by Mark Tufo
“Well, that’s fucking gross. Don’t shoot them; let’s try to get out of here without making any more noise,” I said.
The gym was burning; easy enough to see the origin of the blaze. Verdan’s drone had punched a hole right through the roof. I was not thrilled when I saw the tips of two missiles pointing directly toward the weight room.
“What aren’t you telling us?” BT asked. “This is about more than just a couple of shitty uniforms. You run over his pet turtle? Maybe put your trash out too early?”
We were moving quickly to the only exit afforded us. We could hear the throaty roar of a V-8 not too far off; I looked over to Eric, who was smiling. Verdan might dislike me immensely, but he had done an admirable job with the gaggle of zombies. There were two large craters on the football field; The Eatonville Eagles would not be playing a home game anytime soon. The zombies that had not been completely obliterated were in complete disarray. Safe to say they were not fans of fire, maybe not the crazed affliction Frankenstein’s monster suffered, but they were staying away from the secondary blazes. We had to clear a couple of them away from our general area, but nothing too taxing. We rounded the corner of the building to where Bronze was parked. Hesitant to get in was an accurate statement, maybe not strong enough to truly imply how I felt.
“It’s not going to turn back into a statue, is it?” I asked as Gary piled in.
“That’s not how it works,” Eric responded. “It’s a perfectly normal truck.” The engine surged twice, like a laugh. “Mostly normal,” Eric amended. “It’s just…possessed. Get in.”
BT looked over at me. “Hummer isn’t that far away.” He had the same misgivings I did.
“You mean the one behind all those zombies?” Eric asked, standing in the bed of the truck and looking toward our vehicle. “Think we can clear them, get it going, and get away before the rest get their act together?”
“Huh?” was my thoughtful answer. My gaze did not waver from the truck; I had poked my head in to see if perhaps this whole magic thing was a ruse and there was a driver, albeit a small one, in there operating the controls. Even when I proved that hope false, I was thinking this could maybe be remote controlled; that was a much more valid notion than a self-aware statue that could inhabit vehicles, right?
A shrieker was barely visible behind what remained of the visitor’s bleachers; its head was thrown back and its mouth was wide open. Neither I, nor anyone with me, was suffering the effects of its yell.
“Oh, wonderful,” Eric and Tommy said in unison. They traded glances and Tommy added, “It’s summoning.”
Even though I hadn’t picked up on the psychic signal, the effects would have been difficult to miss. Zombies who were, only moments before, confused individuals were beginning to coalesce around the shrieker and as they got closer to him, it appeared that they were receiving a secondary message as they would turn to us and start moving as fast as they could. I entertained thoughts of standing and fighting, but there were too many and more were coming.
“Oh well, I guess I can always tell my grandkids I rode inside a magical statue; pretty sure they’ll just commit me at that point, but what the hell.” I waited until everyone was in before joining them. The engine thrummed; the reverberations were loud inside the cab as it left a trail of rubber some twenty feet long as we fishtailed it out of there. Eric said nothing, riding in the bed and holding on to the headache rack with one hand as the driverless vehicle barreled down the highway.
“Don’t you want to get in?” I shouted.
“Swords,” he replied over the engine roar and wind. “This truck doesn’t have the sword rack option installed.”
I would have felt much better to see someone driving. The wheel turned, the pedals moved, the whole thing ran like a machine possessed, which I guess it was. I swear it was fucking with me as it would drift around, coming dangerously close to debris or other stalled cars along the road, then swerving clear at the last possible moment. I winced or involuntarily bunched up each time, and it seemed to be getting its jollies from the entire affair. I was smart enough to wait until we were stopped and all out before I told Eric his statue was an asshole. I flipped it off, too. The engine backfired, spitting a black cloud of smoke. Same to you, buddy.
“She’s just playful.”
“The Hummer is one street over.” BT was looking at his GPS.
“See? She can be nice,” Eric pointed out.
“What now?” I asked him.
