelled on it, the more convinced he was that she could do just that. Like his head was an open porno magazine and she was the centerfold looking out at him.
Jenny sat down on the couch next to Mike, the phone on the table next to her. Four guys tried their best to pretend not only that they weren't four and a half sheets to the wind but also that they weren't looking at her. It did not go very well.
Jenny got on the phone with her mother. "Hi Mom, yeah, everything is fine. I went down to WBCK today. Yeah, of course I applied for the internship." Jenny was now becoming self conscious that there was no other conversation going on in the room.
Mike, meanwhile, not having an outlet for his tripping mind, began to dive deeper and deeper into the hidden recesses of his mind, much like Alice down the rabbit hole. It was so dark and lonely in there. This was the point at which Mike realized that he had taken too strong a dose. That was the problem with mushrooms. There was no viable way to tell just how much one had taken. Sometimes one mushroom could send someone half way into orbit; at other times it could take half a bag for the same results. This seemed to be more of the former. Mike was concentrating so hard on not making an ass of himself in front of this goddess, he slipped. Holding his racing mind in check was like trying to hold a charging buffalo back with thread.
Jenny looked over at Mike. A look of horror and disgust appeared on her face as she spoke into the handset. "Mom, I've got to go," she said, hanging the phone up abruptly and quickly thanking Pete before she exited the room.
A foot long thread of drool hung from Mike's mouth and was pooling in his lap. The laughter from Pete, Brian and Dean as she left was good-natured, but it was way too late for Mike. His trip had soured. He made some excuse about going to the bathroom and never looked back. Mike was in a panic and he didn't know where to turn. He thought about going back to his room but was fearful that Pete would find him there. Mike hit the elevator button, praying to a God he didn't believe in to please make sure nobody else was in there. Having to share that tiny confined space with another human could send him over the precarious edge he was already barely holding onto.
For not being real, God really came through, the twenty-one story ride was externally completely uneventful. That all changed of course when you entered into the hyper-active over-imaginative super speed neuron firing brain of Michael Talbot. Sounds began to echo. Every time Mike moved his head, tracers formed in his vision. His sneakers sounded like tap shoes on the hard slate tiled lobby floor of his dorm.
"Outside, outside," he whispered to himself. Two co-eds walked past him giggling. Mike knew they knew he was messed up. It was easy to tell when someone was tripping. Their pupils were generally the size of small saucers. The laughs bounced around the edges of his mind. As he stepped outside the bracing breeze helped to reel his awareness in, but only temporarily. The tree-lined street he was on usually gave him comfort, reminding him of his boyhood home, but now the trees loomed ominously, their branches seeking to snatch and tear at the unsuspecting. The hallucinatory doubling of all imagery only added to the illusion.
Mike was damn near in a panic by the time he got to the massive student parking lot off of the south fields. Even in this state, Mike knew that he had had entirely too much to drink (and eat for that matter) to drive but the comfort of getting to his car could be just what he needed to turn this bad ride around. His 1976 Plymouth Fury looked like heaven, all in white resplendent with a red roof and red trim. He almost kissed the seat as he got in. Mike, however, was fearful to put the key in the ignition in case some extremely bad timing brought the campus police out to this deserted location. Mike would get a DUI for merely sitting there with the ignition on. If he went to jail in this state he'd never get his mind back.
"So much for putting music on," Mike said with a shiver.
For a minute all was well within, but like a mouse that burrows a hole through the sidewall of a house, stray thoughts began to first leak out and then chip through the wall Mike had erected. Structural damage ensued. Mike's meager defenses crashed in around him, and just as fast as he got in he got out. Mike took long breaths, believing that he had not been able to get enough air inside the car.
Mike found himself in a huge parking lot surrounded by cars, any one of which could be hiding a 7-foot clown with white face paint and a machete. The gravel he walked on was so loud he could barely think. He didn't realize, that was a good thing. Mike's heart was racing as he kept his head down, fearful to look at the trees. They were moving but it had more to do with the wind than Mike's bad perception. That mattered little at this point.
Back onto the slate tile of the lobby, thank God for muscle memory. He pulled his student ID out of his pocket and showed it to the security guard who took a cursory glance. Security was composed of students who would much rather be having a good time than any type of officiating, but money is money.
Mike got to the elevators where three other students waited. "Can't do it," he muttered, and immediately went into the stairwell. He soon realized the error of his ways as the echoes his psychosis was producing in that enclosed cement area now had their own echoes. Twenty-one flights up he went. The smell of sweaty fear pervaded his entire being. He poked his head out the door hoping nobody would be in the hallway. He rushed to his door and fumbled with the keys, happy to be back in his room without getting caught.
"Okay, its midnight now, when will Paul be back, he can get me down." The reality was that Paul wouldn't be coming home tonight, he was already in bed with his girlfriend and wouldn't be leaving those confines until sometime around lunch the next day.
Mike waited three minutes, almost an eternity when your brain was racing forty-two times its normal pace. "Okay, so how mad would Jamie's parents get if I called right now?" Mike had met Jamie's parents a few times already. They were alright, maybe a little stuck up but for the most part decent. The reality was they couldn't stand Mike. They were of the Blue Blood variety, old New England money, and could not see what their daughter saw in this working class man, a common laborer at that. Mike would have called Jamie's home but he didn't think he could handle the 20-second conversation with her parents it would take to get her on the phone.
Mike huddled up in the corner of his bed, arms wrapped around his legs, one dim light on. "I don't know how long I can do this," he told himself as he rocked back and forth.
THE PAST
Put quite simply because Mike's mother had told him so, he was a mistake. Mike had three older brothers and an older sister. His brother Ron, who was fifteen years his senior, was almost a generation past Mike. Not too many teenage boys want anything at all to do with a gurgling smelly infant, and with a sister as a buffer, Ron never found himself in the position of babysitter. The years went past, and Mike's early remembrances o
f his brother were few. He was basically some guy that stopped by to do his laundry while he attended college. Now there was no physical distance in the relationship, just the distance caused by the difference in age. They loved each other as brothers do, but there also was no closeness, no bond, beyond the normal family ties. That gap only seemed to widen as Mike came into his formative teenage years, and Ron was already married and fast tracking in the corporate world. They were brothers and nothing more. That would all change in Mike's sophomore year.
BACK TO THE PRESENT
Mike was quickly running out of options and sanity. He picked up his phone, hopeful that no one was on the other line, more specifically the girl that lived in the dorm below him. Mike and Paul were not part of the trio of responsible students on that floor that had paid their phone bill. Mike knew just enough to be dangerous; he had unscrewed the phone jack and spliced into another set of phone wires until he had found a pair that worked. It wasn't the optimum scenario and they had nearly gotten busted a couple of times, but they always informed whoever they were calling that they might need to hang up abruptly and to not talk to the 'crazy chick' that got on the other line. Mike's parents were a little dubious but they let it go. Ma Bell would catch on eventually but tonight they still had service.
"Hello." A groggy, just woken up voice responded.
"Uh…uh…hi, Nancy, is Ron there?"
"He's sleeping Mike, it's late."
"So he's there?" Mike asked desperately. The lifeline had been thrown overboard, now he had to hope someone grabbed it or he might be adrift for a long time. Mike heard some fumbling with the phone being handed over and then someone, probably Nancy, getting out of bed.
"Mike?" Ron started it as a question. The last time Mike had called Ron, scratch that, Mike never called Ron. They just weren't on each other's life radar except around the holidays and Christmas was still two months away.
