Ava says. “It’s normal. You can turn back now, we haven’t left yet.”
David says. “Would you? It’s funny, one of my last conversation with Phillip was about you if you can believe that.” She moves over the grass closer to David. He continues. “I was trying to get a reaction from him, but he didn’t fall for it.”
Ava bumps him with her shoulder. “So what did you say?” David looks at her then down; he clears his throat, then says. “Um…I said I wanted to ask you out to the movies.”
Ava says. “I don’t believe you, you don’t have to tell me.”
David grins and says. “What do you think this is? It’s one long miserable first date.”
Ava says. “I’m not a cheap date and I don’t put out. Do you still want to hang?”
David looks across the water at the swaying trees. “Hang. I haven’t heard that slang in a while…Not everyday or conversations have to be depressing to prove we’re sad. There are still peaceful moments despite how much this world has changed.”
Ava says. “Only the people have.”
David takes out his journal, opens it to a certain page, and hands it to her.
Ava says. “What I am suppose to do will this, wipe my ass?”
“Read it.”
“I hope it’s not a love letter.” Ava reads the journal: Enclosed in my journal is a map of the twelve solar bunkers across the U.S. and I marked the one I think Phillip is at, if I die use the map. Don’t let the Indians know...Give me the book back and tell me, no one will want to read this.
She slams the book. “No one will want to read this shit.”
David says. “A little harsh.”
Ava has a big grin on her face.
David side hugs her with one arm. “We’re going to get him back, I promise. Abigail too.” Takes a sip of water. “I’m going to go check on my new friends, so we can leave while light is still out, we’ll travel a lot tonight because I know the area pretty well, but after a few days we’ll travel mostly during the day.” He helps Ava up, she says. “Lead the way, Boss.”
Cooper is placing rocks in an arch near the shallow end of the river to catch fish with his hands.
Lou is talking privately to Youngblood. “Ava seems serious and David’s a dick, don’t forget who your friends are out here. We will get your mom back if you listen to me.” The Chief tells Lou when he walks up. “You’re not here only because of what you lost, but you here to do the things I can’t. Lou puts his head back looking up, blood rushes to his face, squeezing a thought out. “Perhaps, you’re lying to yourself.”
The Chief says. “I’m not sure about our plan anymore, David has brought a woman with him.”
The Indians stop talking as David walks up to them, and he claps his hands. “Lets go.” Everyone gathers their packs then rides away from the sunset.
7
At the sound of laughing, Raoul awakens and rolls out of bed, opens his drapes to a rustic backyard patio with a swinging bench and chrome grill. A manicure lawn is in the backdrop and further outbound is a row of horse stables.
In the living room, a long horn skull is over the mantelpiece and fireplace; various antique crosses of diverse styles cover the walls. Seven year old identical twin grandkids, one a boy the other a girl, are eating cereal on the high circular table with their legs gleefully kicking underneath. The little boy is making his wooden lion and a man figurine toy fight to the death; his bowl of cornflakes is overflowing.
Each kid is delicate bone with dark hair down their backs, and are hard to tell apart until they open their mouths.
The little girl says with her mouth full, “grandpa,” and hops off the gigantic chair. He turns the singing television’s volume lower from max, then picks up the little girl and hoists her up in the air; she’s light as a balloon with helium laughter. The little boy forgets about his toys, runs up and pulls on Raoul’s pajama pants, looking up with pleading eyes.
The little girl has a scrunch up nose and wryly looks down at her brother, fomenting odd wounds. “Jealous.”
Raoul complies with his grandson’s watering eyes, brings his granddaughter to the ground by the wrist and she immediately pushes her brother.
“Stop it.”
“Be nice kids.” He switches grandkids and tosses the boy, who giggles louder than his sister near the ceiling. She rubs both her eyes mocking her brother.
Raoul takes a seat on the couch. “Let grandpa catch his breath.” Straightaway, the twins start bouncing between leather couches. He makes a mental note of what needs to be done today and reminds the screaming kids. “Get ready, your mom’s coming and she doesn’t like dirty little rascals.”
