by Tufo, Mark
“It was not your fault—I’ve told you that. It was an accident. If anything, it was the package delivery man’s fault.” Hannah looked at me. “He rang the doorbell and my mom turned and her weight must have shifted weird. She rolled, then broke her ankle as she fell off. He was nice, though. He came in and called 911 and waited until they showed. He must have apologized a hundred times. It was as much his fault as it was yours, Johnny, which means none at all.” I could tell she’d gone over this probably a few times a day every day.
Immobility during an attack, inability to guard your children, and subsequent panic. Never a good combination.
“My father got Johnny and myself on a truck and went back to get my mom. That was the last time we saw them,” Hannah said.
“How’d you end up here?” I asked.
“It’s our grandparents’,” she replied. “They owned a couple hundred acres next to the forest. My mom used to call my granddad the oldest kid she ever knew. He has ziplines, four wheelers, snowmobiles…just about every toy you could own.”
“The military, they brought you out here and dropped you off?” BT asked incredulously.
“Not quite. The escaping trucks were attacked. Our driver was shot. It took us close to a month to get here.”
I had a new found respect for Hannah; not that what she’d accomplished in the treehouse wasn’t significant, but having boots on the ground for that long, a small child as her charge, and getting to safety? That was a huge deal. Then they’d survived here, and she was getting enough food for the both of them.
“Are your grandparents gone?” I asked.
“Probably. They were vacationing in Scotland when this happened,” she said. “My mom got one call out to them and that was it.”
Tommy had not joined the conversation; he was over by the monitors. “I think they smell my blood.” He was pointing. I went over to look; there was a group of zombies huddled together. Two were close to the ground. It was difficult to tell, as it was getting darker and the night vision gave everything a greenish hue, along with the rain and massive crowding, but it did look like they were checking something out.
“Trackers,” I said, knowing without a doubt I was right. “Can’t smell what’s not there, though.” I was referring to our climb up the rope and ladder. Any scent of ours would have dissipated in the wind and rain. Now the question was, would they stay rooted to the last spot they’d detected their quarry, or would they move on? They had a lot of mouths to feed. A parting began to happen. The zombies, which had been in a relatively tight cluster, began to separate on the far side. It was strange; it wasn’t like they were consciously doing it. It seemed like they just so happened to make a pathway. Wasn’t long before I got an answer as to why. Skinnier, big-brained zombies were coming through.
“Shriekers,” I muttered. I broke out in a sweat, dreading the ice pick agony I was about to receive. Hannah moved quickly and came up beside me.
“Johnny, screamers.” The boy ran toward the coolers. He opened a drawer and pulled out two baseball hats, both completely covered in tin foil. He ran across the room and handed her one before donning his own.
He was looking at us. “Don’t you guys have one?” Sounded like he thought we were dolts for not. I shook my head.
He ran back to the drawer and pulled out a roll of tinfoil that looked more like a promotional item from one of the large bulk food warehouses.
“Hurry,” Hannah said, moving toward him. “You’ve got to cover your frontal lobe. It should be three sheets thick, but even one dampens it considerably.” She was ripping hunks off and hastily fashioning headgear.
We’d all experienced that pain before and were eagerly helping. I was just placing my hat on as the first piercing cry ripped through. The bliss that followed as I put the hat over my head was nearly indescribable.
“How did you know?” Tommy asked.
“Funny guy told us,” Johnny said before his sister could.
“White hair, long ponytail, reeked of weed?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
Hannah’s mouth opened in surprise; she wanted to know how I knew. And I wanted to know how they had run across Trip.
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“A few weeks, maybe a month ago. I was out looking for food. I saw this man; he was barefoot, dancing down the middle of the roadway. I stayed hidden in the trees, but he stopped across from me and lit an, umm…” She looked at Johnny.
“We know,” I told her.
