Etna Station

by Mark Tufo

  “I honestly have no idea,” I told her. “I’m just throwing my thoughts in, and I’m sorry for that, but you two seem very fond of this bear. I’m having a hard time seeing the upside to bringing her to the suburbs of Boston. More people, more zombies, fewer woods, and what happens when she runs out of Cap’n Crunch?”

  Harold looked at his wife. Nicole had come up with Wesley in her hands; she had to reach up to pet the bear’s face. There was no part of me that didn’t want to scream at her to get away from the wild grizzly. The baby’s face led me to believe either he thought he was looking at the world’s largest stuffed animal or he was constipated. To me, ThornGrip seemed a little too interested in smelling the baby.

  “Uh, Nicole,” I said turning her way.

  “Relax, dad. They’re bonding.”

  “I used to have that bonding moment when your mom made meatloaf. He’s sniffing at your son like he’s a Tootsie Roll.”

  Wesley reached a hand out and grabbed a fistful of bear lip. He pulled away, exposing huge canines.

  “So, nobody else thinks this is a bad idea?” I asked.

  Wesley thought this was funny as hell and began to bounce his hand up and down, making a motorboat sound and slinging a lot of bear spit around. Justin, upon seeing his nephew having so much fun, thought maybe Avalyn might get a kick out of the bear as well. I’ve been accused of a rash act or seventeen in my life, but this was seemingly notched up. ThornGrip’s demeanor changed swiftly; Avalyn and Justin were about ten feet away when she turned, quickly pulling away from Wesley. She took two large sniffs and bristled. Justin had been so focused on the soft, pink baby he was carrying over to the carnivore, he had not taken note of the bear’s change.

  “Far enough, Justin.” I was moving to intercede, my arm extended out to physically stop him.

  “I just want the baby to see her,” he said, looking at me like I’d kept him from the balloon twister.

  “No closer.”

  Nicole had backed away as well, sensing the shift. Maybe it was me, but I got the distinct impression that bear was afraid. A scared chipmunk is one thing; they’ll scurry off. A scared bear? Well, I’m not sure.

  “What’s the matter, girl?” Harold asked as he saw what had my attention.

  “Justin, back away.”

  “It’s just a baby,” he said as if we needed the point reiterated.

  Avalyn was staring at that bear, and not in any sort of curious baby way, either. I could just about see the wheels in her head turning as she was thinking. ThornGrip snorted again and stomped her right paw down hard. I, for one, heard: “Stay away.” Better yet, “Get away from me or I’m going to crush that baby.”

  “She’s just a baby!” Justin was getting mad like he was offended by the bear’s preference to Wesley.

  She was a baby, no doubting that, but she was more as well–we just didn’t know what yet. Were we like kids running around with sparklers in a dynamite factory? You know, it’s all fun and games until shit goes boom.

  The scene was getting increasingly tense, Justin had wisely, if not happily, moved away, but ThornGrip had not calmed. If the bear charged we would be hard-pressed to stop her; most likely several of us would die trying, but we’d try nonetheless.

  “We should be going,” Mabel said.

  Riley and Ben Ben said their goodbyes; Patches sat on the roof of one of the cars. Her tail swished back and forth as if she’d like to say goodbye as well, but that was beneath her.

  “Zombies are closing.” Mad Jack had pulled up our surrounding area again.” That was the perfect opportunity to go our separate ways. I wished them luck and thanked them for saving our asses.

  “You know where we’re at if you need anything,” Harold said. I thought Mabel was going to pull out those knitting needle eyes again for even offering. Did she get the same vibe from Avalyn that ThornGrip had or was it merely because ThornGrip had reacted the way she had?

  “Same,” I told him as I shook his hand.

  2

  Mike Journal Entry 2

  We’d parted company some forty-five minutes previously; our caravan was now nearly halfway across the state of Massachusetts. I’d had to take backtrack and take a detour up route 190 as what looked like a jumbo jet had completely obliterated all of the lanes and left an impassable crater. We were now crossing the state on route 2 which put us close to New Hampshire. Two steps forward and one step backwards and shit.