A tiny foot changes the channel.
Two fat Mafiosi guys in flashy jumpsuits talk fast and sit across from each other in a night club at closing time. A Rolling Stone song is playing in the background. The bartender the only other person walks to the back. The camera pulls in close showcasing both their faces in the wide frame.
Character 1: Mook, you better have my fucking money, or when I’m done with you, you’ll be eating through a fucking straw...up your ass. Capisce motherfucker. It’s about respect. He waves his hands for empathic emphasis.
He puts his hand in his jumpsuit and stands up.
Character 2: Do me a solid and shut the fuck up. I’m a made guy, so kiss my Italian ass. Wise guy, your protection money will come when it fucking comes I’m not a fucking bank. Stop being a cunt about it…Hey you know what rat, maybe I’ll drop the dough off at your mothers during Sunday dinner, then say hi to your Misses.
Character 1: You fucking cocksucker!
Both guys pull out their guns. The screen goes to black and the voice says. “The Oscar winning Gangster Fellas 2 will be right back after the commercial break.” Raoul says. “Who watches this shit?” He turns the TV off and the jumping kids laugh as one. “Shit.”
The little boy lands next to his grandpa and springs to the hardwood flooring; it turns into a roll on the ground. His sister sticks the landing next to him, tight fists to her sides. “You better not start crying before mama gives you a reason.” She spits out simpering with an unerring attitude.
Raoul holds his tongue and decides not to fight all the boy’s battles. “I’m going to iron your clothes, both of you go wash up.” The kids run down the hall, best of friends again. His eyes crinkled at the corners of his eyes when he smiles.
In his bedroom again, Raoul’s sipping coffee and realizes an hour has almost passed by and he hasn’t moved from his chair. He talks to the TV as he stands, “every president can say the right things, surprise me and do the right thing,” he turns off the TV or he won’t get anything done today. I love these kids, but I’m glad they get to go home.
More time goes by and there is a loud banging on the door, so Raoul sets down the iron and strides for the living room. At the front door, he peeks through the curtains then opens the door. “Hello?” He steps outside stretching his back, there’s not another house in sight and that was why he bought this land, the solitude makes him appreciate human interactions, be it in public or private. Someone up the road is coming towards the house at a brisk pace. He squints and shuts the door.
The loud drumming beats back up after he locks the front door. He rubs his brow, hoping they don’t make him raise his voice, and with his hand on the kid’s doorknob. “You better be packing up. Your mother hates waiting.”
Their room is peppered with toys displayed across the floor; miniature blue and pink suitcases are between the unmade twin beds, but no children. He slams open the closet door, expecting the kids to be hiding in the dark like usual, instead the pit of his stomach tightens. In the dim light, the boy’s tiny legs kick in the air; his chockfull mouth is filling with blood. The little girl is sitting cross-legged, languidly gnawing on her brother’s neck that’s cradle between her thighs.
Raoul draws a short breath, pulls the boy by the ankles, and slams the door with his back in the girl’s bloody s
mile.
Turns the boy on his side and smacks his back like a drowned victim. Blood spews over the white carpet. The little boy coughs and wheezes, regaining a little color to his face. “Thank the good Lord.” The doorknob is rattling and the wood is clinging.
Raoul pulls the kid’s shirt to check the wound; it’s on the dip where neck and shoulder meet. The little boy talks with a lisp because he bit his tongue. “What’s wrong with her?” Hell, if I know.
The little girl runs and slams into the closet door, it pushes Raoul forward and off balance.
Raoul has his foot wedged under the closet door; he picks the boy up by the armpits and steadies him upright. “Can you walk?”
The boy shovels handfuls of long hair out of his face, and briefly pauses, “I feel dizzy,” he finds his center by bracing the wall. When Raoul raises his voice. “Call the police.” The boy’s lips begin to pucker. “I’m scared, is my sister going to be ok?” It breaks Raoul’s heart and he takes the whimpering boy’s head into his hands and chivvies. “Yes, now go.” They each lean their foreheads against the other and close their eyes. Raoul is just as afraid as the boy.