“He sat down, kept smoking, then pulled out a bag of potato chips.” She again looked at Johnny. “I hate to admit this, but I almost shot him so I could get the chips. They were sour cream and onion flavored. I mean, I hate onions, and still, my mouth was watering at the thought. Then he told me I should come out. I figured it was a trap.”
“Should have shot him,” BT grunted. I shouldered him to silence.
“He told me he didn’t have any weapons; he emptied all his pockets. It was all basically food and drugs. I still don’t know how he was carrying all of it plus that big thing of tin foil you just used. I mean, he didn’t even have a backpack.”
“Mike,” BT started, “where did he have that box?”
I knew he was fucking with my neurosis, and still, I couldn’t do anything to stop the runaway train that took off with that thought. I knew that Trip had that either stashed in the front or the back of his pants, and both areas gave me the willies. Now I was trying to think how much direct contact I’d had with the outside of that foil box and how long could microbes survive away from the host.
Hannah was still talking. “I think he was sick. He had a couple dozen prescription bottles.”
“Oh, he’s sick, but not like you’re thinking,” BT said.
Hannah was undeterred. “I kept my rifle on him, and was looking around, expecting somebody might jump out. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the chips, and he knew that.” She almost smiled then. “He started sliding them behind him while pushing the tinfoil box to me.”
“He doesn’t share well with others.” Why I felt the need to explain his actions, I don’t know.
“Then he started putting the pill bottles and you know, other stuff, away. All that was left was the foil, and I think he forgot about the chips. At least, I thought he did. Then he did something really weird.”
“Then? Then he did something really weird?” BT asked.
“He started ripping off little squares of foil and asking if I wanted them. He said they tasted great.”
“Substituting tin foil squares for chips. Yeah. If I had any doubt it was Trip, I don’t anymore.” BT was getting riled. I don’t know why the stoner was so proficient at getting under BT’s skin, but we weren’t even close to the man, hadn’t seen him for months and he was presumed dead for most of that time, but here was BT, getting ready to pace the room. Maybe it was innate. We tended to be scared, or at least wary, of that which we don’t understand, and Trip was all of that and a bag of marbles. Whatever the fuck that means.
“When I asked him about the chips, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then he had a conversation with himself; something about Stephanie saying he should give them to me. He handed the bag over. I had to stop him from eating the foil.”
“He sounds funny,” Johnny said.
“Yeah, it starts off like that, and before you know it, you’re dealing with radioactive poop doing its best to climb free of the toilet,” BT said.
“You’re scaring the kids,” I told him.
“You saw it. Probably poisoned us all.”
“He’s funny too.” Johnny was pointing at BT.
“He told me about the screamers, and how this would protect me and Johnny. I got scared then, because I never said anything about my brother. I felt like maybe he had been watching us. Then I was worried that maybe he had drugged the chips, and I’d already eaten half the bag while he folded hats. They looked like little boats. The baseball hats were my idea; I fi
gured I could run with it on and it wouldn’t fall off.”
“You wore it?” BT asked.
“Not at first. I was more thankful for the chips than the tinfoil. I figured he was just crazy, but I kept them; he made sure I put them in the pack I had. They got covered up with some canned food I found that day, kinda bent. I forgot about them or I would have probably just tossed them when he left.”
“He didn’t ask you to come with him?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t have,” she said.
“I know that, just weird he didn’t ask.”
“He said I couldn’t follow where he went. I don’t know what he meant.”
I had an inkling and so did the rest of my group, though none of us said anything.
“When I got back here that night, Johnny and I were having a feast. I told him about the weird man and even pulled out the hat just to show how weird the guy was. I put it on and was jumping around.”
“It was really funny,” Johnny said. “Then, it wasn’t.” His hand involuntarily went to his nose where he absently wiped away something that wasn’t there.
“We were laughing, and then Johnny just keeled over. Blood was coming out of his nose, his hands were over his ears. I was freaking out. It looked like his brain was exploding.”