“I think I’m going to move on. Too many zombies, not enough magic, and I doubt anyone is interested in taking up a collection to keep me fed. Don’t misunderstand. I’d be willing to help, but I suspect your superiors will start poking their noses into things better left unpoked. I might be forced to do some unsavory things in response to their prejudice. I’m sure you understand.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, because I did.
“All in all, I think we should end on a high note. Don’t you?”
“This is a high note?” BT asked. “I’d hate to see your aria.”
“The Queen of the Night’s got nothing on me,” he replied, smirking. I caught the joke. “It’s been interesting,” he went on. “I doubt we’ll see each other again, but I’ve been wrong before. Entirely too often, in fact.” He seemed to be scanning a memory.
I stuck my hand out, wasn’t sure what else to do. Eric tugged off a gauntlet and shook it. His grip was firm and dry, but his hand was cold, very cold.
“Thanks for…I’m not sure what,” I admitted.
“You are most welcome…Michael Talbot, Lawrence Tynes, Gary Talbot, Thomas Van Goth, and Jake Winters. Good luck with the zombies! With those, the shriekers are the key.”
“Oh, we got it,” BT agreed.
“As for the humans,” he added, “I wish I had an answer for you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Observe humans for a thousand years and see if you still need to ask.”
We all watched as Eric mounted up on his V8 steed and took a grip on the headache rack. It roared to life with the cab still empty. The headlights came on and one of them blinked off for an instant, like it winked at me. The whole truck darkened from a coppery color down to a dull black before it spun through a tight turn and roared off into the night.
“Are we gonna check out where he goes?” BT asked.
“Not a fucking chance,” I said as I turned and was heading to our ride.
“What are we supposed to say in our debriefing?” Winters asked.
“Everything, exactly like it happened, just without Eric, magic swords, possessed trucks, and all the other crazy-ass bullshit. Should make it simple enough,” I told him.
The drive home was quiet except for Gary’s humming. We were all trying to process what had just happened, or at least assimilate it into our new reality. Luckily, I was the only one Bennington met with and after an hour of telling him all I wanted him to know, he dismissed me. I had stood and was heading for the door, thankful he’d not delved too deeply.
“Oh, Lieutenant, the next time you don’t want to tell me something, I suggest you work a little longer on your delivery.”
“Sir.” I turned back. “What I saw, what we all saw…I don’t even think I believe it. I wouldn’t even know how to explain it. The intel is good, the anomaly is gone; if you still want to know, give me a day or two to formulate some thoughts.”
“If you think I need to know, then you know where to find me. Otherwise, good job, Lieutenant. Enjoy some downtime.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Post Epilogue
Post Episode:
* * *
I went back a couple of weeks later, alone. I wandered around the burned-out gym and the destroyed football field. Don’t know why I felt the need to do what I was doing. Thanks to Eric, we now had people back at the base working on something like noise-canceling headphones. They were big and bulky and right now, I didn’t see how they could be used in a tactical situati
on. But I was told these were early prototypes and soon they would have something that fit into our gear and weighed under a pound–we’d hardly notice it. I believed that as much as I believed in war rabbits. Errant thought, but true, nonetheless. I’d been in the military long enough to know it would probably weigh more than fifteen pounds and have to be mounted on our chest or some such shit, but it was a start. I thought on Eric a lot and the more I did so, the more I came back to the realization I didn’t believe him to be human, or to have ever been human. The demon truck was just a small piece of it; I dwelt on his line about watching humanity for a thousand years. Who says something like that and then leaves? Yet, through all my doubts, here was an ally, potentially. Tough to gauge someone whose thoughts were probably very alien to my own, but there I was. Humans, as a species, were on the ropes and getting burns on our backs as we quickly slid down them; we could only hope there wasn’t a noose waiting at the end. If help was out there, in any form, I was going to do my best to secure some. I wrote a note and stuffed it into a large manila envelope which I emblazoned with block letters that spelled out his name. That should keep anyone else away. I used a liberal amount of tape and adhered it to the front of the high school. The odds he would ever come across it, I pegged at a billion to one. About the same odds of there being a zombie apocalypse, so yeah, stranger things could happen.