The boy gives him an expectant look then runs out the door with his hand on his neck.
Raoul lays his palms and feet flat on the ground and sits with his back against the door; his body slides forward after the next hit. The rapid scratching behind him and sonorous growling make Raoul’s skin crawl. Disillusioned with years of Sunday teachings and everything he thought he knew about the face of evil. His grandson has more confidence in the girl’s wellbeing than him and that’s what makes him feel weak, his lack of faith.
He checks his robe pocket for his pills. Empty. His supercilious heart constricts even more, his breathing slows, and his eyes are straining to stay open. The front door alarm goes off and he knows the boy is outside. Raoul stands holding his thighs, turns to the door into a standing pushup fashion after a hit from the other side. Thin pieces of wood cover his feet. “I’m going to help you.” He runs over the toys barefooted and falls through the bedroom door into the hallway. He sardonically kicks the kid’s door to a close like a man defeated, the plywood splinters and it hits the doorframe and lingers open.
He cackles to himself in a meager attempt to hold it together, shuffling his legs and holding onto the walls on the way to his bedroom, leaving bloody fingerprints on all he touches with his red gloves.
His pills are on a small table with the mail, remote, and vitamin bottles. He collapses rights as he pinches the heart medication, bringing the table down as well.
He gasps for air on his hands and knees as he goes through the miscellaneous rumble of empty medicine bottles and stacks of mail. He drops to his back and sees out the corner of his eye, the orange pill bottle under the ironing board, he stretches and gets hold of the pills, pops the bottle’s lid open and shakily empties the last two pills in his mouth like it will magically rewind time. Lets go of the bottle and it spins on the floor.
Splayed across the ground, his body is heavy and deadened; it’s numb and ultra sensitive resembling the tingling sensation of a limb falling asleep due to no blood to the nerves. All his blood is behind his eyes waiting to blast through. Moving an inch only exacerbates the pins and needles feeling over his entire body. The stifling room is shrinking. All the light in the room is getting sucked through the ceiling fan, the room’s corners are black, and now it looks like a flowing white blanket about to fall and drape his body to lay him to rest.
He closes his eyes and tries not to even breathe because of the pain and let’s the light take hold.
First the hair on the back of his neck bristles, next his eyes open to the sound of sprinting and before he can take a good look, his granddaughter jumps for his face, bumping down the ironing board, she plunks down on his neck, she jostles in his arms for a moment then chomps down on his neck. He snaps the bones in her hand clawing into his chest. She surges and sputters an ungodly scream.
He’s too weak to get her off completely, struggling underneath the strength of ten men. Manages to pull her by her unruly hair; her head comes up with warm flesh between her tiny rows of silver encased teeth. The pain in his neck jumpstarts and recharges his nerves. He holds her over his chest in the air; her legs wildly kick behind her, as if she’s swimming over him. She plops into his stomach and reopens the old wound. He snatches her by the throat and his fingers crawl for the nearest object. She knees him in the groin in a rage.
“I’m sorry.” He presses her face into the red hot smoldering iron lifting her head up in the process. The right side of her face sears and pops like cooking grease, her eye is a black marble. Droplets of flesh burn into his chest and it jolts him to his knees and knocks the girl under the king sized bed.
He stumbles about in the immediate vicinity for the door to the outside which is next to his bedroom window, as he takes hold of the bronze doorknob, the unswerving girl runs on and springs off the bed and into his back. He spins and staggers backwards as if the floor is made of ice and rotates through the low window. Shattering it except for a pinkish color on the lower pane of glass that now has a preteen finger wedged in. The oversized pots of oleanders break his fall; his thigh is skimmed to the muscle by the window. Phasing in and out of consciousness. The mussy man leaves the glass shard in his stomach in place, afraid to make it worst. If only I stayed asleep a little longer.