Johnny made an explosive noise and spread his hands wide. “It would have made a huge mess! Mom said I have a really big brain.”
“Bird brain. She said you had a bird brain,” Hannah teased.
“I miss mom,” he said.
She deftly steered the conversation away from there. “My hat flew off when I went to help and I fell down next to him, hands at my head, nose bleed, everything was the same. I figured both of our heads couldn’t be exploding at the same time. I reached out, grabbed the hat, and put it back on. As soon as I did, the pain went away. I found the tinfoil box and just started tearing strips off and plopping them on his head. The change was like that.” She snapped her fingers. “He was crying, but he could sit up.”
“I wasn’t crying, you were,” he said, even now sniffling, thinking on it.
“How did Trip know?” BT asked.
“How does Trip do most of the things he does?” I asked. What I left unvoiced was: why had he sought out Hannah? Because, yeah, I was convinced he had sought her out and helped her. What did he know that we didn’t? Did he save her, somehow knowing we’d wind up here? That didn’t make sense; we would have stumbled upon the treehouse regardless if she had lived or died. That meant she was important in some way, or Johnny was. Come to think of it, the only reason why we were even out on this fuckfest of a mission was to look for him. If not for that dream, we’d all be kicking back, drinking beer and having barbecues. There were some implications here; I had to accept that. We were meant to find her. Again, why? If he found her, why not just bring her to us? Or, at least, keep her under his wing until we found him?
“Fucking Trip,” I muttered.
“See, you’re beginning to get it,” BT chimed in.
“We’ve got something going on,” Tommy said; he’d still not left the monitors. Personally, I’d seen all the zombies I’d ever care to.
There was now an open circle in the area below us. The majority of zombies had pulled back, except for the shriekers, who didn’t seem to be doing anything, but I wasn’t going to take my hat off to check. Thought about flipping BT’s off to check, but that seemed about as wise as shoving firecrackers down your pants, though, for some reason, there’s always some idiot willing to do just that. A lone zombie was strolling through the throng, heading right for the center of the clearing. That was the one. She was running the entire show; I was certain of it, and the moment she looked right up into the camera, I felt like my innards were going to liquefy. She knew we were here. I knew what I had to do. I grabbed my rifle and sprinted for the hatch.
Seems she knew what I had to do, as well. Zombies pressed in to cover her, and she ducked down just as I fired. My selector switch was on three-rounds bursts, and I plowed through that magazine in seconds. Made a tight circle of death as I obliterated everything in the vicinity. With the movements of the creatures still coordinated, I was sure I’d not taken down the leader. I was grabbing another magazine as a thick bubble of zombies moved away.
“No!” I was pissed as I fired into the mob. Zombies fell away, but more poured in to bolster the weakness. Anything short of a fifty-caliber round was not going to penetrate her protective sphere. By now I had half my body hanging out of the hatch, BT or Tommy had grabbed my legs; for that, I was thankful. So lost was I in the need to kill her that I’d not thought of my own safety. It was a shortcoming of mine, sort of like not being able to chew gum and walk, the jokes I’d made about ditzy blondes for years, yet I was guilty of the same shit, and in a much worse way.
“Mike, I don’t have a great hold!” BT was gripping my pants and shuffling me around as he pulled me back in.
I dropped the spent magazine; it careened over the broken skull of a dead zombie below. I was twisting to try and grab another one; BT had pulled me most of the way back in. Even dropped my hat, which floated gracefully onto the head of one of the zombies. He looked somewhat lost when it happened. It made sense. If the covering severed the tie between us and the shriekers, then it probably did the same between him and the boss lady. Great. Now we just needed a stadium-sized sheet to drop over the whole lot of them. Then there was one final nugget to conclude this sonata; I won’t swear this on a stack of bibles—I was moving, BT was pulling, rain was coming down in sheets, and it was dark—but I saw a finger shove up and out of the crowd heading out into the night, and you don’t need five guesses to figure out which one it was. By the time I was all the way in and had rushed to the window that looked out on the way they had gone, they were just that: gone. They’d melted into the murk. Pissed off is a couple of words I would use to describe my disposition. If no one lived here, I’d be in the process of kicking and breaking things and it showed. Johnny was on the verge of tears as Hannah held him in a death grip, her eyes wide.