  “We going to talk about what we just saw?” Tracy asked.

  I knew where she was going with this but I didn’t want to go down that road. “Yeah, that was an awful friendly bear. You think she was a circus animal? Seems strange that she would be that alright around people.”

  “Mike.”

  “I don’t think it’s right, circuses having animals, especially since most treated them pretty bad or were at least neglectful. Big animals need space.”

  “I can punch pretty hard,” she said.

  This I knew. We’d played a game or two of Slug Bug and I would lightly tap her on the shoulder when I saw one and she would generally hit back the same way–unless she was losing. Then I got some of the full brunt of her poor sportsmanship. Like, she was trying to make up for her lack of numbers with force of contact. Travis was even worse when he was playing football in school. He actively looked for Volkswagens and took it as a challenge to deliver as jarring a jolt as he could every time he saw one. Got so that I flinched every time there was oncoming traffic.

  “What specifically do you want to talk about?” I asked. I learned this tactic a long time ago. When a woman says she wants to “talk,” it is extremely better to let her clearly initiate the discussion. I cannot tell you how many times I stupidly opened with things that weren’t relevant and there’s no getting those worms back in that can. Once her real agenda had been settled, we would then have to “talk” about my presumed topics.

  “The baby! That huge bear was afraid of that baby.”

  “Her name is Avalyn.”

  “Don’t…don’t. Not just yet. I don’t want to get attached to it just yet.”

  “It?” I asked.

  “You’re avoiding the issue.”

  “Sure am,” I said proud that I was being honest as well as clearly understood.

  “An eight-hundred-pound bear was scared of an infant. Don’t you think maybe we should be, too?” she asked.

  “It’s cause for concern, I agree, but what do we do about it? We can’t just leave her on the side of the road.”

  Tracy was quiet. Too quiet.

  “Woman!”

  “What! That baby is nothing to us! There’s something off about her. The way she peers at you like she knows what’s going on. I don’t care if it’s selfish or not, Michael, I’m not willing to risk the well-being of my family for what could be a zombie baby.”

  I wasn’t sure what I could say here. I was cautious of the baby; maybe wary is a better word. What if I argued for her and she did end up hurting someone, even inadvertently? Tracy would never forgive me. But she was still a baby. She cooed, drank milk, formula in this case, fussed…all the things you would expect an infant to do. Did we even try to test her? Did we, I don’t know, find some tripe or entrails and see what she thought about that? I mean, if she started digging into some disgusting shit then I might have to reevaluate my stance. As of now, she seemed like a normal, weird-staring, bear-scaring baby.

  “I’m not sure what you want me to say here,” I told her.

  Nicole was in the car with us. “Dad, you know I usually have your back, right?”

  “But?”

  “She was born after Wesley and she’s already bigger.”

  “What’s that mean? It’s not like you’re a large woman,” I weakly argued. “And who is going to tell Justin that we’re leaving the baby? He’s grown mighty fond of her.”

  “Too fond,” Tracy threw out there.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” I said.

  “Somewhere in
him he still houses the virus, right?” was what she said. “Wouldn’t it make sense he would want to protect her? I’m not saying it’s a conscious thing.”

  “You’re saying that instinctually the virus in him is protecting the virus within her?” I hated that I’d said it because it made sense. “I know Justin; you give that argument and you’d better be prepared. We tell him we don’t want the baby in the group anymore, he’s likely to leave with her.”

  “What about Deneaux?”

  “What about her?”

  “She’d take care of it. We force her out with the baby.”

  “What the….You two are scaring the shit out of me! You’d loose that psychopath on a baby? And what about her makes you think she’d do it? Leave and watch the baby?”

  “She’s not a baby! Wesley is a baby, Zachary is a baby. That thing is an abomination and I wish you’d never brought it back.” Well. That was out there.

  “We’re going to stop this conversation now because I’m not going to do anything about it today and probably not tomorrow, either. I’m not going to do anything to, with, or about that baby until I get a reason to.”

  “I swear to you, Mike, if you wait until it’s too late and she hurts someone it will be a moment you regret forever, on more than one front.”