After a reprieve, he cups his hand underneath the glass in his gut so it doesn’t shift and kill him quicker, he has to know if his grandson’s ok because he feels nothing like a grandfather at this exact moment. The central air and heating unit cranks on and the fan becomes rowdier as Raoul desperately looks around for the semblance of his granddaughter. I can’t try to kill her again.
Catty-cornered from him, an unidentifiable raucous squeal emanates, it sends a shudder down his aching back. He falls off the lattice porch.
He interweaves through the brambles and bushes. Back in sight, the girl climbs with gusto onto the deck, broken bones protruding through her arms.
“Be gone.” A fumbling Raoul whisks away from the scrounging eighty-pound child and without looking slams into the wooden gate door. He leans back against the chained fence and pulls the glass shard from his stomach, it’s dark red and slippery. Quickly breathes after, to make sure he still can.
His little girl, the last grandchild, his favorite, has trounced him in his home and forever tainted the land, he hates her for forcing him to choose his or her life.
Taking refuge on the gate, he swings his arm up high as if to hammer the broken glass into his heart. She tumbles off the deck, she looks like his innocent girl, he wants to hug her and fix everything he’s done to her. “Stop.”
The monstrosity is only a few yards away, regaining her step and rhythm as she saunters closer. “Leave.” She’s in a state of somnambulism and his screams don’t wake her from her nightmare.
He’s squeezing the chuck of glass in his hand, so hard that blood’s dripping down onto his face.
His granddaughter has past the point of no return. “I can’t.”
Fending for more than himself, he slices in a sweeping motion at the motley girl’s throat, she watches him with steely eyes and takes a step back because of the force, there’s a latent reaction then the blood sprays from her neck like a thumb on a water hose in Raoul’s face. Familial ties forever severed.
She jumps forward, higher than ever. Raoul’s ready this time for it, catches her small head in mid-air and leads it into the metal fence pole, adding his weight behind it. Her face crushes down the middle inwardly and she stops moving. Rife with guilt that she’s finally dead. There is a tang of the fresh shampoo coming from her hair, that he bought her. He pulls her away from the fence with his eyes closed. A fiendish end, I have taken decades of all she could have been, for what? For a man who has a handful of good years left. He lays back in exhaustion with her cradled in his sully arms. Soaking up each other’s blood. “I’m sorry.”
> He still has her in both his arms, walking down the gravel driveway; he can see the little boy passed out in the passenger seat of his mother’s car parked in the street. The pressure is tight in his chest.
His daughter runs up to him. “My daughter?” She falls to her knees holding her screaming face. The father, grandfather, the Chief, passes out in the grass.
8
When the group stops to camp at night, zombies run out of the bushes like bats out of hell and the group slaughters them with the respect they deserve. The last zombie falls and they all quickly sit on the dirt and no one says a word like after a strenuous training session.
Later, David helps the guys and Ava drag the zombies, placing them around the campsite. Piling the bodies at five points, forming an unintentional pentagram to ward off evil spirits. The original Star of Bethlehem.
David says as he takes a breather. “Pissing and shitting out here, it’s going to be real intense because all you are too modest for a buddy system.” The group says. “Just keep dragging.”
Cooper is collecting zombie scalps and covering the horses with them.
David’s tent is made up with sticks, a tarp over them, his duffel bag is filled with clothes to create a pillow, and he has an old sleeping bag inside. Ava sets up her hooped bivy on a flat surface to sleep in. The Indians set up their hammocks then place braided rope in a circle around David’s and Ava’s tents.
Ava says. “What’s that for?”
Youngblood says. “For snakes, they won’t cross it.” She gives him a quick thumbs up.
Around the campfire, the group unwinds as David hands everyone a small bowl. “Pretend they’re full, like the Lost Boys.” He waits for a reaction, then says. “Peter Pan. Am I the only one who read and watched movies? I loved watching movies, a film never changes but you do, so it’s a new experience every time.”
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