“Sorry.” It came out more like a swear word would have and was about as sincere.
“Safe to say they know we’re here.” BT’s forehead bristled with sweat as he sat next to the now closed hatch. “You do realize you almost took a header, right?”
I said nothing as, in fact, I had not known. Is it possible to be so focused on completing a task as to be completely unaware of one’s peril? Not even sure why I phrased that as a question; I’d like to say there’s a first time for everything, but I’m fairly certain that’s a common state of being for me.
“Now what?” BT asked as I extended a hand to help him up.
“I suppose we thwart whatever plan they come up with.”
“Better get started.” Tommy hadn’t moved from the monitors. I was thinking of shutting them off. It was a lot like watching the news when it was still on—never anything good to report. “Bulkers.”
I started evaluating the construction of the tree house; this was not made by kids or an unskilled hobbyist. There were cross beams, columns, and metal anchors. It would survive a decent windstorm; how it held up to giant monsters slamming into the tree supports was now the question.
“The trees are oak; this shouldn’t be a problem,” Tommy said as he gripped the table he was standing by. That did little to boost my confidence.
There were wet crunching sounds below us. The dead zombies, or the slow ones, were being trampled under the feet of their much heavier brethren. The squelching, screeching sound was nearly as disturbing as the shriekers. The first thud was much louder than the resulting shock wave; I’d been expecting more. That’s when I remembered that sometimes you need to be careful what you’re wishing for. Not that I was wishing for it; I guess I just expected it. The tremor was similar to what one might expect when a heavy door was slammed vigorously shut. Disturbing and loud, but nothing that will wobble your balance. Another hit, different tree. Either a very fast bulker, or a
nother had joined the party.
Still holding on to the door slamming analogy, although now it appeared I had two angry teenaged daughters so mad at me, the only way they could express their rage was through the slamming of wooden panels. All things considered, I’d take the bulkers over the alternate scenario. Another hit. A picture frame fell from a shelf near me and crashed to the floor. The tree house was held up by four trees, and any one of them being struck shouldn’t make a difference, but all four at a synchronized pace could be problematic. But the zombies weren’t hitting all at the same time; they were staggering the strikes, creating a sustained ripple.
“We’re in trouble.” I braced my hand against the wall. As they continued to strike, the rippling intensified. It wouldn’t be long before my fillings popped free from my teeth. My guess was the trees would be fine, but they were going to shake this house apart by the sustained vibrations. As if I needed a visual presentation of my assertion, two of the windows shattered. Only a matter of time before nails came free, floorboards curled up, walls fell inward or outward, depending, and the roof collapsed.
“Tommy, Mike, help me.” BT was making his way to a broken out window. By this point, I wasn’t even sure how he was keeping his balance. We managed to get over to him. I only fell once, thankful my hand missed the shattered glass as I braced myself. “Hold me in.” I looked like a three-year-old plaything with his dad. I was sitting on the floor and had wrapped my body around his foot and leg. Tommy took the much more dignified action of bracing against the wall and grabbing BT’s waist. BT spared me a glance; he may have shaken his head, but given the circumstances, I couldn’t be sure. He was leaning out so far, I could feel myself being lifted off the ground. I realized now my mistake. As a counterweight, I wasn’t going to be enough. If he pitched out, I wasn’t heavy enough to stop him. I hoped Tommy was a better anchor than myself.
There were six or seven quick shots from BT; I lost count as my head was being smacked against the wall. I was thinking that receiving a concussion wasn’t out of the question. Either my head whacks were diminishing, or I was blacking out.