  I almost pulled the car over, her response was so visceral and charged with animosity. I had just had those thoughts, but hearing them spoken out loud made me sick. I wanted to put some distance between us before any real damage was done. Even thought about asking her if she wanted to ride in a different car.

  “Mike, pick up–this is Mad Jack.”

  “I’m listening,” I told him.

  “We’ve got about a dozen cars and trucks to our six.”

  “How far back?”

  “Five point two miles. They’re doing about eighty.”

  I was doing sixty-five, about as fast as I dared go on a roadway that had no upkeep and had more than one hazard littered across it.

  “There’s an exit five miles up. Spread the word–we’ll take that and let them go on by.”

  “And if they don’t?” he asked.

  “Fuck me,” I muttered. I was getting asked a lot of questions today, most of which I did not have answers for. “We’ll deal with it when the time comes.”

  “Yeah, Mike. Wouldn’t want to plan ahead or anything,” Tracy said with a lingering simmer to her voice. What I wouldn’t have given to have a VW pass by just then. No pulled punches this time.

  “What would you have me do?” I was getting a little pissed myself. “I don’t think we can outrun them, and if their vehicles are full they outman us. Would you rather we circled the wagons and prepared for a fight?”

  She said nothing.

  “Oh, isn’t that convenient. Give me crap for making a decision but then don’t offer an alternative.” Why I felt the need to push it, I’m not really sure. “It’s easy to sit back and fault the choices of others if you’re never on the hook yourself. And while we’re at it, maybe I’m sick of making all the hard ones.”

  “Watch where you’re going with this, Mike. We do things together; we make decisions together. When you do something it’s because I agree with it. Otherwise, we don’t.”

  Hard to argue with that. Now normally, Tracy and I were on the same page so things seemed to flow easily enough; it was when we were reading different books that the waters got murky, choppy, and almost hurricane-like. I wisely said nothing else. Anything out of my mouth now was mired in gasoline, while Tracy held a blow torch.

  I pulled off the highway and followed the sign that assured me Wendy’s was in a quarter mile. If only. We pulled behind the long, unmanned drive-thru.

  “I’ve got three minutes of feed left,” MJ replied.

  “And…?” BT prodded.

  “It’s going to be close if they get to the exit before that,” he said.

  Deneaux was in her normal pose. Pistol on hood, leaning back against the car, head upturned, smoke billowing around her like a protective cloud. It was going to be a tense few minutes; those that could fight were outside, down behind the cars for just that eventuality. Those that could not were ducked inside for flight, if that became necessary.

  “Ten seconds.”

  “They slowing down?” BT asked.

  I had gone to the corner of the building to attempt a visual, should they come this way. I was beginning to hate Deneaux’s viewing box. I’d once considered this gadget to be the greatest gift that could be bestowed upon us, our small advantage. But it also caused me massive indecision; it was constantly making me second guess and alter what little plans I’d felt forced to prepare. Our movements were constantly being directed, or at least heavily weighted by what we could see on this viewer, and it cost us the power of spontaneous action. Our intuition was dismissed; now we had to go with what we knew, never again by what we felt. That gut reaction is a powerful Human force; maybe we just weren’t supposed to know. It was like those fucking Cyclopes that had traded an eye to divine the future but were tricked into only knowing their deaths; the inevitability of that final drop dictating their lives. Typical Deneaux. She appears as if she’s helping with one hand while the other is honing away at a boning knife she is planning on driving into the side of your neck the second you’re of no use to her own plans.

  I saw BT and Gary coming over; that did not bode well. Deneaux eyed her pistol to make sure it had not moved. Justin and Travis were setting up a perimeter around the kids. Tracy had just pulled her charging handle back, she threw a glower at me, as if this were somehow my fault; partly it was. I’d decided to pull over. All things being equal, I’d rather be here than get into it on the highway with no cover. Car metal is pretty thin and bullets have no problem going through it.