I wrote:
Hey Eric, it’s Michael Talbot. First off, thank you for getting us out of that jam. Wait, now that I’m writing this down, if it weren’t for you setting the whole thing up, we would have never been in trouble. Almost a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point. Forget it. A simple thanks is what I’m shooting for. Ultimately, I don’t know what your motives are, but if you’re in the neighborhood and humans still exist, I wouldn’t turn down your help, and I’ll even offer you a beer.
Chapter 14
TALBOT-SODE ONE
I was sitting in the living room. Wesley and I were discussing the merits of Duplo blocks over traditional-sized Legos. He was young, so it was mostly a one-sided affair, though every once in a while he would let me voice my opinion. When he was done building his masterpiece and destroying mine, we went to sit in my chair so I could read him the Lion King for who knows how many times. Can we go back to the blocks for a moment? Funny little quirk about the boy. For whatever reason, no matter what I built, wall, house, plane, spaceship, he had to destroy it. Now I’m not talking the normal, taking his matchbox car and slamming it into the side like we all have, destroy it; I’m saying he dismantles it down to the block, almost as if to erase the fact the structure ever existed. Strange; I’m sure there’s more to it, but for now, it’s just one of those things that makes me scratch my head. Okay, where was I? Ah, page one of the Lion King. I was rapidly getting to the point where, if I was in this story, I would kill Mustafa, Mufasa or whatever his name is, just to get it over with. Maybe mow down the entire pride.
“That’s cynical even for you, Talbot,” I said aloud. I cleared my throat and began the narrative. It was something I could now do from rote. Which, in this case, was not a good thing as it gave my mind a chance to freelance. I’d been having a reoccurring dream lately, vivid enough that I was more than convinced it had happened. Not in this life-line, maybe, but in one of the others. I did not envy that version of Mike, even if it seemed his world was devoid of zombies. It goes something like this…(if this were a movie, you’d see the wavy lines on the screen indicating a reality shift right about now).
“I can’t believe I gave up a day off to be with you,” BT groused as he pulled a large toolbox out of the back of my Jeep.
“What are you bitching about? I’m paying you for this. Can’t you grab the other box too?”
“What are you going to carry?”
“I’m the foreman! I’ve got the pencil.”
“You sure this is the house?” BT had put the box down on the dilapidated front porch, stepped back and was looking up at the gray Gothic structure.
“Yeah, 1282 Raven’s Head.”
“Mike, there’s a Giovanni and Sons sign out front.”
“Yeah? So?”
“They’re famous for flipping houses. Do all the work themselves. They make a fortune doing this type of thing; why would they call your little handy-man business?”
“Maybe they’re overwhelmed.”
“Maybe that’s the case, but, and I don’t mean this in a hurtful way, but how far down on a contractor’s list do you think they had to travel before they got to your name?”
“Don’t mean to be hurtful? Maybe next time punch me in the throat. At least I’d be out cold while I nursed my injury.”
“You know what I mean. They must have tons of contacts in the field, workers they’ve used for years. You’ve been doing this for two months, and only on the side.”
“Don’t know, don’t care. They’re paying me a shitload to demo a kitchen. Eight hours of work and I might be able to retire.”
“Exactly how much are they paying you? Because you told me all you could afford was twelve bucks an hour, which isn’t shit! I’m doing this as a favor to you.”
“Shitload was a figure of speech. We should get started while we have light; there’s no electricity inside.”
“Are you kidding? What about heat?”
“Not likely.”
“It’s going to be freezing in there! I hate that empty house cold feeling; it seeps into your bones.”