  “Here they come,” BT said. It was a large tractor-trailer, Allied Moving company actually, though I was pretty sure they weren’t delivering furniture to the Hamptons. “How many, you think?” he asked as he rested his barrel on a small cement wall built to hide the trash bin.

  “Tough to say. I can’t imagine they’ve got troops riding in the back of that thing, unless it’s been retrofitted, so there shouldn’t be more than two or three in each truck.” The truck was loud, air brakes booming as it came down the exit ramp. “Go right…” I urged. It turned left.

  “I don’t think they heard you,” BT said. “I don’t see any others.” The truck had made the turn and was coming straight toward us, yet there were no other cars behind it. They weren’t here for the lunch menu. If they were, indeed, looking for us and knew where we were, it made no sense to bring the one truck, which had stopped suddenly, halfway between us and the highway ramp.

  “They’re just sitting there. What are they waiting for?” Gary asked.

  And that was a good question. If they got off the highway to take a piss, which also made no sense by the way, why were they just sitting in the truck?

  “They looking for a little alone time?” BT asked.

  “Shit. Let’s go.” I tapped BT on the shoulder.

  “Where?”

  “It’s a trap. The rest of them will be coming around from the other exit ramp. These guys are here to delay us, hem us in…keep an eye on us, whatever.”

  “Hold on a second.” BT was thinking.

  “Man, we don’t have time for that.”

  “MJ, how far to the next exit?” BT asked across the small parking lot.

  “Eleven miles,” he answered. That was the beauty of Route 2, the lack of exits.

  “That’s all great and fine, BT, but there’s no guarantee they’re going to drive all that way. They could be coming through the woods right across from the highway while we are sitting here.”

  “They’re going to drive. They’re overconfident and cocky…add in a little dose of lazy.”

  “How the hell do you know?” I asked.

  “Because I was a cop. Victimizers always think they are one step ahead of their victims. Plus, criminals ar
e just fucking lazy. They’d rather take from others than do for themselves, that’s how I know. There’s no way they’re hiking.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We leave Deneaux here, maybe with Gary, to keep an eye on who is in that truck and so they can report back that we’re just waiting them out. Then you, me, Tommy and a few others go out to meet these assholes on our terms.”

  “Lots of unknowns, buddy. Like what if there are more men in the back of that truck or those two have a grenade launcher. And even if they have more traditional arms and it’s only the two of them, we have no idea what the rest of us are going to be running into.” I had depended on that real-time view screen long enough to fear the unknown, and BT called me out on it.

  “Never seen you afraid of a fight, Mike,” BT said.

  “I don’t like having all these non-combatants in the fold; it changes the dynamic. Gary and Deneaux get overrun, there’s not much left to mount a defense.”

  “So, we doing this?” he asked already knowing I was just spinning my wheels here.

  “Of course. I’m leaving one of my boys here too, though. I’d feel better, and I’ve got a feeling Justin won’t want to leave that baby behind.”

  3

  Mike Journal Entry 3

  We backed away from the wall slowly. I laid out my simple plan and then we took a small side road that cut away from the truck and any possible prying eyes. We were making a good clip and I was doing the math of the other trucks rolling the eleven miles to the next exit and how far they would dare to come back before the noise of their engines gave them away. Figured they would stop a mile and a half, maybe two miles away and then sneak the rest of the way in on foot. We set up our ambush about a mile away from the Wendy’s, and we had to really hump it to beat my estimated time of their arrival.

  “Holy shit, dad! You been working on your cardio?” Travis asked as he leaned against a tree to catch his breath.

  Tommy looked as if he’d gone for a stroll, BT was walking it off, making sure from my angle I couldn’t see the heaving in his chest. Meredith may or may not have retched behind a large oak. I would have answered my son, but I had a stitch in my side that was threatening to rip open. And what about those little warnings from the body? Who needs them. About as useless as the nutritional information on a Twinkie. Let’s be honest, you know what’s in it just by looking at that creamy filling. Maybe reading the label, skipping all the big chemical words, makes you feel like you give a shit, but you’re still going to eat the Twinkie. Hell, there’s a death warning on the side of cigarettes. They were the first things looted from the shops.