“Well, if you work hard and start earning your pay you won’t even notice.” I grabbed a sledge and used the key I’d been given to head in. The house was a mess; it was tough to even tell what style it had been in before the demolition had started. It never even dawned on me why it had not been finished.
“There’s shit everywhere…even tools. What gives? A contractor worth a shit would never leave his gear behind.”
“Most of this stuff is DeWalt; think anyone will miss it?” I asked as I picked up a drill that, on my best day, I couldn’t afford. Don’t get me wrong; my Black and Decker worked just fine, but a DeWalt was like the Rolls Royce of power tools.
“You start tossing other people’s tools in your Jeep and I’m out of here. I’m a cop, Mike, people already think I’m corrupt. I’m not going to give them any concrete proof.”
“I would think this would be right up your alley,” I told him as I reluctantly put it down. “Want a hit?” I pulled out a joint.
“You are absolutely kidding me.”
“What? We’re in Colorado. It’s legal.”
“So is Scotch. That doesn’t mean I’m going to pull out a decanter while I’m working.”
“Suit yourself.” I took a quick toke. I was hoping it would quell some nerves that were beginning to make themselves known. Besides the bone-chilling cold BT was complaining about, this house just felt…off. But if I thought a hit or two of some Mary Jane was going to do anything to dispel that feeling, I was sadly mistaken. Chalk that up with all the other poor choices I had made through my life; soon I was going to need another notepad to keep track.
I turned the corner and headed into the kitchen, then paused for a second to look around. The rest of the house looked as if it had been attacked by steroid-fueled workers; in contrast, the kitchen was immaculate, everything was pristine. A light gray granite counter-top sat upon beautiful cabinetry. The oven was a Southbend antique stove; somehow the hundred-year-old appliance looked like it had just come out of the box. It looked more like a piece of art than something used for such pedestrian purposes as cooking a meatloaf. The floor was hardwood, possibly oak; it had a brilliant shine to it. BT had to push me out of the entryway as he hefted the tools in. He set it all down then stretched and popped his back.
“What the fuck have you got us into?” He had walked to the cabinets and opened one of the top ones up. “This is Royal Doulton.” He flipped a gold-rimmed teacup over. “This stuff is worth more than you.” He opened up a drawer. “Silver. These utensils are silver. I’m not trying to
be a dick, Mike, but this kitchen is worth more than your townhome. There’s no way someone wants it gutted. That stove itself is close to ten grand in that condition. The cabinets are American Chestnut; you can’t even get this wood anymore.” He was longingly rubbing a hand across the smooth, pale-grained finish.
“What?”
“Some idiot brought Asian chestnut trees over to the states back in the early 1900s. Huge blight pretty much wiped out the entire species; they only grow for a few years then die. Never big enough to harvest any wood from. I can’t even begin to put a price on what something like this might cost.”
I fumbled through my jacket, pulled up a mostly folded but somewhat wadded piece of paper. I reread the signed contract before handing it over to BT. He took a second to look at it before handing it back.
“I’m not doing it. I can’t. This is like breaking into the Louvre and trashing the Mona Lisa.”
The job paid twelve hundred bucks. There was a dumpster onsite, which meant I didn’t have to rent a truck or pay a disposal fee at the local landfill. After I paid BT, I was going to clear around nine hundred. Unbelievable pay for eight hours of demo work, and with the holidays rapidly approaching, it was an infusion of cash the Talbot family could use.
“Shit.” BT knew we were hurting for money; that’s why he was even here, helping out a friend.
“They want you to just tear this shit out and throw it away?”
“That’s what it says.”
“What if we take it down gently and salvage it?”
That got me thinking. I’d have to rent a truck, but if we sold even half this stuff…I let the thought trail off.
“I’ll split it twenty-eighty,” I told him.
“Fifty-fifty.”
“Twenty one-seventy nine.”
“Talbot.”
“Fine, fine. Going to take a lot longer than we thought; might as well get started. And not for nothing–how are we planning on moving that stove? It looks like it could be heavier than my car.”
